TIME TO TRUEVO

Dayna Clarke caught up with chief executive officer David Liu to find out why Truevo set up shop within the Maltese Islands and their incredible journey to date.

Why did you set up a base in Malta?

I originally came to Malta because I was looking for an EU-based acquirer so my South African-based payment gateway company could expand into accepting payments in Europe. This was back in 2012. When I visited, I realised that PSD had come into effect which allowed a tech company to apply for a financial license. Instead of working with an acquirer, I decided rather to open one myself!  That is how Truevo came to be. 

What challenges have you found locally along the way?

In this industry, if you are prepared to be an entrepreneur, you must also be prepared to wait.  This isn’t so much specific to Malta. It’s true that the license was new to Malta, but the country handled it great. It is more the nature of the beast of setting up this sort of organisation that it takes time for all the pieces to come together. I was ready to begin the process of setting up a company in Malta in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2016 that Truevo was fully licensed and ready to process its first card-present transaction.  I don’t see it as much as a challenge as a necessary requirement to operate, but yes, it does take time.

“As far as our next steps go, we’re taking artificial intelligence methodologies such as machine learning very seriously”

You have won multiple awards, and many companies have shifted to your service, why do you think this is?

I would say our success is based on our technology adoption.  We’re not held back by legacy or historical systems like some of the older companies in the space. This allows us to adapt to new technologies just as soon as they’re pumped out.  In this way, we can service offerings that less agile companies can’t.

Additionally, we don’t constrain ourselves to a specific technology.  We follow architectural approaches when addressing system design which allow for rapid agility. For example, if our best option is C# or Python, a NoSQL database or a cache, streaming or a queue - we can choose and use what’s best.  We are nimble enough to use whatever suits each job. 

What are the current technical challenges faced by your service?

Happily, I can say the challenge is our growth.  We have been aggressively ambitious with our plans so our technical roadmap is crammed with new products and features.  Also, we are increasing our transaction volumes so much that our tech needs to have the ability to scale seamlessly alongside not only us but our customers, who are growing themselves. We’re lucky in that we have a talented tech team that thrives on challenges and new systems.

Are you able to find the right skilled employees to drive the business forward? Or do you train up tech people in-house?

The short answer is yes, we’re able to source great people and we tend to keep them.  The average technical team member at Truevo stays for 4-5 years.  The long answer is that tech talent is perpetually in short supply, and it’s important to give tech team members challenges that further their careers and combat boredom.

For us, it’s essential to hire the right people from the start, so we give candidates three interviews, an aptitude test to analyse their developer skills, and a psychometric assessment.  We take knowledge into consideration just as equally as we hire for personality, cultural fit, and values.  We promise our team members that they’ll always be learning with us, and we’ll always be investing in their skills.  Thankfully, great developers tend to be motivated by this, so we have a terrific team. 

The market is steadily picking up pace locally with others cropping up, what makes you stand out from your competitors?

We stay current on competitors not just locally, but abroad. Our C-level team is a mix of local and international talent with a combined 100+ years in the payments industry so they have a great hand on the pulse of the industry.  I, myself, have been launching payment companies since the late 90’s so I’m quite familiar with the territory. 

As a larger team, we share industry knowledge daily via a Slack channel. On any given day, you can find a Risk Analyst, a Developer, and a VP of Sales posting news. The payments industry is changing rapidly, but it is also clear what is missing in the marketplace and which parties are underserved. We work to create products that solve established needs, and there are plenty.

What feedback have you been getting for your service?

We receive the most positive feedback on how easy it is to integrate with us.  Instead of taking months, our integrations average a couple of days at best to a few weeks at worst.  So, the time to market our merchants’ products are that much faster and project risk is lower. 

What people like about us is that we use new technologies that are secure, effective and fast.  Our industry is rampant with companies which started out using monolithic, rather than micro service architectures which don’t allow them to deliver iterative pieces quickly.  We leverage a cloud-first environment with access to a multitude of technologies rather than being restricted to just a few.  Our agility helps us accomplish big things, but it also propels our customers into the future.

What’s on the horizon for Truevo?

We are in the process of creating a unified platform which we will release to our customers, enabling them to access several different financial systems and instruments through modern APIs. Our aim is to provide customers with the toolbox and we are excited to have them surprise us with what they can achieve with our platform.

We are constantly investing in our data platform.  As far as our next steps go, we’re taking artificial intelligence methodologies such as machine learning very seriously.  It is the era of big data, and the tech world has access to a ton of information. In reality, very few companies are able to leverage the power of that data. SME players, in particular, do not have the capacity for data science, machine learning, and data engineering teams yet their businesses would be so much more powerful with these kinds of resources.

Our plan is to be right there to hand them these capabilities and allow them to play with the big guys.  That is the big, hairy, audacious goal that motivates our technology teams every day.

About Truevo

Truevo is a FinTech company which provides fast, flexible and convenient payment solutions.  They empower businesses to accept Visa, MasterCard and JCB payments in 120 currencies and receive settlements in the currency of their choice.  With Truevo, customers can accept card transactions online, over the phone, and in-store. They also offer a push payments solution which facilitates fast pay-outs to over a billion eligible Visa, MasterCard and Maestro cards.

Dayna is a senior speech therapist by day and feature-writer by night. When she’s not busy fixing words, she is travelling the world to add to her fridge magnet collection.