Boarding in progress.
Crunchfish, the company has just released its year-end report for 2024. I'm joined by the CEO, Joachim Samuelsson. Very much welcome, Joachim.
Thank you, Martin. Thank you.
I will talk about the report, of course, prospects and ambitions for the company. It is also based on your questions. I encourage all viewers to send in questions using the Q&A function at the bottom of the frame. We will address them during the session, of course. Let us start with the report. The headline is focusing on business. Why have you chosen this headline?
I think it is almost I don't know how many have contacted me and said, "We need business. We need business. We need business." I don't know. We know we need business. That is what we need to create. We have a fantastic product. We have fantastic technology. What is really going to turn things around is that we actually can capitalize, that we can commercialize our technology. It is focused on business. We fully understand that. That is what we need to do. We have developed over the years a lot of technology. Some has not been successful. Now we have focused down sort of our business to, let's bet on this, offline payments that we filed for a patent in 2020 and worked with since then. A lot of focus has been on India, as we understood that India has an opportunity in this area.
We have said, "We understand. We need to get business now. We cannot just go on with great technology that hopefully will give something." Now we have to deliver as well. Certainly, I think our whole financial situation demands that. Time is actually against us right now. We just need to perform. The focus is in the company for business. We know that. That is why I think I put it as a high headline that we understand. Yeah.
Yeah. We will come back to the patent discussion a bit later.
Sure.
Let's start from your most imminent focus area, which is India. Could you describe the environment? I mean, you're in talks with the Reserve Bank of India and National Payment Corporation of India and several banks. Yeah.
Yeah. What's going on?
Yeah, what's going on in the market?
Yeah. I think from a reporting perspective, I'm actually very glad to say that we've developed our product for demands in India. And we've been focusing on India since day one of offline payments. The development that has happened during the last months here has been in India. That is, if we're going to look at 2025, what can turn this around? India is the key market, for sure. We're very happy that this is where things have actually happened a lot.
RBI is pushing for implementing the digital currency.
Yes. That is one thing that is going on. I think the RBI took already in 2023 a decision that they will pilot their digital rupee. It was a product that already from the start, they said it's going to work also offline. They built a system, which I think let's come back on that after I describe all the roles as you first asked. They built a system, which is that they digitized the bank note, that you have physical bank notes, bills, basically, INR 100 bills and INR 1,000 bills and so on. They just made an exact copy of that, but digitally. This is news. They are actually going away from that. It's not going to be based on that.
This shift in the market is actually very good for us because now they're going to develop a new system which is much more closer to how we look upon offline payments. It suits better.
This is what you're writing in your report. This is the value-based tokens.
Yeah. Instead of having only fixed values, they have a digital token for INR 1,000 and INR 400. Then a token could be on any value. Why is that important? If you think of it in a payment situation, it's going to be hard in a payment situation because I need to have exactly the right amount of tokens. Alternatively, you would have some tokens that you can turn back as a change, giving me back something. That will very seldom match exactly the amounts. In online, you can sort of do it because then you can online do some of the changes. If you're offline and you're stuck with what you have, it's actually hard to get something actually working. They've realized this. That's why they're doing a major change.
Back to the roles that RBI is pushing along for offline payments. They've been doing that since they came up with their idea that let's pilot for digital rupee. It's similar to what other central banks are doing in the world, that offline becomes sort of a priority. We've seen it in Europe. We've seen it. We're involved with some other central banks in the world as well. Offline is driven in a way by the central banks. Their cash is offline, the physical cash. Digital cash needs to be that as well. RBI is pushing this along. There is this company, NPCI, or this organization, I'd say NPCI. This is the National Payment Corporation of India. They have been started some years back.
They are running the payment system.
They run this payment system. In a way, it's sort of a bank corporation. It's the National Payment Corporation of India. They've also been initiated by RBI. It's almost like a government organization, although they have private players there as well from the banking sector. As you said, they operate, in a way, the systems. They have their enormously successful payment system called UPI. It's now up to, I think, 17 billion transactions annually. No, sorry, monthly. Monthly, I should say. Monthly. They do an enormous amount of online transactions. They've launched something called UPI Lite X, which is a very similar system to ours, but it's still not out in the market. RBI has not let them go beyond. They have it in their own app. NPCI has their own app in the market, which is not spread very widely in the market.
That is the only place they have it. Offline is not really there with it. They have it, but it's not that there. NPCI is the company behind a lot of the payment products in India, and especially then UPI. NPCI is also involved with RBI because they are the one that writes the specs for how now, yeah, both the previous system and now the value-based system. NPCI is also integrally involved in how the digital rupee is going to be organized. NPCI is also a very important player for what RBI is doing in this area. Then we come to the banks. The banks, they are the ones that are behind it. If we talk to digital rupee, there are 15 pilot banks that RBI is working with to sort of launch this.
They've recently also opened up that also sort of other players than just banks can actually also do digital rupee transactions. That's also a recent sort of announcement that has happened. Not only the banks' payment instruments can do it, but also third-party application providers, they're called. They will also do it. This whole mix is where we are acting. We have dialogues with the RBI . Physically, I met them in January. I was there for the Harbinger third-year final of the hackathon. I met with the NPCI . I met with sort of banks while I was there as well. We are talking to all of them here, including the wallets also. In this mix, we are positioning our offline technology as something of value. There is still, I would say, keen interest.
There's been a lot of discussions back and forth and a lot of proposals back and forth. I'm happy to go into more of the details there. We haven't lost the game in India. There has been rather shifts in the market. I think the most important shift is that RBI is introducing now value-based tokens, which for an offline sense, it's sort of working like our system is sort of working, that you sign out an exact amount that I pay you with, Martin. I'm not just having something almost like a voucher that I can give you. We will have a problem with that.
You'll have a big change.
Yeah, we will have a big problem there. Now they have a system that actually, I think, is set up for proper offline payments. We are, as RBI knows us, they have even approved our system back in 2023. They know we can do offline payments. They are pushing in a way for how about working with sort of the Crunchfish Joachim model.
Can I ask about, do you know anything about the change to value-based token? Is it imminent, or is it a plan for?
Yes, it's imminent. They're doing it now. RBI, they have a deadline for all the pilot banks needs to be ready in Q1 with the shift into a new architecture. That affects, it's not only offline. It affects online as well because the whole system will change. The deadline is Q1. Everybody, all the banks are super busy right now doing this shift here, really. In the mix of that, it also now opens up a much more opportunity to actually properly do offline payments. This is where we come in.
Do they have a plan for the offline segment as well, or just?
Any of the pilot banks, not all pilot banks have done offline payments in the first sort of we talked to one bank the other week. They were one of the first ones. They launched already in 2023. They since then had only done online payments. For them, they will now first update it to value-based payments for online payments before they actually take on offline payments as well. There are some banks, some of the leading banks actually, that have done offline payments. For them, they need to update it as well for the offline part.
There will obviously be a need to do the offline payment solution. What alternatives do they have apart from you? Do you have any competition?
There are. I think one thing which was announced just, I think that was just a month back. We were in their regulatory sandbox back in 2023 for our smartphone-based offline payment system. They have just announced that they are going to work with a company called Exto in India. They are very good at doing it on a smart card. They are going to be now in the regulatory sandbox. We have not been focused on, say, the actual smart card. We focus on actually doing it on a mobile. They are now in the regulatory sandbox for that. That is another way of implementing offline payments that you actually can do it from a card as well. They are going to try that, which is fine. Obviously, there is NPCI, what they have done.
They've done one solution for offline for UPI, but it hasn't yet because it's not secure enough. It hasn't been spread in the market.
That is the UPI Lite X that you mentioned.
Yeah, that's UPI Lite X. They can't just take UPI Lite X into what is happening. That is another offline player, which is part of the ecosystem. As that one hasn't been released yet because of issues, we are talking to RBI and we're talking to NPCI that we who have an approved solution already, why don't we build it on sort of our technology, which could be sort of the baseline for the market.
Yeah. In all this change, you've started collaboration with a subsidiary to the RBI .
Yeah. They reached out to us. This also was quite recent. They reached out to us after my visit in January for the Harbinger final. It's a subsidiary. They invest in technology, and they look a little bit more long term. The focus area that they want to talk about is offline because I know that's our strength. They also have a related area to offline and to payments, really, which relates to offline as well. They have said if we could help them with developing in that area as well. We made a proposal for them as well. Again, it shows that RBI is, I think we're well seen with RBI. I think they like what we do.
They are for, if we're back to offline again, where the push is for offline in the market, the most focus is right now, let's do it for the digital rupee. This is where the RBI , in a way, sets the agenda. We are one of the players. One thing I might be a good time to come up with that, I think, why does it take so long? Why is it difficult? Why don't we sell already? I think it's linked to the fact that if you are a central bank or National Payment Corporation of India for that matter, who delivers something for the entire country that the whole country should use, they are struggling with making themselves dependent on a private venture. Even an Indian private player, they wouldn't like that either. That would be maybe easier for them to swallow.
They do not really like that either. A foreign private company, it is highly risky for them to make themselves dependent on a foreign entity. Because what happens with this foreign entity if it is sort of, will that foreign entity survive? Also, maybe it is bought up by more of a hostile organization. They are making sure that what we invest in, we need to have control over, and we need to own it. That is one thing. We are working with them to come up with a way of how can you actually get our technology so you control it. We still have the chance to, we cannot give away sort of all rights to our things. How are we going to manage that? This is one of the key discussions that we have. It is similar for Europe.
Europe was very clear in their tendering process for the digital euro. European Central Bank said, we need to own this. We cannot ever put ourselves in a dependent situation on private players. We are willing to pay, we are willing to own it. It is us to actually control it. Similar discussions we have had all along with NPCI since we started talking to them back in 2020. I think they all understand that they need to be in control because otherwise they risk that their backbone of the payment system is actually potentially, you can be in a hostage situation that someone else comes in and sort of puts.
Why not invest directly in Crunchfish?
They don't really, that would mean that it would buy us. That could be one alternative. That could be one alternative. I think what we are rather right now, the solution we're coming up with is that what they could invest in is the right to use our patent solution. All our know-how and the patents, they can have the right to own that. The product could either be delivered together with us, with NPCI to all the banks. Or it could be that the banks will be responsible for actually implementing their own sort of solutions. The fact that they can actually have the right to use our patent base and our know-how means that they can actually own that part. The product delivery in itself could come as a step two.
That could either be with our solution, there is the Exto solution, or it could be other solutions. This means that we can also then scale that solution in the future. There are the discussions with NPCI as well, because NPCI is known to deliver components for this background solution. This is where NPCI, as recent as this week, has come back to us and said, we want an updated proposal from you. We did a proposal back in November, which was our solution.
The proposal is the one that you're describing in the report. They want an updated proposal.
We had already a proposal back in November. That was our solution, which was our technology that we control. As many people who are following us know, we have developed our product. The product is developed within something called VT, a virtual secure element that comes from Singapore. That part is very hard. We can't sell full rights to NPCI or anyone to use that because that's the property of VT. Now the last idea of NPCI is that, why don't we think of this way instead, that let's take that out of the equation and use your technology, but we figure out together the security arrangement around the technology. Right now, I think, and they've said, give us a new updated proposal taking out the virtual secure element in it. That means that our product currently is based on that.
Right now, they want to have the specs and they want all the patents and the know-how. That is what they want to then instead pay for. We can co-create together with them something new, but in this sense, not based on it. This means that they can control it, but they can also then deliver something with our help, but it will be a new sort of system. That was what we voted on as late as this week. It has been a moving target. I think what I want everybody to understand is that I can understand, just like I can understand the European Central Bank, we need to own it. NPCI has the same thing. We cannot distribute to everybody. All of a sudden, there is some hostage situation that we do not have the control of the technology.
RBI thinks the same. I think we've now come up with a way that they could still invest in us and make a deal with us. We co-create something together for the Indian market. Alternatively, as RBI could do as well, let's open. We have the specs. They have the patent right. They could be the banks will then invest something which follows the specs. They will buy the products.
You're now in the process of considering how to respond to the updated request from.
We have already responded.
Yeah.
We've already sent that proposal. We.
Do you have an idea for how long the project will be?
We said in November that it will take three to six months to reach an agreement. I think we would have been there now if they had taken our original proposal. I am glad I said sort of three to six months because now I think we will go into a new round of discussions around this latest proposal. That might take, but we are getting close. We are talking about infrastructure for the entire Indian market. What we would get money for is actually our know-how, our patent rights here. We will co-create something together with them that will be for NPCI that will work offline. It was sent earlier this week. I think it is important. Things are moving all the time. We are responding. I think we are getting closer. This is the big breakthrough for us.
Yeah, I think we are on track of what we said. Three months was in a way, if they had gone for the proposal we sent in November, we could have been there now. Now they've just shifted the goalpost. Let's take out in a way our security arrangement. Let's try to do that together instead.
Which could potentially be a bigger, well, prospect for you.
It is a new scenario. Yeah, that is where we are with it really. There are the banks who are the players that are going to implement this solution and the wallets that are going to implement this solution. They are part of the picture. We are having these discussions with some of these leading banks in the market. I think they understand that we know offline payments very well. The question is, would it be them being fully responsible for the security here themselves? They need us very dearly. Or will they get something here from maybe National Payment Corporation of India and hopefully something deliverable which comes from us and NPCI that NPCI owns, but we have been part of developing that.
You have a commercial agreement with HDFC Bank, IDFC First Bank.
No, IDFC First Bank.
Sorry.
IDFC.
IDFC First Bank.
Yes.
Can you give us any updates? Are they awaiting this upgrade from RBI?
Right now, they're also fully busy on doing this shift into value-based tokens. I think the product we have with them, it's sort of for what we call remote offline that you use the telecom route to connect to the backend instead. That product still works. We had a meeting just a couple of weeks back with IDFC and telling them that with this shift that is happening, there is sort of really almost as long as you do that shift yourself, there is sort of zero impact on this product. This would also come along. IDFC is very, we've talked about full offline as well, where I can pay you without any connectivity. They are keen to, that's a bank that is very keen that we can showcase that in the market. It might come to that as well.
It's good that they're behind us very much still. Yeah.
You also mentioned in the report, you're talking with wallets, digital wallets.
Yeah, that's a big section of the market as well that there are sort of wallets in the market. It's one particular right now that we've had a dialogue for a long time is with a petrol company who have, because if you're out in the countryside, poor coverage, they want, it's a closed loop sort of solution that you put in money into a wallet of that petrol company. Then you can use that for filling up your gas. They like that to work offline. That's one of those, it's not in a way, it's just one opportunity. What I talk about with NPCI and RBI, this is for the whole shebang in India. This is huge compared to some of those minor deals here and there. This is national infrastructure.
This is why they need to own it and can't just, yeah, become too, they can't get dependent on us.
Such a deal with a digital wallet could also validate your case in the market.
Yes, yes. We would be one deal instead of the other one would validate us for the world in a way. That would be a major step forward. We want business if we can get. It would be nice validation, but it would be one player out of many. Whereas a major central bank like India and also done it together with NPCI, who is known for having now the most successful real-time payment system in the world, I think that would be the major breakthrough if we get that one.
Would you like to add anything about the developments in India before we move on outside of India?
No, no, no. I think my basic, India is key to us. I end my CEO word is that this is where we can have, where really we can get a major sort of deal because it's for the whole country if we do it. I think the good news is that a lot of good things have happened in India. Yeah, our key market, which is key to our success, this is where we have taken a lot of good steps forward. That's what excites us. That's what keeps our spirits high in the organization still.
Outside of India.
Yeah.
Can you tell us?
Out here. India is inside India and out here, outside of India. Yeah, let's go to out here.
Yeah. Could you update us on the CBDC projects out here?
The biggest offline product in the world by far is Europe. The central bank, European Central Bank, has budgeted for over EUR 200 million for the offline part. They have said it can even go up to EUR 600 million. It is sort of a tendering process. We have signed very strict confidentiality agreements, so we cannot actually comment on where we are with that one. What they have opened up for as well is that they want something called programmable money. They want innovative ideas. We have filed, and because that is something we filed a patent for back earlier last year. We have said we know how to make programmable payments work for offline payments as well. We hope to get some response out of that. That goes besides, because programmable payments, it is not just for offline.
It's actually for, yeah, it's just a feature of the digital euro system that they're interested in. That's another one we're part of. The major development there for us is that our core patent that we filed in January 2020, that is already granted in the U.S. We got that in July. We also got in December a notice of allowance, which is basically saying the European Patent Office has said, we are now ready to grant you the patent. They give us, okay, this is what we want to grant you for. Are you okay with that? We are in that process now. We've got the notice of allowance. There are some formalities that are going to happen before we actually get the grant.
This is interesting in Europe because it's sort of our original idea, which is very fundamental to offline payments, is actually now being approved not just in the U.S. as we have it, also in Europe. It's pending in India as well. What we came up with in 2020, and I actually didn't, for that reason, I decided let's explain a little bit more in this report of what is this patent. How can you understand it? There are a couple of pages on that. Europe is important in the fact that we're actually getting this one granted here. In Europe, there's one central bank who are right now using our technology for a pilot. This is an unpaid pilot right now, but it's sort of an Eastern European country doing it.
They are sort of now, they're going to soon launch and do a pilot. The pilot's going to be, I don't know if it's ending in Q1 or if it's just Q2, but they're going for it.
It's ongoing.
We have another, it also is the European that is highly interested in our technology that we have discussions with for a pilot as well. We have other central banks interested in our offline technology for, yeah, CBDC. There is the big one. It's obviously European Central Bank, which is a huge project as well. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to say anything.
No.
Because, yeah.
Will the patent loans help you in the tender, do you think?
It depends on how you design things. I think there's a lot of aspects of offline payments, and it's valid. Europe has talked a lot about that they want hardware-based security for offline. This patent protects both for hardware and software. It's not just software-based solutions. It will be there. We will, yeah. It's too early to say anything really. It's something which applies to both software-based security as well as hardware-based security.
Yeah.
Things are happening in Europe. Other parts of the world?
Africa. We have our friends at SaaS Expanse. They actually told us that they had one or even two deals that were closed before the end of the year. None of that has, they did not happen. There is one of these deals on our, it is up for board approval in February. That is very soon. That is sort of an African country where we are hoping to actually then, that is just like this petrol in India. It is sort of a wallet and they want offline because that is important in their country. I hope for us and for SaaS Expanse and also for this country that they take this on. It is a dominant wallet with having, I think, 60-70% of the population using it. It is one of these deals as well, which, as you said, would validate our technology.
It's not as big as India by far, but it's still a, would be a great thing if we would get that. Just to get business, get going and yeah.
Yeah. We spoke a bit about patents in Europe. What's the situation in India?
All our patent applications are pending in India. Nothing has been granted there yet. This one we filed originally in 2020. We got it first in the US. We got it in Europe. India is, you know, we are in that examination process. This is the one we hope we will get. That will actually protect us for offline payments similar to UPI Lite X. It will be hard, I think, to do UPI Lite X if we get this patent sort of approved. I think we would exploit this patent for how we want to do offline payments for the digital rupee as well. This is not our only patent, this one in 2020. We have, I think it's, I don't know, is it more than 10? They are also in various stages.
The one we filed already in 2020 is now the one which is granted in the U.S., granted soon in Europe, and pending in China and India as well. We do not have the patent yet, but it is in process.
In process. Yeah. We received a question regarding the NPCI. The thing that they do not like, V-Key, is it for the same reason as Crunchfish, a small player outside of India or?
I think they appreciate what V-Key has done. The V-Key, the virtual secure element, is a great thing. I think NPCI also recognized that. I think we've talked about doing a proof of concept. This has been for doing a proof of concept of the virtual secure element. That's what they've been asking for because they wanted to see, understand it more in operation. The problem is not that they don't like us or like V-Key. The problem is with control. Because the V-Key system, the virtual secure element that they deliver, VOS, virtual operating system, that is a security environment that V-Key has sold to hundreds of companies in the world, banks and many, many other places. V-Key cannot provide NPCI with full control and source code. They basically said, we can't because then they will jeopardize the security for their other customers.
We have explained to NPCI, and we did that in November, and we were explaining it again when we had a meeting in December with NPCI that the US virtual secure element from V-Key, that's an operating environment which is secure. You cannot get access to full control of that. This is why they now turned to us and said, for our solution, which we need control over, let's do it this way. We want to work with you, give us a quote, but take out VSE out of the equation so we could actually together, because NPCI have a lot of payment products. They know a lot about security, but they don't have a virtual secure element, but they know about security still.
They are figuring out, can we actually do something together on the security side, which we have then control over, but using your know-how and technology for offline payments. This is where it now stands.
Okay.
Yeah.
We also have a question regarding the bidding and the talks with NPCI. How many players are talking with NPCI in competition with you? Do you know?
No. I do not think there are too many. Not that many. There are. I think we just, we saw this Exto. We met them a few times at these Harbinger events where we see a little bit the Indian.
That's the card.
Yeah, they are strong on the standalone cards that you can have a stored value on the card. They talked to, I think, RBI , and they talked to National Payment Corporation of India. There are some other solutions for various implementations here. I think our strength is that we were very early. We have some key patents. They know for the form factor of a smartphone, which National Payment Corporation of India focus on, and we focus on as well, I think we have the most know-how in that area. This is why I think we are in these discussions still. I do not think ideally they would have loved to work with an Indian player, but they are, as I said, as late as this week, they have asked us, let's do it this way now then.
We want to control, let's do with your technology for the Indian market, but let's take out then V-Key out of the equation because you can't sell that to us and with full rights. We can't. V-Key, I've just said that we discussed that with V-Key as well. They've said we can't give it, we simply can't give that right. That is just because it would jeopardize their own business really. They would have to buy that also. I think they are, they're not, yeah, they're not asking us to buy us. They're not asking to buy V-Key. That's why it's.
Yeah. Regarding the ECB tender, could you tell anything about the competition there or is it just?
I think it was official for offline, there were five, maximum five. That's all they said. It's going to be.
You're one of them together?
We're one of the five.
You're part of this.
One of the five. Yeah, and that's all they've been officially released. Nothing else really. Yeah.
We have a question regarding if you are in discussion with the Georgian Central Bank regarding CBDC. Is that something you can answer?
That is very, yeah, that could vary. We are in discussions with Eastern European, and Georgia could be one of them. I am not sure if under the NDA agreements I could actually sort of say anything. That could be one of them. Yeah.
Yeah. I encourage everyone who's watching to send in questions. Joachim will answer them as best he can. In the meantime, of all the prospects you're involved in right now, which is the most likely to materialize during the first half of 2025, say?
Yeah.
Do you think?
As I said, one small deal here that SaaS Expanse said would close already in Q4. We hope to get that one and that we're waiting for an approval that this project would go ahead. We will have to be contract signing and so on for it. That could be one. The main focus, which takes up most of my time and the organization's time, is to get those breakthrough deals in India. We have proposed for Reserve Bank of India directly. We have worked with their subsidiary for one proposal. We have just proposed an updated, as I described a few times here in this call with National Payment Corporation of India. I really hope that they take us on because that will be such a major breakthrough for the company. I don't think they are just stringing us along. I think why would they?
They could have said no many, many times in the past. I do think they are sincere and they are looking for a way to get something going, which fulfills their requirements that we need to have control, but we are interested in your technology. I hope that with NPCI now, we may have reached that idea. We have proposed similar ideas to RBI where you could have control. We work with you to come up with a great way of doing offline payments for the digital rupee and then let the banks implement whatever they want. They can use our solution and also maybe competing solutions, as you said. There are others. We let you own the spec and own the patents to actually have the right to use the patents. That is what you can buy from us.
We can open the market that anyone can then do offline payments. We will be one of the contenders because the good thing for us then is that it would scale very well because we would first get money for the system level specification and patent rights. It will be up to any of the payment providers, the banks or the payment systems to actually then acquire whatever technology they want to actually get this work. We would be one of them there also. If we talk about Q1, Q2 here, as you said, it is to get that big deal. Let's just set because that would turn things upside down. We are in the, this is the leading payment country in the world. They do half of the world's Swish payments. It's done in India. It's just an enormous market for payments.
We're still seen as a credible player here for offline, which is just enormous if you think of it.
You want to have things in place in India before you build a proper business case in Europe based on your patent?
We are putting most of our bets or most of our basically efforts into India because we need to break through that now. We have been working there for so many years without actually having this breakthrough that we hope for. We cannot run around everywhere in the world because it will take time everywhere else also. If we can get India, that is the focus, then we will have a lot of credibility and we will sustain ourselves with money. We can even have a scalable business here where the banks and payment systems are paying for the product. We need to get India. We have our ears to the ground and we are with partners. We are working in some other opportunities as well.
India is where we are directly involved and in direct contact with the key players.
We received a question regarding a company called Modeloop. Did you come up with that?
Yeah, we've come across them. They have a system which is a platform which can do almost like UPI. It's sort of an open system where they can do push payment through their Modeloop platform. Just like in UPI, a lot of payment applications, many apps can do push payments through UPI. Modeloop is sort of a system where they can put that in place and then you can do push payment through it. We have a dialogue with Modeloop about we could help you facilitate offline payments on the Modeloop platform, just like we can facilitate offline payments on the UPI platform.
Is this in India as well?
No, this is more in Africa. Their focus has been on a lot of third world sort of emerging markets in Africa. This is their main market for Modeloop. Yeah. It is not in India. They are not, yeah, they are not in India, NPCI with UPI dominates. Modeloop is sort of in many, yeah, third world countries in emerging markets in Africa, this is where they put up their platform to help get something of a digital push payment system going.
Yeah. So complementing their platform.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think we've addressed the questions sent in. To wrap things up, just what's your feeling for 2025?
We are, believe it or not, but we're still optimistic. We are talking to the, I think the finest payment market in the world, India. If we are talking to the right players, Central Bank, NPCI, and many of their sort of leading banks and payment providers as well. If we can get it through, then what we've all been waiting for and dreamt for, it's going to be a new situation for us. I think we've come up with this way of actually making ourselves delivering something where they can be in control because this is where the patents come in because we can give them the freedom to operate against with these patents and all our good know-how. We can put that all into the specs of how it should be done.
The product itself, the implementation is another matter that could go via NPCI and/or also that the payment banks would sort of have to source in whatever product they want. We can get that as well. I have a good feeling about this. It has been a lot of good development during the last months in our direction. I think the shift in India, because offline right now is driven by the central bank, particularly for the digital rupee. The fact that they went for value-based tokens instead of just having fixed bank notes and trying to do that offline, which was a bad idea, now they have a much better chance to actually implement something. It goes very well with how we have designed our system. I have a good feeling about that.
Nothing is sort of done until we've signed a deal or sort of, but we are certainly moving forward with it. I hope we will get that. My feeling is that we will get that breakthrough. That's what we have to hope for. We're working very hard to get talking to all. I have a good feeling for 2025, but I wish we could have had this already in 2024 because then we wouldn't have gone through this painful price issue. I hope we can turn it around by actually getting into the ecosystem of, yeah, the leading payment market in the world, India. That would change a new future for us, really.
Thank you very much, Joachim. Focus on business?
Focus on business. In India is where the big business is, really. What did I say? Three or four years, big deals are coming. I hope we can deliver that in India, even if I don't want to take those words in my mouth because I've eaten enough over three years. Yeah.
Okay. We'll see. Thank you, Joachim again. Thank you, everyone who's watching. Yeah, watch this on Beth Hamlin's YouTube channel. It will soon be uploaded there. Until next time, see you later.
Bye-bye. Thanks, Martin.