Refer To：《Visa Follow-Up and Today’s Payments Ecosystem (with Gaurav Ahuja)》。

Note: This transcript was automatically generated using speech recognition technology. While we will make minor corrections on request, transcriptions do not currently go through a full human review process. We apologize for any errors in the automated transcript.

注意：本记录是使用语音识别技术自动生成的。虽然我们会根据要求进行小幅修改，但目前转录并未经过完整的人为审核过程。对于自动转录中的任何错误，我们深表歉意。

David Rosenthal:Gaurav Ahuja, welcome to ACQ two. 

David Rosenthal:Gaurav Ahuja，欢迎来到 ACQ 二。

Gaurav Ahuja:Thanks for having me, guys. 

Gaurav Ahuja:谢谢你们邀请我，伙计们。

David Rosenthal:It's been a long time in the works. You've been a friend of the show for a long time, and thank you for being a research source for our visa episode. 

David Rosenthal:这项工作已经进行了很长时间。你一直是这个节目的朋友，感谢你为我们的visa节目提供研究资料。

Gaurav Ahuja:Of course, I was excited to give it a listen and you guys do such a good job just going through the history in the most meticulous way possible. I love the episode. 

Gaurav Ahuja:当然，我很兴奋去听，你们在梳理历史方面做得非常出色，尽可能细致。我喜欢这一集。

David Rosenthal:Well, thank you. Well, we wanted to say, listeners, if you don't know Gaurav, Gaurav is an investor at Thrive, and some of you may know that name, but not know the history. So Thrive launched its first institutional fund in 2011. That was a $40 million fund. They led Warby Parker Series A, invested in Instagram, and they incubated several businesses, one of which is Oscar Health and another of which we will talk about later this episode with Gaurav that is in the fintech credit card payment space. And since then, the firm has grown to a much larger entity, managing $15 billion with a team of nine investors. They invest at all stages pages and their track record includes leading rounds in companies like Stripe, OpenAI, Twitch and many more. Gaurav, we want to open with you and say you're both an investor at Thrive and also the founder of a thrive backed startup, and in particular, you invest in vertical SaaS and fintech, but you started this credit card company. So how does that work? How do you pull off this dual role? 

David Rosenthal:好的，谢谢你。我们想说，听众们，如果你们不认识 Gaurav，Gaurav 是 Thrive 的投资者，你们中的一些人可能知道这个名字，但不知道历史。所以 Thrive 在 2011 年推出了其首个机构基金，那是一个 4000 万美元的基金。他们主导了 Warby Parker 的 A 轮融资，投资了 Instagram，并孵化了几家企业，其中之一是 Oscar Health，另一个我们将在本期节目中与 Gaurav 讨论，它在金融科技信用卡支付领域。从那时起，该公司已发展成为一个更大的实体，管理着 150 亿美元的资金，拥有九名投资者的团队。他们在所有阶段进行投资，其业绩记录包括在 Stripe、OpenAI、Twitch 等公司中主导融资。Gaurav，我们想和你开场，说你既是 Thrive 的投资者，也是一个 Thrive 支持的初创公司的创始人，特别是你投资于垂直 SaaS 和金融科技，但你创办了这家信用卡公司。那么这是如何运作的？你是如何实现这种双重角色的？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, look, the very fact that thrive as open minded on how exactly we think about our day to day and our roles is really what drew me to the firm seven years ago. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，你看，正是我们对日常生活和角色的思考保持开放心态这一事实，真正吸引我在七年前加入这家公司的。

I love investing and working with founders directly, but I knew if one day I have an idea and it was this idea I couldn't stop thinking about and I just had to start it, that thrive would be a unique way to capitalize that company in a pretty special manner. And so in 2020, I got really excited about the, the idea of co branded credit cards, and I hit it off with this guy named Dara Murphy. And I remember it was early Covid and we were breaking New York City curfew just to hang out with one another and just kept talking about the idea in New York City, going in parks, unsure how much distance we needed to keep. We had masks on, but I was pretty much just focused on imprint for that first year and helping it get launched. And, you know, I still get the same emotional ups and downs that a founder would get, which is one week, I'm like, man, imprint is the best company in the world. The next week I'm pretty sure that we're about to go bankrupt. And that oscillation keeps me going back and forth and back and forth. And even today I'm still joining leadership meetings every single week. I am about to go to a company offsite. I'll hop on a plane for any important sales meeting and I'm even a pitcher or a storyteller of the product to other venture capital firms as well. 

我喜欢投资并直接与创始人合作，但我知道如果有一天我有一个想法，而这个想法让我无法停止思考，我就必须开始它，那么 Thrive 将是一种独特的方式来以一种非常特别的方式为那家公司提供资金。因此，在 2020 年，我对联名信用卡的想法感到非常兴奋，并与一个名叫 Dara Murphy 的人一拍即合。我记得那是早期的疫情期间，我们为了见面而违反了纽约市的宵禁规定，并在纽约市的公园里不断讨论这个想法，不确定我们需要保持多远的距离。我们戴着口罩，但我基本上在第一年专注于 Imprint 并帮助它启动。而且，你知道，我仍然会经历创始人会经历的同样的情绪起伏，这就是一周我觉得 Imprint 是世界上最好的公司，下一周我几乎确定我们即将破产。这种波动让我来回反复。即使是今天，我仍然每周参加领导会议。我正准备去公司外出活动。 我会乘飞机参加任何重要的销售会议，我甚至还是产品的推销员或讲述者，向其他风险投资公司介绍产品。

David Rosenthal:Does being the founder of one of your portfolio companies make you behave differently with companies that you're not the founder of? 

David Rosenthal:作为您投资组合公司之一的创始人，是否会让您在与您不是创始人的公司打交道时表现得有所不同？

Gaurav Ahuja:Definitely. I like to think that each of the roles makes me better at the other every day. At thrive I'm a seller of the venture capital product. At imprint I'm actually a buyer of the venture capital product and telling the story to other firms. And we've raised over $100 million at this point. The reality is I think we've seen so many types of venture capital experiences, we know what good founder experience looks like versus bad founder experience. And man, do I take that back to the firm. I think it's really influenced the way that I want thrive and myself to just really thoughtfully interact with founders and always make sure we're creating that good experience. 

Gaurav Ahuja:当然。我喜欢认为每个角色每天都让我在其他方面变得更好。在 Thrive，我是风险投资产品的销售员。在 Imprint，我实际上是风险投资产品的买家，并向其他公司讲述这个故事。到目前为止，我们已经筹集了超过 1 亿美元。事实上，我认为我们已经看到了许多类型的风险投资经验，我们知道良好的创始人体验与糟糕的创始人体验有什么不同。天哪，我真的把这些带回了公司。我认为这确实影响了我希望 Thrive 和我自己与创始人进行深思熟虑互动的方式，并始终确保我们创造良好的体验。

Ben Gilbert:Yeah, it's pretty crazy that like as an active GP at a, you know, premier venture firm, you are also going and pitching gps at other venture firms. You're getting real time competitor experience data. 

Ben Gilbert:是的，作为一家知名风险投资公司的活跃 GP，你还去其他风险投资公司推销 GP。你正在获得实时的竞争对手经验数据。

Gaurav Ahuja:Every firm has its own style and every individual will have their own style. That's what's going to make them unique and, and win opportunities. But one thing that always stuck with me is during the a that we raised, we talked to a few firms and one of those firms, we met a few of the partners, we presented, nobody asked questions. Afterwards, kind of felt like a dead room. We walked away feeling like, do they really like the business at all? And turns out they did. And then we walked to another firm and had the same thing. We pitched the company, but man, all the questions we got were totally different. Each individual who was part of that meeting sent us their own thoughtful solo email on all the things they loved about our product, which stores they wanted to see it at. One of them even gave us a consumer survey that they did with their own 20 friends and showed us the insights from that. That was real love. And it showed us that every single person on that team was bought into the product, not just the point person that we were working with at that firm. So that's one thing that I've always tried to take back to thrive is a really tactical example of how it's influenced me as an investor and how I think about that founder experience today. 

Gaurav Ahuja:每家公司都有自己的风格，每个人也会有自己的风格。这就是让他们独特并赢得机会的原因。但有一件事一直让我印象深刻，就是在我们筹集资金期间，我们与几家公司交谈，其中一家公司，我们见了几位合伙人，我们进行了展示，没有人提问。之后，感觉像是一个死气沉沉的房间。我们离开时感觉他们真的喜欢这个业务吗？结果他们确实喜欢。然后我们去了另一家公司，情况也是一样。我们推介了公司，但我们收到的所有问题完全不同。参加会议的每个人都给我们发了他们自己深思熟虑的单独邮件，讲述他们喜欢我们产品的所有方面，以及他们希望在哪些商店看到它。其中一人甚至给我们提供了一份他们与自己的 20 位朋友进行的消费者调查，并向我们展示了从中获得的见解。那是真正的热爱。这表明团队中的每个人都对产品充满热情，而不仅仅是我们在那家公司合作的联系人。 所以，这就是我一直试图带回去的一个非常战术性的例子，说明它如何影响了我作为投资者的思维，以及我今天如何看待创始人的经历。

David Rosenthal:Love that. All right, well, Gaurav, let's dive right into it. So you invest in fintech, and you do a lot of stuff in the credit card space. A lot of these cards rely on interchange. And a big topic on the Visa episode was, is this trending to go away? Like, should Visa be worried? Should these companies that rely on interchange be worried? Give us your view of what's going on in that space. 

David Rosenthal:喜欢这个。好吧，Gaurav，我们直接进入正题。你投资于金融科技，并且在信用卡领域做了很多事情。很多这些卡依赖于交换费。Visa 那一集的一个大话题是，这种趋势会消失吗？Visa 应该担心吗？那些依赖交换费的公司应该担心吗？告诉我们你对这个领域正在发生的事情的看法。

Ben Gilbert:Diners Club took 7%. Now it's down to two to three. What's going on? 

Ben Gilbert:大来卡占了 7%。现在降到2-3%。发生了什么事？

Gaurav Ahuja:Look, it's a great question, and I'll start with my bias, which is, I don't want it to go away. At the same time, I actually think interchange is kind of misunderstood. 

Gaurav Ahuja:听着，这是个很好的问题，我会从我的偏见开始，那就是，我不希望它消失。与此同时，我实际上认为互换有点被误解了。

To assess a lot of industries, I like to think about natural market forces and unnatural market forces. And here, when I look at just the natural market forces that might influence Visa's interchange or merchant discount rate, I don't think it's likely to be just capped at the knees and go away. 

为了评估许多行业，我喜欢考虑自然市场力量和非自然市场力量。在这里，当我只看可能影响 Visa 的交换费或商户折扣率的自然市场力量时，我认为不太可能会被彻底限制或消失。

Maybe unnatural of market forces, say a new president who has an agenda. It's just hard to predict that. So let's set aside unnatural market forces for a second and just talk about what we can see and feel. On the natural market forces side, the first thing I'd argue is, look, I think the common narrative is that interchange is falling. And David, as you point out now in the episode, yes, it was six or 7% once upon a time. It's now two to 3%. But that's only true if you look across a very, very long time horizon. The reality is, if you look across a different timeline, you actually see a kind of flat lining of interchange rates. And it suggests to me that we found this market equilibrium. So you can go on the Federal Reserve's website, and I'll send you guys the link to this. It shows you the last 13 years of merchant discount rates. And what you'll see is that it's been pretty steady. So one, I dispel the narrative and look, the way merchant discounts rates get set is there's this tug of war from banks. On the one side, because the banks want higher mdrs, because that's more interchange in their pocket, and on the other side, merchants who want lower MDR, so they're not paying as high a fees. And it suggests that the tug of war has actually steadily stabilized over the last 13 years. When you look at these charts, and. 

也许市场力量不自然，比如说一个有议程的新总统。这很难预测。所以让我们暂时搁置不自然的市场力量，只谈谈我们能看到和感受到的。在自然市场力量方面，我首先要说的是，我认为普遍的说法是交换费在下降。正如大卫在这一集中指出的，是的，曾经是 6%或 7%。现在是 2%到 3%。但这只有在你看一个非常非常长的时间跨度时才是真的。事实上，如果你看不同的时间线，你会看到交换费率实际上是持平的。这让我觉得我们找到了市场平衡。所以你可以去联邦储备局的网站，我会把链接发给你们。它显示了过去 13 年的商户折扣率。你会看到它一直很稳定。所以，我打破了这个说法，看看商户折扣率的设定方式是银行之间的拉锯战。 一方面，因为银行希望更高的 MDR，因为这意味着更多的交换费收入，而另一方面，商家希望更低的 MDR，这样他们就不用支付那么高的费用。这表明过去 13 年中，这种拉锯战实际上已经逐渐稳定下来。当你查看这些图表时。

David Rosenthal:Just to make sure we define some terminology, the 2% or the 3% that we throw out on the visa episode, that is actually the merchant discount rate. And the amount that the issuing bank keeps is known as the interchange. Is that right? 

David Rosenthal:为了确保我们定义一些术语，我们在visa事件中抛出的 2%或 3%实际上是商户折扣率。而发卡行保留的金额被称为交换费。对吗？

Gaurav Ahuja:That's right.  没错。

David Rosenthal:So the MDR is the sum or the total, and then a fraction of that pie is the interchange fee, and. 

Gaurav Ahuja:Most of it is going to interchange. So, say, just to use hypothetical numbers, say visa sets the merchant discount rate for a card scheme at 200 basis points. So 2% of a transaction is going as MDR, only ten bits. So ten basis points out of that 200 might be going to visa, and then, say another ten bits might be going to the payment processor, and then the bulk of it, 100 and 7180 bps, is going towards the bank. And so most of that is bank interchange. That's why this tug of war exists. That, yes, the entire 2% is eaten by the merchant, but the bank is seeing a lot of that. And so visa, yes, they're here, they're setting the rates, but their job is to set rates that work for the entire market and help visa. Or just cash to digital as a secular trend to grow. 

Gaurav Ahuja:大部分将用于交换。因此，假设使用假设数字，假设 Visa 将卡方案的商户折扣率设定为 200 个基点。因此，交易的 2%作为 MDR，只有十个基点。因此，从那 200 个基点中，可能有十个基点给了 Visa，然后，假设另有十个基点可能给了支付处理器，然后大部分，100 和 180 个基点，给了银行。因此，大部分是银行交换。这就是为什么存在这种拉锯战。是的，整个 2%由商户承担，但银行看到了很多。因此，Visa，是的，他们在这里，他们设定了费率，但他们的工作是设定适合整个市场并帮助 Visa 的费率。或者只是现金到数字作为一种长期趋势来增长。

Ben Gilbert :Yeah, there's also an element here, too, that's similar to, like, Amazon type dynamics of ingest. You could look at this and say, like, man, payment networks were a way better business back in the fifties and sixties when they could take six or 7% out of the transaction, but that would be, like, completely wrong because the volume was so much smaller then and now. Like, yeah, okay, the total VG that payment networks take out of the system is two to 3%, but the volumes are like, an unbelievable amount. I don't know what, like a million times higher, maybe? Like, the actual dollars that are coming out are so much higher. 

Ben Gilbert :是的，这里也有一个元素，类似于亚马逊类型的动态摄取。你可以看看这个，然后说，支付网络在五六十年代是一个更好的业务，因为他们可以从交易中抽取 6%或 7%，但这完全是错误的，因为当时的交易量要小得多。现在，支付网络从系统中抽取的总 VG 是 2%到 3%，但交易量是一个难以置信的数量。我不知道，可能高出一百万倍？实际流出的美元要高得多。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, David, we're on this multi decade, perhaps multi century freight train of cash to digital that just will not stop. And so in some ways, we're losing the forest from the trees when we're always debating ten bits here and there. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，大卫，我们正处于这列可能持续数十年甚至数百年的从现金到数字的货运列车上，这列车不会停下来。因此，在某些方面，当我们总是在这里和那里争论十位数时，我们正在失去全局观。

David Rosenthal:Well, there's this interesting thing that we didn't explore, too in the visa episode that you just brought up. So if 160 bps or 170 bps is going to the bank, we talked about what this amazing business visa is. Do you have a sense of the cost of goods sold on the card issuer, the bank side of things on great, they get 160 bps in the door, but how much does that cost them in fraud and everything that they need to do to be able to facilitate that revenue rewards points. 

David Rosenthal:好吧，还有一件有趣的事情我们没有在你刚提到的visa那一集中探讨过。所以如果 160 个基点或 170 个基点是给银行的，我们谈到了这个令人惊叹的商业visa。你是否了解发卡机构、银行方面的商品销售成本，他们获得 160 个基点的收入，但在欺诈和他们需要做的一切以便能够促进该收入奖励积分方面，这需要花费多少？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head at the end there. So yes, there's customer service, there's fraud costs, but the big one is the rewards. And the banks think about this not just as interchange, they're thinking about it as a collection of interchange and interest revenue on their credit cards. So for every transaction, there's probably at least two points, or for higher end cards, maybe three points, 3% of interchange revenue. But then, on average, for every dollar spent, there's some users who that you suggested on the episode are, you're a transactor, so you're on auto pay every single month. You're never revolving. But on average, there are quite a lot of revolvers, and the average dollar is probably generating six to 8% of interest revenue as well. So between the interchange and the interest revenue, we're talking on the order of magnitude of eight to nine to 10% of total revenue per dollar spent on a credit card. And so they're thinking about both of those hand in hand. And for the highest end customers, they'll even charge annual fees like the Amex Platinum, which is 400, $500 a year. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，你在最后确实一针见血。所以是的，有客户服务，有欺诈成本，但最大的一个是奖励。银行不仅仅把这看作是交换费，他们把它看作是信用卡上的交换费和利息收入的集合。因此，对于每笔交易，可能至少有两个点，或者对于高端卡，可能有三个点，3%的交换费收入。但是，平均来说，对于每花费一美元，有些用户你在节目中提到过，你是一个交易者，所以你每个月都在自动支付。你从不循环。但平均来说，有相当多的循环用户，平均每美元可能还会产生 6%到 8%的利息收入。因此，在交换费和利息收入之间，我们谈论的是每花费一美元的信用卡总收入的 8%到 9%到 10%的数量级。因此，他们在考虑这两者的同时。对于最高端的客户，他们甚至会收取年费，比如 Amex Platinum，每年 400 到 500 美元。

David Rosenthal:So for a good rewards card that lots of people use, you could imagine it's something like a dollar 500 annual fee for $500. And people are getting three, 4% back on the sort of all in blended rewards if they're using it appropriately and if they don't revolve. Do banks look at credit cards as a loss leader, as a hope to get people into other products? If you're not actually making any interest payments ever for the basket of users. 

David Rosenthal:因此，对于许多人使用的优质奖励卡，您可以想象它的年费大约是 500 美元。人们在使用得当且不循环时，可以获得大约 3%到 4%的综合奖励。如果用户从未为这类用户群支付任何利息，银行是否将信用卡视为一种亏损产品，希望将人们引入其他产品？

Gaurav Ahuja:There are always some interest payments. And so for the basket of users, they can make the justification that, sure, I'm going to get some transactors only who I make less margin on, but the revolvers out there, especially when we can do it in a healthy way and not be abusive on our credit side, we're actually on a basket basis doing pretty decently on this card program. All that said, for the transactors only, they still don't want to steer you away for those high end cards like Amex Platinum or Chase Sapphire. The reason being you as a transactor still might not be making money for them on that particular card. But you now, being in the Amex or the chase ecosystem, you're way more likely to go buy a mortgage from Chase. You're way more likely to go do that savings account with Chase. You're way more likely to get the car loan with Chase because they're always front and center with you. And guess what? Credit cards, of all of your financial products, are the most engaged with product. And so if you're trying to get people and shots on goal to show them new products, credit cards are the best way because you're checking your transactions, you're making sure that your statements are paid full on time. That is the golden ticket to all the other products that that bank has. 

Gaurav Ahuja:总是有一些利息支付。因此，对于用户群体来说，他们可以证明，当然，我会得到一些利润较低的交易用户，但对于那些循环信用用户，特别是当我们可以以健康的方式进行而不在信用方面滥用时，我们实际上在这个卡计划上总体表现相当不错。尽管如此，对于仅限交易用户，他们仍然不想让你远离那些高端卡，比如 Amex Platinum 或 Chase Sapphire。原因是你作为一个交易用户在那张特定的卡上可能仍然没有为他们赚钱。但现在，你在 Amex 或 Chase 的生态系统中，更有可能从 Chase 购买抵押贷款。你更有可能在 Chase 开设储蓄账户。你更有可能从 Chase 获得汽车贷款，因为他们总是与你保持密切联系。你猜怎么着？在所有金融产品中，信用卡是参与度最高的产品。 因此，如果你想让人们和射门来展示新产品，信用卡是最好的方式，因为你在检查交易，确保账单按时全额支付。这是获得该银行所有其他产品的金钥匙。

Ben Gilbert:Well, this is so great. And this is one of the big reasons why we wanted to do this episode with you. On our visa episode, we didn't really focus on, one, the incentives writ large of the banks today versus the bank of America days, and two, this whole rewards ecosystem. And this is the world that you live in at imprint. So let's dive into both of those. Let's take the banks first. How are they thinking about this? I mean, I'm imagining, based on what you just said, like, duh, every time I take out, you know, my chase card and I pay somewhere, that's obviously a Chase logo right in my face, you know, multiple times a day. Just simply the value of the brand logo on the card is huge for a banker, for whoever's logo is on that card. 

Ben Gilbert:嗯，这太棒了。这也是我们想和你一起做这一集的一个重要原因。在我们的visa那一集，我们并没有真正关注，第一，今天银行的整体激励与美国银行时代的对比，第二，整个奖励生态系统。而这正是你在 imprint 所处的世界。所以让我们深入探讨这两个问题。先谈谈银行吧。他们是怎么想的？我的意思是，基于你刚才所说的，我想象着，每次我拿出我的 Chase 卡并在某处付款时，那显然是一个 Chase 的标志，每天多次出现在我面前。仅仅是卡上的品牌标志的价值对于银行家或卡上标志的拥有者来说都是巨大的。

Gaurav Ahuja:Absolutely. At its core, Chase has a skew of products for every income segment out there. So we're, of course, in the last part of this conversation focused on the higher end card, which is the Chase sapphire. But they've also got the Chase freedom, which is their free general purpose card. And that's for, you know, kind of mid tier FIcO scores. And then as you get lower, you've got secured cards. And as you get into customers who have not been approved for credit at all, you have chase debit cards, obviously, and you want each of those to be the terminology for Chase's top of wallet cardinal. You want each of those to be the number one thing you are spending on, because for all the reasons we just talked about, it gets you to go to the Chase app multiple times a week, checking your transactions. And when you're ready for that mortgage or when your income starts to go up and they start to realize that your spend on each card is going up, they're going to trigger you with the right offers at the right time and make sure they can monetize you as a whole for the next several decades. 

Gaurav Ahuja:当然。从本质上讲，Chase 为每个收入群体提供了一系列产品。因此，在这次谈话的最后部分，我们当然专注于高端卡，即 Chase Sapphire。但他们也有 Chase Freedom，这是他们的免费通用卡。那是针对中等 FICO 评分的客户。然后，当你的评分更低时，你可以获得担保卡。当你进入那些根本没有获得信用批准的客户时，你显然有 Chase 借记卡。你希望每一个都成为 Chase 钱包中的首选卡。你希望每一个都是你花费的首选，因为出于我们刚才谈到的所有原因，这会让你每周多次访问 Chase 应用程序，检查你的交易。当你准备好申请抵押贷款或当你的收入开始上升，他们开始意识到你在每张卡上的消费在增加时，他们会在合适的时间给你合适的优惠，并确保他们能够在接下来的几十年里整体上从你身上获利。

Rewind to the nineties. This was kind of the emergence of capital one. Their credit card captured the hearts of the Gen X population, and they are still riding that wealth wave of the Gen X population till today. In 2023, and will continue to be doing so and then zoom forward. What will the next version of that be? This is some of the investors thesis on cash app, which is cash app had captured the hearts and minds of millennials. And will cash app roll out credit cards and mortgages and a bunch of the profitable products that traditional banks have to then go capture that wealth generation for the next several decades? 

回到九十年代。这是 Capital One 崛起的时期。他们的信用卡赢得了 X 世代人群的心，并且他们至今仍在享受 X 世代人群带来的财富浪潮。在 2023 年，并将继续这样做，然后快进。下一个版本会是什么？这是一些投资者对 Cash App 的投资论点，Cash App 赢得了千禧一代的心智。Cash App 会推出信用卡、抵押贷款和一系列传统银行拥有的盈利产品，以便在未来几十年中捕捉那一代的财富吗？

David Rosenthal:It's fascinating. So really the card relationship could be viewed as a customer acquisition strategy, a way to build brand, and it'll be profitable for the card issuing bank. But the goal is really the bigger pie of having you participate in a suite of products across everything they offer. 

David Rosenthal:这很吸引人。因此，实际上卡片关系可以被视为一种客户获取策略，一种建立品牌的方式，并且对发卡银行来说是有利可图的。但目标实际上是更大的蛋糕，让你参与他们提供的所有产品组合。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's right. And I don't want to give the impression that credit cards as a category for each of these banks is unprofitable. In fact, they still do rank in one of the more profitable, profitable categories. My only point is that they are willing to take transactors on because they can still cross sell all of these other products for decades to come. 

Gaurav Ahuja:没错。而且我不想给人留下信用卡作为这些银行的一个类别是不盈利的印象。事实上，它们仍然属于较为盈利的类别之一。我的观点只是他们愿意接受交易用户，因为他们仍然可以在未来几十年交叉销售所有其他产品。

Ben Gilbert:This is super helpful because I sort of always wondered, you know, my behavior is like Ben's. I'm just a transactor. I don't think I've ever carried credit card debt for a single month in my entire life. I always wonder, like, I get these great rewards. 

Ben Gilbert:这非常有帮助，因为我总是想知道，我的行为就像本一样。我只是一个交易者。我想我从来没有在我一生中背负过一个月的信用卡债务。我总是想知道，比如，我得到了这些很棒的奖励。

I'm just taking all this money effectively from these banks, but understanding this now, like, oh yeah, of course. Like, they're happy to play the long game here and, you know, push me into other products. 

我只是有效地从这些银行拿走所有这些钱，但现在明白了，哦，是的，当然。他们乐于在这里玩长远的游戏，并且，你知道，把我推向其他产品。

David Rosenthal:I've always wondered, David, if I'm personally unit economic negative for the underwriting bank of my most common credit card. A few times I've tried to do the math and come to the answer of, like, I'm probably breakeven, which I'm sure is how they've done the math too, is like, even our most corner case customers who get the best DLR roughly break even for us. But I don't know, it's always been hard for me to try to back into that calculation. 

David Rosenthal:我一直在想，大卫，我个人是否对我最常用信用卡的承销银行来说是单位经济负面的。有几次我试图计算，得出的答案是，我可能是盈亏平衡，我相信他们也是这样计算的，就像，即使是我们最极端的客户，他们获得的最佳 DLR 大致上对我们来说也是盈亏平衡。但我不知道，我一直很难尝试回到那个计算中。

So we were in the middle of talking about the credit card interchange and about the merchant discount rate. And Gaurav, you did a nice job illustrating sort of what part of the MDR flows to which entities. So if there were downward pressure from, say, a regulatory regime on MDR and on interchange, how would that actually play out and how would that impact visa? 

所以我们正在讨论信用卡交换费和商户折扣率。Gaurav，你很好地说明了 MDR 的哪一部分流向哪些实体。那么，如果有来自监管制度的压力对 MDR 和交换费施加下行压力，这将如何实际发生，并将如何影响 Visa？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, I think the first thing I do is think about where exactly interchange would get cut. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，我想我首先要考虑的是换乘究竟会在哪里被切断。

When I see a lot of the Wall street analyst reports on visa, it feels like they just talk about interchange getting cut at the knees indiscriminately and all interchange is the same to them. When I think in reality, consumer credit interchange versus business debit interchange versus charge cards are all totally different risk pools for visa. And the one that seems most likely to get cut, I'm not making a statement of yes likely or no likely, but ranks highest on my list is probably Durban exempt interchange. And so to back up this is really relevant for the fintech narrative. This is a rule that allows some debit cards to make 2% interchange on all debit card spend instead of what is the capped regulated rate of just ten to 20 basis points. So ten x higher revenue. And the reason the exemption exists is to say there are a lot of small banks out there, oftentimes regional or local community banks that really debit interchange was their main source of revenue or can be a main source of revenue. We want you to keep banking that your populations very well, so we don't want to take this business away from you. So we'll protect you all. You all are Durban exempt. Now, what's been happening though, this is. 

当我看到很多华尔街分析师关于 Visa 的报告时，感觉他们只是随意地谈论互换费被削减，并且对他们来说所有的互换费都是一样的。而实际上，我认为消费者信用卡互换费、商业借记卡互换费和信用卡对 Visa 来说都是完全不同的风险池。而最有可能被削减的，我不是在说是否可能性高或低，但在我名单上排名最高的可能是 Durban 豁免互换费。因此，回过头来看，这对于金融科技的叙述非常相关。这是一项允许某些借记卡在所有借记卡消费上获得 2%互换费的规则，而不是受限的仅 10 到 20 个基点的监管费率。所以收入高出十倍。豁免存在的原因是因为有很多小银行，通常是地区性或地方社区银行，借记卡互换费是它们的主要收入来源或可以是主要收入来源。我们希望你们能很好地为你们的客户提供银行服务，所以我们不想把这项业务从你们手中夺走。因此，我们会保护你们。你们都是 Durban 豁免的。 不过，现在发生了什么。

Ben Gilbert:For banks under a threshold of assets, right? 

Ben Gilbert:对于资产低于某个门槛的银行，对吗？

Gaurav Ahuja:That's right. It's under 10 billion of assets. You are considered a Durbin exempt bank. The list of all the banks who qualify for this is public. 

Gaurav Ahuja:没错。资产低于 100 亿。您被视为杜宾豁免银行。所有符合条件的银行名单是公开的。

David Rosenthal:And just so listeners know, there was a thing called the Durbin act that passed that for the large banks, capped the debit card interchange rates. So that's that ten to 20 basis points core that you're talking about. 

David Rosenthal:为了让听众了解，有一项名为杜宾法案的东西通过了，该法案对大型银行的借记卡交换费率进行了上限。因此，这就是你所说的那 10 到 20 个基点的核心。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly right. How this has been getting used in fintech world is a lot of fintech companies partner with these banks and say, you're a small bank, you get 2% of interchange. Let us be an extension or a wrapper of you build the consumer experience, and we will make the 2% interchange ourselves or the bulk of it, and share a little bit of it back with Eubank. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全正确。这在金融科技领域的应用是，许多金融科技公司与这些银行合作，并说，你是一家小银行，你获得 2%的交换费。让我们成为你的延伸或包装，构建消费者体验，我们将自己赚取 2%的交换费或大部分，并与 Eubank 分享其中的一小部分。

Now, I'd actually argue that's a great thing. Obviously, I'm biased here. I'm an investor in these companies. I think it's led to a ton of innovation that would not have otherwise existed. 

现在，我实际上认为这是一件好事。显然，我在这里有偏见。我是这些公司的投资者。我认为这带来了许多本来不会存在的创新。

But just to state the argument, I think people out there look at some of those success stories, cash app in particular, and they say, cash app, you're a behemoth. Now, you have 50 million actives. You are making something like $40 of gross profit dollars per active user. There's a lot of money here. And so why are you guys working with a small Durbin exempt bank still getting access to this 2% interchange. I think that's an argument that people are going to wrestle with and has been brought up about square and cash app in particular. 

但只是为了陈述这个论点，我认为外面的人看到其中一些成功故事，尤其是现金应用，他们会说，现金应用，你是一个巨头。现在，你有 5000 万活跃用户。你每个活跃用户大约赚取 40 美元的毛利润。这里有很多钱。那么，为什么你们还在与一个小的杜宾豁免银行合作，仍然获得这 2%的交换费。我认为这是一个人们将要争论的问题，尤其是关于 Square 和现金应用。

On the other end, I think several regulators are still fine with how this has played out, because they're looking at cash app or they're looking at chime, and they're saying, hey, for my constituents, they're happy with this. 

另一方面，我认为一些监管机构对这一结果仍然感到满意，因为他们在看现金应用程序或 Chime，他们说，嘿，对于我的选民来说，他们对此感到满意。

Ben Gilbert:This enabled innovation. 

Ben Gilbert:这促进了创新。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, this enabled innovation. This is the first great consumer experience for lower income populations that our traditional banks weren't serving well. So maybe this was all a great thing, and we should continue to ride the Durbin exempt wave, which is so. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，这促进了创新。这是传统银行未能很好服务的低收入人群的第一个伟大的消费体验。所以也许这是一件好事，我们应该继续乘坐杜宾豁免的浪潮，这就是这样。

David Rosenthal:In some ways strange that it accrues to these tiny community banks in another way. It is actually the upside of the way that this amendment was written, where if the goal was to help the people that these small community banks were working with, keeping those banks afloat and bringing them a new revenue stream is very important. I mean, community banks are among some of the most endangered species of businesses in the United States right now. A thing that I hadn't totally understood before is, well, if the small community bank, the Durbin exempt Bank, is the one that's powering an enormous card program, even if that debit card program is huge in scale, it doesn't actually accrue to their aum, so it won't push them over the limit. So that can sort of scale indefinitely. 

David Rosenthal:在某些方面，这些小型社区银行以另一种方式积累起来是奇怪的。实际上，这是这项修正案的好处之一，如果目标是帮助这些小型社区银行所服务的人们，维持这些银行的运营并为它们带来新的收入来源是非常重要的。我的意思是，社区银行是目前美国最濒危的企业之一。我之前没有完全理解的一件事是，如果小型社区银行，即杜宾豁免银行，是一个庞大的卡计划的推动者，即使该借记卡计划规模巨大，它实际上并不会计入他们的资产管理规模，因此不会使他们超过限制。因此，这可以无限制地扩展。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's exactly right. That's exactly right. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全正确。完全正确。

Ben Gilbert:Thinking this through a little bit, if the dynamics hadn't been this way, we'd probably be living in a world where there are three or four banks in America right now, and that's probably not the world that we want to live in. 

Ben Gilbert:仔细想一想，如果动态不是这样的，我们现在可能生活在一个美国只有三四家银行的世界，而这可能不是我们想要生活的世界。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, we want competition. We want innovation. This is what we all live for. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，我们想要竞争。我们想要创新。这是我们活着的意义。

Say I'm wrong on this, and it's not this overly analytical view of which parts of interchange are most at risk. And it is something wholesale like, we just set an MDR cap on all types of credit card fees, so nothing can be higher than, say, 1% or whatever number they choose. Well, I still think visa might have an out, because I think people might be conflating interchange with MDR to our earlier conversation in that. And so the cap that would be set is not on interchange necessarily, but it's on MDR. So the merchant discount rate can never be higher than 1% in this hypothetical. Well, the split of that 1% is still something for visa to go negotiate. And so today, if the split is ten to 20 basis points for visa, ten to 20 basis points for the processor, 170 to 180 basis points for the bank. Well, in a world where 1% is the cap, the total pie gets drunk. Visa still might be able to come out winning with ten basis points and five basis points for the processor and only 70 basis points for the bank. The outsized share of the hit might be the bank. Now, I still feel good about that scenario because, look, Visa shared the pie with all the other constituents. Banks really want this, so they're lobbying hard for MDR to stay high. And then, by the way, it's not just banks. The users are getting smart. They understand that interchange means rewards for them. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but do either of you use the points guy? 

假设我在这方面是错的，这不是对哪些部分的交换最有风险的过度分析视角。而是像这样全面的措施，我们只是对所有类型的信用卡费用设定了一个 MDR 上限，所以没有什么可以高于，比如说，1%或他们选择的任何数字。那么，我仍然认为 Visa 可能有出路，因为我认为人们可能将交换与我们之前谈话中的 MDR 混为一谈。因此，设定的上限不一定是交换，而是 MDR。因此，在这个假设中，商户折扣率永远不能高于 1%。那么，这 1%的分配仍然是 Visa 可以去谈判的事情。因此，今天，如果分配是 Visa 的 10 到 20 个基点，处理器的 10 到 20 个基点，银行的 170 到 180 个基点。那么，在 1%是上限的情况下，总体份额减少。Visa 仍然可能能够以 10 个基点和处理器的 5 个基点以及银行仅 70 个基点的情况下获胜。受到最大冲击的份额可能是银行。现在，我对这种情况仍然感到乐观，因为，看看，Visa 与所有其他利益相关者分享了这块蛋糕。 银行真的很想要这个，所以他们正在努力游说让 MDR 保持高位。顺便说一下，不仅仅是银行。用户也变得聪明了。他们明白互换意味着对他们的奖励。我不知道你们有没有见过这个，但你们中有谁使用过 points guy 吗？

David Rosenthal:Yes.  是的。

Gaurav Ahuja:Have you read the points guy? 

Gaurav Ahuja:你读过 The Points Guy 吗？

Ben Gilbert:I have referenced the points guy many. 

Ben Gilbert:我多次参考了 The Points Guy。

Gaurav Ahuja:Times for your listeners who haven't seen it, like a wicked good website to go explore all of your credit card and rewards optimizations. If you're traveling, you go check out the points guy. They started this whole petition this year that got users to sign and basically fight against the Credit Card Competition act, which is one of the current active threats to MDR and interchange out there to go send messages to their local congressmen and women to actually tell them, no, we want interchange to stay high. So they're just recruiting. Visa hasn't done any of this. It's just collateral damage of sharing a piece of the pie with all the constituents around the table. 

Gaurav Ahuja:对于那些没有看到的听众来说，这是一个非常好的网站，可以探索所有信用卡和奖励优化。如果你在旅行，可以去看看 The Points Guy。他们今年发起了一项请愿，号召用户签名，基本上是反对《信用卡竞争法案》，这是目前对 MDR 和交换费的一个活跃威胁，鼓励用户向当地国会议员发送信息，告诉他们不，我们希望交换费保持高位。所以他们只是在招募。Visa 没有做任何这些事情。这只是与桌子周围的所有利益相关者分享蛋糕的一部分的附带损害。

David Rosenthal:It is funny. I mean, it's the old mongerism. You show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome. And after decades of really enjoying these rewards, we do not need visa as consumers to advocate on our behalf. We are perfectly happy if someone puts something in front of us to say, sign this petition. So you get to keep your, you know, hundreds or if not thousands of dollars of rewards per year that you're getting for free to say, sure, I would love to do that little sidebar. 

David Rosenthal:这很有趣。我的意思是，这是老掉牙的说法。你给我看激励措施，我就给你看结果。在享受这些奖励几十年后，作为消费者，我们不需要visa来为我们自己倡导。如果有人在我们面前放了一些东西说，签署这份请愿书，我们会非常乐意。这样你就可以继续免费获得每年数百甚至数千美元的奖励，当然，我很乐意做那个小附带的事情。

Ben Gilbert:But I just imagine that the points guy is like one of these incredible, you know, small business on the Internet stories like, that must just be like an incredible business. Running the points guy. It just took a guy to start the points guy, and, like, obviously the organization has scaled, and there's a lot more to it now. But on the Internet, you can build something amazing with just a guy. 

Ben Gilbert:但我只是想象，积分达人就像是这些令人难以置信的互联网小企业故事之一，那一定是一个令人难以置信的生意。经营积分达人。只需要一个人就能开始积分达人，显然这个组织已经扩展了，现在有更多的内容。但在互联网上，你只需一个人就能建立一些惊人的东西。

David Rosenthal:Same with Nerdwallet. It's almost the identical story of, I think they went through YC at some point, but before it was like just a couple co founders. 

David Rosenthal:和 Nerdwallet 一样。我想他们在某个时候也参加过 YC，但在此之前就像只有几个联合创始人。

Ben Gilbert:Yeah, I was a nerd. 

Ben Gilbert:是的，我曾是个书呆子。

Gaurav Ahuja:People love their points, guys. 

Gaurav Ahuja:人们喜欢他们的积分，伙计们。

David Rosenthal:I know we were going to do this later in the episode, but let's do it now. Tell me your history as a points nerd. 

David Rosenthal:我知道我们本来打算在这一集的后面做这件事，但我们现在就做吧。告诉我你作为积分迷的历史。

Gaurav Ahuja:So I started out my career as a consultant, and as you know, you travel a lot in consulting. I actually didn't have a home. I was one of those people. I didn't have a home or a home address, I should say, for two years. And I took advantage of it. I, for two years, Washington young and trying to see a bunch of cities around the country. I think I got ten cities and ten different projects over two years. And I stayed in hotels as much as I could. I tried to go explore those cities on Sundays before the week started because. 

Gaurav Ahuja:所以我开始我的职业生涯是作为一名顾问，正如你所知，做咨询工作需要经常出差。实际上我没有一个家。我是那种人之一。我应该说，我两年没有家或家庭住址。我利用了这一点。在两年里，我年轻时在华盛顿，试图去看看全国各地的许多城市。我想我在两年里去了十个城市和十个不同的项目。我尽可能多地住在酒店。我试图在周日去探索那些城市，因为。

Ben Gilbert:There'S this thing right where at the end of the week, the consulting firms will fly you to wherever you want. It's not like you have to fly back to your home, right? 

Ben Gilbert:有这么一回事，在周末的时候，咨询公司会飞你去任何你想去的地方。你不一定非得飞回家，对吧？

Gaurav Ahuja:That's effectively what it was. Or if you wanted to come on Sunday instead of Monday morning, come do it and come hang out in the city, or if you wanted to fly your significant other out to you, come do it. You don't just have to go home to them. So it was this kind of, I mean, within some bounds, you know, really unlimited travel policy. 

Gaurav Ahuja:这实际上就是它的意思。或者如果你想在周日而不是周一早上来，那就来吧，来城市里玩，或者如果你想让你的另一半飞到你这里来，那就来吧。你不一定非得回家去找他们。所以这是一种，我的意思是，在某些限制范围内，真正无限的旅行政策。

And I ended up in a place where I was choosing my airlines. I was making debates about who had the best screens or seats with other consultants. Just the nerdiest stuff that, you know, ten years, 20 years later, I know I'll never think about again. But in that moment, felt huge. And that sprawled into other types of rewards programs, and I ended up in a place where I have something like dozens of credit cards that I use and have been approved for at this point, and I will make sure each of those cards is maximally used. You guys are feeling bad about maybe being unit economic negative for your banks. Like, I promise you, I am unit economic negative for my banks. 

最后我到了一个选择航空公司的地方。我和其他顾问争论谁的屏幕或座位最好。就是那些最无聊的事情，你知道，十年、二十年后，我知道我再也不会想起。但在那一刻，感觉很重要。这扩展到了其他类型的奖励计划，最后我有了几十张信用卡，我在使用并已获得批准，我会确保每张卡都得到最大化使用。你们可能会因为对银行来说是单位经济负面而感到不安。我向你们保证，我对我的银行来说是单位经济负面。

Ben Gilbert:And that didn't deter you from getting into the industry. 

Ben Gilbert:这并没有阻止你进入这个行业。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's exactly right. It's a behavior we can lean into. 

Gaurav Ahuja:那完全正确。这是我们可以依赖的行为。

David Rosenthal:What's your craziest points story where you traded a paperclip for a house? 

David Rosenthal:你用回形针换房子的最疯狂的积分故事是什么？

Gaurav Ahuja:I grew up in Michigan, and the Detroit airport is a Delta hub. And so quickly, through consulting, I got delta status. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我在密歇根长大，底特律机场是达美航空的一个枢纽。因此，通过咨询，我很快获得了达美航空的会员身份。

Now, occasionally, each of these airlines will do status matches. However, most of the time they don't have these live and active. Apparently, if you email the right people at each of these airlines, you can actually get custom status matches with very little burden of proof. And so every year I was kind of emailing from a new address or making a new sky miles equivalent at other airlines such that I could get to the diamond status or whatever the equivalent was at each of the airlines. Now what? I could never find out a way to crack washing. All of these airlines have something above their highest listed status. So for United, it's called global services. For Delta, it's called Delta 360. 

现在，这些航空公司中的每一家偶尔会进行状态匹配。然而，大多数时候它们并没有这些实时和活跃的服务。显然，如果你给这些航空公司的合适人员发邮件，你实际上可以获得定制的状态匹配，而几乎不需要提供证明。因此，每年我都会用一个新地址发邮件，或者在其他航空公司创建一个新的里程账户，以便我能达到钻石状态或各航空公司的等效状态。现在怎么办？我从来找不到破解洗牌的方法。所有这些航空公司都有高于其最高列出状态的东西。对于联合航空，它被称为全球服务。对于达美航空，它被称为 Delta 360。

That was one that I could never figure out how to kind of play the game for and get behind the scenes into. 

那是我一直无法弄清楚如何玩这个游戏并进入幕后的一件事。

David Rosenthal:Wait, so when you say status match, it means you literally email a person. You're like, I'm super status y on this airline. Can you make me that on your airline? And I'll start flying that and they'll just give you all those qualifying miles effectively for free? 

David Rosenthal:等等，所以当你说状态匹配时，这意味着你真的给某人发电子邮件。你就像，我在这家航空公司是超级状态 y。你能让我在你的航空公司也这样吗？然后我就开始乘坐那家航空公司，他们就会免费给你所有那些合格的里程？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yep, that's exactly right. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，完全正确。

David Rosenthal:Wow.  哇。

Gaurav Ahuja:Right now you can do this on JetBlue. JetBlue is seeing an opportunity at this very moment to steal Delta customers away because Delta changed their rewards program this year and they went from miles flown as a qualifier to simply dollars spent. And believe it or not, turns out the only people spending massive amount of dollars are business travelers on Delta. And the regular consumer is really frustrated with this, who's been playing the Delta Rewards games for decades, and JetBlue is seeing this as a frustration moment to go steal a bunch of those hearts over to JetBlue, and they're offering status matches that are pretty friendly for all the delta users. 

Gaurav Ahuja:现在你可以在捷蓝航空上做到这一点。捷蓝航空此刻看到一个机会，可以抢走达美航空的客户，因为达美航空今年更改了他们的奖励计划，从飞行里程作为资格标准变为仅仅是消费金额。信不信由你，结果发现唯一花费大量金钱的人是达美航空的商务旅客。而普通消费者对此感到非常沮丧，他们已经玩达美奖励游戏几十年了，捷蓝航空将此视为一个挫折时刻，去抢走那些心向捷蓝航空的人，他们为所有达美用户提供了相当友好的状态匹配。

David Rosenthal:Amazing.  惊人。

Ben Gilbert:All right, well, this is actually, I think, the perfect time to transition to the rewards ecosystem piece of this. And we may come back to banks and interchange and MDR and all that, but the rewards piece we talked about for just the general bank credit cards, why even transactors like Ben and me are still worth it to have in their ecosystem because of the cross sell to other products. 

Ben Gilbert:好吧，我认为现在是转到奖励生态系统部分的最佳时机。我们可能会回到银行、交换和 MDR 等话题，但我们谈论的奖励部分只是针对一般银行信用卡，为什么即使是像 Ben 和我这样的交易者仍然值得在他们的生态系统中存在，因为可以交叉销售其他产品。

But obviously, there are a lot more credit card programs out there today than just from banks. And many, many merchants have their own programs and so are participating on the other side of the aisle here. This really gets to your expertise and the company that you founded, imprint. Talk to us about this whole merchant rewards world. 

但显然，如今有很多信用卡计划不仅仅来自银行。许多商家都有自己的计划，因此也参与其中。这确实涉及到你的专业知识和你创立的公司，imprint。和我们谈谈整个商家奖励的世界。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, absolutely. So all the rewards we've talked about till now are one to one, they're between a bank like Chase and Chase Sapphire or Amex and Amex Platinum, and their users. When you add a new variable into the mix, which is the merchant, I think things get really interesting because there's a new rewards pool. It's not just interchange and interest revenue that's monetized. It's a merchant also giving rewards, saying, I think you're going to spend more at my store now. So there's a third value pool you get to tap into, which is more sales and more margin for the store. That's the why here as the backdrop. Now let me get into imprint. So if you guys have, as we've talked about, an Amazon credit card or a Delta credit card or a Costco credit card, these are all versions of what we call as a category, co branded credit cards. And what we do at imprint is pretty simple. We power these co branded credit cards for the best and largest merchants. So today we've raised something like $100 million plus from Thrive and Kleiner and Stripe and ribbit this year. We've ten x'ed our transaction volume in the last six or seven months. And we power cards for some very large merchants. If you have any southern listeners tapping into this episode, we work with Heb, which is a top five grocery store in the country that does about $40 billion of revenue. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，绝对如此。所以到目前为止我们谈到的所有奖励都是一对一的，它们是在像 Chase 和 Chase Sapphire 或 Amex 和 Amex Platinum 这样的银行与其用户之间。当你在其中加入一个新的变量，即商家时，我认为事情会变得非常有趣，因为有一个新的奖励池。不仅仅是货币兑换和利息收入被货币化。商家也在给予奖励，说，我认为你现在会在我的店里花更多钱。所以你可以利用第三个价值池，即商店的更多销售和更多利润。这就是背景下的原因。现在让我进入 imprint。所以如果你们有，如我们所谈到的，亚马逊信用卡或达美信用卡或 Costco 信用卡，这些都是我们称之为类别的版本，联合品牌信用卡。而我们在 imprint 所做的非常简单。我们为最优秀和最大的商家提供这些联合品牌信用卡的支持。所以今天我们从 Thrive、Kleiner、Stripe 和 ribbit 筹集了大约 1 亿美元以上的资金。今年在过去六七个月里，我们的交易量增长了十倍。我们为一些非常大的商家提供卡片支持。 如果你有任何南方的听众收听这一集，我们与 Heb 合作，这是一家全国排名前五的杂货店，年收入约为 400 亿美元。

Ben Gilbert:Yeah, Heb is actually like a really amazingly well run company based in Texas, based in San Antonio. Huge that you guys work with them. 

Ben Gilbert:是的，Heb 实际上是一家运营得非常出色的公司，总部位于德克萨斯州，位于圣安东尼奥。你们与他们合作真是太棒了。

Gaurav Ahuja:Totally. We've absolutely loved them. Fun fact for everybody listening, they're famous for their tortillas that are made fresh in the store and they have a butter tortilla candle. So definitely go get that out. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全是这样。我们绝对喜欢它们。给大家一个有趣的事实，他们以店内新鲜制作的玉米饼而闻名，并且还有一个黄油玉米饼蜡烛。所以一定要去看看。

David Rosenthal:So how does it work? When you say imprint powers them, what is it that imprint does where Heb couldn't directly create their own co branded card program? 

David Rosenthal:那么它是如何运作的？当你说imprint为他们提供动力时，imprint做了什么，为什么 Heb 不能直接创建自己的联名卡计划？

Gaurav Ahuja:It's maybe helpful to tie this all back to the personal story, why I'm a credit card junkie again from before. I told you I have dozens of credit cards. But let's understand the user behavior behind those. 

Gaurav Ahuja:这可能有助于将这一切与个人故事联系起来，为什么我又成了信用卡迷。我告诉过你我有几十张信用卡。但让我们了解这些背后的用户行为。

Most of them just sit in my closet at home and they don't have a physical presence in my life. I'm explaining all this because the why is really important to understand behind this category. 

他们大多数只是放在我家里的衣柜里，在我的生活中没有实体存在。我解释这一切是因为理解这个类别背后的原因真的很重要。

Most of them don't have a physical presence in my life. And despite living in my closet, they are doing their job, directing my spend in the right places. 

他们中的大多数在我的生活中没有实体存在。尽管住在我的衣柜里，他们正在做好自己的工作，把我的花费引导到正确的地方。

If I'm making an airline purchase, I will irrationally tell myself I shouldn't go price check, United and american and spirit. I'm just going to Delta and I'm booking there because that value from booking with my card and the extra points I'm getting and the potential free seat upgrade I'm getting, the emotional value I feel there is so much greater than the actual dollar value. Or similarly, if I'm making an expensive purchase, say a Dyson fan, I'm going to make sure. I'm doing it on Amazon to get my 5% cash back with the Amazon credit Cardinal versus dyson.com dot. Similarly, Uber Lyft, so easy to price compare by opening up both apps. I'm not doing that. I'm going straight to Uber because I know I'm getting my 5% cash back on the Uber credit card. And so these are marketing tools at their heart. They are not financial products. And that's the extra variable I was talking about by adding in a merchant, and relative to the way I think you guys talked it on the episode, this is the investor in me coming out, why I'm so economically attracted to this market. 

如果我要购买机票，我会不理性地告诉自己不应该去比价，不去看 United、American 和 Spirit。我只会去 Delta 并在那里预订，因为用我的卡预订所获得的价值、额外的积分以及可能获得的免费座位升级，我在那里感受到的情感价值远远超过实际的金钱价值。同样地，如果我要进行昂贵的购买，比如说戴森风扇，我会确保在亚马逊上购买以获得 5%的现金返还，而不是在 dyson.com 上。同样，Uber 和 Lyft，通过打开两个应用程序很容易进行价格比较。我不会那样做。我直接去 Uber，因为我知道我在 Uber 信用卡上获得 5%的现金返还。所以这些本质上是营销工具，而不是金融产品。这就是我所说的通过加入商家而增加的额外变量，相对于我认为你们在节目中谈到的方式，这是我作为投资者的表现，为什么我对这个市场如此经济地吸引。

It's not about marketing for Visa. I think that's how you guys might have laid it out in the show. And it used to be that way. So it used to be in the nineties, there were these affinity cards that went viral everywhere. So every university had a card, every nonprofit had a card, every sports team had a card. And the logic was kind of gimmicky in my mind. It was, my users love me. 

这与 Visa 的营销无关。我想你们可能在节目中是这样呈现的。过去确实是这样的。在九十年代，有这些到处流行的联名卡。所以每所大学都有一张卡，每个非营利组织都有一张卡，每个运动队都有一张卡。在我看来，这种逻辑有点花哨。那就是，我的用户爱我。

My users will love a card that has my image or logo on it, and they'll use my card. That was it. However, with co branded cards, specifically with merchants, we're talking about a value pool shift. We're talking about a business model innovation. And so imagine you're Walmart. 

我的用户会喜欢一张带有我的图像或标志的卡片，他们会使用我的卡片。就是这样。然而，对于联合品牌卡，特别是与商家合作时，我们谈论的是价值池的转移。我们谈论的是商业模式的创新。所以，想象一下你是沃尔玛。

Every time you see one of your customers swiping a card at checkout at Walmart, say it's a Citi double cash card or a chase freedom card, you're watching a bank get 2% of interchange. Citi or chase getting 2% of interchange. And as we talked about, another maybe 8% or 6% at least of interest revenue on average per dollar spent. So this bank that did nothing to help consummate the transaction between me and the user is getting 8% of every dollar going through my store. Why don't I instead, as Walmart, partner with the bank and take some of that 8% by working with that bank through a revenue share back, and I'm going to give that portion back to my users. So now it's this free value pool. I already have a Walmart loyalty program. It's positive ROI for me. People want to spend more when they're using my loyalty program. I can boost that at no extra cost and maybe double the value in it by working with the co branded card. And so it's this thing that you can use for your highest value users that account for most of your spend. 

每次你看到顾客在沃尔玛结账时刷卡，比如说是花旗双倍返现卡或 Chase Freedom 卡，你就会看到银行获得 2%的交换费。花旗或 Chase 获得 2%的交换费。正如我们所讨论的，平均每花一美元，银行还可能获得至少 8%或 6%的利息收入。所以，这家银行在我和用户之间的交易中没有做任何事情，却从我店里流通的每一美元中获得 8%。为什么我不作为沃尔玛，与银行合作，通过收入分成拿回那 8%的一部分，并将这部分返还给我的用户呢？所以现在这是一个免费的价值池。我已经有一个沃尔玛忠诚度计划。对我来说是正向投资回报率。人们在使用我的忠诚度计划时会想花更多的钱。我可以在不增加额外成本的情况下提升这一点，并通过与联名卡合作可能将其价值翻倍。因此，这可以用于占你大部分消费的高价值用户。

David Rosenthal:And why is the bank willing to do this and split their revenue pool with a merchant. 

David Rosenthal:为什么银行愿意这样做并与商家分享他们的收入池。

Gaurav Ahuja:It depends on which bank. And this is structurally why I think we're able to enter. 

Gaurav Ahuja:这取决于是哪家银行。这就是我认为我们能够进入的结构性原因。

If you zoom out already, it's clear that this is a pretty big industry. 

如果你已经缩小视角，很明显这是一个相当大的行业。

30% of all credit card volume is actually going on merchant or store branded cards. So that's a trillion dollars of transaction volume just on co branded credit cards. 

实际上，所有信用卡交易量的 30%都发生在商户或商店品牌卡上。因此，仅在联名信用卡上的交易量就达到了万亿美元。

But I think as you properly point out Chase and Amex, the bar is really high for them to care about doing a rev share with a merchant. And so it's got to be Amazon for Chase to worry about doing a Chase Amazon card, or it's got to be Delta for Amex to worry about doing a Delta Amex card. But most of the time it's like, hey, I'm Chase, I'm Amex. I'm already winning. One in every five cards is a chase credit cardinal. One in every five credit cards is an Amex credit card. So they're already doing a good job capturing that full 8%, the full value themselves. They have zero or very little incentive to partner with a standard merchant out there. So that's why when you look down the list of hundreds of co brand programs, most of them are not Chase and Amex. That's just a handful. It's most of these banks that you should never be working with, which are synchrony bank, comenity bread, or us bank. And the reason you never want to work with these banks is that on the one hand they're not technology companies, but then secondly, I don't believe that they realize they're marketing products, they still think they're financial products. On the technology front, these banks, they don't build out their own banking core. They each sit on top of fiserver tsys bread. Comenity, as an example, went down earlier this year. You couldn't issue a card, you couldn't log in. Their merchants were extremely annoyed. Even Goldman Sachs, who powered a the magical Apple card experience. 

但是，正如你所说，Chase 和 Amex 的门槛真的很高，他们不太可能与商家分享收入。所以，Chase 必须是像 Amazon 这样的大客户，才会考虑推出 Chase Amazon 卡；或者 Amex 必须是像 Delta 这样的品牌，才会考虑推出 Delta Amex 卡。但是大多数时候，他们的态度是：嘿，我是 Chase，我是 Amex，我已经在赢了。每五张信用卡中就有一张是 Chase 信用卡，每五张信用卡中就有一张是 Amex 信用卡。所以他们已经在做得很好，自己就能捕获那 8% 的全部价值。这样他们没有或者几乎没有动力与标准商家合作。所以，当你看待数百个联合品牌计划时，你会发现大多数不是 Chase 和 Amex，只有少数几个。大多数都是这些你永远不应该与之合作的银行，比如 Synchrony Bank、Comenity Bank 或 US Bank。你永远不想和这些银行合作的原因是：一方面，它们不是技术公司；其次，我认为它们并没有意识到自己是在做营销产品，它们仍然认为自己在做金融产品。在技术方面，这些银行并没有自己构建银行核心系统，它们都依赖于 Fiserv、TSYS 或 Bread 等平台。例如，Comenity 今年早些时候就发生了系统故障，无法发行卡片，无法登录，它们的商家非常恼火。即使是为神奇的 Apple 卡体验提供技术支持的 Goldman Sachs，也存在类似问题。

On the one hand, they didn't build out the front end, Apple built all of that out. And on the other hand, they didn't build out their own core. They used something called core card. And so it's like, what did they do? And I look at this and it leaves a lot of obvious gaps. It's like merchants take twelve to 18 months just to get launched with one of these banks. Every time a merchant wants to make a tweak to a loyalty program, it's extremely difficult because you have to go back to the negotiating table and basically rebailed out the entire rev share agreement. 

一方面，他们没有构建前端，苹果完成了所有这些工作。另一方面，他们没有构建自己的核心。他们使用了一种叫做核心卡的东西。所以这就像，他们做了什么？我看着这个，留下了很多明显的空白。就像商家需要 12 到 18 个月才能与其中一家银行合作启动。每次商家想对忠诚度计划进行调整时，都非常困难，因为你必须回到谈判桌上，基本上重新协商整个收入分成协议。

The bank doesn't know how to share transaction details with the merchants. So imagine going to your Delta account and not knowing how much you've spent on your card to see how close you are to accruing the value status that you were hoping to get. Synchrony, by the way, has two different logins. So for web and mobile, you'd have two different logins. Or if you had two merchant cards, both powered by Synchrony, they'd also have different logins. This is the thing that frustrates me the most. That was the technology piece. They don't realize, on the other hand, that they're marketing programs. And so here are your best customers as a merchant, and you have this panel of your most loyal users spending the most at your store. You have all their transactions, you have all their SKU level detail where you have no ability through your bank partner to interact with these customers, send them promotions, engage with them, send them the right messages at the right time, or even just the basics on gleaning insights about what are they spending. Let me tell me more about my best users. It's just such a shame. 

银行不知道如何与商家共享交易详情。所以想象一下，进入你的 Delta 账户，却不知道你在卡上花了多少钱，以查看你离获得期望的价值状态有多近。顺便说一下，Synchrony 有两个不同的登录方式。因此，对于网页和移动端，你会有两个不同的登录方式。或者如果你有两张由 Synchrony 支持的商家卡，它们也会有不同的登录方式。这是最让我感到沮丧的事情。这是技术方面的问题。另一方面，他们没有意识到他们的营销计划。因此，作为商家，这里是你最好的客户，你有一个最忠实用户的面板，他们在你的店里花费最多。你拥有他们所有的交易记录，拥有所有 SKU 级别的详细信息，但通过你的银行合作伙伴无法与这些客户互动，无法向他们发送促销信息，与他们互动，在合适的时间发送合适的信息，甚至无法获取关于他们消费的基本见解。让我更了解我的最佳用户。这真是太遗憾了。

Ben Gilbert:One thing, just to be clear, these banks, the synchronies and the like of the world that you say, you know, you should essentially never be working with. These are dedicated banks for like merchant card programs. These aren't like we were talking about earlier in the episode, the small community banks that are powering fintechs. These are not like mom and pop shops. 

Ben Gilbert:有一点需要明确，这些银行，比如你提到的 Synchrony 和类似的银行，基本上你不应该与之合作。这些是专门用于商户卡计划的银行。这些不是我们在本集早些时候谈到的小型社区银行，这些银行为金融科技公司提供支持。这些也不是夫妻店。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's such a great point, David. Most credit card companies are competing on one dimension when they're going after users, which is rewards and maybe user experience in their app for that consumer. 

Gaurav Ahuja:大卫，你说得太对了。大多数信用卡公司在争取用户时只在一个方面竞争，那就是奖励，可能还有他们应用程序中的用户体验。

The dimensions we're trying to compete on are much more multifaceted. There's this entire layer of product surface area that we're trying to build for the merchants. Of course, we've got to have great user product, but we've also got to build an entire b two b effectively marketing tool for marketing offices at each of the merchants that we work with. Everything from sending specific promotions to your best users, or understanding the insights on how they're spending throughout the year. Or being able to say, I have another merchant in Texas who wants to be a part of our loyalty program for the month of December this year. How do I add them in seamlessly as a partner to my card network? Those are the sorts of things that that software should be able to let you do that somebody else can't. 

我们试图竞争的维度要复杂得多。我们正在为商家构建整个产品表面积层。当然，我们必须拥有出色的用户产品，但我们还必须为与我们合作的每个商家的营销办公室有效地构建一个完整的 B2B 营销工具。包括从向您的最佳用户发送特定促销活动，或了解他们全年消费的见解。或者能够说，我在德克萨斯州有另一位商家希望在今年 12 月成为我们忠诚度计划的一部分。我如何将他们无缝地添加为我的卡网络的合作伙伴？这些是该软件应该能够让您做到而其他人无法做到的事情。

David Rosenthal:And so if I'm understanding right. What you're essentially saying is because it is provable that you actually can increase loyalty. You know that there is an additional revenue pool to play with in creating even better rewards for frequent shoppers if they use this card. 

David Rosenthal:所以，如果我理解正确的话。你基本上是在说，因为可以证明你实际上可以提高忠诚度。你知道有一个额外的收入池可以用来为经常购物的顾客创造更好的奖励，如果他们使用这张卡的话。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly right.  完全正确。

David Rosenthal:Interesting.  有趣。

Gaurav Ahuja:The logic for a Walmart or any other merchant out there is that right now they've all got loyalty programs that they've found the perfect investment into. So they're saying, as Walmart devoting 2% of my annual sales to a loyalty program is yielding positive ROI with the good customers in my basket. Now with this co branded card, I can make that 3% or 4% at no extra cost to me, and all of a sudden juice a lot more value from my highest spend users and get them to stop spending at my competitors and only at my store. 

Gaurav Ahuja:沃尔玛或其他任何商家的逻辑是，他们现在都有忠诚度计划，并且找到了完美的投资方式。因此，他们说，作为沃尔玛，将我年销售额的 2%投入到忠诚度计划中，正在为我篮子里的优质客户带来正面的投资回报率。现在通过这张联名卡，我可以在不增加额外成本的情况下将其提高到 3%或 4%，并突然从我最高消费的用户中榨取更多的价值，让他们停止在竞争对手那里消费，只在我店里消费。

Ben Gilbert:And there's also, I didn't understand this before. For merchant card programs, depending on the terms of the rev share agreement, the merchants also get to participate to some extent in the interest revenue that the banks are making from those cards. 

Ben Gilbert:而且还有，我之前不明白这一点。对于商户卡计划，根据收入分成协议的条款，商户在某种程度上也可以参与银行从这些卡中获得的利息收入。

Is that correct too? 

这也正确吗？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, it might not be exactly framed that way depending on how the deal is structured, but the simplest way to think about it is for every dollar spent, there's some percentage that is going to the merchant. The merchant is using that percentage, some or all of it, to devote into their loyalty program. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，这可能不会完全以这种方式表述，这取决于交易的结构，但最简单的理解方式是，每花费一美元，就有一定比例会给商家。商家使用这部分比例，部分或全部，投入到他们的忠诚度计划中。

Ben Gilbert:Gotcha. So back to the ATB example. They certainly could have created, and perhaps they likely did have their own credit and debit cards before, but they had nowhere near the fine level of control and insight into their customers and their customer spends and their customer loyalty on these platforms. 

Ben Gilbert:明白。那么回到 ATB 的例子。他们当然可以创建，或许他们以前确实有自己的信用卡和借记卡，但他们在这些平台上对客户及其消费和忠诚度的控制和洞察力远不及现在。

Gaurav Ahuja:I would say it's even more basic than that. I think as a brand, if you care at all about your user experience, the bank partner that you choose is an extension of you as a brand. And it is very hard to put synchrony or any of these other legacy banks in front of your customers and expect them to still be high np's on your brand. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我会说这甚至比那更基本。我认为作为一个品牌，如果你在乎用户体验，那么你选择的银行合作伙伴就是你品牌的延伸。很难把 Synchrony 或其他这些传统银行放在客户面前，并期望他们对你的品牌仍然有很高的净推荐值。

David Rosenthal:Trying to explain the credit card ecosystem today versus trying to explain it in 1995 is completely different. Like where the value pools are, how it's cut, what the percentages are. It was a pretty clean story in the nineties of how this whole system works. And the answer today to basically any question about who makes money in what scenario is. Well, it depends. 

David Rosenthal:今天试图解释信用卡生态系统与 1995 年试图解释它是完全不同的。比如价值池在哪里，如何分配，百分比是多少。在九十年代，这个系统的运作方式是一个相当清晰的故事。而今天关于在什么情况下谁赚钱的任何问题的答案基本上是：嗯，这要看情况。

It is wild how everyone has sort of figured out without massively changing the overall system. The merchant discount rate is still to your point, Grove, approximately what it was 30 years ago, but everyone has sort of figured out well, for this particular situation, I'm providing more value, and therefore, I'd like to negotiate some custom deal for this segment in this scenario where I'm able to get more of the economics on it. 

令人惊讶的是，大家都在没有大幅改变整体系统的情况下找到了方法。商户折扣率仍然如你所说，Grove，大约是 30 年前的水平，但每个人都在某种程度上找到了方法，在这种特定情况下，我提供了更多的价值，因此，我想为这个细分市场在这种情况下谈判一些定制的交易，以便我能够获得更多的经济利益。

Gaurav Ahuja:I think that's a really good insight. The ecosystem has gotten increasingly complex, and this is just one example where merchants are now a new variable added in and a new value pool that you can tap into because of sales uplift. But there's tons of examples of this. I think corporate card and corporate spend is another version of this where there's new variables popping in. Certainly, it gets even more complex as you start to think about corporate also with travel. So now you're getting OTAs and the OTA margin involved in this, and companies like Ramp are trying to get into this space and take advantage of it. I think every new variable you add into this, there's new value pools you can tap into, which creates both more room for complexity, but also more room to just align incentives for the right people in a transaction versus what in the past has always been really one to one. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为这是一个非常好的见解。生态系统变得越来越复杂，这只是一个例子，商家现在成为一个新的变量，并且由于销售提升，你可以利用一个新的价值池。但这样的例子有很多。我认为公司卡和公司支出是另一个版本，其中有新的变量出现。当然，当你开始考虑公司与旅行时，它变得更加复杂。所以现在你有在线旅行社和在线旅行社的利润率参与其中，像 Ramp 这样的公司正试图进入这个领域并利用它。我认为每增加一个新变量，就有新的价值池可以利用，这既增加了复杂性的空间，也增加了为交易中合适的人对齐激励的空间，而过去总是非常一对一的。

David Rosenthal:And the right framing for this is probably as a business you can no longer think about, well, I have 3%, or whatever it is that I owe in card processing, and then I'll think about the other 97% as my business that I have to run. That 3% is sort of blended in now with, yeah, it's card processing, but I could use it to my advantage. I could be clever with it. I could say for some customers, it's this percent, for some customers, it's that percent. It sort of gets rid of the clear, bright line between the business I'm operating, where I acquire customers and sell goods and retain those customers. And, oh, yeah, I owe some money for payments as this. This cost over here. 

David Rosenthal:正确的框架可能是，作为一个企业，你不能再想着，嗯，我有 3%或其他我在卡处理上欠的费用，然后我会把其他 97%视为我必须经营的业务。那 3%现在有点融合在一起，是的，这是卡处理，但我可以利用它。我可以聪明地使用它。我可以对某些客户说，这是这个百分比，对某些客户说，那是那个百分比。它有点消除了我经营的业务之间的明确界限，在那里我获取客户、销售商品并保留这些客户。哦，是的，我欠一些支付费用。这是这边的成本。

Gaurav Ahuja:Certainly, I think if you're thinking about it the right way, there are always going to be those merchants who look at that 3% and have a limited number of things they can do with it. And so we'll continue to look at it as a 3% cost. 

Gaurav Ahuja:当然，我认为如果你以正确的方式思考，总会有那些商家看到那 3%并且能做的事情有限。因此，我们会继续将其视为 3%的成本。

Thus, all the pressure that we've been talking about earlier in this episode on Visa and Mastercard. 

因此，我们在本集中早些时候谈到的关于 Visa 和 Mastercard 的所有压力。

I think where that will particularly hold true is you guys mentioned low margin businesses. What's even lower margin than, say, a retail goods business might be, for example, a really low take rate marketplace. And so you might only be getting a five to 10% net revenue take rate on all the GMV going through your marketplace. But, boy, you still got to pay 3%, not on your net revenue, but 3% fees on the entire GMV. So as a portion of your net revenue, it is a really high cost to bear. 

我认为这尤其适用于你们提到的低利润业务。比方说，比零售商品业务利润更低的可能是一个真正低抽成率的市场。因此，你可能只从通过你市场的所有 GMV 中获得 5%到 10%的净收入抽成。但是，你仍然需要支付 3%的费用，不是基于你的净收入，而是基于整个 GMV。因此，作为净收入的一部分，这是一项非常高的成本。

David Rosenthal:We want to thank our longtime friend of the show, Vanta, the leading trust management platform. Vanta, of course automates your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like Soc two, ISO 2701 GDPR, and HIPAA compliance and monitoring. Vanta takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resource draining efforts for your organization and makes them fast and simple. 

David Rosenthal:我们要感谢我们节目的长期朋友，Vanta，领先的信任管理平台。Vanta 当然会自动化您的安全审查和合规工作。因此，像 Soc two、ISO 2701 GDPR 和 HIPAA 合规性和监控这样的框架。Vanta 为您的组织处理这些本来极其耗时和资源的工作，并使其快速简单。

Ben Gilbert:Yep, Vanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here on acquired Jeff Bezos his idea that a company should only focus on what actually makes your beer taste better, ie, spend your time and resources only on what's actually going to move the needle for your product and your customers, and outsource everything else that doesn't every company needs compliance and trust with their vendors and customers. It plays a major role in enabling revenue because customers and partners demand it, but yet it adds zero flavor to your actual product. 

Ben Gilbert:是的，Vanta 是我们在这里经常谈论的那句名言的完美例子，杰夫·贝佐斯的想法是公司应该只专注于真正让你的啤酒味道更好的东西，即只花时间和资源在真正能推动你的产品和客户的事情上，其他一切都外包出去。每家公司都需要与其供应商和客户建立合规性和信任。这在促进收入方面起着重要作用，因为客户和合作伙伴要求这样做，但它对你的实际产品没有任何味道。

David Rosenthal:Vanta takes care of all of it for you. No more spreadsheets, no fragmented tools, no manual reviews to cobble together your security and compliance requirements. It is one single software pane of glass that connects to all of your services via APIs and eliminates countless hours of work for your organization. There are now AI capabilities to make this even more powerful, and they even integrate with over 300 external tools. Plus they let customers build private integrations with their internal systems. 

David Rosenthal:Vanta 为您处理所有这些问题。没有更多的电子表格，没有零散的工具，没有手动审查来拼凑您的安全和合规要求。这是一个单一的软件界面，通过 API 连接到您的所有服务，为您的组织节省无数的工作时间。现在还有 AI 功能使其更加强大，并且它们甚至与超过 300 个外部工具集成。此外，他们还允许客户与其内部系统构建私有集成。

Ben Gilbert :And perhaps most importantly, your security reviews are now real time instead of static so you can monitor and share with your customers and partners to give them added confidence. 

Ben Gilbert :也许最重要的是，您的安全审查现在是实时的，而不是静态的，因此您可以监控并与客户和合作伙伴分享，以增强他们的信心。

David Rosenthal:So whether you're a startup or a large enterprise and your company is ready to automate compliance and streamline security reviews like Vanta's 7000 customers around the globe and go back to making your beer taste better, head on over to Vanta.com acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. And thanks to friend of the show Christina, Vanta's CEO, all acquired listeners get $1,000 of free credit. Vanta.com acquired wow. 

David Rosenthal:所以，无论您是初创公司还是大型企业，当您的公司准备好自动化合规性并简化安全审查时，就像 Vanta 在全球的 7000 名客户一样，回到让您的啤酒味道更好的工作中，前往 Vanta.com acquired，并告诉他们是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。感谢节目好友 Christina，Vanta 的 CEO，所有 acquired 的听众都可以获得$1,000 的免费信用额度。Vanta.com acquired wow。

Ben Gilbert:I've never actually thought about this, but like my mind immediately goes to Airbnb. Like how do they deal with this? 

Ben Gilbert:我从来没有真正考虑过这个，但我的脑海里立刻想到了 Airbnb。他们是如何处理这个问题的？

David Rosenthal:Well, Airbnb is a high take rate marketplace. 

David Rosenthal:嗯，Airbnb 是一个高抽成率的市场。

Ben Gilbert:I mean, well, I mean, yes and no. It's not a high take rate on. 

Ben Gilbert:我的意思是，嗯，我的意思是，是也不是。接受率不高。

David Rosenthal:The GMV after you factor in fees it is. 

David Rosenthal:扣除费用后的 GMV。

Ben Gilbert:Maybe that's how they deal with it. 

Ben Gilbert:也许这就是他们处理它的方式。

Gaurav Ahuja:So I don't know exactly anyone at Airbnb or how they've thought about this, but outside in, you can see, they launched with a new product called Stripe Link not too long ago. And for anybody who doesn't know yet, stripe link is kind of like think about shop pay, but for anything on the web, not just e commerce, it remembers you based on your phone number and or email and your identity and your saved payment methods at any checkout. However, the way Airbnb has chosen to implement this is not as a credit card remembering tool and remembering your identity for increased conversion that way, but as a bank linked payment method tool. And so that would indicate to me that they have hopes of yes, also lowering the processing fees just like other. 

Gaurav Ahuja:所以我并不完全了解 Airbnb 的任何人或他们是如何考虑这个问题的，但从外部来看，你可以看到，他们不久前推出了一款名为 Stripe Link 的新产品。对于任何还不知道的人来说，Stripe Link 有点像 Shop Pay，但适用于网络上的任何东西，而不仅仅是电子商务，它会根据你的电话号码和/或电子邮件以及你的身份和保存的支付方式在任何结账时记住你。然而，Airbnb 选择实施这种方式并不是作为一个信用卡记忆工具，通过这种方式记住你的身份以提高转化率，而是作为一个银行链接支付方式工具。因此，这对我来说表明他们也希望像其他人一样降低处理费用。

David Rosenthal:Marketplaces might as well by shifting the money movement from the credit and debit rails to the ACH rails. 

Gaurav Ahuja:You got it.  明白了。

David Rosenthal:It does make super low take rate marketplace businesses basically non viable. You could imagine if you only take a 5% take rate on your marketplace, the payment processing is 40% ish of your total revenue. It's pretty hard to have below the line costs and stay profitable as a going concern. 

David Rosenthal:这确实使得超低抽成率的市场业务基本上不可行。可以想象，如果你的市场抽成率只有 5%，支付处理就占了你总收入的 40%左右。要在不亏损的情况下维持运营，控制成本是相当困难的。

Gaurav Ahuja:I think that's very well said and it's why in a lot of brokerage industries that are low take rate, they tend to be more b two B and they tend to be, as a result, almost always ach and or cash. Right. Real estate is filled with examples like this where you'd never use a card to go make that payment because the fees would be unbearable and they've stayed on ACH and or check as a result of that very large barrier. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为这说得很好，这就是为什么在很多提成率低的经纪行业中，它们往往更倾向于 B2B，因此几乎总是使用 ACH 和/或现金。房地产中充满了这样的例子，你永远不会用卡来支付，因为费用会非常高，因此它们一直使用 ACH 和/或支票来应对这个非常大的障碍。

Ben Gilbert:Well, I imagine for imprint, kind of the idea two part of this we've been talking about the Amazon merchant card programs, the Deltas, even the HEB's like the really large customers that you all have. Part of this also must have been about just kind of democratizing access for merchants at lower scale into having their own card programs and thinking strategically about the 3%. Right. In the old world, would a mid sized regional merchant be able to get the time of day from one of these banks to customize their programs? I'm imagining probably not. 

Ben Gilbert:我想，对于imprint来说，我们一直在谈论亚马逊商户卡计划、达美航空，甚至像 HEB 这样的大客户。部分内容也一定是关于为较小规模的商户提供进入自己卡计划的机会，并战略性地考虑 3%。在过去的世界里，中型区域商户能否从这些银行中获得时间来定制他们的计划？我想可能不会。

Gaurav Ahuja:I think that's such a good point. I think Visa can sometimes get a bad rep for being a non innovative company. Or at least that's what investors might say. They'd say it's classic big company profits. They have no incentive to innovate. They haven't done anything new in years. At least I've heard that narrative before. And I got to tell you, David, to your point, our experience at imprint has been pretty different with visa. So I'll hit on a couple of examples one is a BD example, the other is a technology example. The BD example is for your listeners looking to learn more about visa to give you insight on how they think about the co branded credit card market. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为这是一个很好的观点。我认为 Visa 有时会因为被认为是一家不创新的公司而受到不好的评价。或者至少投资者可能会这么说。他们会说这是典型的大公司利润。他们没有创新的动力。他们多年来没有做过任何新事物。至少我以前听过这种说法。我要告诉你，David，关于你的观点，我们在 imprint 的经验与 Visa 的情况有很大不同。所以我会举几个例子，一个是 BD 的例子，另一个是技术的例子。BD 的例子是为您的听众提供更多关于 Visa 的信息，让您了解他们如何看待联名信用卡市场。

If a new merchant is looking to launch a card or re up a deal for a card with a new bank, sure, it might seem like this deal between the merchant and the bank, but Visa and Mastercard are kind of watching and they both smell blood. They both look at this and say, I got to get the banks that I work with. So for Visa, that might be chase, for example, and get Chase to go win that deal. Because if Chase wins that deal, it means I win the deal. And that volume is coming to me in what is a pretty steady state market share business between Visa and Mastercard. These can be pretty big chunks. If you, as Visa just swung over the Costco card to you away from, say, Amex as a hypothetical, that's 1% of all card spent that just moved over to us. 

如果一个新商家想要推出一张卡或与一家新银行重新达成一笔交易，当然，这看起来可能像是商家和银行之间的交易，但 Visa 和 Mastercard 都在关注，他们都嗅到了商机。他们都看着这个并说，我得让我合作的银行参与进来。对于 Visa 来说，这可能是 Chase，例如，让 Chase 去赢得那笔交易。因为如果 Chase 赢得了那笔交易，就意味着我赢得了那笔交易。而且在 Visa 和 Mastercard 之间，这是一个相当稳定的市场份额业务。这些可以是相当大的份额。如果你作为 Visa 刚刚把 Costco 卡从 Amex 那里转到你这边，假设如此，那就是 1%的所有卡消费刚刚转移到我们这里。

David Rosenthal:Visa, oh my God. 

Gaurav Ahuja:Yes. The Costco card alone is roughly on the order of magnitude of 1% of all card spent. These are one of their few opportunities and strategic ways to try to go in business. And what's been awesome to see is they aren't just staying with what they would have considered to be safe old banks for new merchant programs. And I know this was effective for us at HeB, and it's effective for us in new deals that we've won but not yet launched with Visa's out there saying, you got to work with imprint, this is the best bank for you. And it's really amazing to see them leaning into startups in a process like this, because the story of them not being innovators totally wouldn't lead you to believe that. So that's the BD kind of side of this. The technology side of this is visas tried to make themselves a lot more approachable. And in the past, it used to be that you couldn't, as a startup looking to play in this 3% interchange world, get directly connected to Visa. You had to go through some intermediary that was big and had a relationship with Visa as a conduit. So you would have worked with a core processor, you would have worked with some card issuing company like Stripe issuing or Marketa or Lithic, and they would have had a deal with Visa that you'd ride the back of. However, now Visa has launched something called Cloud Connect, and it's what we use at imprint, and it actually is this instance that we can plug into directly, and it gives us direct access into Visanet. So we are directly plugged into the ledger through visa, not working with some big conglomerate that they had to go partner with before. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的。仅 Costco 卡就大约占所有卡消费的 1%。这些是他们为数不多的机会和战略方式之一，试图进入业务领域。令人惊喜的是，他们不仅仅停留在他们认为安全的老银行中寻找新的商户计划。我知道这对我们在 HeB 是有效的，并且在我们赢得但尚未推出的新交易中也是有效的，Visa 在外面说，你必须与 imprint 合作，这是最适合你的银行。看到他们在这样的过程中倾向于初创公司真的很了不起，因为他们不是创新者的故事完全不会让你相信这一点。这就是这方面的 BD。技术方面是 Visa 试图让自己变得更易接近。在过去，作为一个想要在这个 3%交换费世界中竞争的初创公司，你无法直接与 Visa 连接。你必须通过一些大公司作为中介，这些公司与 Visa 有关系。 因此，您可能曾与核心处理器合作过，您可能曾与一些发卡公司合作过，比如 Stripe issuing、Marketa 或 Lithic，他们可能与 Visa 有合作，您可以利用这个合作。然而，现在 Visa 推出了一种名为 Cloud Connect 的东西，这是我们在 imprint 使用的，它实际上是一个我们可以直接接入的实例，它使我们能够直接访问 Visanet。因此，我们是通过 Visa 直接接入账本，而不是与他们之前必须合作的大型企业合作。

And it's not just technology. They've got teams of people who can talk to fintechs. They know how to speak our language. It's been a really cool sight to see. 

不仅仅是技术。他们还有能够与金融科技公司对话的团队。他们知道如何用我们的语言交流。这真是一个很酷的景象。

David Rosenthal:All of this speaks to just the general power of technology getting better. Everything from our previous discussion on, well, it depends on the type of transaction, on who the customer is, on which card they're using. You can't do this sort of clever individual segmentation on a per transaction basis without more advanced technology. Or in this more recent example, this API. You can't facilitate thousands of small partners working directly and plugging into Visa net without modern technology. And so it does definitely support the story of as technology gets better, as visa adopts modern technology, you sort of can have a much more cleverly routed ecosystem for these transactions and for all these different parties involved in each transaction. 

David Rosenthal:所有这些都说明了技术进步的总体力量。无论是我们之前讨论的内容，还是取决于交易类型、客户身份、他们使用的卡片类型。没有更先进的技术，你无法在每笔交易的基础上进行这种聪明的个体细分。或者在这个更近期的例子中，这个 API。没有现代技术，你无法促进成千上万的小型合作伙伴直接工作并接入 Visa 网络。因此，这确实支持了随着技术进步，Visa 采用现代技术的故事，你可以为这些交易以及每笔交易中涉及的所有不同方构建一个更聪明的路由生态系统。

Gaurav Ahuja:I think that's totally right. And look, I'm saying all these positive things with my founder hat on and from personal experiences, then if I totally remove myself from the situation and put my investor hat on for a second, I look at these things and I say, hey, they're great. Mastercard's leaned into a few of these things as well. They have a product called finicity, which is kind of a plaid competitor. They have a product called Session M, which is a merchant loyalty software. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为这完全正确。看，我是以创始人的身份和个人经验说这些积极的事情的，然后如果我完全从这种情况下抽身出来，戴上投资者的帽子，我看这些事情，我会说，嘿，它们很棒。万事达卡也在这些方面有所涉足。他们有一个叫做 finicity 的产品，这有点像 plaid 的竞争对手。他们有一个叫做 Session M 的产品，这是一个商户忠诚度软件。

But then I look at them and I think, boy, like, I hope I'm not offending anybody, but who the heck cares about these? Well, they move the needle on a half a trillion dollars of enterprise value. We've got this massive secular shift going on from cash to digital that will last for decades. 

但后来我看着他们，我想，天哪，我希望我没有冒犯任何人，但谁在乎这些呢？好吧，他们推动了价值五千亿美元的企业价值。我们正经历着从现金到数字的巨大长期转变，这将持续数十年。

And these other things are on the margins for these businesses. It kind of reminds me of Google, of what has been a 30 year tailwind of just movement to search online and digital advertising online and every other consumer product that Google launched just kind of doesn't move the needle further p and L, and it doesn't matter. 

对于这些企业来说，其他事情都处于边缘地带。这让我想起了谷歌，过去 30 年中，在线搜索和数字广告的趋势一直在推动，而谷歌推出的其他消费产品似乎并没有进一步推动损益，这并不重要。

Ben Gilbert:What's interesting, this seems like a case where Visa and Mastercard want this increased volume on their networks, like that is core to their whole business. 

Ben Gilbert:有趣的是，这似乎是 Visa 和 Mastercard 希望在其网络上增加交易量的一个案例，因为这对他们的整个业务至关重要。

But building these types of technology and marketing technology programs for merchants to enable that more volume happening on their networks and as competitive vectors between the networks, that feels like less of Visa's core competency. So it makes sense, right, that they would, like, open their APIs to allow startups like imprint to do this. 

但是，为商家构建这些类型的技术和营销技术程序，以便在他们的网络上实现更多的交易量，并作为网络之间的竞争向量，这感觉不像是 Visa 的核心竞争力。因此，他们开放 API 以允许像 imprint 这样的初创公司来做这件事是有道理的，对吧。

Gaurav Ahuja:I think that's absolutely right. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为那是完全正确的。

David Rosenthal:All of these things are. And tell me if you think I'm seeing this wrong. Ways that Visa is using technology to play defense, like oh, we have to keep that merchant on our network, or oh, we got to go get that merchant to be on our network instead of Mastercard's network. On the episode we talked sort of more about ways they're using technology for offense, which is can we expand beyond our core market of consumer to business payments, like with Visa Direct or with B two B payments? Do you think that that story is credible of a huge driver of visas future is something other than the consumer to business tailwind of digital payments? 

David Rosenthal:所有这些都是。而且告诉我如果我理解错了。你认为我看错了吗？这些都是 Visa 利用技术来进行防御的方式，比如说“哦，我们必须把那个商户留在我们的网络上”或者“哦，我们得让那个商户加入我们的网络，而不是 MasterCard 的网络”。在之前的节目中，我们更多地讨论了它们如何利用技术进攻，比如我们能否从我们传统的消费者市场扩展到企业支付市场，比如通过 Visa Direct 或者 B2B 支付。你认为这个故事可靠吗？即 Visa 未来的巨大推动力，是否是除了消费者到企业的数字支付趋势之外的其他东西？

Gaurav Ahuja:I definitely think there are other categories for them to tap into, whether it's underpenetrated categories of consumer payments or to your point, B two b payments. Those are definitely growing parts of the pie that I know their BD team is leaning into with fintechs. Take rental payments as an example, on the consumer side, as an underpenetrated area of spend for credit cards. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我绝对认为他们可以进入其他类别，无论是消费者支付的未充分渗透类别，还是你所说的 B2B 支付。这些绝对是我知道他们的 BD 团队与金融科技公司合作的增长领域。以租金支付为例，在消费者方面，这是信用卡支出的一个未充分渗透的领域。

They've done a couple of things here. They've partnered with some fintechs who are launching rental payments rewards cards that actually give back a lot of the fees to users when they do manage to pay rent with a credit card. But then secondly, within the last few years, they've actually lowered interchange fees or lowered MDR for rental payments. And so visa is not a one size fits all type of MDR. Every category has a different type of MDR, and they've purposefully lowered it in some categories like grocery or gas, that are kind of necessary for the everyday consumer. While it's higher in other categories, they've added rental payments to one of the lower categories on their list as well. Those are some of the levers they can push on the margins on the consumer side. On the b two b side, I think they're doing a great job leaning into all of the rapidly growing corporate credit card startups out there. And one thing that's constantly surprising to me is you guys talked about on the episode this McDonald's advertisement that felt kind of like a shock in the nineties of this is a big deal, they accept credit cards. I wonder sometimes if we're in the same place in that journey on the b two b side of businesses. Just starting to realize that I've got to accept credit card payments in 2023 to be able to stay competitive and win business, make my process of accepting customers as easy as possible relative to my competitor. So I think a lot of the services industries are starting to adopt credit card payments as a result and visa is right there making sure they are ready to capture it. 

Ben Gilbert:It's never crossed my mind of should acquired accept credit card payments for our sponsors, but like maybe, I don't know, maybe that's a world that we're heading. 

Ben Gilbert:我从未想过我们是否应该接受赞助商的信用卡付款，但也许，我不知道，也许这是我们正在走向的世界。

David Rosenthal:Towards if the fees were low enough. I mean it's one of these interesting things where if there is real competition for a consumer between merchants, then Visa should massively lower the MDR so that they can shift ACH payments to card payments. But when there's not competition, like let's say I move into a apartment building, I'm not making the decision on which apartment building to move into based on who's going to let me use a credit card versus who's going to require me to enter my bank information. 

David Rosenthal:如果费用足够低的话。我是说，这是其中一个有趣的事情，如果商家之间对消费者有真正的竞争，那么 Visa 应该大幅降低 MDR，以便他们可以将 ACH 支付转移到卡支付。但当没有竞争时，比如说我搬进一栋公寓楼，我不会根据谁让我使用信用卡与谁要求我输入银行信息来决定搬进哪栋公寓楼。

If I'm that apartment building owner. There's almost nothing that you can do to compel me to take credit cards. Push back on that growth. But that feels like a hard category to ever actually move the needle on. 

如果我是那栋公寓楼的业主。几乎没有什么能迫使我接受信用卡。抵制那种增长。但这似乎是一个很难真正有所突破的类别。

Gaurav Ahuja:I agree with your higher excitement on the b two B side and lower excitement on cracking some categories within consumer that have seemed uncrackable, like rental payments. The way it's starting to happen in rental payments is less of what you just said though. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我同意你对 B2B 方面的更高兴奋度，以及对破解一些在消费者中似乎无法破解的类别（如租金支付）的较低兴奋度。不过，租金支付开始发生的方式与你刚才所说的有所不同。

So the emerging properties we're starting to see are not individual landlord saying hey, I'm going to accept cards. That individual landlord is still going to take Venmo or check or cash, whatever it might be that they're doing informally today, it's happening more on the property management side. So these companies operating at scale that are trying to formalize their business, it's much easier to think about digitizing all of your payments versus just accepting cash or informal payment methods. 

因此，我们开始看到的新兴特性并不是个别房东说，嘿，我要接受信用卡。那个个别房东仍然会接受 Venmo、支票或现金，无论他们今天非正式地做什么，这更多地发生在物业管理方面。因此，这些大规模运营的公司正在努力使其业务正规化，相比仅仅接受现金或非正式支付方式，考虑将所有支付数字化要容易得多。

And it's not to say that they're accepting all the credit card fees themselves. They actually do pass on a lot of the fees in most of these instances to the user. So they have the user at checkout again. It kind of feels like an e commerce experience. Equity Residential is a good example of a property management software company doing this. They at checkout will offer the consumer the option to pay for fees. And you'd be surprised at the uptake rate of users buying into this. And one of the trends I was referring to is people like Visa and Mastercard working with startups. There's one called Bilt out there that are saying, sure user, you're paying a fee, but let us give you rewards back in the version of that fee. And maybe in some cases we can even partner with the property manager to get another value pool of what is now increased conversion from users feeling like it's easier to pay and live at this building. So that's again, small portion of the industry, but I'm trying to explain narratives as to where they could crack into new markets that they've just had a tough time cracking into so far. 

这并不是说他们自己承担所有的信用卡费用。实际上，他们在大多数情况下会把这些费用转嫁给用户。所以他们在结账时再次让用户承担费用，这有点像电子商务的体验。Equity Residential 是一个很好的例子，它是一家物业管理软件公司，采用了这种做法。在结账时，他们会给消费者提供支付费用的选项。你可能会对用户购买这一选项的接受率感到惊讶。我要提到的趋势之一是像 Visa 和 Mastercard 这样的公司与初创公司合作。有一家叫做 Bilt 的公司就这样做，他们说，“没问题，用户，你在支付费用，但让我们以奖励的形式将这些费用返还给你。”或许在某些情况下，我们甚至可以与物业经理合作，创造另一种价值池——那就是通过用户觉得在这个楼宇里支付费用更容易，从而提高转化率。所以，这个行业仍然是小部分，但我试图解释的是它们如何进入新的市场，这些市场至今它们很难突破。

Ben Gilbert:So as we're talking here about b two B payments and about rental payments and niche consumer use cases and ACH and banking versus credit card networks, this of course takes my mind to the really big question out there, at least for startups and VC's, of like is there any potential that a competitive, very large global network effects payment network could emerge out there like a true competitor to the Visa Mastercard duopoly? And lots of people have talked about this for a long time. We spent a lot of time on this on our Visa episode. Is there any path that this could actually happen? 

Ben Gilbert:因此，当我们在这里谈论 B2B 支付、租金支付、利基消费者用例以及 ACH 和银行与信用卡网络时，这当然让我想到了一个非常大的问题，至少对于初创公司和风险投资公司来说，是否有可能出现一个具有竞争力的、非常大的全球网络效应支付网络，成为 Visa 和万事达双头垄断的真正竞争对手？很多人长期以来一直在谈论这个问题。我们在 Visa 那一集上花了很多时间讨论这个问题。是否有可能实现这一目标？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, it seems like a tall task as we've had kind of keep circling around. It just feels like Visa and Mastercard are so entrenched and do such a good job protecting their positions. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，这似乎是一个艰巨的任务，因为我们一直在兜圈子。感觉 Visa 和 Mastercard 根深蒂固，并且在保护其地位方面做得非常好。

But all that said, I think it's fun to go through the theoretical exercise of who could start to take away share, so maybe not cut them off at the knees, to use my old language, but find pockets of opportunity. And broadly, I think about two areas. 

尽管如此，我认为进行理论上的练习，思考谁可以开始夺取市场份额是很有趣的，所以也许不是用我以前的说法来打击他们，而是寻找机会的空间。总体而言，我考虑两个领域。

The first area you guys touched on, so who are the processors out there already that have 1ft in the door on this business? What does it take to displace visa as a processor? It's either really large scale on the payment acceptance side, or it's really large scale on the consumer side. And there's a few names. PayPal, Shopify, you guys didn't mention, I don't think, on the episode stripe launch, stripe link square you definitely mentioned. So maybe to tick through each of those four, like PayPal is the first legitimate threat here. And they showed that yes, we can take some share of our payment processing and direct it to a user's bank account or their PayPal wallet instead of a card. It's not clear that that is ever going to increase share from here, but it certainly means they can keep the entire payment processing spread on a select number of transactions that don't go through visa. So they at least proved it was possible. 

你们提到的第一个领域，那么在这个业务中已经有谁是处理器了？要取代 Visa 作为处理器需要什么？要么是在支付接受方面规模非常大，要么是在消费者方面规模非常大。有几个名字。PayPal，Shopify，你们在节目中没有提到，我想，Stripe Launch，Stripe Link Square 你们肯定提到了。所以也许可以逐一讨论这四个，比如 PayPal 是这里第一个合法的威胁。他们表明是的，我们可以将部分支付处理份额转向用户的银行账户或他们的 PayPal 钱包，而不是卡片。目前尚不清楚这是否会从这里增加份额，但这肯定意味着他们可以在不通过 Visa 的特定交易中保留整个支付处理的差额。所以他们至少证明了这是可能的。

I think Shopify is probably the most similar inform factor to PayPal, but a way better experience in my mind. My guess is that shop, pay is a way higher percentage of total Shopify GMV than PayPal wallet is of entire braintree processing online. 

我认为 Shopify 可能是与 PayPal 最相似的信息因素，但在我看来体验要好得多。我的猜测是，购物支付在 Shopify 总 GMV 中的比例要远高于 PayPal 钱包在整个 Braintree 在线处理中的比例。

And you could see a world where Shoppay, now that they have rewards, this rewards cash concept, they make one of your five default payment methods your bank account, and default to that each time and offer you some percentage of rewards to go pay with bank account. That would be another example that comes to mind. Similar to PayPal, on the square side of things, they're way stronger on the consumer end. They've got 50 million maus, which is an incredible number of maus to have in today's market. 

你可以看到一个世界，在这个世界里，Shoppay 现在有了奖励，这个奖励现金的概念，他们将你的五种默认支付方式之一设为你的银行账户，并每次默认使用该账户，并提供一定比例的奖励以鼓励你使用银行账户支付。这是我想到的另一个例子。类似于 PayPal，在 Square 方面，他们在消费者端更加强大。他们拥有 5000 万月活跃用户，这在当今市场上是一个令人难以置信的月活跃用户数量。

On the processing side, the payment acceptance side, though, I do think while they have a couple hundred billion of processing volume every year on square terminals, those are still really small businesses and it's hard to change user behavior that way. So yes, when I go to my coffee shop, I can scan the cash app QR code, and it's an amazingly fast experience that does bypass Visa and Mastercard. But until I think you get some big, big merchants, it's hard to just see that story play out the positive narrative. There would be they bought Afterpay and Jack is spending a lot of time, he says, on afterpay itself, that they find a really good way to integrate that into the network such that that same coffee shop scan the cash app QR code experience I just mentioned starts to show up anywhere after pay is accepted too. That would be certainly a boon in their direction. 

在处理方面，支付接受方面，虽然我认为他们每年在 Square 终端上有几千亿的处理量，但这些仍然是非常小的企业，很难以这种方式改变用户行为。所以是的，当我去咖啡店时，我可以扫描现金应用的二维码，这是一个非常快速的体验，确实绕过了 Visa 和 Mastercard。但在我认为你得到一些大商家之前，很难看到这个故事呈现出积极的叙述。他们会购买 Afterpay，Jack 说他花了很多时间在 Afterpay 本身上，他们找到了一种很好的方法将其整合到网络中，这样我刚才提到的同一家咖啡店扫描现金应用二维码的体验也开始在任何接受 Afterpay 的地方出现。这无疑会对他们有利。

David Rosenthal:Would the natural play for someone like Square, who has the consumer side of the marketplace, but not the terminal side of the marketplace at scale at least, they've got only these sort of small merchants. Should they just go buy verifone or someone like that and then enable the pay with cash app on these huge merchants also. 

David Rosenthal:对于像 Square 这样拥有市场消费者端但至少在规模上没有市场终端端的公司来说，他们只有这些小商户。是否应该去收购 Verifone 或类似公司，然后在这些大型商户上启用 Cash App 支付。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, that's an interesting thought. So any terminal with the screen, effectively, they can start to put the cash up. QR code is kind of where you're going with that. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，这是一个有趣的想法。所以任何带屏幕的终端，实际上，他们可以开始放现金。二维码就是你要说的。

David Rosenthal:Right? And of course the merchants would have to opt in, and of course it would have to make economic sense for them. But you could imagine the merchants would be really excited about this. Wow. Just as fast payment rails that 50 million consumers have access to and I don't have to pay the full merchant discount on this. Sounds amazing. 

David Rosenthal:对吧？当然，商家必须选择加入，当然这对他们来说必须有经济意义。但你可以想象商家会对此感到非常兴奋。哇。就像 5000 万消费者可以使用的快速支付渠道，而且我不必为此支付全额商户折扣。听起来很棒。

Gaurav Ahuja:Totally. And I think it's worth calling out. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全同意。我认为这值得指出。

This is probably the most direct thing that Apple, the biggest competitor on your list, could probably do. So I think the two of you ended your episode with the understanding that Apple had a tall task of needing to either be a bank or overcome some compliance regime to be able to close the loop on the transaction. I actually am not sure the bar is that high. So again, they've got all the users out there and they're, by the way, the highest value users, right? Just think about every app that launches on both Google Play Store and iOS. Most of the value comes from the iOS users. So these are the right users that they've got. And already you can close the loop. But Apple doesn't talk about this. So if you are going to pay with Apple Pay, which is splattered all over the web at this point, yes, your cards pop up is one of the things you can choose to pay with Apple Pay. But your Apple cash wallet is also one of those options. And my guess is, do either of you use your Apple cash wallet frequently? 

这可能是苹果，你名单上最大的竞争对手，可能做的最直接的事情。所以我认为你们两个人在结束这一集时达成了共识，即苹果面临着成为银行或克服某些合规制度以完成交易闭环的艰巨任务。实际上，我不确定门槛有那么高。所以，他们已经拥有了所有用户，顺便说一下，这些用户是价值最高的，对吧？想想每个在 Google Play Store 和 iOS 上推出的应用程序。大部分价值来自 iOS 用户。所以这些是他们拥有的正确用户。而且你已经可以完成闭环。但苹果没有谈论这一点。所以如果你要用 Apple Pay 支付，这在此时已经遍布网络，是的，你的卡片弹出是你可以选择用 Apple Pay 支付的选项之一。但你的 Apple 现金钱包也是其中一个选项。我的猜测是，你们中有谁经常使用 Apple 现金钱包吗？

David Rosenthal:No.  不。

Ben Gilbert:No.  不。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's because the three of us are not cool. We're not young high schoolers at this moment in time. But if you go survey high school users at this moment in time, Apple Cash has surpassed cash app as the number one peer to peer app for this population. 

Gaurav Ahuja:那是因为我们三个人不酷。此时此刻，我们不是年轻的高中生。但如果你去调查此时此刻的高中用户，Apple Cash 已经超过 Cash App 成为这个群体的第一大点对点应用程序。

And so as I think about opportunities of where people are going to naturally start closing the loop without thinking that they're closing the loop, that feels like one opportunity to me. And that's just the online side for the offline side. The reason I brought this up is because that's kind of the verifone example in my mind. Could an apple, if anybody has the scale to play hard at the negotiating table, could an Apple go work with each of the payment processors that work out there and say, yes, add me as a network with your core processors, that feels like an outcome that is worth thinking about without them needing to be a bank or some kind of compliance regime. And so high schoolers are using apple cash as their peer to peer wallet. Therefore, they constantly have balances stored in there. It's almost like an extension of a bank account. And so it would be a natural next step for them. Unlike us, the three of us who never have balances in there, when they click apple Pay at checkout, they see their cash balance right there and they start selecting that as a de facto way to go pay. So in some ways, it's already a version of closing the loop. 

因此，当我考虑人们将自然开始闭环而不认为他们在闭环的机会时，这对我来说就像是一个机会。这只是在线方面的情况，离线方面的原因是因为这在我脑海中有点像是 Verifone 的例子。如果有谁有能力在谈判桌上强硬，苹果能否与每个支付处理器合作，并说，是的，把我作为你的核心处理器的网络，这似乎是一个值得考虑的结果，而不需要成为银行或某种合规制度。因此，高中生正在使用 Apple Cash 作为他们的点对点钱包，因此他们不断在其中存储余额。这几乎就像是银行账户的延伸。因此，这对他们来说将是一个自然的下一步。与我们不同，我们三个人从来没有在里面存过余额，当他们在结账时点击 Apple Pay 时，他们会看到他们的现金余额，并开始选择这种方式作为默认支付方式。因此，在某些方面，这已经是闭环的一个版本。

David Rosenthal:Okay, so we're talking about this interesting apple scenario. What could they do here? So, Gaurav, what you were proposing a minute ago is different, I think, than what Apple Pay does now. So what they do now is they throw, what is it, ten basis points or 15 basis points on top of every transaction and say, I don't really care how this transaction routes, we get a little spiff on top. So it's a little bit more expensive a transaction when you use apple pay. And what you were sort of proposing there is what if they bootstrap another parallel network to visa? And they say, well, rather than running it over the visa network, we're going to run it over our own network. How does visa think about carrots and sticks that it has with merchants to keep transactions running over their network versus alternative payment methods? 

David Rosenthal:好的，所以我们在谈论这个有趣的苹果情境。他们在这里能做些什么呢？所以，Gaurav，你刚才提议的和我认为 Apple Pay 现在做的不同。所以他们现在做的是在每笔交易上加上，是什么，十个基点或十五个基点，然后说，我不太在乎这笔交易如何路由，我们在上面得到一点好处。所以当你使用 Apple Pay 时，交易会稍微贵一点。而你刚才提议的是，如果他们启动另一个与 Visa 平行的网络呢？他们说，好吧，我们不通过 Visa 网络运行，而是通过我们自己的网络运行。Visa 如何看待它与商家之间的胡萝卜和大棒，以保持交易在他们的网络上运行，而不是使用替代支付方式？

Gaurav Ahuja:I think the source here would likely have to be the processing terminals or the processors that each of the networks are working with, because that is who Apple would have to go to to get approval in this process. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为这里的来源可能必须是处理终端或每个网络正在使用的处理器，因为那是苹果在这个过程中需要去获得批准的对象。

David Rosenthal:And there are not a lot of them. This is a pretty consolidated market at this point. 

David Rosenthal:而且它们并不多。此时这是一个相当集中的市场。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly right. Exactly right. So when there's a few, and you can imagine most of their business today is visa. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全正确。完全正确。所以当有一些时，你可以想象他们今天的大部分业务是visa。

Visa is threatening, hey, if you work with Apple, I would not work with you. That would be the obvious stick that they can go apply to the market. 

Visa 正在威胁说，嘿，如果你与苹果合作，我就不与你合作。这将是他们可以在市场上施加的明显压力。

David Rosenthal:That the DOJ would likely have a lot to say about. 

David Rosenthal:司法部可能会对此发表很多看法。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, exactly.  是的，没错。

David Rosenthal:He tells Veraphone they can't accept alternative payments. 

David Rosenthal:他告诉 Veraphone 他们不能接受其他付款方式。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly. And look, we're getting into two or three layers of hypotheticals. If Apple entered and then if Visa responded. So this is all fun storytelling at this moment, but the carrot then is, okay, Apple's come into the market and they're going to charge 1% fee. Do we, for the first time, lower MDR to match that? We're still going to keep our visa share of MDR, but bank's like, sorry, you got to deal with it because otherwise you're going to get zero from Apple. 

Gaurav Ahuja:没错。看，我们正在进入两三层假设。如果苹果进入市场，然后如果 Visa 做出回应。所以此刻这都是有趣的故事情节，但关键是，好吧，苹果进入市场，他们将收取 1%的费用。我们是否第一次降低 MDR 以匹配这个？我们仍然会保留我们的 Visa 份额的 MDR，但银行会说，对不起，你得接受这个，否则你将从苹果那里得到零。

David Rosenthal:Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating to think about, and it almost does feel like an inevitability that something in this area will happen. Because as you and I have talked about in previous conversations, the wallet and the notion of what card is at the top of your wallet is so much less relevant now, now that your phone, in many cases, is the payment method. Like, I don't care often, like, what card gets used or what rails it goes over. All I care about is I'm going to hold my phone up to your little thing. And I know in a post Covid world that the transaction's going to complete. And so, like, who is providing value in. In the whole chain of the transaction here? Like, a lot of who is providing value is now the terminal and the phone company. 

David Rosenthal:是的，是的。想到这一点很吸引人，而且几乎感觉到在这个领域会发生一些事情是不可避免的。因为正如你我在之前的对话中所谈到的，钱包和在钱包顶部的卡片的概念现在变得不那么重要了，因为在很多情况下，你的手机就是支付方式。比如，我不太在意使用哪张卡或通过哪个通道。我关心的只是我要把手机对准你的那个小东西。我知道在后疫情时代，交易会完成。所以，在整个交易链中，谁在提供价值？现在，很多提供价值的是终端和手机公司。

Gaurav Ahuja:That's so. Well said. It's an abstracted user experience is another way of saying that. Right. There's an abstraction layer above all of your cards when you're paying with your phone. I think that's also, by the way, what would make it easier for a rewards nerd like me to constantly optimize and always be choosing the best card for the best transaction? In fact, there are some startups out there that specifically lean into that value prop. They say, always pay with our card and we're going to reroute the transaction to your best card that you send to us. 

Gaurav Ahuja:确实如此。说得好。这是另一种说法，称其为抽象的用户体验。没错。当你用手机支付时，在所有卡片之上有一个抽象层。我认为这也是为什么像我这样的奖励爱好者可以更轻松地不断优化并始终选择最佳卡片进行最佳交易的原因。事实上，有一些初创公司专门利用这一价值主张。他们说，总是用我们的卡支付，我们会将交易重新路由到你发送给我们的最佳卡片。

David Rosenthal:Wow, so you can do proxy cards like that? 

David Rosenthal:哇，你可以这样制作代理卡吗？

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah. And the business model there is for anything where you don't have a better rewards proposition than our card, we get to keep those transactions for ourselves. 

David Rosenthal:Fascinating.  迷人。

Ben Gilbert:This is the perfect transition. We've been talking in this potential competitors to Visa, Mastercard section. We've been talking about all these big companies, Apple, stripe, square, Shopify, etcetera. 

Ben Gilbert:这是完美的过渡。我们一直在讨论这一潜在竞争对手对 Visa、Mastercard 的部分。我们一直在谈论所有这些大公司，苹果、Stripe、Square、Shopify 等等。

That's all well and good, but we're all private company investors here. Let's talk about startups. 

这很好，但我们都是私人公司投资者。让我们谈谈初创公司。

Is there a vector, do you think? I mean, you do so much work in this space. 

你认为有一个向量吗？我的意思是，你在这个领域做了这么多工作。

Is there a vector that there really is the ultimate prize here, that a new company, that a new network could win? 

这里是否真的有一个最终奖项，一个新公司，一个新网络可以赢得？

Gaurav Ahuja:Gosh, I go back to the beginning of the story. Remember how this entire journey started with payment networks. It all dates back to the Diners club. 

Gaurav Ahuja:天哪，我回到了故事的开头。记得这整个旅程是如何从支付网络开始的。这一切都可以追溯到大来俱乐部。

And the Diners Club, as you so well highlighted in your episode, doesn't really scale horizontally. 

正如您在节目中很好地强调的那样，大来俱乐部实际上并不能横向扩展。

And as a result, that's what paved the way for bank Americard to be this horizontal network that could work anywhere, not just at restaurants. 

因此，这为美国银行卡成为一个可以在任何地方使用的横向网络铺平了道路，而不仅仅是在餐馆。

But I love the kernel from the Diners Club narrative that there was this network effect that emerged in just the restaurant industry in New York. And I think that's such a powerful insight. 

但我喜欢大来俱乐部故事中的核心，即在纽约的餐饮业中出现了这种网络效应。我认为这是一个非常有力的见解。

So Diners Club in its very first instance was launched at one restaurant. That one restaurant had 200 users that were think the mad men of their days going out in New York City having great meals. And they probably didn't just shop at one restaurant, they probably went to multiple. And what that means is the other high end restaurants in New York City also wanted access to those users. Those users already had a Diners Club card, so those next restaurants are more likely to want to join the Diners Club network. So after a year, they had 27 restaurants, not just the one. Those 27 restaurants now attracted 47,000 cardholders and so on and so forth. You kind of saw this virtuous cycle emerge. After a decade. The Diners Club card had a million users on the network. 

因此，大来俱乐部在最初是从一家餐厅开始的。那家餐厅有 200 名用户，他们被认为是当时在纽约市外出享用美食的疯狂人物。而且他们可能不仅仅在一家餐厅消费，可能去了多家。这意味着纽约市的其他高档餐厅也想接触这些用户。这些用户已经持有大来俱乐部卡，因此接下来的餐厅更有可能想加入大来俱乐部网络。因此，一年后，他们有了 27 家餐厅，而不仅仅是一家。这 27 家餐厅吸引了 47,000 名持卡人，依此类推。你会看到这种良性循环的出现。十年后，大来俱乐部卡在网络上拥有了一百万用户。

And so for so many reasons, the business didn't really work. And that's why Visa and bank Americard took over. But, but, but that kernel is interesting because every industry has this power user dynamic, and it's certainly one that I've invested behind. I love studying different corners of the world and understanding how the highest spenders, the most loyal users of that industry, really operate and what their specific needs are. You can look everywhere and you see it. So, in mobile gaming, the top 6% of users are 88% of all mobile gaming spend. In healthcare, I think it's something crazy, like 10% of patients are 78% of all patient expenses. And the list goes on in other industries. Trucking users, cannabis purchasers, luxury apparel shoppers. There are power users in every one of these industries that have specific needs. And just to make those specific needs really tangible, take healthcare as an example. If you have a large transaction you got to make, it's probably not as simple as just paying with your Visa card. It's probably more complex. You've got to use your HSA or your FSA account. There's obviously insurance billing involved in that. And then you've even got, for high aov transactions, you've got to have buy now, pay later. You've got to have some sort of installment loan option at checkout, or the equivalent of checkout. And sure, you can maybe say healthcare is too complex in industry. Of course it's different there. But even look at cannabis, there's regulatory needs in cannabis. 

所以，由于种种原因，这个商业模式并没有真正成功，这也是为什么 Visa 和 Bank Americard 最终接管了。但，这个核心还是很有趣的，因为每个行业都有这种“核心用户”动态，显然这是我所投资的领域之一。我喜欢研究世界的不同角落，了解那些行业中最高消费、最忠诚的用户是如何运作的，他们的具体需求是什么。你可以到处看到这种现象。在移动游戏领域，排名前6%的用户贡献了88%的全部移动游戏支出。在医疗保健领域，我记得好像是那种疯狂的比例，10%的患者占据了78%的所有患者费用。其他行业也有类似的情况，比如卡车运输用户、大麻购买者、奢侈品服装购物者。每个行业中都有核心用户，他们有特定的需求。为了让这些特定需求更加具体，拿医疗保健作为例子。如果你需要进行一笔大额交易，可能并不像简单地用你的 Visa 卡支付那么简单。它可能更复杂。你可能需要使用 HSA（健康储蓄账户）或 FSA（灵活消费账户）。显然，在其中涉及到保险账单。而且，对于高额交易，你可能还需要使用“先买后付”服务。在结账时，你需要有某种分期贷款选项，或者类似结账的功能。当然，你也许会说医疗保健行业太复杂了，情况确实不同。但是即使是大麻行业，也有大麻的监管需求。

And every time you make a purchase at a dispensary, you need to show your driver's license in most states and prove that you're not an illegal buyer of this cannabis product. Mobile gaming, no regulatory requirements, but that mobile game company wants to reward you or sell you items and sell you those coins or gems as packages at different rates, depending on how good of a player you are, how many minutes you spend in the game, what level you achieved. And so the vertical specific nature of checkout introduces opportunities for these vertical companies who process payments to emerge. And as I think about startup opportunities, each of them probably have pockets of areas they can start to do what PayPal showed as possible, which is for certain pockets of power users, which might be a very small end of users. If I can give them an incentive to link their bank account, I can actually keep the entire 3% spread for myself. That's the name of the game. And while I don't think that's the strategy to go take down Visa, but it is this really great opportunity that I know I'm excited about and see a lot of our founders going after as well. 

在大多数州，每次你在大麻零售店购物时，都需要出示驾驶执照，证明你不是非法购买大麻产品的消费者。移动游戏没有监管要求，但那个移动游戏公司希望奖励你，或者以不同的价格出售物品、金币或宝石包，具体价格取决于你作为玩家的表现、在游戏中花费的时间以及你达成的等级。因此，结账的行业特定性质为这些处理支付的行业公司带来了机会。当我思考创业机会时，我认为每个行业都可能有一些领域，可以开始做 PayPal 展示出来的可能性——对于某些核心用户的特定群体，虽然这个群体可能非常小。如果我能给他们一个激励来绑定他们的银行账户，我实际上可以把整个 3% 的差价留给自己。这就是游戏的规则。虽然我不认为这是击败 Visa 的策略，但这确实是一个非常好的机会，我知道我对此感到兴奋，看到很多我们的创始人也在追求这一点。

David Rosenthal:It's funny, the bear case on Visa is not that someone is going to come in and take all of Visa's lunch. It's that a lot of these vertical and niche opportunities that they could have taken if the world had stayed a simpler place and technology had not progressed this far, get eaten away by a fragmented set of little specialized players. 

David Rosenthal:有趣的是，对 Visa 的看空观点并不是有人会进来抢走 Visa 的所有市场份额，而是许多他们本可以占据的垂直和小众机会被一组分散的小型专业玩家蚕食掉了，如果世界保持简单且技术没有进步到如此地步的话。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly right. The Diners Club was this vertical use case to start because nothing existed before then. And then the standardized protocol of visa and a standardized accounting method took over for everything everywhere. But technology has actually made it easier to verticalize again and make checkout more specific to each use case. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全正确。大来俱乐部是这个垂直用例的开始，因为在此之前什么都不存在。然后，Visa 的标准化协议和标准化的会计方法接管了一切。但技术实际上使得再次垂直化变得更容易，并使结账更具体化到每个用例。

Ben Gilbert:Such a great point, particularly like the healthcare example. And as you say, there's all sorts of regulatory stuff there. So maybe it's possible, maybe it's nothing. But I can think of three or four examples just in Jenny and my own history over the past few years where you have enormous transactions, multiple diverse payment sources, all sorts. Not because we wanted it that way, but it just had to be that way. Particularly going through fertility. I mean that was a 30 $40,000 transaction with so many parties involved and yeah, that's a huge opportunity. 

Ben Gilbert:这是一个很好的观点，尤其是医疗保健的例子。正如你所说，那里有各种各样的监管问题。所以也许是可能的，也许什么都不是。但我能想到三四个例子，仅在过去几年里，Jenny 和我自己的历史中，你会看到巨大的交易，多个多样的支付来源，各种各样的情况。不是因为我们想要这样，而是不得不这样。尤其是在经历生育治疗时。我是说，那是一个涉及许多方的三四万美元的交易，是的，这是一个巨大的机会。

Gaurav Ahuja:Absolutely. And I don't think it's just value extraction from these vertical companies. I actually think it's good for the user. If you are a power user in a particular category, if you're checking out in gaming all the time, or you're checking out a cannabis dispensaries all the time, you being remembered in a shop pay like way every single time with your stored payment methods is just a better experience for you. So it should be a win for both sides. It's not this only value extractive play. 

Gaurav Ahuja:当然。我认为这不仅仅是从这些垂直公司中提取价值。我实际上认为这对用户有好处。如果你是某个特定类别的高级用户，比如你一直在游戏中结账，或者你一直在大麻药房结账，每次都像在商店支付那样记住你的存储支付方式，对你来说是一种更好的体验。所以这应该是双方的双赢。这不仅仅是一个价值提取的策略。

David Rosenthal:Popping up a level. Youve listened to our visa episode. What else do you have comments on? Or what else did we miss in our episode? 

David Rosenthal:提升一个层次。你已经听过我们的visa那一集。你还有什么评论吗？或者我们在那一集中遗漏了什么？

Gaurav Ahuja:So one timely thing that I dont think came up in the episode was this ongoing conversation about the credit Card Competition act. 

Gaurav Ahuja:所以我认为在这一集中没有提到的一个及时话题是关于信用卡竞争法的持续讨论。

Is that something you guys are familiar with? 

这件事你们熟悉吗？

David Rosenthal:Not terribly.  不太糟糕。

Gaurav Ahuja:Its probably the most active version of a proposed act or bill that could threaten credit card merchant discount rate today. 

Gaurav Ahuja:这可能是今天最活跃的一个提议法案或议案版本，可能会威胁到信用卡商户折扣率。

And essentially what it says is that any bank issued card, even if it has the Visa logo on top of it, has to have at least one other network that it works with as well. And so that would be saying a merchant, if you're accepting a card and somebody swipes a chase visa, you're not forced to just use Visa. There's a backup network on that card that they have to have legally now that can set their own merchant discount rate. And, hey, it's probably cheaper than Visa. You can choose to use that one instead. That's kind of the logic behind this act. And the theory is that by introducing competition, or at least two networks on each card, you'll start to see fees come down naturally. And whatever market equilibrium I discussed before having settled for the last 13 years, starts to move back down in favor of merchants. This isn't a totally new idea, so it's not like this act came out of nowhere. It's very similar to how our debit cards actually work today. So every debit card, even if it says visa on it, does have a secondary network that it is forced to also work with. And we never talk about it because one, nobody's heard of these secondary networks. No regular user has ever heard of these secondary networks. And two, most merchants don't care to ever use them because the approval rates are lower. And guess what? On debit fees are already capped. They're very low in the first place, unless it's Durbin exempt. So Visa and Mastercard remain dominant. 

基本上，它的意思是任何银行发行的卡，即使上面有 Visa 标志，也必须至少有另一个可以使用的网络。因此，这就意味着商家在接受卡片时，如果有人刷了一张 Chase Visa 卡，你不必只使用 Visa。现在法律要求卡上必须有一个备用网络，可以自行设定商户折扣率。而且，嘿，这可能比 Visa 更便宜。你可以选择使用那个。这就是这项法案背后的逻辑。理论上，通过引入竞争，或者至少在每张卡上有两个网络，你会开始看到费用自然下降。我之前讨论的市场均衡在过去 13 年里已经稳定，现在开始向有利于商家的方向回落。这并不是一个全新的想法，所以这项法案并不是凭空出现的。这非常类似于我们今天的借记卡运作方式。所以每张借记卡，即使上面写着 Visa，也确实有一个强制使用的次要网络。我们从来不谈论它，因为一是没人听说过这些次要网络。 普通用户从未听说过这些次级网络。其次，大多数商家不愿意使用它们，因为批准率较低。你猜怎么着？借记卡费用已经被限制了。它们本来就很低，除非是杜宾豁免。因此，Visa 和 Mastercard 仍然占据主导地位。

But in some higher risk industries, like the adult entertainment industry or the cannabis industry or the gaming industry, these industries do tap on these secondary networks at times because they can't work with Visa or Mastercard in some cases. 

但在一些高风险行业，如成人娱乐行业、大麻行业或游戏行业，这些行业有时会利用这些次级网络，因为在某些情况下它们无法与 Visa 或 Mastercard 合作。

As I look at that example, I think that would be one version of the world that we can try to glean and peek around to the corner of. If this act were to get passed for credit cards, how impactful might it actually be? That's maybe one thing that wasn't covered in the episode. 

当我看那个例子时，我认为那将是我们可以尝试去了解和窥探的世界的一个版本。如果这项法案通过信用卡，会有多大影响？这可能是剧集中没有涉及的一件事。

And then I step back and zoom out and I think about Visa. 

然后我退后一步，放大视野，思考 Visa。

They've got to be pretty actively thinking about this, or at least I would assume they're actively thinking about all these risks. 

他们必须积极地考虑这个问题，或者至少我认为他们正在积极考虑所有这些风险。

I think there are some things they are probably doing actively to manage it, and then there are other things that they might be doing not so actively, or they might not be doing so intentionally to manage it as well. The most obvious thing that they do is they share the value pool. We've talked about this a few times now, but the fact that so much of the value goes to banks and so much of that value goes to consumers means you've got all these constituents lobbying and fighting for MDR to stay where it is to oppose the counter lobby. The point sky lobby. Exactly. 

我认为他们可能正在积极管理一些事情，然后还有其他事情他们可能没有那么积极地去做，或者他们可能没有那么有意地去管理。最明显的事情是他们分享价值池。我们已经谈过几次了，但事实是，银行获得了如此多的价值，而消费者也获得了如此多的价值，这意味着所有这些利益相关者都在游说并争取让 MDR 保持现状，以对抗反对游说。正是如此。

That's the intentional thing. And I think that will continue to remain so you've got other people fighting the good fight, the unintentional things are. This is all conjecture at this point, is I feel like they do a good job leaning into the press narrative that visa is kind of helpless against merchants. 

这就是故意的事情。我认为这将继续保持下去，因为你有其他人在为正义而战，而无意的事情是。这在这一点上都是猜测，我觉得他们在迎合媒体关于 Visa 在商家面前有点无能为力的叙述方面做得很好。

You guys had this fascinating story that stuck with me from the episode, which is bank of America played dumb effectively and pretended their credit card business was so unprofitable, and as a result, it invited no competition for a better part of a decade. 

你们在那一集中讲述的这个引人入胜的故事让我印象深刻，美国银行非常有效地装傻，假装他们的信用卡业务毫无盈利，因此在十年中的大部分时间里没有引来竞争。

Sometimes I feel like Visa does this, too. Honestly, if I were the CEO, I'd probably be very actively leaning into it and telling my pr team to say, always plant stories about how everyone's attacking us, about how there's regulatory pressure all over us and we're being forced to lower our fees, and Amazon doesn't like us and this country doesn't like our fees. 

有时候我觉得 Visa 也会这样。老实说，如果我是 CEO，我可能会非常积极地迎合这一点，并告诉我的公关团队说，总是散布关于每个人都在攻击我们的故事，关于我们面临的监管压力，我们被迫降低费用，亚马逊不喜欢我们，这个国家不喜欢我们的费用。

And in reality, we've seen that fees have held steady for 13 years. And so just take a look at this headline. This article had a moment on Twitter earlier this year. 

实际上，我们已经看到费用保持稳定了 13 年。所以请看看这个标题。这篇文章今年早些时候在推特上引起了关注。

Here's how the headline goes. 

这是标题的写法。

Visa and Mastercard agree to lower average credit card interchange fee below 1%. 

Visa 和万事达卡同意将平均信用卡交换费降低到 1%以下。

David Rosenthal:I remember seeing this. 

David Rosenthal:我记得看到过这个。

Gaurav Ahuja:You remember this, right? 

Gaurav Ahuja:你记得这个，对吗？

David Rosenthal:Yeah.  是的。

Gaurav Ahuja:Like, this sounds horrible, but it's totally not true. And the headline makes it sound like they're getting punished globally. But then you read it and you're like, okay, so this is only for Canada. And you read the fine print. It's not only for Canada. It's also only for the smallest of small businesses that they have to work in some particular industries and have sales under $300,000. So effectively zero. 

Gaurav Ahuja:听起来很糟糕，但这完全不是真的。标题让它听起来像是他们在全球范围内受到惩罚。但当你读到它时，你会觉得，好吧，这只是针对加拿大的。然后你读到细则。它不仅仅是针对加拿大的。它也仅仅是针对一些特定行业的小型企业，他们的销售额低于 30 万美元。所以实际上几乎为零。

Effectively, this didn't affect visa at all. 

实际上，这并没有影响visa。

Ben Gilbert:But the narrative is getting out there to the broader public, or at least the Twitter sphere, of like, oh, wow, Visa and Mastercard really have been lowering their fees. 

Ben Gilbert:但这种说法正在向更广泛的公众传播，或者至少在推特圈中传播，比如，哦，哇，Visa 和万事达卡真的在降低他们的费用。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly. Exactly. And it kind of feels like there's like every six months there's some viral moment like this that happens again. And then you look into it and it's kind of a total nothing. So here, on the one hand, there pointing out or letting these sob stories be pointed out again, intentionally or unintentionally, while on the other hand, they do a pretty good job, kind of making it hard to see where fees are being increased at the same time. 

Gaurav Ahuja:确实。确实。而且感觉好像每隔六个月就会发生一次这样的病毒式事件。然后你深入研究，发现其实完全没什么。所以在这里，一方面，他们指出或让这些悲情故事再次被指出，无论是有意还是无意，而另一方面，他们在让人难以察觉费用上涨的同时，做得相当不错。

David Rosenthal:Value added services.  增值服务。

Gaurav Ahuja:Yeah, you guys talked a lot about value added services. And so to dive deeper into how MDR is set, it's not the simple 2% or 3% that we've been talking about this whole time. There is, as you guys pointed out, there's credit card schemes. So there's visa traditional, Visa signature, Visa infinite. All three of those have a different fee. 

Gaurav Ahuja:是的，你们谈了很多关于增值服务的内容。因此，为了更深入地了解 MDR 的设置，它并不是我们一直在谈论的简单的 2%或 3%。正如你们指出的那样，还有信用卡计划。所以有 Visa 传统、Visa 签名、Visa 无限。这三者都有不同的费用。

Every type of swipe has a different fee, whether it's card not present or present. 

每种刷卡类型的费用都不同，无论是卡不在场还是在场。

Every type of customer has a different fee scheme. So whether it's consumer credit, consumer debit charge card, credit card, small business charge card, corporate credit card, all different. And then even every category, as we've talked about, has different fees. So gaming versus gas versus grocery, all different fees. So you've got this four dimensional spreadsheet that they can kind of like pull and tug on different strings to increase certain parts while decreasing other parts. But really the most valuable parts are. 

每种类型的客户都有不同的费用方案。因此，无论是消费信贷、消费借记卡、信用卡、小型企业信用卡、公司信用卡，都是不同的。然后，即使是每个类别，如我们所讨论的，也有不同的费用。因此，游戏与汽油与杂货，费用都不同。所以你有一个四维的电子表格，他们可以在不同的方面进行调整，以增加某些部分，同时减少其他部分。但实际上最有价值的部分是。

David Rosenthal:Probably getting increased, whereas the least valuable parts seem to be getting the headlines exactly right. 

David Rosenthal:可能正在增加，而最不重要的部分似乎正好把标题弄对了。

Gaurav Ahuja:I pointed out how they decreased interchange fees in the rental category before, which is true. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我之前指出他们如何降低租赁类别的交换费，这是真的。

On the other hand, the gaming category is increased, which I'm sure is much. 

另一方面，游戏类别增加了，我确信这很多。

Ben Gilbert:Larger for visa right now. 

Ben Gilbert:目前visa更大。

David Rosenthal:One other thing I wanted your take on after doing the episode was these systems like Pics and UPI, these are India and Brazil's real time payment networks. These are working very well in those countries and have inspired Fednow in the US. Do you think that's a credible threat to visa? 

David Rosenthal:在做完这一集后，我还想听听你对这些系统的看法，比如 Pics 和 UPI，这些是印度和巴西的实时支付网络。这些在这些国家运作得非常好，并且启发了美国的 Fednow。你认为这对 Visa 是一个可信的威胁吗？

Gaurav Ahuja:I think Pix and UPI were developed in a really different market environment in India and Brazil relative to the Fed now in the US. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我认为 Pix 和 UPI 是在印度和巴西的一个非常不同的市场环境中开发的，相对于美国现在的联邦储备。

And just to say more on that, credit card penetration was just a lot lower in India and Brazil, and payment terminals weren't ubiquitous everywhere in those countries. 

再多说一点，印度和巴西的信用卡普及率要低得多，而且这些国家的支付终端并不普及。

In fact, I remember looking at UPI based startups in India at the time. And when UPI was launched, India basically had 50 million active credit card users out of a population of a billion. So it was really that specific 50 million high income users that were, say, shopping at malls or some e commerce transactions. 

事实上，我记得当时在印度关注基于 UPI 的初创公司。而当 UPI 推出时，印度在十亿人口中基本上有 5000 万活跃的信用卡用户。所以，真正进行购物或一些电子商务交易的是那 5000 万高收入用户。

But on the whole, there was this massive gap in the market that was still cash based. And so the secular tailwind of moving from cash to digital wasn't actually totally being served, not as a result of anything visa did, but just payment processing wasn't a thing in as broad of a sense. So UPI could come in with a government mandate and actually take over from day one. And I think the reason that's probably different in the US is that Visa and Mastercard are already so entrenched and the problem is kind of solved. Yes, it comes with fees, as we've talked about already, but they've done such a good job spreading the value that I think people are kind of happy with this equilibrium, or happy in a sense that it's resulting in equilibrium. And then moreover, I look at how Fednow is being rolled out and this is a huge if. But if it is being run the way it's kind of currently being run, I feel like it's got no shot anytime soon at really taking share. The reason I say that is the rollout is already kind of a slow and tedious rollout. They're trying to take it one step at a time. But the whole point of trying to launch a payment network is that it is a network. You need scale, you need users, you need the banks to be a participant in it. And unfortunately, at start there were only 35 banks that opted in. But some of the massive names like bank of America or Citi just weren't a part of it at all. If you're somebody trying to build a product experience around instant payments on Fed now, you're going to have a really hard time because a substantial percent of your transactions won't be real time. 

但总体而言，市场上仍然存在一个巨大的现金为主的空白。因此，从现金转向数字化的长期趋势实际上并没有完全得到满足，这并不是因为 Visa 做了什么，而是支付处理在广泛意义上并不是一回事。因此，UPI 可以凭借政府的授权从第一天起就接管。我认为这在美国可能不同的原因是 Visa 和 Mastercard 已经如此根深蒂固，问题已经得到解决。是的，正如我们已经讨论过的那样，这伴随着费用，但他们在传播价值方面做得如此出色，我认为人们对这种平衡感到满意，或者在某种意义上说，它导致了平衡。此外，我看看 Fednow 的推出方式，这是一个巨大的假设。但如果它以目前的方式运行，我觉得它在短期内没有机会真正占据市场份额。我之所以这么说，是因为推出已经有点缓慢和乏味。他们试图一步一步来。但尝试启动支付网络的重点是它是一个网络。 你需要规模，你需要用户，你需要银行参与其中。不幸的是，起初只有 35 家银行选择加入。但一些大银行如美国银行或花旗银行根本没有参与。如果你是一个试图围绕 Fed Now 上的即时支付构建产品体验的人，你会遇到很大的困难，因为你相当大比例的交易将不是实时的。

So your choice as a product company is to not launch the product or launch a bad product. And you're going to choose not launch the product. 

所以，作为一家产品公司，你的选择是不发布产品或发布一个糟糕的产品。而你会选择不发布产品。

David Rosenthal:Yeah. Funny thing about these network effect businesses, they often require near 100% penetration in order for them to be viable. You can't really guarantee an experience and then have it only work with 70% of the participants in the network. 

David Rosenthal:是的。这些网络效应业务的有趣之处在于，它们通常需要接近 100%的渗透率才能可行。你不能真正保证一种体验，然后让它只在网络中 70%的参与者中起作用。

Gaurav Ahuja:Exactly. If you're a fintech company and you're deciding go or no go, 70% is not going to cut it to determine launching a new product on Fetnow. 

Gaurav Ahuja:没错。如果你是一家金融科技公司，并且正在决定是否推进，70%是不足以决定在 Fetnow 上推出新产品的。

David Rosenthal:Fascinating.  迷人。

Well, Gaurav, on a lot of this stuff, I felt like I knew a lot coming in from doing the visa episode. And I've realized that in typical sort of acquired fashion, we did our best in a four hour episode to round off all the rough quarters and say on an 80 20 basis, you now understand the 80% case. And yeah, there are a lot of details here and there, but you sort of understand this in the majority of cases. And what I'm realizing from this conversation is, man, that 20% is sort of growing in complexity. It's growing to be a larger percentage transactions, and it matters a lot. And I think that's the complicated story of payments today, is you can get the general gist, but to really be successful in this ecosystem, understanding all the corner cases and all the dynamism in the industry right now is actually extremely important. 

好吧，Gaurav，在很多事情上，我觉得在做visa那一集时我已经了解了很多。我意识到，我们以典型的方式，在四小时的节目中尽力将所有棘手的部分圆满解决，并以 80/20 的原则来说，你现在理解了 80%的情况。是的，这里那里有很多细节，但在大多数情况下你大致理解了。而我从这次对话中意识到的是，那 20%的复杂性正在增长，正在成为更大比例的交易，并且非常重要。我认为这就是当今支付的复杂故事，你可以了解大概，但要在这个生态系统中真正成功，理解所有的边缘情况和当前行业中的动态变化实际上是极其重要的。

Gaurav Ahuja:I really love that. As a summary, I guess there's a reason you guys do what you do, which is you can take a bunch of complex detail and abstract it away, which is exactly right here. And that 20% is both where the challenges are going to exist. It's also where the opportunities are for a bunch of startups out there. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我真的很喜欢这一点。总的来说，我想你们做你们所做的事情是有原因的，因为你们可以将一堆复杂的细节抽象化，这正是这里的关键。而那 20%既是挑战所在，也是外面一堆初创公司机会所在。

David Rosenthal:Yeah, speaking of startups, you do a lot of investing in fintech companies. We briefly touched on thrive at the beginning. But can you give me a little bit more of a sense of what does this quite secretive firm invest in? And as you guys have grown so large, I mean, 15 billion Aum reasonably quickly is kind of a crazy, out of nowhere story with nine investors. Small team. 

David Rosenthal:是的，说到初创公司，你在金融科技公司进行了大量投资。我们在一开始简要提到了 thrive。但你能不能多给我一点关于这家相当神秘的公司投资什么的感觉？而且随着你们的成长如此之快，我的意思是，150 亿的管理资产在相当短的时间内增长，这有点像是一个疯狂的、出乎意料的故事，只有九个投资者。小团队。

Ben Gilbert:Josh did that great interview with Patrick on Invest like the best. 

Ben Gilbert:乔希在《像最优秀者一样投资》中与帕特里克进行了精彩的采访。

Everyone should go. Listen to that if you haven't already. But there's not a ton out there about you guys. 

每个人都应该去。如果你还没听过，就去听听。但关于你们的信息并不多。

David Rosenthal:What does thrive look like today? 

David Rosenthal:今天的繁荣是什么样的？

Gaurav Ahuja:I'll hit on the small team part. 

Gaurav Ahuja:我会专注于小团队部分。

It's one of the things that drew me to the firm. 

这是吸引我到这家公司工作的原因之一。

When I joined, we were six people on the investment team. We're nine people on the investment team today. The firm as a whole has grown a ton. But the reason I think it's so special is that each of our sub teams is really small still, and what that allows is this deep level of shared consciousness. I've worked with my partners for many, many years now, such that I can probably predict how they might react to an opportunity or what questions they might be asking if they were in a room when they're not even there. And we don't have these formal investment committees where some small portion of the team is joining. We are all the investment committee every single meeting, critically debating each other's thoughts. And so even if we're going a little long or debating an extra minute thought, one meeting, it's kind of compounding for the next one and the next one after that. And inventure, which is a power law business, as you guys know, being 1% better every single quarter really, really starts to add up. And if you can be 93% good in your thinking versus 90% good, I really think it shifts the odds of you trying to get a shot at working with one of those category defining companies. So that's the team part and why we've stayed so small. And I think we always will have that same mentality on the what do we invest inside? 

当我加入时，我们的投资团队有六个人。今天我们的投资团队有九个人。整个公司已经大幅增长。但我认为它如此特别的原因是我们的每个子团队仍然非常小，这使得我们能够达到这种深层次的共同意识。我和我的合伙人已经合作了很多年，以至于我可能可以预测他们在面对一个机会时的反应，或者如果他们不在房间里，他们可能会问什么问题。我们没有那种只有一小部分团队成员参加的正式投资委员会。我们每次会议都是投资委员会，认真辩论彼此的想法。因此，即使我们在某次会议上花费的时间稍长或辩论一个额外的细节，这也会对下一次会议产生复利效应。在风险投资这个幂律业务中，正如你们所知，每个季度提高 1%真的会累积起来。如果你的思维能达到 93%的好而不是 90%的好，我真的认为这会改变你尝试与那些定义类别的公司合作的机会。 这就是团队的部分，以及我们为什么保持如此小规模的原因。我认为我们在内部投资什么方面始终会保持这种心态。

The answer is pretty simple. The answer is that we want to find category creating or category defining companies, and we want to partner with them as early as possible. 

And we've invested everywhere from seed stages to public rounds and everywhere in between. 

我们从种子阶段到公开轮次以及中间的各个阶段都进行了投资。

When we work with companies, we try to lean in in a massive way, and then the thing that makes us perhaps a little unique is that we'll go earlier than early. We will not just invest at the seed stage, but we work in a lot of ways with founders who are starting to think about that next idea but don't know exactly what they're thinking about. And we've got this wonderful insights team that will actually sprint at ideas with founders along their journey to help them crystallize their idea. Venture at the seed stage is kind of funny sometimes, which is, hey, I'm a founder, I've got an idea. 

当我们与公司合作时，我们会以一种大规模的方式投入，然后让我们可能有点独特的是，我们会比早期更早介入。我们不仅仅在种子阶段投资，还会以多种方式与那些开始思考下一个想法但不确切知道他们在想什么的创始人合作。我们有一个很棒的洞察团队，他们实际上会在创始人的旅程中与他们一起冲刺想法，帮助他们明确自己的想法。有时候，种子阶段的风险投资有点有趣，就是说，嘿，我是个创始人，我有个想法。

It's not built yet. I'm going to come pitch the VC firm, VC firm, go back in a black box, make a debate, ask a bunch of tough questions and come back to me and spit out yes or no. That's the process today. And I think what we've tried to create here is let's co diligence this or let's co explore this together. And over several weeks or months together, we'll ask those same tough questions and do the calls together. We're going to do the market report research together. Were going to go tap our network to introduce you to the right people together. And by the way, at the end of this, hopefully youre coming out with either the conclusion of this is not worth the next decade of my life spending time on, or a lot more conviction in the idea. And if we can have that conviction together from the seed level thats so unique in this market that I think it builds the foundation for a really long lasting relationship. 

它还没有建成。我打算去向风险投资公司推销，风险投资公司，然后回到一个黑匣子里，进行辩论，问一堆棘手的问题，然后回到我这里，给出是或否的答案。这就是今天的流程。我认为我们在这里尝试创建的是让我们共同尽职调查或共同探索这个问题。在几周或几个月的时间里，我们将一起提出那些同样棘手的问题，并一起进行电话会议。我们将一起进行市场报告研究。我们将利用我们的网络一起为你介绍合适的人。顺便说一句，在这一切结束时，希望你能得出结论，这不值得我未来十年的时间，或者对这个想法有更多的信念。如果我们能从种子阶段就共同拥有这种信念，这在这个市场上是非常独特的，我认为这为建立一个真正持久的关系奠定了基础。

David Rosenthal:I love that. So either way, it's sort of a successful outcome for the founder. So either it's yes, let's do this together or no, and you probably also shouldn't do it, but of course you let them come to their own conclusion on that. 

David Rosenthal:我喜欢这样。所以无论哪种方式，这对创始人来说都是一种成功的结果。所以要么是“是的，我们一起做这个”，要么是“不，你可能也不应该这样做”，但当然你让他们自己得出结论。

Ben Gilbert:I'm curious what the pitch is to founders about doing this process. And I assume part of it is what you just said. And yes, that sounds like a great experience, but this also isn't happening in a vacuum. There is a market for seed financing out there. A response I might think of to that is like, that sounds great, but I can also go pitch 20 other firms and a whole bunch of them will just give me money right now. Why should I spend all this time. 

Ben Gilbert:我很好奇向创始人推销这个过程的说辞是什么。我想其中一部分是你刚才说的。是的，这听起来是一次很棒的体验，但这也不是在真空中发生的。外面有一个种子融资的市场。我可能会想到的一个回应是，这听起来不错，但我也可以去向其他 20 家公司推销，其中很多公司现在就会给我钱。我为什么要花这么多时间。

Gaurav Ahuja:With you if a founder has already determined everything they need to know about the idea, which is certainly the case, sometimes it's a founder who's worked in the industry, or maybe it was an open source project they're running on the side and they're ready to go edit full time. Those are instances where you don't really need to co explore the idea, and I totally buy that. And we're still going to make sure we're there for that process as a more traditional looking seed round, but for a lot of processes out there, I actually think there's this moment in time where you have a few categories or kind of nuggets of ideas you're really excited about, but you really either want to, a, refine them or b, kind of have the pressure tested. Thinking from somebody who will be doing that eventually in a pitch anyway, and doing that in the, out in the open together versus again, in this like closed door black box is a VC investment committee, I think is a much healthier experience for both sides, and then it just leads to better partnership. I think any founder who's looking to work with the firm, if you pitch somebody and get an answer in a week, that could be one great way to work with somebody. But it'd be much better to have a foundation that was built over several months, or better yet, several years, is actually often the way this happens with us, where now we both have the foundation of working styles with one another, but also have the foundation on the idea, and that we've kind of pressure tested every corner. 

Gaurav Ahuja:如果创始人已经确定了他们需要了解的关于这个想法的一切，这种情况确实存在，有时是创始人在该行业工作过，或者可能是他们在业余时间运行的一个开源项目，并且他们准备全职投入。这些情况下，你不需要共同探索这个想法，我完全理解这一点。我们仍然会确保在这个过程中以更传统的种子轮方式支持，但对于很多过程，我实际上认为在某个时刻，你会有一些类别或想法的片段让你非常兴奋，但你真的想要，a，完善它们，或者 b，进行压力测试。考虑到最终会在推介中这样做的人，并且在公开场合一起这样做，而不是在这种封闭的黑箱中进行，我认为这对双方来说是更健康的体验，并且会导致更好的合作关系。 我认为任何想与公司合作的创始人，如果你向某人推销并在一周内得到答复，这可能是与某人合作的一种好方法。但更好的方法是建立一个经过几个月，或者更好是几年时间构建的基础，这实际上通常是我们与人合作的方式，现在我们不仅在彼此的工作风格上有了基础，而且在想法上也有了基础，并且我们已经在各个方面进行了压力测试。

So as the idea evolves or things aren't going well, we're not sitting here freaking out because we didn't understand what we invested in. We're actually sitting here trying to be constructive, helping with the problems, and I. 

因此，随着想法的发展或事情进展不顺利，我们不会坐在这里惊慌失措，因为我们不理解我们投资的内容。我们实际上是坐在这里试图建设性地解决问题，而我。

Ben Gilbert:Guess also married to what thrive has become now too multi multi billion dollar asset under management firm. 

Ben Gilbert:猜测也嫁给了现在已经成为数十亿美元资产管理公司的繁荣。

I would imagine part of the pitch too, is not just like, oh, we do this and then there's a great seed round and it's like, oh, yeah, and we can be a major capital provider to you for a very, very long time. 

我想象推销的一部分不仅仅是说，哦，我们做这个，然后有一个很好的种子轮融资，而是说，哦，是的，我们可以在很长一段时间内成为你的主要资本提供者。

So it's worth it to invest in this deep relationship with us. 

所以值得投资于与我们的深厚关系。

Gaurav Ahuja:Listen, it's capital, it's a communications team, it's data science team, it's a talent team. There's not just one person you will ever interact with at the firm. It's certainly all nine investors who are now bought in fully into your idea and are going to storytell on your behalf. And then every type of function or service that you will either need today or at some point in the future of the company. There are thought partners that you can work with at the right moments in time, and you can pull on those strings with, again, a group of an entire firm, not just that one individual. 

Gaurav Ahuja:听着，这是资本，这是一个沟通团队，这是一个数据科学团队，这是一个人才团队。在公司里，你将不仅仅与一个人互动。现在有九位投资者完全认可你的想法，并将为你讲述故事。然后是你今天或公司未来某个时候需要的每种类型的职能或服务。在合适的时机，你可以与思维伙伴合作，并且可以与整个公司团队一起拉动这些资源，而不仅仅是那一个人。

David Rosenthal:We would be remiss if we didn't give a shout out to great friends of acquired the Nava team, where this is literally a case study in exactly what you're talking about. Incubated at Thrive, co founded by a thrive partner. Companies doing super well and Thrive has been a major player in every single round that they've done. It's one thing for someone to come on a podcast and say here's the strategy and lay it out in broad strokes, but this is literally an angel investment of mine where I've watched it happen firsthand and it's very cool. 

David Rosenthal:如果我们不向获得 Nava 团队的好朋友们致敬，那我们就太失职了，这正是你所谈论的一个案例研究。它在 Thrive 孵化，由 Thrive 的合伙人共同创立。公司发展得非常好，Thrive 在他们进行的每一轮融资中都扮演了重要角色。有人在播客上说这是策略并大致勾勒出来是一回事，但这实际上是我的一个天使投资，我亲眼目睹了它的发生，非常酷。

Gaurav Ahuja:Thanks. I appreciate you saying that. And the Nava team is truly amazing. We're not always the best at talking about ourselves, as you guys alluded to, so it's way better and we think it speaks much louder volumes when it's founders being able to tell stories about working with thrive. And anytime there's a founder considering working with us, our answers you should definitely talk to the founders. We've worked with them in the past. That's a way better story than the one we're going to be able to tell you ourselves. 

Gaurav Ahuja:谢谢。感谢你这么说。Nava 团队真的很了不起。正如你们提到的，我们不总是擅长谈论自己，所以当创始人能够讲述与 thrive 合作的故事时，这更好，我们认为这更有说服力。每当有创始人考虑与我们合作时，我们的回答是你一定要和那些创始人聊聊。我们过去曾与他们合作过。这比我们自己能告诉你的故事要好得多。

David Rosenthal:Love it.  喜欢它。

Well, Gaurav, this has been a blast. Thank you so much. 

好吧，Gaurav，这真是太棒了。非常感谢你。

Gaurav Ahuja:Totally. I am so glad we were able to do this. And if you'll let me, I just have to thank you guys for everything you do on acquired to date this back to why I'm probably working in business at all today. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全同意。我很高兴我们能够做到这一点。如果你允许的话，我必须感谢你们为收购所做的一切，这让我回想起为什么我今天可能会从事商业工作。

Going back to undergrad, where I thought I was going to be going into medicine or become a doctor, there was this one class that I took pass fail my senior year. It's one of those throwaway classes taking out of curiosity called american business history. 

回到本科阶段，当时我以为自己会进入医学领域或成为一名医生，我在大四时选了一门通过/不通过的课程。这是一门出于好奇而选的无关紧要的课程，叫做美国商业史。

And man, did I work the hardest I've ever worked at a class for that pass fail class. I just loved it. I loved the material. I loved the random stories we learned about tv and tv advertising emerging for the first time in the 19 hundreds and how that led to consolidation of CPG brands. I loved reading about milk co ops and how they came together in each market, and these were stories that really stuck with me and I was applying them or thinking about how they related to businesses in the real world today. 

天哪，我在那门通过/不通过的课程上付出了我有史以来最努力的工作。我就是喜欢它。我喜欢这些材料。我喜欢我们了解到的关于电视和电视广告在 1900 年代首次出现的随机故事，以及这如何导致了消费品品牌的整合。我喜欢阅读关于牛奶合作社的内容以及它们如何在每个市场中聚集在一起，这些故事真的让我印象深刻，我正在应用它们或思考它们如何与当今现实世界中的企业相关。

And what you guys do is a total extension of that class. In my mind, you are educating the world, all of us as listeners, on the most iconic companies. 

你们所做的完全是那堂课的延伸。在我看来，你们正在向全世界、我们所有听众教育最具标志性的公司。

And what I like even more is that so much of my corner of the world, which is venture and startups, really admires other venture backed companies and other startups. But oftentimes those are stories that are maybe five years old or in the best case scenario, 20 to 30 years old, like a Facebook or Google. And the reality is, sure, I'm sure there are learnings there, but how do we actually learn from the most iconic companies that are 100 years old out there? 

而我更喜欢的是，我所在的世界角落，即风险投资和初创公司，真的很欣赏其他风险投资支持的公司和其他初创公司。但这些故事往往可能是五年前的，或者在最好的情况下是二三十年前的，比如 Facebook 或 Google。现实是，当然，我相信那里有很多经验可以学习，但我们如何真正从那些已经存在 100 年的最具标志性的公司中学习呢？

That's a crazy thought to me. A company can last for 100 plus years, and that's what you all do. Those are the types of companies you all study. So I get the benefit of that education. So thank you. As a founder, trying to make it as an investor, trying to always have an edge, I so appreciate and love what you guys are doing. 

这对我来说是个疯狂的想法。一家公司可以持续 100 多年，而这正是你们所做的。那些是你们研究的公司类型。所以我从中受益匪浅。所以谢谢你们。作为创始人，努力成为一名投资者，努力始终保持优势，我非常欣赏和热爱你们正在做的事情。

Ben Gilbert:Just really grateful for the friendship that means so much. Thank you. That's been a huge discovery for Ben and me over the last year. 18 months of we used to just be in our little tech and venture ecosystem and there's nothing wrong with that. That's great. And there are great stories there too. But actually it's these really, really old ones, the LVMHs, the Costcos, the Nikes that are of Undertold in our industry, surprisingly. 

Ben Gilbert:真的非常感激这段意义重大的友谊。谢谢。在过去的一年里，这对我和本来说是一个巨大的发现。18 个月前，我们只是在我们的小科技和风险投资生态系统中，这没有什么不对。这很棒。而且那里也有很棒的故事。但实际上，真正、真正古老的公司，如 LVMH、Costco、Nike，在我们的行业中却出人意料地少有人讲述。

David Rosenthal:Yeah. David, it just occurred to me we should make a plot starting in 2015 to today where the x axis is date and the y axis is age of company covered and sort of watch it shift back in time. Because I think our personal taste has definitely shifted from the shiny to the enduring over these last eight years. 

David Rosenthal:是的。大卫，我刚刚想到我们应该制作一个从 2015 年到今天的图表，其中 x 轴是日期，y 轴是公司覆盖的年龄，并观察它如何向后移动。因为我认为在过去的八年里，我们的个人品味确实从光鲜转向了持久。

Ben Gilbert:It means a lot coming for me to hear you say that. 

Ben Gilbert:听到你这么说对我来说意义重大。

What we've believed is that and by studying those companies, it brings new dimension to the arena that we operate in, which is the new company arena. 

我们所相信的是，通过研究这些公司，它为我们所处的领域带来了新的维度，这就是新公司领域。

Gaurav Ahuja:100% agree with that, guys. All I can say is that I hope in 100 years, whatever the young kids are doing, instead of podcasts, they are going back and looking on acquired and telling the story of acquired themselves. 

Gaurav Ahuja:完全同意，伙计们。我只能说，我希望在 100 年后，无论年轻人做什么，而不是播客，他们会回过头来研究已获得的东西，并讲述他们自己获得的故事。

Ben Gilbert:Gaurav, let's all hope for that. 

Ben Gilbert:Gaurav，让我们都希望如此。

David Rosenthal:Thank you so much. Thank you and listeners, we'll see you next time. 

David Rosenthal:非常感谢。谢谢你和听众们，我们下次再见。

Ben Gilbert:We'll see you next time. 下次见。