W&F Issue 3 2018

Wealth & Finance International - Issue 3 - 2018 13 Diverse Skillsets Combining to Deliver an Unrivalled Service London and pay with a UK issued debit card, the taxi driver will pay a seven percent transaction fee for the essentially risk-free payment processing. Please ask next time you take a taxi ride! We only process card transactions which have been authorised in our own PoS:es after the correct PIN has been keyed. Thus, the risk of fraud is zero. Which is why our Investors benefit from being able to partake in the highly profitable card processing and credit card financing businesses, that are based on the massive investments we as Partners have made in technology and marketing of our services. For the first time, we have decided to make a proper marketing splash in which we are branding the card processing and Merchant Financing with the new name WoW! This name and the colour turquoise for our new PoS:es have been developed together with one of the leading PR firms in São Paulo. The colour is chosen for the brand to be associated with the most sought after Tourmaline from Paraíba. Brazil as well as the lovely colour of the water lapping Brazil’s outstanding beaches. Q:You were taking a London-based example above, are you thinking about entering into other markets with the new concept? A: As a serial entrepreneur since I was eighteen years old, it is hard to ignore the massive opportunities in the rest of the world, especially given the fabulous success of PagSeguro which is now trading at USD 35 and has a market capitalisation of eleven billion USD. Other competitors like Stone are also eyeing an IPO and I am contacted every week by investment banks and others to look at opportunities in the rest of the world. The fact is, however, that we are highly busy in the Brazilian market which has phenomenal potential for growth. There are still millions of people and small business outside of the financial system having no ‘plastic’. Brazil has 60 million people without a bank account or one single credit card and these people spend about half a billion BRL yearly. Thus, there is ample space for growth beyond the present market which already is one of the largest in the world. Furthermore, all major Brazilian banks and acquirers are solely focused on scale, therefore they are much slower to react than us and they have not been able to provide the specialised services the market demands. The goal of WoW! is to offer a series of services helping the business owners to increase control, organise as well as forecast their cash-flows, plan and market their businesses. We already, 20 months after the launch, have thousands of PoS:es humming away on a daily basis and the number of PoS:es out ‘in the street’ is growing by 20 % monthly. If you look at the ‘heat-map’ below, you see that we are all over the vast country already. Q:What is the key to success for the new WoW!- development for the Prudent Group? A: As with any business these days, finding the right people to run the business and a spoon- full of luck are the two-key element making the endeavour sink or swim. We have been most fortunate on the human resource front as we managed to convince the highly seasoned Card Processing Executive Marco Mamari to join us in August last year. Marco has in the past been responsible for the creation and running of Ticket S.A. Crédito Financiamento e Investimento in the Edenred Group. Marco was there responsible for a multi-billion BRL business while exploring credit opportunities for its Merchants. After leaving the Edenred Group, Marco struck out on his own as an Investor/Manager in several FinTech start-ups in Brazil and the United States. Thus, Marco has the perfect background for running and developing a young entrepreneurial organisation like WoW! now that we are going for major scale. Q:What do you see as the major challenge facing the Prudent Group presently? A: When I had the pleasure of being interviewed last year in February 2017 by your sister publication AI Magazine when we had won the ‘Leading Hedge Fund Manager 2017 for Luxembourg award’, I stated that the most difficult hurdle for us is that most investment allocations go to the huge brand name funds. This impediment to proper money-raising success is still there. Despite the fact that we consistently have earned our investors serious money since launch we, just like a lot of highly talented and professional peers, have a hard time attracting truly large investments. As I mentioned above, the market we are attacking now with the WoW!-brand is worth well over three hundred billion USD, we could, therefore, deploy vast chunks of investor money for the card processing business. I am hoping that this latest recognition of our investments success from your magazine, will help us overcome this serious obstacle. Company: The Prudent Group Contact: Jon Malmsäter Address: SCF Brazil, LTDA, Rua Pedroso Alvarenga 1.284, Itaim Bibi, São Paulo, São Paulo State, 04.531-004, Brazil Phone: +55 11 98 12 40 006 Website: www.prudentgroup.us “The goal of WoW! is to offer a series of services helping the business owners to increase control, organise as well as forecast their cash- flows, plan and market their businesses.” Marco Mamari photographed at the Banana Café, Itaim Bibi, São Paulo