Cam Richardson: Where I went man. So much more is possible when we do things together than when we do things solo and I have to make more of these magic moments happen for everyone. Pacequad really is as easy as Select Collect Done helping squads do things together they can't do solo. Core mission of ours. This is such an opportunity to have an impact on the world, to make some of the outcomes for squads even better and just have fun building things with great people and great partners.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail.
Nathan Bush: Here's your host, Bushy welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast where we bring you insights from the top e commerce operators, founders and experts. My name is Bushi, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now, if you want to grow your career and business in e commerce, join our free learning community@campus. Add to cart.com where you'll connect with other professionals and access exclusive insights. You can also explore Add to Cart Learning for even deeper strategies. Find all the details at add to cart.com au now. Have you ever been stuck chasing your mates for money after fronting the bill? Turns out so are 58% of millennials every single week. Luckily, today's guest, he has the solution. Today I am chatting with Cam Richardson, founder of PaySquad, which is a group payment solution turning one purchase into 10 new customers. Since launching on Shopify, PaySquad has seen the average order value skyrocket to over $850 for their retailers with 95% of group purchases that have been initiated successfully completed. It's a huge statistic. Cam's now on a mission to reinvent the way that we buy together while increasing sales and data for retailers. Whether it's concert tickets, booking a holiday or gifting a three wheeled motorbike for your mate's birthday, we can hear that story. Today we explore why young shoppers are ditching credit cards, how retailers can unlock high value group purchases and how squad buying can increase AOV without discounting. Also, a really quick heads up about our upcoming Add to cart live on 26 March in Brisbane. Join us for drinks, chats and exclusive insights as we explore the story of Black Milk clothing and hear insights from their CEO Jacky Kruger. We will be diving into their business growth, Jackie's leadership styles and some of
[Voiceover]: the change that they have experienced over the last 12 months.
Nathan Bush: Go to the homepage of Add to Cart website to grab your tickets. Tickets are $20. That includes a $10 donation to our friends at Thread together, as well as a bar tab from our friends at Retail Fest. All right, a big thanks to our partners, Shopify and Klaviyo, for making this episode possible. Now, let's get into it. Here's my chat with Cam from PaySquad. Cam, welcome to Add to Cart.
Cam Richardson: Hey, great to be here. Bushy, stoked.
[Voiceover]: Brilliant to have you here, mate. I am going to apologize first and foremost, because if you hear banging or sirens or anything happening outside my place, there's a cyclone on its way. So we have it arriving tomorrow. Apparently, everyone will be hearing this week later. So hope I'm still here, but if you hear anything, let me know because we are approaching cyclone territory.
Cam Richardson: Sheesh. Is this first sort of experience like this?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, first time I've recorded during a cyclone.
Cam Richardson: There we go. It's an honor to be here with you.
[Voiceover]: Well, look, let's go down together. Well, you're in New Zealand, so you've got nothing to worry about.
Cam Richardson: It's going to have to be quite big to head us down here, to be fair.
[Voiceover]: And, mate, whereabouts in New Zealand are you based?
Cam Richardson: In Wakargil, which is right down the very bottom. Next stop, Antarctica, south of Queenstown. For the people who have been tourists here before.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
[Voiceover]: And is that where you grew up?
Cam Richardson: It's the closest thing to a hometown I've ever had. I was born in the States to a Kiwi dad and an American mother and then moved here to Invercargill. Lived in Sydney for a bit, back to the States, then back here. So, you know, my identity is as confused as my accent, so we just keep rolling with it.
[Voiceover]: I didn't even pick up that you're a New Zealander because we met face to face at Retail Fest last year. Right, where you had.
Cam Richardson: Online retailer.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, online retailer.
[Voiceover]: You had your first stand.
Cam Richardson: That's the one. And I got to say, the accent probably sounded even weirder then because I sounded like I had the full on plague, which was great. I never lose my voice the one day I lost it. Conference day. Let's go.
[Voiceover]: How good is that? When you're a startup and you're like, this is that first conference. We're going to have a booth. We're going to make a big impression, and then you get crooked.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, it's great.
[Voiceover]: Love it. All right, well, let's bring everyone into Pay Squad. In our research, we found that you call Pay Squad reverse mullet party at the front business at the back. Talk me through that analogy.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, that's right. We're kind of like an inverse Ned
[Voiceover]: Brockman, you know, speaking to my heart here.
Cam Richardson: You know, it kind of comes from this expression of, like, we are all about the party in the front, about the squad helping the squad achieve their goals, helping people do things together that they can't do solo. But in the back, we're connecting up complex financial systems, handling foreign exchanges, and all the other myriad of things that come with creating payment rails.
[Voiceover]: Okay, so as long as the mullet doesn't go over your eyes, you're okay.
Cam Richardson: Well, that's exactly right. Yeah, you gotta have a little partition in there.
[Voiceover]: So what's the problem you're solving for customers?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, look, we found that online shopping is built for individuals and not groups. So when we want to buy a group gift or, or travel with friends or buy concert tickets and actually sit together, it can turn into a massive hassle. Like, you've got to send one person to the checkout, they make the full payment, and then they're left chasing friends, family and colleagues to pay them back. It's just pretty awkward, not very transparent, and super time consuming. Yet 29% of Gen Z do this every day, and 58% of millennials do it every week. So it's this massive trend.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
[Voiceover]: Okay, cool. I was going to say it's probably a problem for some, especially if you don't have like one of those friends who has the platinum credit card, who wants to put all the big transactions through and get all the points on behalf of everyone else.
Cam Richardson: Totally.
[Voiceover]: But you've got a different audience, and
Cam Richardson: young people, they're kind of credit card allergic.
[Voiceover]: Right.
Cam Richardson: That's why BNPL is so popular now. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Okay, and where did you come up with the idea? What made you so passionate about it?
Cam Richardson: I was just sick of chasing mates to pay me. Imagine just starting a. Yeah, I need new mates instead of a new business. Right? No, the origin story actually really occurred at my 21st, you know, with the people I was renting. My friends I was renting a house with at the time were there at my 21st party and they filled the whole house with smoke and they ushered me inside and they wheeled out a three wheeled motorbike and I was like. I was absolutely floored. I was like, what is this? This is your gift, man. And I was so shocked because we were all pretty poor students at the time. You know, I was expecting like a mug or a T shirt or something. So the only question I had was like how? And they said, everybody at this party chipped in to get this for you. And for maybe the average sane person, they've been like, oh, that's cool. Thanks, mate. For me, it was a full on paradigm shift where I went, man, so much more is possible when we do things together than when we do things solo. And I have to make more of these magic moments happen for everyone. And so I just became kind of fixated on what's stopping this from happening. Why don't we do this more? And that's where I got to the problem statement I came up with before of online shopping is built for individuals, not groups. I realized, oh, we're interacting with checkouts that haven't kept up. Sweet.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
[Voiceover]: And were you in E Commerce before this?
Cam Richardson: No, the closest was sort of omnichannel retail with Vodafone and that was part of, part of that. Got to see sort of behind the veil of the afterpay negotiations with Vodafone and seeing kind of how that was managed and like the shared customer side of things and the commission fee rate and that sort of thing, which gave me a bit of a light bulb of, okay, appearing at checkout could be the big unlock here.
[Voiceover]: Okay, so you've gone straight in and you've gone straight for the checkout, which is, you know, what could go wrong?
Cam Richardson: Totally.
[Voiceover]: Tell me about how you got it off the ground. What year are we talking?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, so we launched our mvp, which was just a very simple prezi powered, like group gift card in December of 2022. And so from that we were just looking to see how people would use it, where they would use it, like some of the interactions and things. And we were fully doing it part time while building up this massive electricity billing platform. So it was like kind of throwing hours at it when we could. And then fast forward to October of 2024. That's when we got the green lights from Shopify Partnerships. That was really the next one to go. Oh, okay. This is where we wanted to get.
[Voiceover]: Okay, so you're just available as a native integration now on Shopify?
Cam Richardson: That's right, yeah.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful. And is there anyone else in market doing what you're doing?
Cam Richardson: Not directly. We know of two competitors in the airline space in Europe and Israel who are doing it in a white label way. So, you know, I don't want to welcome on any too much competition. But hey, we're out here just having some fun. Most merchants we've talked to have never considered this. It's early days.
[Voiceover]: And tell us about some of the retail success stories that you've had so far?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, we knew we had something. There's just a couple touch points. Number one was in that, in that Prezi powered mvp. We had triple the regular AOV that they had. And so we were just seeing squads really come out in force with heaps more buying power. And seeing that happen was like, oh, okay, this is, this is pretty cool.
[Voiceover]: How did that work? Because Prezi's a gift card company, right?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, that's right. So we would handle really. And issue their gift cards on the back of our API system and just going, cool, let's collect the funds and direct them straight to Prezi there and have people experience the Pacebot experience, but have it tied to those gift cards.
[Voiceover]: Gotcha. And did they invest in you at all to start with or was it just a proof of concept?
Cam Richardson: Purely a proof of concept. They probably thought we were pretty nuts and yeah, we just went for it.
[Voiceover]: Is there thought around moving into other categories? So obviously we've talked a lot about physical retail and traditional retail. What about things like experiences, whether that be travel, whether that be one off experiences or even donations?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, we want to keep it pretty focused. There's a lot of like donation technology out there. Yeah, we may get into the charity space if there is a very clear product or service outcome. But our big three right now, retail ticketing, like, you know, for events and travel. Our big three right now. And we've got an online travel agent out of Southeast Asia that we're looking to onboard a multinational ticketing firm. There's just some pretty exciting things there. And they have quite unique problems that are solved relatively straightforwardly by our software and can be integrated at the point of sale. And so ultimately, I mean, to be completely honest, we're looking for that like really clear fit, like afterpay got with their, with fashion, right. They were like, they were expecting, cool. We're going to be for the high end, like tech, jewelry, that sort of thing. And then they found out that everyone just wanted to split their payments for fashion. We're finding that thing where squads just all of a sudden go, yes, we want to do that all the time. And there's just endless sort of use cases that come out of that. So that would be one big touch point. The other one was in some of our early validation of talking to merchants about whether or not they would want this or not, talking to one. And we used to always just bang on about the buying power, increasing aov, all this sort of thing. And one of them. Merchant was like, what about those other people involved in the, in the pay squad that are contributing in. Is there any way that we can connect with them, engage with them or anything? And in that moment I was like, yes. We feel like just like gears are turning. Oh, we can, yeah, we can figure something out there.
[Voiceover]: I mean, I'm sure we've already built that. It's already available.
Cam Richardson: That's just right now in our production zone. We'll just. Yeah. So that was like a really big thing because now a massive part of our value prop is going, hey, one sale, 10 new customers. It's the turning your checkout into a customer acquisition channel. And truly that's the importance, right. Of when you're starting a company is talking with as many people as possible because they can even see potential value in it that you either overlooked or didn't think was that valuable.
[Voiceover]: So talk us through that customer journey. So if I'm logging onto a site, say I'm coming on to buy you a motorbike. I'm on the Yamaha side.
Cam Richardson: Great.
[Voiceover]: I don't know if Yamaha's good motorbike. Is that, Is it a good motorbike?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, it's decent. I'm not really a massive motorbike head but man, I love ripping around on them.
[Voiceover]: Good. What's good? What would be a good group buy
Cam Richardson: purchase for a motorbike or just general.
[Voiceover]: Just generally.
Cam Richardson: I don't know if I've been just like too much in the Shopify test store, but I'm just obsessed with snowboards now. I don't know if you've been on those test sites but they always have the multi location one.
[Voiceover]: He's getting inside your head, right? Big time. We are going snowboarding and I want to buy my mate a snowboard for his birthday and I've got a bunch of other friends as well who are going to chip in. I'm the leader here of this squad so I've floated the idea and I said this is what we're going to do.
Cam Richardson: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: How does it work? When I land on the site and start that process, you're in the group chat.
Cam Richardson: As you said, you're the squad leader, the guy who's the most organized and you're going, right, let's do this thing. Pay squad really is as easy as select collect done. So you would jump onto that online store that has both Paysquad at checkout and snowboards and you would select PaySquad, Pay with Friends at checkout. Next to the regular options like Pay with card or afterpay and the likes. You'd then fill out a couple details as the squad leader, and then we would generate a link for you to share so that your squad from anywhere in the world can contribute. You can drop that straight into the group chat. And when people click that link, they can see who started the pay squad where the cart's being bought from, how much left there is to contribute, who's already contributed, and so much more context that's usually completely missing with no need to download an app or go through any sort of, like, credit check or anything.
[Voiceover]: So when I create that cart, I don't have to tell you how many people are contributing to it and who they are and how much each person will contribute.
Cam Richardson: No, there's some beautiful chaos in a group payment that you just can't, you know, tie down that much. We've seen it even in office environments where, you know, there's someone who's really tight with someone who's going to have a baby shower, they want to be able to contribute more than that person who's like, in the other department who's like, oh, you look, you know, I could. I can Chuck in 10 or 20,
[Voiceover]: you know, who are guilted into contributing.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, they want to be on the card, but they don't want to be like, you know, spending too much. They don't actually care that much. Then the last little bit there is that when the contributions hit 100%, that item is automatically purchased. There's no need to double handle the funds or have them in your account and head back into the store or anything. No need to chase anyone. It's just complete.
[Voiceover]: So it holds everyone's individual payment details until you hit 100%?
Cam Richardson: That's right.
[Voiceover]: Okay, cool. And what are some of the edge cases that you've come across here? Because it all sounds very nice, but I can imagine that as you're building this out, there are edge cases left, right, and center of retailers wanting to do things slightly different.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, look, just to head one off, I mean, we thought there would be much bigger pushback on sort of inventory timelines. Like, hey, the squad wants three days to pull things together and the merchants pulling their hair out, trying to think about how they're going to store those things or whether or not to put something on hold for that period of time. It turns out the pay squads really happen a lot quicker than we even anticipated. So we're seeing them get done usually in under four hours. And so that's, I guess, been a good little boost there for our merchant partners. Secondly ones that sometimes there is someone who's contributed and they're looking to contribute just them from different cards. And so we're then verifying that that is in fact a real purchase. And we didn't think that was going to be as much of a thing. But there's people who make a contribution and then they clearly have just another card that they're working with, they make a contribution off that one. And so their squad is just them. So making sure that that's all above board is good, but we're seeing interesting uses, but nothing that's really breaking the system or causing headaches for our partners.
[Voiceover]: How are retailers. That's a really interesting point that you make around retailers holding the Stock and the three days that you're seeing most of the transactions hitting 100% by are retailers reserving the stock or is it best efforts on inventory once it reaches
Cam Richardson: 100%, most are reserving. They know from our stats that 95% of pay squads that have that first contribution go through are complete. So that's huge. It really is. I'm quite stoked to see that actually. And further down the line, we might even have be rolling out sort of an alternative flow where the whole thing's underwritten by the first contributor to begin with because those success rates are so high, meaning we can guarantee the sale up front.
[Voiceover]: Gotcha. So the contributor says, look, if no one else contributes, I'll pay for the whole lot, but I want to have the chance to put it out there first.
Cam Richardson: Exactly. And make it so. It's a transparent process where everyone can see who has contributed, who hasn't, without having to dive into your, your banking or anything like.
[Voiceover]: That's interesting. Okay, cool. And you mentioned there around the increased average order value, what kind of average order values are you seeing come through?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, the average pay squad is about $850 and the average number of people is between seven or eight. We've seen a surprising number above the four grand mark, which has been really cool. But at that sort of level, there's just not that many products that our current merchant base has. And so we're kind of suggesting to our merchant partners, hey, why not dream a little bit here? Let's, let's think about some wild bundles you could put together that some of these big squads can get excited about and all chip in on. So, yeah, it's been pretty cool to see, especially for, you know, shops where the AOV is typically under 300 or even more commonly under about 200.
[Voiceover]: That's massive. I mean, most retailers would love an AOV of over $800. That's insane. Tell me about some of these squads because I think you've given a great example there of the typical friendship squad buying for a birthday. But as you're talking, my head races to community groups and fundraising and all sorts of other scenarios where you might even have to get strangers together to contribute for something. Are you seeing much of that?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, I mean, even the like, people on the sideline of a footy team, you know, these parents that you barely know, would you ra send them a link or would you rather send them bank account details and try and like be. Be harnessing it that way? We've seen the first happen quite a lot. The other interesting use cases that we've got just from talking to our customers is like for lower AOV stores is, you know, creating pay squads to unlock free shipping. So there's like free shipping thresholds of typically 150 bucks, you know, going, hey, if we buy, for example, on rugby bricks, one of our merchants, if we all buy kicking teas and have them just sent to Nathan's place, then we're going to save heaps on shipping, potentially even unlock a bulk discount and then have those can kind of go divvy them out. And so it's an amazingly versatile sort of product really. And we can't market all these segments at the same time. But we're here really to celebrate anything that a squad wants to do together.
[Voiceover]: And I could imagine, especially when you've got groups like that, and I know it's not your main audience, your main audience is friendship groups. But the ability to have communications land really clearly and concisely because it will be a new concept to a lot of people who suddenly get an email or an sms. If you offer it to say, hey, Cam started this pay squad and want you to contribute money, can you come and enter your credit card details? That is a big hurdle to get over. How are you doing that?
Cam Richardson: The two big trust building points are, number one, we show very clear how it's attached to a merchant. So you're not raising funds to get funds, you're raising funds to get a particular product or service from a particular merchant. Secondly, that person that has sent the link, it's typically from their messaging account. And then that's then mirrored in the pay squad itself, where you can see Bushy's pay Squad, he's the one who started this thing. You can see that you've already contributed in as well, and so there's like that trust building part there of like, okay, well, if he was willing to chip in on here, then we can as well. And we're seeing squads from multiple countries, even contributing to one, which is solving so many problems for international friend groups and family groups and colleagues as well.
[Voiceover]: That's very cool. Are you finding that there is one form of sharing that's more successful than others? Like, is email better than sms, is better than social or. You don't have that data yet.
Cam Richardson: From our interviews, it's mainly happening in group chats. And one of the funniest sort of situations that we've seen was a group that was getting together to buy a person a sewing machine for her birthday. So it was actually her husband who started the whole thing. He chipped in, he wanted to show that he was being generous and he invited 21 people to this group chat and they managed to fill that whole thing and complete the pay squad within 40 minutes with 11 people. And so now these 10 other people that are in the group chat are just checking it, going, oh, no, like we've missed the boat here. We're not going to be on the card. This is terrible. And so what they did is they went and started their own pay squad as well and then got an overlocker for her as well. And so I thought you were going
[Voiceover]: to say they got the same product but put on express shipping so they look better than the other group.
Cam Richardson: That would have been the ultimate move. But yeah, they got an overlocker. And so now this girl is getting like these two awesome, like gifts for her birthday simply because of that chaotic, like group kind of buy situation. And that is the power that we're trying to lean into a little bit with basecoin, you know, one of the things we've talked about and there's so many things that no one's really like looked into in this before, but one of them is what we would call like saving the sale. Sort of what you're saying there is. Like, we hit 50%, no one's willing to budge. Rather than the whole thing folding. If we then go, hey, if we can get people to agree, we're going to just change this into a gift card for the store. Suddenly we've saved a sale that wouldn't have converted otherwise. And that recipient, as you say, is going to be way more stoked to get just a little bit closer to that dream. But then there's equally going back to the sewing machine example. Say there's a squad that's just really going hard at it. Having stretch goals so that we can go, hey, we could get the mid tier like sewing machine or if we get enough, we can go and get that top tier one. And suddenly we're actively upselling for the merchant as well. The chaos of groups tell you like when you harness it, like the possibilities are endless.
[Voiceover]: That's pretty cool. From a psychology perspective, how do you upsell a group and put like use that. Not peer pressure, but the power of groups to kind of go, oh yeah, maybe we should go either to the more premium model or add this and this and this. Because I'll need this to have that wow experience when they open it. That's pretty cool.
Cam Richardson: On the psychology front, let me put you this one. So would you rather get a 10% off when you came in or see that a brand has contributed 10% to your pay squad? Like they themselves have gone in and gone, hey, we love what you're doing. We're going to like take this portion from it and all of a sudden they're part of your squad.
[Voiceover]: That feels like real money, right?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, yeah. So they're, they've joined your squad basically for that and we're, we're looking into that.
[Voiceover]: Oh yeah, I like that because that feels real, that feels tangible. You've just given me X into our kitty.
Cam Richardson: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: That we're going to buy with. Oh, that's fair. Oh, I love it.
Cam Richardson: Let's go.
[Voiceover]: That's interesting. You've got a little bit of that time sensitivity and FOMO happening there. In those scenarios, we all say that
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Cam Richardson: yeah, big time. So yeah, group chats, like everybody's, virtually everybody's in a group chat and we're here to put the group chat on steroids in a way.
[Voiceover]: And is that well, I'm just hoping that you kind of calm the group chat more than anything. Like, there's nothing worse than those back and forth around who's contributing what and where do I take my money? And here's my BSB.
Cam Richardson: Like, just we heard one group, they have a WhatsApp group and they're always doing group guests together. But the way they do it is they have the full list of friends and they post the full list and they put an emoji next to their name and then post the whole list again to their group chat. So you can just imagine it going like, with all these ones being added and just like, as soon as I saw Pasteboard, they're like, oh my gosh. Like, it's so nice to not have as many notifications.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome. And are you finding that that's translating then to social? Because I love that story of how you came up with that idea and that you want to create more of those moments of awesomeness in really great gift giving, thoughtful gift giving. Are you finding that's transl at the other end when the person gets it and they're like, oh my God, how'd you guys do this?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, those sort of outcomes are incredible. We want to get better at actually capturing those and presenting them on our own social channels as well, going like, hey, this is only possible because of my squad, our squad goal achieved, that sort of thing. But yeah, you're right to say, I mean, going back to the original story, that is the thing about Pay Squad that makes it truly, like incredible. Even like in the social circles that we've been sort of like talking to, and even I've seen it in my own social circles, the conversation shifts from what am I going to get that person for their birthday? Coming up to what are we going to get that person? And it's so much easier to think of items that you can get that are above what one person can normally buy. It's so much easier to think of gifts above that point. And so we're really leaning into that as well.
[Voiceover]: Do you have any mechanism and probably too early for this, but to help in that initial stage before that person, that organizer goes, hey, we're getting an overlocker or whatever it is to go, hey, here's a list of stuff that she might like, can we vote on it or like to have that group decision making as well as payment.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, look, we would love to really dive into that discovery piece. There are so many interesting parts of the whole, like, group like buying journey to make the group experience integrate seamlessly with the shopping experience is really the aim. You know, if we had full command over the Shopify platform for this whole thing, then we would definitely build out that sort of like functionality where you can have people, you know, voting on different things and then all of a sudden there's big buy in. That's happening. But right now we're just seeing it happen fully in the group chat of people like, hey, what about this? It's typically one really good friend that's like, this is absolutely what they want. So like, let's just get it going. Everyone's got that friend. And then to be honest, there's, you know, so many other people in the group chat who would have never had an idea of what to bring. And it is such a relief to get a link and just be like, oh, okay, I don't have to think about it. I'm just gonna hit this link and just contribute. And I've done my bit.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, exactly. But you are going to get such an amazing view over not even premium gifting ideas, but big dream gifting ideas. Like the stuff that you kind of go, oh, what can I get for $50 or $100? And you're really limited. But it's like actually to your point, before you could curate like this awesome list of big dream gift ideas, which is pretty cool. Yes.
Cam Richardson: Helping squads do things together they can't do solo. Core mission of ours. And as I said earlier, even just helping merchants dream a little bit more about the things they could offer would be awesome.
[Voiceover]: What about on the other end of that? So when it comes to the fulfillment side of it, are you finding that most of your gifts are delivered to the organizer or delivered directly to the recipient?
Cam Richardson: In most cases it's to the squad leader so that they can present it at an occasion that's coming up. In some cases we are seeing it delivered straight away, especially for those international use cases, you know, there's even been ones we've seen that people have sent it to like a parcel forwarding thing for the people that offer just Australian only sort of options. But yeah, that's been an interesting one as well. I think we could do even better at surfacing where it's going so that people are more bought in on knowing that, hey, it's going here and we want to bring it as part of the gift and you're going to be a part of carrying it in. Probably adding like a gift note kind of like aspect to it as well. Where we've turned the I was literally
[Voiceover]: about to say partnering with someone, like gift note, we can add video messages or whatever. It's pretty cool.
Cam Richardson: Hey, and even having a breakdown to show that all these people contributed to get that thing for you, we do it in a way that it shows the full list without going really clearly into detail of how much each person went in. And that's been part of the feedback we got from our customers to say, hey, look, you know, happy to. For everyone to see how close we are to target. It's obviously pretty awkward. If it's really obvious that I only put in $10, everyone else put in 100, we're like, yeah, makes sense.
[Voiceover]: Don't expose the tight asses. Yeah, I love it. Okay, cool. And tell me from a merchant perspective, I think you'll have got some people really imagining what could be possible here. Who are some of the merchants that you hold up as best cases if people want to go on and have a look at what they're doing?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, look, we're lies with some great retailers say baby stores like Baby Village, Cloth Bums, Mimi and co, they naturally gravitated towards this because of the high iov and the rule like gifting occasion that comes with it. So we like check them out for sure. We've got, you know, Davano Furniture Craft Club, Australia's fastest growing craft brand. Love those guys. They're such unique and really polished, you know, like advertising merchant. They're awesome. Pick and mix lollies, Rugby bricks, Alpha Wave, which is a wellness brand out of Canada. There's a few options on there just to see the range that we have.
[Voiceover]: That's cool. Very cool. All right, we'll check those out. When it comes to data, I know, like that is really interesting what you're saying there. Instead of getting one lot of transaction data, you're getting 10, 20 lots of transaction data. Obviously. Do you give them all the opportunity to opt into marketing email? Because at that point you're just getting allowing transactional emails. Are you also allowing them to opt into marketing?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, definitely. And if you think about for a contributor to Pay Squad, there is about three, three different opportunities that we have to engage with them. So it's when you're making a contribution, the checkbox underneath the contribution. Hey, do you want to keep in touch or join the mailing list? Sweet. The contribution receipt that they get. Hey, cool. That $20, $20 contribution has gone through to Baby Village. Hey, you know, get 10% off your next order with this. We can show in a little promo panel there. And an opportunity to join their mailing list for a one time offer or even just loyalty program and things. And then finally when we notify everybody that the pay squad's been complete, that's another option again to put another one in there as well. And so that's part of the data there. Another piece of the data that we're sharing with merchants is the occasion data as well. So quite often they're not really tracking, you know, was it either lots of 21st where people are buying the sort of thing anniversaries or thank you presents and that sort of thing. Just allowing them to lean into that marketing opportunity a little bit more, we know is really valuable as well.
[Voiceover]: That's very cool. And tell me in terms of the technical side of it, do you see yourself as a payments company or are you built on top of payments?
Cam Richardson: Who's listening? Bushy?
[Voiceover]: You know, no one listens to this. Don't worry, it's just you and I,
Cam Richardson: we are payment orchestrators. And so at a sort of fundamental level, we're helping one person enlist the help of their friends, family and colleagues to make a purchase. And we are going to find, as always, the least friction ways for them to make their contribution and for other people to make their contribution as well. And for us, it makes sense right now to be doing that through partnerships with some amazing payment orchestrators as well and existing as a layer on top. But we also want to take the pain out of the merchant's hands of being just an administrative layer that then they're still seeing each individual contribution and trying to figure out if that was going towards a success, accessible pay squad or not, or. And some of these other complexities. So taking as much of the pain out of merchants as possible while making sure that our squads have the most frictionless experience as possible.
[Voiceover]: Okay, and what's the commercial model for a retailer?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, we similar to bnpl, we charge a commission fee for every successful pay squad and we handle, as I said, the full payment service and all associated transaction costs. Even like foreign exchange and people contributing from anywhere in the world.
[Voiceover]: Yep. Okay. Do you get many refunds any like people get gifts and go, guys, this was way off the mark. This was shit.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, we haven't seen too many. And that's part of the benefit of not being like a massive fashion kind of like option. I think that the fashion numbers blow the E Commerce refund model out of the water. Right? Yeah. And there's not too many people sharing the cost for a T shirt yet. So we are we're in the clear. But the other thing is with the gifting focus and, and a little bit of like having this extra recipient, that person may get a refund that doesn't actually need to go all the way back to the contributors. And so we've seen examples of them going in and getting store credit instead swapping it out for something else, but not too many because you know, there's still some, probably some social cues around that that are discreetly a little bit later, you know. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: How do you trigger that? So if I'm receiving a gift, obviously is it the same as normal? I'd go to one of the gifters and say, hey, awkward, I need to take this back.
Cam Richardson: Typically this is straight back to the retailer and they acknowledge, hey, you know, there's like a receipt thing here that they can then track back to based on the sku, things like that sometimes get in touch with us as well. We haven't had too many scenarios like that.
[Voiceover]: You got good squads behind you.
Cam Richardson: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
[Voiceover]: And then from a technical perspective, you mentioned their integration with Shopify. Are you integrating natively with any other platforms at the moment?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, we're on Shopify and Woo right now. So we've got apps on those that allow us to onboard a merchant in under 30 minutes. Then we've built relationships with most big payment orchestrators for the enterprise scale merchants which is also how we Service Magento Bigcom Commerce Cloud. But then for fully custom setups, got APIs and a merchant portal that make it super easy for merchants technical teams to hook into. And that's sort of our bread and butter, this complex sort of integrations. So we love getting dirty every now and then.
[Voiceover]: And 30 minute setup that's very impressive for organizations where it might need to flow back into ERPs without kind of uncovering all of this. Does it flow back as one transaction then? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Otherwise it'd be a bit of a nightmare. Cool. And then in terms of 30 minutes integration, no integration costs.
Cam Richardson: No, can't be doing that.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful way you go. Any minimum commitment. If people are thinking about turning this on.
Cam Richardson: No, we're willing to work with any merchant that we can. And even for your listeners, anyone who wants to cash this in, we are going to offer some pretty sharp pricing and $1,000 of CO marketing for the A2C listeners. So use code. I heard that on the podcast. Awesome.
[Voiceover]: So $1000 worth of co marketing for that. Tell us your wish list. Who are the retailers that you're like, oh, I know we could do Wonders for them. Who's up there?
Cam Richardson: We've got all the marketplace scopes we would love to see, especially in Aussie, some of those larger ones. I'll tell you what, one random one, I want a golf brand on board as well. The whole thing of golf buddies who are out there day in, day out and the only thing between them and a better score is just those better clubs and all their friends know it. So we'd love to connect with someone in that and really sort of anyone that has a gen Y, gen Z sort of approach digital first and can create unique value out of groups like those are our big ones. Happy to share more about that as well.
[Voiceover]: Wow. Okay. Yeah, that all makes total sense. Especially the golf nerds because my brother, my brother in law, they're all golf nerds and every time it's like what do you want? They're like just this golf for very specific around what they want. Guys, you can go buy this yourself like any day. Yeah, that's all they want more golf stuff.
Cam Richardson: They're rabid. I know, it's. We've seen that this is a bit of resurgence among young people.
[Voiceover]: I'm curious Cam around your entrepreneurship journey because we were talking online back and forth a little bit before we actually met in person and I kind of watched from the sidelines of you building this. You were very open around what you were building, the help that you needed. How have you found your first few years in this? Because I understand that you actually studied environmental science before diving into business. What's been that change?
Cam Richardson: Yeah, it's just natural obviously like this environmental science to fintech it's just, it's two P's in a pod. Now look in Maui City, basically if you're a capable student, you've got three solid options. You're either going to be a lawyer, doctor or engineer. And in school I was a really avid mountain biker, so. So I thought oh could shape some more dirt as an engineer. So I just went to geotech engineering and luckily there was a wave of entrepreneurship going through the uni and I absolutely knew the first time I saw it that I did not want to do anything else. And I often say if I had known a single entrepreneur growing up, I would have figured this out a lot quicker. But I just didn't. And so you could say I'm really still in the honeymoon phase right now of like just entrepreneurship. Like wow, like this is such an opportunity to have an impact on the world, to make some of the outcomes for squads even better. And just have fun building things with great people and great partners.
Nathan Bush: How do you grow a business from a small Sydney garage to a global brand? Fragrance designer who is Elijah achieved this success with the help of of Shopify by upgrading to the full power of Shopify Plus. Who is Elijah used expansion stores and B2B E commerce to achieve a 400% increase in direct to consumer sales and 50% year on year growth in international wholesale. Shopify plus made it easy to customize their messaging, checkouts and even their pricing to suit different markets. With a unified dashboard, they could easily track data and optimize their business for growth. That's how who is Elijah is powered by Shopify. To read more success stories like this, visit shopify.com case studies
[Voiceover]: that's cool. And what came first, the idea for Pay Squad or the idea that you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
Cam Richardson: The idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So the very first item I had in which there was a business like competition coming up and I was like, I've got to enter something. This is, this will be fun. And I saw that everybody was locking their bike locks through their helmets and then locking their bikes through it as well. I thought, why don't we combine, you know, the bike helmet and the bike lock makes sense. And, and just did a bunch of research, pitched my life out for it, you know, like in this little competition, ended up being like in the top 10. And it was like, oh my goodness, this is all it took was just like having an idea and knowing that there are systems to propagate great ideas into the world. It's like, it's just too good to look past. It's too exciting to not just go, this is what we're doing now.
[Voiceover]: Did your bike lock, helmet combination, did it make it to life?
Cam Richardson: It did. It turns out like hardware and physical products are just a bit more expensive. And it turns out there's certain weaknesses that come with attaching a bike lock to a helmet that affect the structural integrity of the whole helmet, which is disappointing.
[Voiceover]: And so I understand too that you've actually been through an official. I can't remember the name of the kind of the venture that you went through, but you've been through an accelerator program.
Cam Richardson: Yeah. Went to, we did Startup Bootcamp as part of their sustainable fintech cohort, which is pretty cool.
[Voiceover]: And you've got. There was another cam in there that's had a baby at the same time as you.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, that's right.
[Voiceover]: What's going on in those startups tech boot camps.
Cam Richardson: I tell you it's eerie. You know, we've got so much time on our hands, we're so bored building businesses that we're like, let's have some kids as well.
[Voiceover]: I know, I never understood you entrepreneurs that, you know, start a business, have kids all at the same time. Doesn't make any sense.
Cam Richardson: Just all seems fun, you know.
[Voiceover]: And how are you balancing it all?
Cam Richardson: You know, balances, balance. Some days is fantastic and other days there's just very full amount of things to do. But I found, you know, becoming better at context switching has been key for me and my kids. Will won't really accept like a half brain dad there, like trying to like I'm still solving, you know, business problems in the back and then trying to read them a book or something. They're like, then they're not going to sell for that. They're going to be like, hey, you know, without saying it directly about, are you here? You know, they're like, oh, I got
[Voiceover]: called out by my wife on that the other day. She's like, oh, you're just not here. And I'm like, I am, I'm here all the time. She's like, no, you're not here.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, that's relatable.
Nathan Bush: Awesome.
[Voiceover]: So, Cam, I'm keen to hear more from you around the future of payments to close us out, like if we're dreaming big around payments, because really we've had the afterpay, buy now, pay later boom and then we've seen contactless payments come through and now we're seeing kind of passwordless, formless payments come through. Where do you see the future of E commerce payments? Heading groups. Yeah, of course, I might need groups to pay for my groceries soon.
Cam Richardson: There we go. We might have to start living in communes just to get the bulk discounts right. Just to get by this economy. Beyond groups, there's some good moves in crypto and stablecoins like drastically reducing FX costs which will have reverberating impact across the market. I know that in the past it's been sort of like a speculative thing or it's, oh, you know, is it ever going to be anything? Web3 sort of went through its hype cycle, but that feels like it's getting more and more real now, but it's doing it more undercover. Then there's the open banking opportunity in the future of reducing risks of chargeback and fraud, which is going to save merchants a lot of money if we can get that user experience correct and some of those incentives aligned as well and then really interested in Looking more into the sort of AI assistants and virtual cards where almost the entire checkout will just be bypassed because you'll have an agent that's just doing the purchasing for you. That's where you're going. Okay, we're going to get pretty smart then about how we do that for groups as well.
[Voiceover]: That's pretty cool, isn't it, to think of that you've got an agent operating your group to get everyone just to get their shit in order.
Cam Richardson: Yeah, I mean that's what billionaires have right now, right. I've got that person that's like doing all their bidding for them and all the purchasing. So, you know, why not for the squad?
[Voiceover]: That's pretty cool. It's been awesome to explore what PaySquad's doing both today and what you're thinking about in the future, next 12 months. Cam, what's on the roadmap for you and the team?
Cam Richardson: Well, let's just think about how far I've come already, you know, to go from listening to add, to cartwheel, mine lawn to being on here. So we're just going to try and keep that trajectory going. But in terms of what's next, we want to keep helping squads achieve their squad goals and doing amazing things together. That involves building an epic brand that is all around being laser focused on squads, the most like group focused brand in the world and taking their lead on the things that they want to do together and then basically connecting those dots. We want to keep helping merchants simultaneously capitalize on this growing trend and helping them like compete on quality instead of always just trying to slash prices. Like if you've got an international competitor coming in, do you really want to go like, you know, pound for pound on the. On pricing as your main strategy? I think there's opportunities here for D2C and niche players to actually like compete on quality instead. That fires me up. Once we were right now just like closing our fundraising round as well. And you know, classic startup, we're always out in the market there and that's going to allow us to hire a head of growth and have someone in the trenches with me. As you know, I see him as a big brand builder as well. And so we're already sort of looking for that next candidate as well. So really excited. We've got a number of opportunities and international markets and categories opening up at the moment. So it's just an exciting time to be, you know, looking at all of this.
[Voiceover]: Cam, I can guarantee that you are going to have people reach out to you after this wanting to know more and get in touch with you to explore it for their brand. You mentioned there that you have a very special add to cart offer of $1,000 in co market for people who successfully sign up. What's the best way for people to get in touch and learn more? Sure.
Cam Richardson: If you find out more, get started at PaySquad co. Navigate up to the business tab or connect with me direct on LinkedIn. Love hanging out in there. Or shoot me a message. Camaysquad Co. Happy to connect and really just explore. See if this will be beneficial for you.
[Voiceover]: Cam. Absolutely. Awesome. I love that chat. You've just blown my brain in thinking of all the ways that you can really power groups for that larger average order value for retailers. I just love that it's a brand new opportunity. To your point, it's not about discounting. It's not about beating the Facebook algorithm. It's about actually unlocking a whole new audience and a whole new buying occasion, which I think is really exciting.
Cam Richardson: Too good. No. Happy to have this chat. It's an honor.
[Voiceover]: Thanks for joining us and you can go listen to yourself when you're mowing the lawn. Next. How good is Cam?
Nathan Bush: It's one of those ideas that you go, why has no one done that before before? But I'm so glad that Cam is leading the charge. It is awesome. Now if you want to give Pay Squad a go, that offer is pretty good. They're offering very sharp pricing and $11,000 in CO marketing for Add to Cart listeners who want to jump on board to give it a go. I mean, with those AOVs of over $800, who wouldn't? All right, visit PaySquad Co business for fill out your dates and then mention that you heard it on Add to Cart to get that thousand dollars of co marketing spend. It's pretty cool. All right, here are the three biggest takeaways from that conversation. Number one, group payments equals group customer acquisition. I didn't think about it this way initially, and most retailers are obsessed with acquiring one new customer at a time. But PaySquad kind of flips that on its head. Instead of just one person at checkout, you're bringing an entire squad, turning one sale into 10 potential future customers. So that's essentially making your checkout your marketing channel. So I think what we're trying to do here is not just trial Pay Squad but actively market it if we have those occasions where it leans it to. So think about 40 teams. Think about baby products, furniture, all those things that could be squattable we actively want to try that to get 10 people shopping with us, not just one. So it's not enough just to put it on your website in the checkout. It really is a marketing opportunity. Number two, younger shoppers are allergic to credit cards. Sometimes you have to take yourself out of how you shop and how you're used to shopping and take about people
[Voiceover]: in different parts of their lives.
Nathan Bush: So the younger shopper, they are not relying on credit cards. They are very prone to buy now, pay later and alternative payment methods. They are more willing to give this a go. And if you are not there for them in the checkout, you are missing
[Voiceover]: a huge chunk of your audience.
Nathan Bush: So you need to offer multiple pathways. If you don't already have buy now, pay later digital wallets or group payments like PaySquad, maybe now's the time to to explore them. And number three, retailers can get really creative with PaySquad. My brain was just ticking speaking to Cam and I think I may have annoyed him a little bit by saying, how about this, how about this? But he was very, very clear. They've got a clear pathway forward there, but you can get creative with this. So think about bundling big ticket items. If your average order value is $200, what would a thousand dollar bundle bundle look like? You can actually create these premium products that squads can chip into. You could use FOMO to your advantage. You know that example that Cam gave around having a group fill up really quickly and then the rest of the squad going, well, what about us? What are we going to do now? That FOMO is a huge, huge advantage if you can get that happening for your brand. So think about how you could get creative with Pay Squad. Again in all of these tips, I think what it comes down to is that it's not about just putting it in as a payment option. It's about thinking about the customer life cycle and the opportunities that are in front of you a little bit differently. All right, that is it from us today. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to keep learning with us, come over to the Add to Cart community. We have webinars, tips and other e commerce professionals in there ready to share. You can join free@campus.add tocart.com or follow the links from add tocart.com it's a great way to continue learning everything that you need in your professional e commerce career. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague. Maybe leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Do it as a group. If you want to. And as always, please support our sponsors, Shopify and Klaviyo, who make this podcast possible. Thanks for joining us today on Add to Cart to listen to all our
[Voiceover]: e commerce conversations, now in the hundreds.
Nathan Bush: You can head on over to add to cart.comau there.
[Voiceover]: You can also join up to our
Nathan Bush: free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's add to cart.com and if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep those customers Adding to Cartoon.
