w/ Vikram Anreddy, Shopify
“It’s truly magic. That’s the word I use internally to describe what we’re doing here.”
We chat with Vikram Anreddy, Head of Product for Finance at Shopify, about how Shopify is making money management way easier for merchants. Taxes, loans, cash flow—it’s all getting simplified with Shopify Finance, a one-stop shop for all your business finances. Vikram walks us through how this whole idea came about, what problems they’re solving, and what’s next. If managing your money has ever made you want to pull your hair out, this one’s for you. Plus, who knew taxes could be this easy?
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Omnisend. Shopify store owners, are you tired of juggling multiple tools to manage your marketing? Well, meet Omnisend, the only platform you'll ever need to skyrocket your e-com sales. With OmniSend, setting up e-com automations is so simple, you'll have them up and running before you finish your morning coffee. Plus, you can segment your customers based on their shopping habits and even dive into SMS or push notifications, all from one seamless dashboard. OmniSend Isn't just another marketing tool. It's the secret weapon behind over a hundred thousand successful e-com brands. Whether it's crafting eye-catching emails or sending out timely texts, Omnisend helps you connect with your customers like never before. Give your brand the boost it deserves. Don't wait. Your best campaigns are just a click away. Your dot omnisen. com slash unofficial Shopify Podcast. Omniscent. Welcome back to the unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster. Jack Nasty. And today, let's talk, let's talk money? No, let's talk financial solutions. Shopify's got some product updates, some new features, and we're going to talk to Shopify's head of product for finance. And they've got new financial tools and I don't know about them yet. This is news to me too. So he's gonna explain it to me. Uh I'm gonna see if I can I can understand it and figure it out. But ultimately, I want to know why does this matter for merchants? You know, why should we care here? And well, we're gonna dive in because I want to know Shopify's new finance tools and what they mean for you. Vikram, welcome. How are you doing?
Vikram Anreddy
Kurt, thank you for having me here. I'm doing well.
Kurt Elster
I am I'm happy to have you. Uh and so you're at you are uh a product lead at Shopify or head of product for finance at Shopify. Um Tell me what's what's Shopify Fi what what is Shopify Finance? What is this thing all about? Give me the quick rundown.
Vikram Anreddy
Yeah, I mean Uh we've been building shop financial solutions for our merchants for a while. We started with Captu a while ago and we've been build-building a bunch of these uh products to help our merchants manage the money and grow. What we're doing now is with Shopify Finance, we're bringing all of these together and we have some new updates as well. Uh what Shopify Finance provides is a one-stop shop. It's a single surface where you can manage all your money within the Shopify admin and the Shopify mobile app. It brings together the tools that we have built for business accounts and money management. uh to get access to loans and credit, uh to manage tools like Bill Pay and Shopify Tax all into one single surface. been straight into the Shopify admin and in the Shopify mobile app so that merchants and entrepreneurs can manage their money where they make it within the Shopify admin.
Kurt Elster
Are there specific pain points? Like you touched on a little bit, but where there's definitely specific pain points that you see merchants experiencing that led you to develop these products and features?
Vikram Anreddy
Absolutely. I mean, uh again, we've been on this journey for a while, uh, right. And um if you think about it, money is like the lifeblood of a commerce business. Right.
Kurt Elster
Without dough, it won't go. You need cash flow.
Vikram Anreddy
It is uh it is truly the large blood of our commerce business. And um uh unfortunately a lot of our merchants and entrepreneurs are stuck with traditional banks in managing their money, right? And the three pain points we hear from merchants again and again. One is access, especially our smaller merchants, right? It's really hard for them to access business banking services from a traditional banks. I mean A lot of banks will need you to be in business for two years to even get a like a business bank account or a loan, right? And 70% of SMB loan applications are rejected. So it's really hard to get access to business banking or credit for your business, right? And as a result, a lot of entrepreneurs end up using personal credit, personal um guarantees and so on The second is friction, right? Even if you're able to access this, you've got to file tons of paperwork, wait weeks to get along. um give personal guarantees, get your credit score impacted, and so on and so forth. There's lots of that friction in that process. And the third one I believe is like even if you get through those hurdles and get access to some of these tools, uh, these tools are just not built for e-commerce merchants. Like How many of you of your customer of your listeners have had this experience where their ad campaign campaigns are performing really well on Meta and this cap there's more spend happening on that uh campaign, but then your credit card fails. So because uh the credit card part is what the the banks are not really built for this, right? And then when you use your credit cards, you get points on things like dining and travel. Maybe that's not your that's not the biggest expense category for uh for e-commerce merchants. I think there's a third one and actually I think there's a fourth one uh which is what happens as a result of all of this, right? Merchants end up uh taking having a bank account uh in this place, uh a line or a credit card from this bank. uh have at this use this tool for Bill Pay and it's all really fragmented and they have to manage all of this things in different places. And these are the the pain points, uh right. And that is why we're going to Shopify Finance, right? The hope is we really help merchants have access to the tools they need in simple ways in uh from within the Shopify admin in one single place.
Kurt Elster
So all right, tools they need. This sounds like Shopify Finance. Is a a collection of features and tools. Like what specifically am I getting with this?
Vikram Anreddy
It's a suite of tools. Uh number one is Shopify Ballots. It's it's a business banking solution, it's a business account where you can manage your money If you set Shopify balance as a payout account, you can set it as a payout account on Shopify payments. You get much faster access to your payouts than any external bank account. That's number one. With Shopify Balance, you'll get automatic APY. You get rewards when you spend on the prepaid card. And you get everything that a business bank account has. Okay uh but really burned for shopify notches. The second tool in the toolkit is uh shopify credit Shopify Credit is a credit card product built specifically for Shopify merchants, e-commerce merchants. It's a charge card, what is called a charge card, uh built on Visa Rails, and it gives you 3%. cashback when you spend on expenses like up to three percent cashback on expenses like marketing like ads on meta or google or tick tock um B2B wholesale like when you buy inventory from fair or someplace like that or fulfillment and shipping labels and things like that. Right? Again, categories Where you spend. So up to 3% cash back on the top spend category every month and 1% on other on the rest in these eligible categories. And in addition, you also get the flexibility to either pay off that credit card at the end of the month. or pay that card over time from sales. Again, this is a new feature that we are introducing as we speak right now. The third product is a mainstay that we've had for a while. Shopify Capital is the product that we started with back in 2016. Again, Capital uh provides really fast, tailored funding offers within your admin. You can apply for it in a couple of minutes. Eighty to ninety percent of applications are instantly approved because we've pre-approved you essentially. And you get money in your bank account in two days. Um compared to weeks that you have to wait at the traditional back, right? And like again, you have uh exciting updates about capital that I'm happy to share. The fourth product we have is uh Bill Pay, Shopify Bilpay. They built this with Melio. And again, it's a free tool. You can send all your invoices there and it will help you pay all your bills on time. uh every time and with whatever payment method uh that you want. Like merchants can use bill pay to pay their bills with a credit card even if the vendor does not accept it, for example And the final product is Shopify Tax, uh, which helps you take out the enigma and the complexity of uh managing sales tax. It's just like Insanely complex, right? Like to keep up with the sales tax compliance and the removals and the changing rules in various loc locations. And we've done this product which again uh gives you insights about which uh look when you should collect sales tax and also does the calculations for you uh on what you should collect And we have these nice integrations where you can keep that sales tax money aside automatically in a balanced account so that that money is there. When it comes for uh when you have to file your taxes, right? So again, this is the full speed uh of our Shopify balance.
Kurt Elster
Am I getting does it function like savings account? Am I getting uh interest on it?
Vikram Anreddy
Yeah, uh so with uh shop of a balance, uh our plus virtuance can earn up to 4. 43% KPY Uh I I don't think I I wouldn't call it a savings account or anything. It's it's just a bank account and every single dollar will earn that APY and you have to do nothing. You don't have to move it into a savings account, checking account.
Kurt Elster
That is a good distinction. You're right. And so I'm getting cashback rewards on stuff that you normally wouldn't with a credit card like buying shipping labels. I could do automatically have my sales tax calculated and held. That's the magic thing, is it's going to move it aside from me. So it's like, okay, we already earmarked that. Okay, great. And I'm getting 4% back on that? Ooh.
Vikram Anreddy
I like that. Exactly, exactly. And it's all automatic. I think one of the things that we really care about, Kurt, is like really automating and simplifying some of these things because I think uh there's banks where you have to separate this money into a separate account to get APY or you have to go through all of these uh gymnastics to uh use those cashback rewards. So when when we give you cashback rewards on our cards, by the way, you can earn cash back on both our balance card, which is a prepaid card, as well as the credit card. And when you when we give you cash back towards, we instantly deposit in your car, in your balance. So you have that extra to spend, right? Again, you don't have to do anything to get this, get the value out of this
Kurt Elster
The all right, so I mean a lot of this is just it's like hey here are things you have to do anyway already in your business and now it sounds like you're going to streamline it as part of my Shopify admin. Save me a lot of time, make my life easier. And I hear that it definitely sounds like there is a focus on automation here, right? Like just get the bills paid, get the taxes filed. uh get loans approved instantly if I need to buy inventory. I mean this this sounds fabulous. What's what there's a catch? What's the catch here?
Vikram Anreddy
Uh really there's no catch, of course. We I think one of the things that we really uh seek to do is be as transparent uh as uh uh for merchants. Uh I think as we build these products, uh one of the core mantras is there's no hidden fees. There are fees, but we want to be extremely transparent on what those fees are. For instance, for capital, when you take a loan for us, there is a fixed uh fee, and we are very clear in communicating that fee on credit. Uh, when you actually you can you can use a credit card for free. And earn rewards. Right? It can be a no-brainer decision for any e-commerce merchant to use up, right? Can I put it down down in meta and uh earn up to three percent Um but when you decide to so you can choose to pay that credit card back at the end of the month or pay that card uh bill back over time, over ten months for a fee. And again, we're gonna be very transparent uh with that fee. So transparency is really important principle with which we build these products. And the other thing, yes, we are doing these automations on your behalf, right? We are connecting. the sales tax account of the balance account to keep money aside automatically, right? And it's truly magic by the way, uh as you said before. That's the word I use eternally when I tell uh teams about this that when we really integrate our products together we create magic for our students. And yeah, so we do a lot of these automations, but again, we want to always give control, keep, give control to merchants. So merchants, for example, merchants can choose uh to loan save sales tax in a balance account if they should want to right again we give control to merchants but if merchants choose to exercise that control we'll automate things really well for them and create magic
Kurt Elster
All right. A lot to a lot to follow up on here, but I think sales tax is what I want to know more about because sales tax, everybody hates it. It's you know, it it's just a big pain. It's a lot of ri especially in the United States, it's a lot of uh filing uh to deal with walk me through this this automatic setup like maybe the workflow with um how shopify finance will help me with my sales tax
Vikram Anreddy
I hear you on the complexity of the and the frustration that merchants have with uh sales tax. Um uh this is something that uh when I first started a Shopify, I was visiting one of our merchants uh in San Francisco where I live uh the merchants call it dandelion chocolate, it's a great chocolate uh maker. And I learned that the sales stacks that they have to collect on their bars of chocolate they sell can change based on the sugar content. in there, uh in the in the chocolate bar because San Francisco taxes sugary products more, I think, something like that. And that kind of elucidates the complexity, right? Uh because Sales tax rules are set at local jurisdictions, then there are state jurisdictions and so on. Again, um, there are like what I think something out of the order of more than 10,000 jurisdictions in the US that set these rules, right? So what we do, right? It's a rock to keep up and all these these rules are changing all the time, right? So what we do with Shopify Tax, which is the product that we have in market, is First, we give you an insight into when you should start collecting sales tax in a given uh location, for example. Because uh when you're very small, you don't have to collect sales tax. You don't have that uh um uh requirement. So first this will tell you when you should start collecting. Then you can s turn on When you are liable to collect sales tax, you can just turn on collection with just one single click. What happens on the back end is we have categorized all of your products into the right categories. We stay up with we keep up with the rules in various locations and the automations on where that purchase is happening and what your liability is. What is the calcul and we do the calculations on your behalf In the moment in real time to make sure you're collecting the right amount in that transaction, in that order, uh, from your customer, right? So that's what we mean.
Kurt Elster
Did they call this rooftop accuracy?
Vikram Anreddy
Rooftop accuracy. That's what we mean. Like we are trying to make sure that you are because again, at the end of the day, you want to collect the right amount from your customer. versus you being have having to be liable for that money later on, right, from your own pocket. So we want to make sure it's accurate for you. And then the last thing we do is also help you m make the filing process much easier. One thing is we are helping you set aside that money in your balance. account but also will give you the right reports and things like that so that your bookkeeper or you can file that uh sales tax uh easily when the time comes So that's the sales tax product. It really automates the complexity and the challenge of sales tax, right? So that you don't have to worry about it
Kurt Elster
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Vikram Anreddy
That's exactly it, cut, right? When in some I mean if you think about this I read and entrepreneurs have so many things to take care of, right? They uh have to think about inventory, they have to think about the next product, they have to think about the campaign that they have to run. It's so many things. So it's really easy to for some of these really complex things to fall build uh fall in the cracks and and get a business in trouble. So I think this is an ex great example of Shopify helping entrepreneurs manage the complexity of something that they just need to do.
Kurt Elster
And so we've also got Shopi Balance, Shopify Capital. Automating sales tax, the benefits of that, very obvious to me. Help me understand balancing capital. Like what is the end benefit? What's the game changer? for our merchants here?
Vikram Anreddy
I think capital um uh let me start with capital and then we've we built we introduced capital to the market in twenty sixteen as in a long road And um uh truly capital has become the in the rocket fuel for uh our merchants, uh like and merchants growth. Uh we've given out more than five billion dollars in funding to our merchants we've given out more than hundred thousand uh financing and loans uh right in its history, um hundreds of thousands, just to be clear. And in some ways the the beauty of capital is um Twofold. One is we give loans all the way from two hundred dollars to two million dollars. And I think both ends of the spectrum are really, really important. We give a $200 loan because, or like a very small loan at when merchants are very early in their entrepreneurial journey, because We fundamentally believe it can make a difference. For example, a college student uh translating their hobby into a real business, uh, right, just so that they can go buy that extra inventory uh and run their uh start. Taking the steps on their business. And one of the beautiful things we see on Capital, for example, is that merchants take these products and grow up on those products and keep coming back and that back and then there's so many merchants around the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth round of financing and they are now taking they started with something like a thousand dollar loan and now taking a two million dollar loan. And uh it's it's really fast, it's flexible, uh, it gives you more options. And right now we are introducing a new feature which helps you which increase the flexibility of capital So the product that we've had in the market is a very simple product where it's fixed price slots. What it means is you take $1,000 and there's a fixed flat fee of let's say $50. Um and we collect as a percentage of your daily sales. So when you don't have any sales, you don't pay us anything, but if you as you have sales, you we take some money out of you. So in the currency construct, what happens is uh if you pay back fast or slow, the cost is the same. And a lot of our merchants like this predictability, right? But now we are also introducing what is what we call monthly cost loans. Here your price will depend upon how quickly. Uh you pay back. If you want a loan just for a month, you can take that loan, pay it back in a month, and all you pay is the monthly cost. And but if you want to pay over time uh your cost will uh will add up the cost for months, right? Again, for really fast-growing merchants and merchants who need really short-term access to money, I think this is a great option So again, we are in the business of trying to create more flexibility in terms of how you can access funding and for what purposes you can access this funding.
Kurt Elster
So the new option that we're adding to Shopify Capital is a monthly cost loan structure. Okay. And it's like, hey, 30-day loans or 30-day loan fixed Interest.
Vikram Anreddy
So fixed price per month. So on a three day loan, it's you can take a loan, you can decide how long you wanna uh take to repay the loan. Uh but if you repay the loan within uh thirty days, just the fee for that first month. If you repay it in two or three months, you'll repay that. Again, it just it it's basically we are now presenting two options, right? One is predictable, like flat, fixed price, no matter how quickly or how late you pay, or Uh mergers who are really growing fast or want access to money faster, uh money for just a short period of time, they cannot print to this variable cost in some ways a monthly cost, no option.
Kurt Elster
And this sounds this this sounds more flexible than traditional business loan options.
Vikram Anreddy
That's right. I think um I think that one of the core aspects of flexibility that we create with uh capital is the repayment from sales. Right? You don't have to scramble at the end of the month to make that loan pay. Because we automate and we take a small percent of your daily sales on ongoing basis. and you're not strambling to pay that loan at the end of the month.
Kurt Elster
Well with with Shopify Capital, it it surely you have success stories here, right? Do you have any emerchant stories that come to mind where like this really enabled growth in a business?
Vikram Anreddy
Yeah, uh we had the story uh of uh Hellbaits, uh they are a woman owned. uh company that builds uh it's a lifestyle brand. They build Aperal and a bunch of accessories uh around the Teamuron for motorcycling enthusiasts And uh they have grown up on Shopify Capital, right? I mean they have I think they're a seventh or eighth round of their funding. Uh one of the rounds of funding they're taken out was to actually invest in a new product category. Uh they wanted to build this product around leather jackets, for example, right? So they took out a loan um and built this product, started ordering inventory and again preparing for uh one of the holiday seasons. And I think that's a great example of where merchants are using capital to fund new product expansion or new uh purchasing new inventory, uh right. And I think it's a great success story We've had many examples of much since using capital for things like uh running ad campaigns for BFCM, uh, for example, uh expanding into new markets or setting up a new retail store. Uh Uh so it's like uh people have figured out ways to use Shopify capital both for their working capital needs, like ordering inventory or ads, but also like expansion place, new products, new markets, and new geographies at times as well.
Kurt Elster
The impressive. And that held babe site is pretty good. I I do we do a lot of aftermarket automotive and and lifestyle stuff. And so I'm like, oh, this is right up my alley.
Vikram Anreddy
Yeah, restauration, so many stories and I think that's like more than the numbers, I think these stories really get us motivated to keep building, you know.
Kurt Elster
It puts a name to it and makes it real, right? The numbers are real and they're they're big, they're impressive. But when you hear it, when you can visualize it with like, oh, this is what it did. Yeah, it it helped build this. That's I think that's the fun of it. Um and then all of this pairs with Shopify balance. So with balance, does how does this How does this help me manage my cash flow better? Like these automation tools, certainly like sales tax, automatic loan repayment, my cash flow is getting better. Any other tools in there?
Vikram Anreddy
I think again, balance, we talked about it a little bit. Balance is a basically an alternative to a business bank account. And we we call we try to say it's better than a bad business bank account. Because it's uh so deeply integrated within the Shopify. uh platform. Uh first and foremost, it's very integrated with Shopify payments. So we are able to give you a much faster payout on your sales. So you get the money. uh like as i said before plus merchants can get next day guaranteed next day payouts and in many cases even same day payouts uh on your sales or the shopify store You don't have to worry about whether your money is earning good APY or not. It's automatic. Any dollar that goes into balance and stays in balance for any duration will earn APY for that duration. You get all of these tools like sales tax automation and things like that, which help it managing money easier. You get access to you can give out a bunch of cards to your staff so that they can spend. You can control that spend on what they are spending on, again, using the balance cards. So I think there's balance is like in some ways. Every and you have all the features that a table stakes features that any business bank account would have. Send wires internationally and do all of that stuff. Right. So it's in some ways an I I think it's a no-brainer way to place to manage your money or at least your payouts because you just get access to those payouts quickly and you start earning APY the second it is deposited in the account.
Kurt Elster
The well, all right. So I agree. The I think w one of the themes here is in addition to the the automation, the ease, the quality of life, is risk reduction, right? It seems like a lot of this Um it it helps to to mitigate risk as best it can. Obviously all businesses are investment, all investments carry risk. Um but it sounds like there's been a lot of thought into being upfront and and trying to make this easier for people. uh by highly tailoring it to you know the needs of e-commerce merchants to to shop fi merchants. Um one of the things I noticed I thought was interesting Shopify Capital the this funding solution. It does not hit personal credit scores, does it?
Vikram Anreddy
It doesn't. And I think this is in some ways one of the core principles we have where we say that All our offers, right? All our products should be based on the merits of the business's performance and not on the personal credit history of the entrepreneur. Uh and I love it.
Kurt Elster
Tell me why you did that.
Vikram Anreddy
I think I don't know. It's at the they say that thing is at the core of what Shopify is. Uh Shopify at its core is trying to is this in this relentless pursuit of breaking down the barriers of entrepreneurship. helping more people reach for entrepreneurship and financial independence. And we don't want to do anything that would um prevent people from doing that. Right. And I think that is at its core. That's sitting the DNA of Shopify. And that's what we think. And we've never even I think this is like kind of the red line that we have at uh Shopify in Shopify finance to not impact the personal credit histories. of individuals.
Kurt Elster
Music to my ears. I mean it's it's great. It really is.
Vikram Anreddy
And again, I I think we will but one of the things that the beauty of all of our products is uh And actually there's a good thing about this. The good thing is that we are f forced to make these offers and build these products based on You are based on our understanding of your business performance and the beauty of it is that as your businesses evolve and grow, these products will automatically grow with you Your credit lines will increase as you grow. Your capital offers that you get in your inbox, in your admin, are going to be bigger and bigger as your business evolves. You'll get more flexibility as your business go grows, right? So this is in some ways it's is actually makes us build better products for you that keep up with your business.
Kurt Elster
Let's recap a little bit here What's new? What's changing versus you know what were things that were already available to us?
Vikram Anreddy
There are four things that are new that we are uh launching right now. One is the Shopify Finance home or the central hub where you can manage all your money and all your products, all our financial services products. You can get real-time insights about your business You can navigate to all your accounts and the tools and all your transactions all in one single place and click away in the Shopify admin and the Shopify mobile. So that's number one.
Kurt Elster
What are the real-time insights? I don't think we touched on that earlier.
Vikram Anreddy
So uh I mean again I think we're gonna build more and more of this, but you can get instant access to how your sales are doing. how your payouts are doing, how your cash is doing. And I think uh we'll have built more on how your spend patterns are changing and have some insights. But I think Uh again, just like having a quick sense for what your cash position is, I think will unlock a lot of value in the workflows that merchants are engaging in. Just think about uh merchants are on the Shopfire admin fulfilling orders all the time, right? Uh and when they're fulfilling orders for a certain product, they can see that their inventory is probably going down. And they may want to place a purchase order for that inventory. Just knowing how much cash you have in the bank right in the moment, I think is very powerful. And even more powerful is the ability to say if your cash is running low, go apply for that capital loan write in the admin in minutes. And the money is going to arrive in two months, uh two days, so you can confidently go place that purchase order. Right? So these are the kind of magical workflows that I think we will create for our merchants when we have cash position and money management available right within the Shopify admin.
Kurt Elster
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Vikram Anreddy
Open up a balance account and op uh get started.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, from your position Are there any financial trends that you see with Shopify merchants that probably stuff that inspired, you know, how Shopify Finance is adapting?
Vikram Anreddy
I think uh a lot of um What we see, I think there are two things that we see, right? One is a lot of our product development is of course guided by the pain points and challenges that we touched upon uh earlier in the conversation, right? And in terms of access, friction and Building building things specifically for e-commerce merchants and all of that. Right. So those pain points and challenges in some ways are what inspire us to build what we're building. And again, We keep going back to our merchants and talking to them and seeing how they're using our existing products and what is working, what is not working. We see that feedback through innovative. That is why we built the Mathi. cost law option. That's why we build flexibility in the credit card. Do we give you m like more than 10 months? Uh up to 10 months to pay the credit card bill versus having to pay at the end of the month. So we constantly try to listen to our merchants, understand what their challenges are and learn from them. And I think so I think the other trend that we see is that there is increasing appetite to go try new financial services products. um versus being stuck because just that the some of the traditional banks have just have a servic doing a good job in serving our mergers, right? And I think that is again an opportunity for us at Shopify To be that place to help our merchants manage their money by just always building products that help them stretch their cash flows, help their money go further, have access to the money that they need, and then just simplifying the hell out of money management. Right, and that's what we are doing with Shopify Finance.
Kurt Elster
Truthfully, my favorite part is just simplifying. Everything around it, like the amount of hours and stress that this can solve really kind of thrills me. You know, anything that it's just finances are are the scary thing for a lot of people and not having that insight and access often just not even having access to these tools is what holds people back. um you know knowingly or not. So what's next for Shopify Finance? You know, there we got certainly you're thinking about new features and improvements even now.
Vikram Anreddy
Oh absolutely. I think uh we have a bunch of new features that we are announcing, but this we are really, really excited about just like investing. There's so much more we can do and we're gonna keep investing in this space. And I think a couple of two or three areas where I am excited as we look to the years ahead. One is really deepening the integration between our products and with the rest of Shopify. And the real power and the magic comes when these products work seamlessly with the rest of the Shopify ecosystem and actually really, really well with each other. For example If you have a Shopify balance account, we have a much better sense for your finances. So we may give you much better offers on capital. Right? We can help you move money faster and cheaper, right? And so on. And we can integrate some of the financial insights into your workflows like what we talked about, into your orders and inventory workflows. So more is deep integration of our products. The second is expansion of services. We may get into new new products and new tools that we help you to help man help you manage your money. In the last two years, actually a lot of our products are built really for the US market right now. Like capital is available is in US, Canada, Australia, and UK, but most of our other products are really US-centric. And we want to help entrepreneurs in everywhere. So we are going to push more and taking some of these products as they mature, as they feel good about them to other markets as well.
Kurt Elster
Excellent. Because it and I'm I'm happy to hear it because it I I know you know our listeners, our merchants use many of these products, but I also hear for the people who they'll say, I wish I could use that. I wish that was available here. And not just, you know, finance. There's A patchwork of availability depending on where you live. And it's you know kind of the reality of building a global software platform. Not a criticism. Um so I'm I'm thrilled to hear that that's that's being addressed here.
Vikram Anreddy
Uh I mean uh yes, I think this is really important again as Shopify itself, Shopify the Shopify platform is available in one seventy-five countries. Heard. You won't believe it, people can create an online store in one seventy-five countries, which is great. Software payments, I think, is available close to in fifty countries. And capital is available in For, some of the others are available in the US. We've we have figured out ways to make our products global at Shopify It's a little bit of a staging game, right? Like you want to first build something really good for a core market, get it nailed, and then okay, slowly you expand and grow into new markets. And we follow GMV, we follow our merchants. Where the there's the biggest impact we can have. That's the next market we go to usually.
Kurt Elster
No, it it it absolutely makes sense from software product development, a business standpoint. Um and I appreciate the thoughtful approach. The one thing I forgot to ask you, these are new features. Are these even available yet? When can I play with this stuff?
Vikram Anreddy
They are available. They are available uh uh right away. Some of them have already been available to merchants in certain segments so we can quickly learn and iterate. They are all available as we speak.
Kurt Elster
And all right, I want to hear I want to hear your pitch on this. If a merchant isn't using Shopify Finance yet, what's your pitch to get them to try it out?
Vikram Anreddy
I would say please go into your admin and see what Shopify Finance has been offered for you. It is the best place and a no-brainer place for e-commerce merchants to manage their money. Where they make it within the Shopify admin, get access to fast capital, get access to credit card that gives you rewards for things that you spend on. really kill that complexity and save that time and headache of managing money with Shopify Finance
Kurt Elster
All right. We're moving into the lightning round. My these are the the questions that interest me about you. Of these features, one of them is your baby. Which is it? What's the one you're most proud of?
Vikram Anreddy
I'm really proud of the new feature that we've built on the credit card that helps you have more payment flexibility. You can pay the card back. At the statement balance back at the end of the month for free, or choose to pay over time as a percentage of your daily sales for a fee. There is no credit card in the market like this. And what we have done is we've combined the superpowers or the the thing the things that really work on the capital product. and brought it to the credit product. And I think it's very innovative. No SMB card exists in the market like this. And I'm excited to see how merchants use it.
Kurt Elster
That is that is clever. I do like that. Hmm. I'm interested. Uh favorite book, good sir.
Vikram Anreddy
Favorite book? Uh I haven't been reading books of late uh with my true trotterers, but me neither. Uh maybe a favorite book. I mean I read this uh earlier in the year uh on a flight at Shudog.
Kurt Elster
Shoe dark. Yeah, about Phil Knight, right?
Vikram Anreddy
Yeah, yeah. And you know, sometimes you read books and you've uh walk away away feeling very inspired and excited and I think that was one of those books. I I read it on a ten hour plane journey and I got out and I felt oh maybe I should start something.
Kurt Elster
The all right, last one. In your background is a meta Oculus Quest 2. I know this because I have one and I wasted so many hours in it during the pandemic. Tell what are your favorite games?
Vikram Anreddy
Uh I think uh two. Uh one is the ping pong game. Uh I grew up playing ping pong at a dining table in my house uh in India. And um the physics, the modeling of the physics in that game are amazing. You can like the top spin works as if it's in real life. Uh the second uh one is supernatural. I say at least uh Uh it's a really really fun and fun way to exercise and sweat, uh although the sweating is not great with the headset, but uh I think it is uh it's really fun and again the physics there are great
Kurt Elster
Very cool. Uh all right, final question. I want to go learn about Shopify Finance. Where am I going? What am I doing?
Vikram Anreddy
First, uh if you're a Shopify merchant Log into the Shopify admin and see what Shopify Finance has in offer for you. And also go check out Shopify. com slash finance to learn more about all of this, all of our offerings and what Shopify Finance is. has an offer.
Kurt Elster
Beautiful. Vickerman Reddy, thank you so much. I gotta go check out Shopify Finance.
Vikram Anreddy
Thank you so much, Kurt. It was fun being here
Kurt Elster
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