All right. I want to thank everyone for joining us today, both in person and online. My name is Chris Kennedy. I'm the research analyst at William Blair, who covers the payments and fintech sector. For a complete list of research disclosures and/or conflicts of interest, please visit our website at williamblair.com. Next up is Payoneer. From the company, we have the CEO, John Caplan. The CFO, Bea Ordonez, is in the audience today. Payoneer does a lot of things, but at the core, it helps its customers connect to the global economy. The company had $205 million in EBITDA last year. That was much bigger than what we expected when we launched coverage back in 2021. Clearly, higher interest rates and float is a key component of that, but the company has a lot more going for it, which management will talk about.
With that, let me pass it over to John.
Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everybody. Hi, I'm John Caplan, CEO at Payoneer. It is awesome to be here. Bob, it's nice to see you as well. Thank you for joining. As Chris shared, Payoneer is a really extraordinary company, so I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes or so introducing you to the company, because I think it's a company that if you take a moment, sort of eyes up and listen to what we're doing and the problem we're solving, I think you'll see really compelling, dynamic business with catalysts for growth that are moving really quickly. We are a diversified, growing, and profitable business. We have exceptional valuation dynamics and significant potential upside in front of us. If you go to the next slide, please.
Our momentum at Payoneer is accelerating, and what we've seen in our business is that we're in the early innings, at just the beginning of building and delivering a full financial stack for SMBs around the globe. And this is, sitting here in Chicago, it's a problem most of us don't know intimately, which is the problem or the opportunity of doing business cross-border. Our customers are primarily in emerging markets around the globe. They do business, they exist on selling to customers across their border and sourcing supplies and services from across borders. Those companies are poorly served by traditional banks. Payoneer is there to solve those problems. When you think about the challenge of running a global business, the sort of core challenge that businesses face is it's very difficult to get paid.
Opening up a bank account, receiving funds in whatever currency you're doing business in is an exceptional challenge. Similarly, actually managing your expenses, all your accounts payable, are equally challenging. You're a business in Vietnam, and you have freelancers in Argentina, customers in Germany, and suppliers in China. You're a business that needs many routes of trade in order to be successful. Payoneer sits at the middle of that trade, enables you to have one universal account to manage all your global transactions, your accounts receivable, your accounts payable. And additionally, as we've gathered so much exceptional data about our customers, we have an opportunity to build a marketplace for lending. There are, we estimate, around 80 million SMBs that are underserved by the traditional banking infrastructure.
You know, the global banks, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and others, don't focus on small businesses, and particularly don't focus on small businesses in Mexico or Pakistan or Morocco. The fintechs, you know, the neobanks, things like Nubank in Brazil or Revolut in Europe, exceptionally interesting companies, but are not designed for SMB businesses. The remittance companies, Wise or Remitly or MoneyGram, are also one-way flows of volumes. That is not what Payoneer represents. Local banks, every one of our customers has a local bank relationship. If you're in Vietnam, you have a local bank relationship to handle your domestic within Vietnam AP needs right at home. But if you're doing business around the globe, you need a Payoneer account in your phone to represent all the tools you need.
We have built a financial stack, a suite of tools and services for this customer. We have a couple of million customers today and a clear path to extend our reach into more of the globe. We do business in 190 countries, have relationships with over 100 banks, and are regulated around the globe. We are purpose-built to serve an underserved global SMB customer. I wanted to introduce you to some of our real-life customers, because it's important when you think about the business they're doing and the opportunities they face and the challenge. So our business is very diverse, both geographically and by the types of customers we serve.
As I mentioned, we have customers in 190+ countries and territories around the globe, and those customers include contractors and freelancers like Pedro in Brazil, who's a software engineer, provides services to companies in the Northwest of the United States, like Amazon and Google and others. They include good sellers like ELEGOO, who runs a business that has, in the 3D printing space, based in China, exporting and selling on Walmart.com and Amazon.com, MercadoLibre, and other platforms.... And we have service providers like BPOs, Hana's business in the Philippines, using Payoneer to receive funds from her customers around the globe and pay contractors around the world. And then service providers, like this firm in the Ukraine, who I'm not going to be able to pronounce his last name, so I'll skip that one.
You know, service providers in the Ukraine that are exporting their ability to do software contracting and others. We recently conducted a survey, and today, in fact, that survey is being released publicly, of SMBs. We surveyed over 3,400 global SMBs that do business cross-border, where over 30% of their revenue occurs outside of their home country, and found that nearly 50% of their customer base is international, and this percentage has been increasing. Globalization is here to stay for the world's cross-border SMBs. It feeds their families and sends their kids to college. We've built an extraordinary platform of assets over 20 years, and those assets actually form a really interesting moat, strategic and competitive moat, around the Payoneer business. It is remarkably difficult to scale, to disrupt what we've built.
You know, every year at Y Combinator, there's a company or two that, that tries, and every year coming out of Y Combinator, there's a company or two that goes out of business, having tried. It is nearly impossible to disrupt the moat that Payoneer has built. We have a banking and regulatory infrastructure moat, 100 bank and payment service providers, and we're regulated in the key markets around the globe. We have global scale and reach. We have 2,300 on-staff employees in 50 countries around the globe, nearly $70 billion of accounts receivable funds flowing into Payoneer accounts, and an exceptionally strong brand. If we were in Lahore this morning, and we searched multi-currency business account, it would be Payoneer first and PayPal second. If we were in the Philippines and did the same thing, it'd be Payoneer first and PayPal second.
If we were in Argentina and did the same thing, it'd be Payoneer first and PayPal second. While in Chicago at 8:30 A.M. this morning, we're not a household name. If this meeting were in Manila, there'd be 5,000 people here. We are synonymous with entrepreneurship and sort of lifting yourself up. So when we do events in China, and in the Philippines, and in Pakistan, and in Latin America, thousands of people will come because they want a Payoneer account, they want a Payoneer credit card, they want to connect into the global economy, and we make that possible. Our business strategy is totally centered around SMBs, our top priority. We've developed our product roadmap, our service model, our pricing, and our teams to meet the needs of SMBs. And this represents, as my kids like to say, a wicked big opportunity.
This is a $6 trillion market. We got famous or went public a couple of years ago as a company that had 20% share in the $300 billion marketplace to SMB space. Marketplaces like Amazon, and Walmart, and others want global supply on their platform, for obvious reasons, right? The more choices of iPhone cases we all have on Amazon, the lower the price of the goods and the better the quality that we get to choose. The manufacturers of iPhone cases want access to the marketplaces but don't have the banking tools to do it. Payoneer provides, for SMBs that sell on marketplaces, exceptional tools, and we have 20% market share in that space and really lead in the goods and services arena.
But about five years ago, Payoneer, some incredible innovation began, and that innovation was not just to enable SMBs who sell on marketplaces to receive funds and put them in their local bank, but those same SMBs wholesale container loads of their iPhone cases and need to invoice people, or they hire contractors around the globe and need to pay them. And that represents the many-trillion-dollar B2B arena across where we see we have small share and exceptional growth. And then finally, our fast-growing checkout business basically enables SMBs that sell on marketplaces to get improved conversion rates from when they're resident in the Far East, and they're selling to customers in the West, improved acceptance rates on their cards. So a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity with a big moat, a great brand, and a lead.
So the way our business works is super simple from the perspective of the SMBs who use it. 2 million customers around the globe, of that 80 million we've identified. We view our business as a multi-currency financial stack, a suite of tools, a menu of tools that SMBs can use. And the stack itself, it enables accounts receivable, cash management, accounts payable needs, really based on the size of your business, the geographies you're doing business in, and who your customers are. $66 billion of volume went into Payoneer accounts in 2023 across the Payoneer network. Nearly $6 billion of customer funds held in Payoneer accounts. Our customers leave their balances in Payoneer accounts in multiple currencies because they trust us. We hold those funds in the G-SIB banks, primarily in U.S. dollars, and we earn interest on those funds.
As Bea has shared in prior investor meetings, we've seen our bigger customers hold many months of international AP in their Payoneer account. So while we, it is true, we will earn $240 million this year of revenue on balances, all interest to us, and we pay no yield, that is core revenue to the business that we have built, and we've seen really good dynamics among our customers and how they think about their balances. And then accounts payable. I mentioned the Payoneer card. We have enabled our customers to use their Payoneer account to manage their international AP. So you receive funds internationally, manage your AP internationally. And our business is cooking. 21% volume growth in the Q1 of 2024, primarily in our three key channels. The first is the marketplace channel.
Like I said, Etsy, Amazon, eBay, Fiverr, Upwork, et cetera. 13% growth, $11 billion of volume through that channel at nearly 100 basis points take rate. Our B2B business, 33% growth in Q1. Q3 of last year, 1% growth. Q4 of last year, 13% growth. Q1 of this year, 33% growth. We are seeing exceptional performance by our organization to drive the growth of our B, B2B franchise. We shared recently that, the, the start of Q2 looked very much like the Q1 did in our B2B business. Our merchant services business or checkout is, you know, a business that's new, an innovation from inside the organization, seeing 200% growth and exceptional take rate dynamics.
And then finally, it's important for me to mention, our infrastructure is so good, and our relationships with brands and marketplaces around the world so trusted, that we do have a $5 billion a quarter franchise providing big marketplaces the ability to use our rails to send funds directly into bank accounts of SMBs around the globe, not into Payoneer accounts, directly into bank accounts. And you can see the take rate dynamics are a third when the funds go directly into a bank account versus into a Payoneer account. And as I mentioned, we're trusted by our customers. Our customers are SMBs like ELEGOO and Hana, and that I mentioned a moment ago.
They value the Payoneer account, and including the ability to hold balances in the account in every currency they could use, because it saves them money, saves them time, and builds trust, and it's simple to use. You know, they can pick up a phone and talk to one of the Payoneer CSMs that we have around the globe. So if you're in India, you can talk to someone in India, or if you're in the Philippines, you can talk to someone in the Philippines. We have consistently grown our customer balances over time. We earn substantial interest, as I mentioned. We do not share that interest back with our customers, nor have we gotten pushback to do so. And we do intend to actively extend the duration on the portfolio over the next few quarters.
We've talked about that, with the intention of reducing our interest rate sensitivity and to drive greater interest income consistency in 2025 and 2026, as rates are anticipated to decline. We will continue to prioritize the safety and liquidity of these funds as our top priority as we do so. I wanted to highlight for, particularly for new investors, something that you may not realize about our business, which is that more and more of our big customers are using more and more of our AP tools. And in the AP, in the AP business, we have an advantage because we have nearly $70 billion of AR. So we're not an AP company starting at zero AR. We're a company that has exceptional AP tools.
Customers are using the funds that they receive, and now we've made it possible for our customers to take funds from their analog bank and deposit them into, move them, load them into their Payoneer account. We see hundreds of millions of dollars of that activity going on. Within our 2 million customers, we're focused on larger and larger customers. We call them ICPs. We have 530,000 of them, 57,000 who receive over $10K a month on average into their Payoneer account. Those 57,000 ICPs represent greater than 50% of our total revenue. So we have this big, broad funnel, really efficient business, global footprint, and a high-value SMB customer globally that we're able to acquire and retain. Two-thirds of our ICPs are acquired organically via our Payoneer website or through existing customers.
The network dynamics are exciting here. A quarter are acquired via, at scale, via our relationships with the big marketplaces, and some local partnerships that are, I think, really accelerating our ability to grow the franchise. And we have go-to-market sales organizations in our tier one countries, who are doing outbound activities to grow the population. And when you look at the distribution of our ICPs, incredibly diverse around, around the globe, pretty much equally between China, Latam, MEA, and APAC. You can see the numbers. You can also see the growth rate in the higher take rate regions. In APAC, MEA, and Latam, where our take rates are at 250 bips, we've seen 15% growth in Q1 of those ICP customers. Those customers have more volumes, higher take rates, and obviously better ARPU. And our momentum at Payoneer is accelerating.
You know, we're at a moment of growth in our organization. We saw a 19% total revenue growth in Q1, normalized, excluding interest as a way to take a look at it, 21% growth year-over-year. In a market that's many trillions of dollars, where we have the number one brand and a big moat, with our banking relationships and our regulatory relationships, we feel very comfortable we can grow this business into the future nicely. So let's talk about take rates. In the payments arena, if you're new to payments, this is a topic you'll hear a lot. Enterprise take rates have been going down in the payments arena. We've seen it in our own enterprise payout space, and it's disclosed in our supplements, so you can see the historicals.
But in our SMB business, which is the lion's share of Payoneer's business today and an important sort of driver of the business, we've actually seen take rates grow. Direct relationships with customers, selling them more products and services, larger customers, take rate expansion. We are delivering solid and strong operating leverage and intend to continue to do so as we retain and expand our relationships with our ICPs, expand the products and services we sell to those customers, and then also further optimize our operations, both our focus on the right customer, the addition of technology. We've just begun some testing with AI in our customer service organization and seen some early, very positive signals about the productivity per head count in that arena, which is very positive for us. So we see an opportunity for further unlock of leverage in our business.
Our business generates significant cash flow. We have a strong balance sheet, that is, you know, growing and exceptional. We have a strategy to continue to grow it. We are returning capital to shareholders. We bought back $50 million of our stock in Q1. The board has approved a $250 million stock buyback program. We have nearly $600 million of cash on our balance sheet and minimal debt. We intend to use the cash to accelerate our product roadmap via tuck-in acquisitions. We are reiterating and have reiterated our guidance here today. We feel comfortable with what we've communicated to the market. Our business is strong, and we're executing well, and we feel confident about achieving our medium- and long-term financial targets. I'll just take a minute to say something I think is very important about Payoneer.
We have a very large and very significant multiyear opportunity at this company right now, especially in the B2B space. That 33% growth we saw in Q1. We've sized the most directly addressable piece of that B2B franchise at around $800 billion. We had about $2.5 billion of volume in the B2B arena in Q1. We're growing that franchise 33% year over year. We think we're on just the beginning of a really exciting journey to capture the full opportunity. Chris, I will pass it back to you.
Sure. We will take questions from the audience. I guess I'll start out with the first one.
Sure.
You talked about the competitive mode-
Yep
of Payoneer. Can you just talk how that's evolved over the last four years or so?
Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting is, we have different competitors in different arenas. So, in China, where we have a strong franchise, there are some local businesses that are competitors. A firm called PingPong, local competitor in Hangzhou, China, not yet public. There's a company called LianLian, which is public, trades in Hong Kong, smaller than Payoneer, trades at 10x revenue. So, you know, you can see what a market that's focused on exports, how it understands the value of providing financial services to export-focused SMBs. We have regional competitors there. Our primary competitor, though, Chris, is the local bank. We are taking share from analog technology-disabled businesses that are geographically limited, that don't have the tools, service, tech to provide a solution for their cross-border SMBs.
You know, Michelle and I were looking at data just from the SMB survey that released this morning that saw if you're an SMB and you export, from our research we released, we interviewed 3,400 or so customers. The screening criteria is that 30% of your revenue had to come from exports. If 30% of your revenue came from exports, you generally exported to nine or 10 countries, and you bought services from nine or 10 countries. That customer is our customer, and she is not served by the analog bank 'cause she, she can't hold a multicurrency account in her local bank. Not served by the neobanks that are regulated in a small geography, not served by the multinational banks that have the capability, but not the wherewithal or desire to do so.
Payoneer, a trusted 20-year-old technology innovator business, particularly in the B2B arena. I see only opportunity in front of us, and none of our competitors have the ability to focus on this customer the way we do.
Yeah, sensitivity and interest to...
Yeah, I think the way I would think about our interest income is we are very conservative about how we hold those balances. Those balances are held in the big banks. I think the smarter people than me are talking about what the future of rates will be, up or down or sideways or what have you. Bea, in our treasury organization are looking to extend the duration cautiously and carefully over the course of 2024. Bea, is there anything you want to add to that?
Well, I think you're covering it, John. I think what I would say and what we highlighted in public commentary is we see an opportunity to duration on roughly at least about the investment program, let's say, further the portfolio goal. We expect to extend it out over an average duration is, you see if you model that out, the internal sets of the bank is-
If you had 100 basis points decline overnight rates, what would be the impact of that?
Right now, we are short planning in possible, and we are almost shortly over the course of this coming quarter, roughly 25.
The duration is under a year right now?
We expect to go way down and direction roughly.
What percentage of transactions can you handle with total liquidity on both sides?
Yeah, we haven't answered that question publicly before, but you could imagine we're very thoughtful about, sort of general ledger entries versus actually physically moving money around the world. Well, thank you. Really appreciate taking the time, sharing Payoneer, and encourage you to join the breakout session. We'll be able to go into more detail about the business.
Thank you.