All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Lytham Partners Consumer and Technology Summit. I'm Robert Blum, Managing Partner here at Lytham, and your host for today's event. We're excited to showcase a number of innovative companies in the consumer and technology space. Throughout the day, they'll be sitting down with our team to share insights into their businesses over the last year and what's ahead for 2027. Our webcast will run throughout the day, so be sure to visit lythampartners.com/cts2026 or click the link in the box to the right for the full schedule and details on our participating companies. All right, let's get started. I'll be back in just a moment to kick things off with a fireside chat with OBOOK Holdings. Thank you. All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the OwlTing Group Fireside Chat. OwlTing is an operating brand of OBOOK Holdings.
Again, my name is Robert Blum, managing partner here at Lytham Partners, and up next I'll be moderating a Q&A discussion with Darren Wang, founder and Chief Executive Officer of OwlTing Group. As a reminder, the company trades under the ticker symbol OWLS on the Nasdaq. All right, let's get started. Darren, welcome.
Hi, Robert. Pleasure to meet you here.
Fantastic. For investors who may be new to the company, can you provide an overview and the background that led you to sort of build this business here?
Yeah, no problem. So the company, we had a vision to use stablecoin to move the money across the world. So we started the journey about six years ago by applying for the U.S. license, and we go all over the world by applying license, for example, in Europe, in Japan, and other regions. So making the company regulated is actually the first important topic that we want to focus. Then we build the technology. For example, we work with Circle to bring in USDC as the standard digital currency. Then we are working with the bank in United States and other regions to providing on-ramp, which means that you transfer your fiat money to stablecoin. Then off-ramp means that transfer the stablecoin to for example, Eurodollar, Hong Kong dollar, Japanese yen, and other currencies.
As of today, we can off-ramp the stablecoin to over 60 countries. For the fiat transfer, we can actually cover over 250 regions. This is today's overall highlight. Starting this year, we actually see a lot of exciting things, the movement around our initial vision. That we have a lot of enterprise, smaller fintech company, for example, they want to move the money from U.S. to Africa to China, et cetera. Right now, we see it is probably the most exciting time for the company to see the transaction volume basically increase a lot compared to the last months. So I think we are getting into the right business model at the right timing. Then the company is in the hyper-growth mode right now. This is pretty much the thing we want to build for the future role.
We want to make everyone to move the money at the cheapest cost, like zero dollars, just like you are sending the message on WhatsApp.
All right. Very good. So, you have really evolved from a broader technology platform into sort of this global payments company here. How would you describe that evolution and kind of where the business is at today?
Yeah. My mother usually wants to send the money to the grandchildren in the U.S. But every time she went to the bank, she needed to pay $30, $40 for the banking transfer fee, and it takes about 24, 48 hours. The thing is, it is very expensive. She needed to go to the bank, and she did not know when the money would be arriving. That is the problem. The same problem actually exists in so many different countries. For example, a lot of people, they want to send their money from U.S. to Latin America. It takes about three days, four days, and the rate is horrible. We want to reduce the friction by reducing the cost, making sure the people can receive the money within minutes. It is not days.
People realize that we can send the money in the latest technology and your friend, your family can receive the money in a timely manner. This is what is very important to us and to the consumers.
Okay. Very good. I guess at the center of your strategy, as I understand it, is OwlPay.
Yes.
Talk about the platform in some more detail, the different products that are within it, and you have talked about this, but really the problems that you are solving for customers there.
Yeah. So, we actually started the flagship product. It is called OwlPay Harbor, which means that we will move the money between fiat and stablecoin. It is like a harbor, the ship come in, come out, and we are handling all of the complicated technology process during the process. I think that is what most important is we provide a regulated way for smaller fintech companies that they do not have the budget to apply for the license in state. We provide a license, anti-money laundering, KYC standard, so they can onboard their customer within two weeks. We spent six years for the licensing, but right now we can shorten the time to two weeks to provide all the company that want to move the money between U.S. and Mexico, U.S. and Africa, to all those regions. That is our flagship product. It is called OwlPay Harbor.
Yeah. You have obviously talked about what you think is maybe the competitive advantage, but from your perspective here, what makes stablecoin-enabled settlement more effective than the traditional cross-border payment methods, particularly for businesses operating in some of these hard-to-reach markets?
Yeah. That is a very good question. I was just checking one particular transaction this morning. There is one consulting company want to pay the money to Europe, right? It is actually Cyprus, I think. The consulting firm actually pay from Nigeria to Cyprus. The money arrive become the Eurodollar within two minutes. That is what makes it very different that, I believe in the near term future, there will be two layer for the banking or fintech. The first layer is the traditional SWIFT network. The fiat money still travel over the SWIFT, but it takes still days, hours, for the money to arrive. But the other layer is the blockchain technology. As you know that there is a lot of blockchain ledger, for example, Ethereum, Solana. They are the blockchain companies, right?
But we need to move the money, which means that we need to record every transaction over different blockchain. For example, there is USDC, there is USDT, right? And those stablecoin could be on Ethereum or Solana. It is too complicated for consumer or enterprise. People that does not really care that which blockchain they are using. They just care about the cost and then the time for the money to arrive. We are the company that is bridging that gap. We do not want people to understand, hey, which blockchain you are using. We just want to tell them, "Hey, how long does it take, and what is the cost for moving the money from Africa to Europe," for example. That is actually the core mission for the company. We do not want to make it too complicated for everyone.
We want to enable, for example, you can use any of the digital wallet that use our infrastructure to move the money. The most important thing is we are legalized in every country in the world. Which means that it is as safe as bank, and they are as regulated as the banking system. I think this is the future. We are building a future with Circle together, and also using Circle's latest settlement network. It is called CPN, Circle Payments Network, to move the money globally.
Right. Payments market is highly competitive. We have actually got a couple of companies at the summit here that participate in the segment here. What differentiates OwlPay from banks, from other payment processors, from maybe other stablecoin platforms, and other just broader fintech infrastructure providers?
Yeah, that is a very good question. I think the most important thing is about the ability to settle the stablecoin to different local currencies. The most important factor, I would say, we provide enough liquidity in every region. For example, if you are sending, for example, $10 million to one crypto exchange, right? Probably, the local crypto exchange, they do not have $10 million to exchange to the local currency. That is the problem, right? If you are moving money for enterprise, it is going to be $100 million per day, right? Which means that you need to provide instant transfer capability to local currency. This, we call liquidity in different currency. We actually have partnered with bank, we partner with Visa Direct to provide those liquidity in all those countries. I think that is the most important different competitive mode, comparing our company to others.
Okay, good. You often describe regulatory compliance as another competitive advantage here. How important is your licensing footprint, and how difficult would it be for another company to replicate what it is that you have built?
Yeah, I think the most difficult part is the time. I think there's a lot of companies that have more capital than us, right? The only thing they don't really have is the time. For example, in U.S., you need to apply for the license state by state, and you need to ultimately achieve 50 states. It's called money transmitter license. I think the time we have spent and invested in the licensing is over five years. That's something that big tech company cannot really replicate because, whenever you want to apply for a new license, you need to go through the local regulator to review the application, something like that. That's just in the U.S. You are talking about the global scale. You need to spend the same effort in different corridors.
For example, Japan, you really need to spend a long time to apply for the license. Europe, a lot of regulation, privacy issues in different regions. I think this is very difficult as a startup company to replicate all of the licensing procedures to become global settlement and payment company. That what the company different is, we actually spend the time, the capital. We want to enable every fintech regulated and success using our infrastructure. We want to become the person, the company that's supporting all the giant in the future. That's our mission. We don't want to be the single brand that everyone use. We want to power hundreds of thousands of fintech company in their country to use our technology.
All right, very good. We've sort of been talking a little macro here. Let's try to dive more specifically within the company here. OwlPay Harbor reached, I think it was reported, 79 enterprise clients in July. Payment volume more than doubled from June, and I think it increased for the sixth consecutive month there. Talk about what's driving that momentum and how should investors evaluate sort of the quality of your growth.
Yeah, so that's a very good question. It's basically like the SaaS model when you're building the software as service, right? Every month, you have a new client that's onboarding the platform. You get a revenue coming from the existing client. Every month, we also have new client that's onboarding the platform. But the most beautiful thing is we are a payment infrastructure company, which means that this month you're probably onboarding a client with $100 million volume. But next month, there's a much bigger player coming with $500 million transaction volume, which means that your growth is actually not linear. It's like when you're onboarding larger client, your revenue, your transaction volume actually goes two times , three times, or even more monthly basis. Because our client, they are all fintech company, which means that every month they need to move the money for client.
Once they rely on your infra, they just keep using the infra monthly. Which means that our revenue is very stable and with the new customer coming, we can actually make more money. The investment for the infra is actually flat because the biggest investment in the previous was the licensing technology engineering team. But once we are reaching the tipping point, we do not need to invest anymore. We just need to get a client more and more to use our platform. With their volume growth, the company has much more revenue coming every month.
Got you. When an enterprise, a new enterprise client signs an agreement, what does that activation process look like? What determines how quickly that relationship begins to contribute the meaningful transaction volumes that you just referenced there?
Initially when we launched the platform, it takes about, I would say, four weeks for onboarding the client. But right now, since our operating team, engineering team has much more experience providing API to them, we also have interface for people who do not have engineering team to connect to the API platform. So we have both. Right now, we can shorten the period to the shortest time for a customer to onboard is three days, and they finish three days onboarding process. Usually there is something, the KYB document, and we quickly go through. We are using a lot of AI to screen the process, onboarding the customer, and then they can start to do some testing transaction. Once the testing pass, then they can bring the real value. But we have client that is shifting $3 million last month, and this month they become $15 million.
That is something that is really helping the platform to scale with much more enterprise client base.
Okay. Help walk us through the economics of the business, right? How you sort of generate revenue, how margins could develop as more payment volume moves across the platform.
Yeah, no problem. Usually there's two revenue type for the company. For a payment company, we usually make money by, first one is transaction fee. That's ranging from 15 basis points, 25 basis points to 50 basis points. And with different corridor that we off-ramping the stablecoin to different countries. So, we usually have some FSV behind it. I would say typically, it's a big range because every country has different FX rate, right? We try to be competitive, but the ultimate goal is actually to find a balance between our transfer platform and other traditional Visa player or banking system. It's usually ranging from, I would say, 50 basis points to 1% or 2%, depends on countries that you send the money to.
Okay, good. Which corridors offer the greatest near-term opportunity, in your opinion? How do you decide where to expand next?
Okay. That's a very good question. So far we noticed a lot of opportunities between U.S. and Africa, particular Nigeria. A lot of people actually sending money between Africa to, for example, Hong Kong. I think also Japanese corridor, also very important that we can actually settle a lot of money to Japanese market, Southeast Asian countries, corridors like that. So those are the corridors that we value a lot and also a lot of settlement that's between, I would say, U.S. to Latin American. I think we have a lot of opportunities and particular, India market as well. We have partnered with some partner in the India market so Indian people can actually using the stablecoin in the future.
I would say emerging country, Latin American, Africa, the Greater China area or Southeast Asia, those are the emerging market that is pretty good opportunities.
Okay. You mentioned Circle earlier. How do your relationships with companies such as Circle and Visa strengthen the platform and where do you sort of then add the further value, if you will, beyond just the broader payment ecosystem?
Yeah. Circle is, the first one is they are also a listed company. I think, they provide USDC as the standard, I would say, digital currency for USD. Starting actually Q4 last year, Circle launched a global payment network. They want to become a new replacement for SWIFT. We are building a Circle Payments Network globally, to see if people can easily send the money with their cell phone and using the Because there is a stablecoin, right? Which means stablecoin cannot travel on SWIFT. So we need to have a new network that can actually move the money. So that is actually the thing we are building with Circle together and globally. Of course, we are building our own settlement corridors. For example, in Hong Kong, China, Japan, different corridor, that Circle Payments Network has not covered.
I think our company is trying to become the most comprehensive stablecoin settlement infra for everyone who want to use the stablecoin. That is something very important, right? If you go to the bank and you want to send a bank to Africa, right? The bank tell you, "Hey, we cannot send the money to Africa." Then you have nowhere to send the money, right? So I think, this is the core value for the company and for the partner with Visa, we are trying to bridge. For example, you have a debit card, you have a Visa card, you can use either one of them to switch your USD to stablecoin and settlement through either our Circle Payments Network or Visa Direct network or our own settlement network.
People didn't realize in the past, you only use Visa card to shopping, right, to check out in the restaurant, coffee shop. But in the future, Visa Direct can become a new protocol for people to send the money. I think that's the major difference and the partnership between the company, Circle or Visa.
Okay, good. I know we're getting sort of towards the end of the time here, but one thing I want to touch on, beyond sort of Harbor, how should investors think about OwlPay Cash, the agent wallet, agent checkout, sort of the other opportunities to support payments initiated by consumers or AI agents?
Yeah. Actually, our AI agent or cash is always built on our infrastructure, which means that everything is built on our Harbor. So it's like TSMC, people using all the foundry from TSMC. People didn't realize it's built on by TSMC. So that's something we want to build in the fintech industry by power every fintech company to use the infra, either it's OwlPay Cash or other cash app, they want to settle the money, they can use our technology. And for stablecoin, it's particular new and difficult, so we power all the technology for settlement using stablecoin.
Okay, good. Just kind of wrapping things up here. Your 2025 results largely reflect the sort of the cost of building the infrastructure, becoming a public company. As transaction volume scales, what should investors watch to determine whether the investment's beginning to translate into revenue growth, operating leverage, and sort of a path to profitability there?
Yeah. I think the most important is the metric for OwlPay Harbor. This is actually the company spent the last five years, the capital, the labor, engineering, operating team to focus for the future, right? I think right now we are into a very good phase that people We see the numbers picking up, and it's something that you cannot marketing to create the numbers, right? It's actually that we believe we are in a very good phase, the company entering the growth phase. I think that's the most important thing that investors should rely on and then focus on. It's actually about we are building future, right? It's not the past. The company coming from Taiwan, we have some legacy revenue, but the future for the company is the global settlement business using OwlPay Harbor.
I think that's the most important metric for the company.
All right. Very good. Well, we're at the end of the time here, Darren. Thank you so much for your participation in the summit here today. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you, of course, everybody for watching. We do have additional presentations and fireside chats coming up next, so please stick around for more. Again, Darren, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Robert. Bye-bye