All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Matthew Inglis. I'm here on the RBC FinTech research team. I'm happy to have with me John Crawford, CFO of Paysafe. John, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
For those maybe less familiar with Paysafe in the room, can you talk about how Paysafe has changed as a company over the past few years, and what have been the biggest changes, and which do you feel position the company to actually accelerate growth?
Sure. A few years ago when Bruce first came in as CEO, the focus was on stabilizing and streamlining the company, and really trying to get all of it returned to growth. There were parts of the business that weren't growing. Many were shrinking at that time. After that, now the focus really has pivoted from that initial stabilization transformation to the forward look, which is all about growth, quality, and scalable foundations. From the growth side, that's continuing to build, and drive efficiencies in the sales organization, and in the product organization. You've heard us talk a lot about the Vitality Index now on the product side. We've made a lot of investments in the product side of the business, and we've seen early great returns. Likewise, on the sales side, we've had some hiccups in the direct SMB business.
It's largely been a success when you look at how the iGaming business has grown, in the enterprise side of e-com. By quality, I mean, the general de-risking approach in the business and trying to drive higher quality, longer term valuable revenue. We divested the direct marketing business a little over a year ago, which was a higher risk business in our SMB merchant book. We've also been continuing to de-risk the consumer business, the wallet business, our risk and regulatory team, and working with regulators, our banking team, and working with our banks. We think that focus on quality will also help us drive a more durable position in the market. Scalable foundation really relates to our various behind-the-scenes transformations. Think of our risk platform, where we're making investments to automate, and drive better, faster outcomes there.
My own financial organization where we're migrating to a streamlined single cloud ERP system from multiple instances around the world. Those should enable us then to support the growth parts of our business without having to put more bodies at it, which is really what the company had to do historically.
Excellent. Yeah, the product, and the go-to market, it's all been very apparent. Lots of improvements. We'll get into a lot of that. Just quickly on the outlook for the company. This past quarter, you had this data licensing deal, the FX benefit. Outside of that, stripping that out, organic growth, let's call it 6%, is mid-single digits as the underlying growth rate the right way to think about the business? What do you view as the medium or maybe even longer-term catalyst to accelerate that?
Sure. Mid-single digits is the right way to think about it now, and in fact, still in line with what we said at the beginning of the year when we said five to eight for top-line growth. We think that's still the way that we're thinking about the year. If you think about what could drive that growth rate higher, I think there are a number of things. I'm going to repeat the Vitality Index, to the extent that we continue to be successful in rolling out new products and new partners, by the way, to address parts of the market that we can't access now or can't access as aggressively. That will drive growth and that'll drive repeatability in the growth. It remains a real focus. The second piece is continuing to drive more efficiency into our direct selling efforts, and that's a lot of little things.
It's not really one big obvious thing. It starts with a better marketing funnel at the top. It then moves to increasing the closing rate as it moves through the process, then it moves to better, faster, more accurate underwriting. Because the faster we can get the potential customer from initial interest to live gives us a better chance of having a successful long-term relationship with the customer. Each of those we're expecting to drive a little bit of incremental growth all the way down the funnel, but we're focused on all of them. Then I'd say the one real unknown is big markets open up. Some of the opportunities that people are thinking about on new tech and new geos move faster than we think. We don't have any of those things baked into our thinking.
While we don't really talk about a midterm guide at this point, I wouldn't expect as we sit here today to look much different than this year. I would think we should be a mid to high single-digit grower for the next several years.
Excellent. I guess in the more short term, call it, you guided for first half 2026, adjusted EBITDA to be about flat year-over-year, then for the full year calling for 5%-8%. What are the key drivers to that second half ramp?
Sure. The key drivers are really First, let me level set. When I say flat, I don't mean zero growth quarter-over-quarter. I mean literally the flat dollar. Think, to level set everybody, call it $200 million of EBITDA in the first half. If you back into a consensus number, you'd say, Okay, you need to drive $253 million-$254 million in the back half. That additional $53 million-$54 million in the back half is about 50/50 revenue and product initiatives and OpEx. I'm going to do the OpEx first because it's simpler and the range is narrower. We mentioned on the last call that we front-loaded about $14 million of spend in marketing and IT, and that we had $10 million of losses in Q1. That's about $24 million that doesn't really repeat.
If I said I expect OpEx to be $25 million-$30 million lower in the second half, that's a big chunk of the delta, and the remainder then is execution on selling efforts and the continued rollout of products that are rolling out today and will continue to roll out through the back half of the year.
Got it. Yeah. I want to come back to a few of those things on the merchant and digital wallet side. First, this past quarter, one that stood out was this data licensing business. That's very new for you guys. Can you just give us an overview of what that is, who you're selling to, and how we should think about that data licensing business playing into the fiscal 2026 guide?
Sure. We had some data deals actually baked in when we did the initial guide, but we also weren't exactly sure when they were going to show up. It's still a small enough, new enough effort for us that it will be lumpy through the year as we work through it. We've actually been investing for the last several years in our data franchise internally, primarily to drive better service, customer service, and allow us to address retention rates and try to drive attrition down faster. The data business is sort of a byproduct of that investment effort, as we now thought, Well, okay, we've got a lot of valuable data, and we can now get to it very efficiently.
Let's look for ways to monetize it. You might imagine there are very stringent limits to what kinds of data you can sell to third parties, it's all anonymized and no identifiable customer information, those kind of things. A lot of folks out there, we're now having multiple conversations in the pipeline, are either trying to build or test fraud simulation or fraud-oriented solutions, or in some cases, they want to downstream data sales themselves and need more to train their own models in order to do so. In addition, we will execute on a number of different deal models with respect to data. At this point, we've essentially done sell data, get paid. We're also going to do transactions or looking at transactions where we will sell historical data and then an ongoing component with it.
TBD how all those will work out from a cash flow standpoint, in many cases, it'll involve upfront payments and then things that look more like subscription payments or monthly payments and a license. We're not finding at this point, we're actually probably more limited by our team and their capacity than we are by opportunities and conversations.
Got you. It seems like the pipeline is maybe coming in a little stronger than you'd thought when you went down the road originally.
Well, a little bit. I certainly don't want to change guide. We're still feeling good about-
Yeah
The year. The question really that we're thinking about now is how do we build that team longer term to have it be a more concerted effort for the company versus sort of side of the desk for some other folks.
Got you. Presumably, as you're going through these first deals, you're kind of getting your training wheels going. You have a better sense of how to do this now. Should we think about this as something that, as this pipeline sounds pretty robust, to be quickly turning into revenue, or is it still going to be sort of like an ad hoc project for each, or?
I think each one is still going to be a little bit ad hoc until we get more than two done. We also are looking forward to doing more of them with a recurring element as opposed to one-time.
Excellent. Okay. I want to pivot to LATAM. Very topical for you guys. Big focus for the business. Can you just level-set investors on what exactly that business does in that market, and how you see that market developing over the next few years to become a much more meaningful contributor to the total company?
Sure. The largest component actually is very similar to our European eCash business. There's still a lot of paper money in Peru, and folks will take their physical money into one of many 200,000 of retail outlets and then convert that into, that's the PagoEfectivo solution. They can then go online, buy, bet, all those sorts of things. Really well-known brand. Over 3 million consumers using it regularly. You don't need to walk very far when you're walking around Lima, Peru, to find an outlet with a PagoEfectivo logo in the window. We then have a network throughout LATAM where folks can send money to people in other countries and a variety of other payments in LATAM. We are in multiple countries other than Peru as well.
The most interesting development for us was the launch of the PagoEfectivo wallet in late last year, where we're very much like our Paysafe wallet in Europe, looking at it as a landing spot for those consumers to go from being a periodic user of the cash-in solution or the pay-in solution to now a wallet customer, where they're converting from PagoEfectivo use to funding the wallet and then using it for, in many cases, probably the same use, video game, sports betting, whatever, but also potentially into broader use cases in everyday spend. The growth of LATAM for us is about also driving the walletization. I'm not sure it's a word, but our team uses the term walletization of the traditional PagoEfectivo user into the wallet, and then driving many more endpoint merchants where they can use it to purchase.
We're also selectively adding banking relationships and looking at licenses in various markets in order to expand to adjacent geographies in that market. Because right now it's growing so well for us, we're trying to be a little bit careful that we don't expand too quickly from a geographic standpoint. There are several markets that are relatively ripe for us to add to the portfolio.
Excellent. Yeah, it seems like iGaming is obviously a big part of the digital wallet business. As we think about the World Cup coming up, can you walk us through your customer acquisition strategy in LATAM? You've talked about co-marketing. Can you maybe just give us some specific examples of what's worked and how you're thinking about that?
Sure. I'm super excited about this, actually, because the company's move into true consumer marketing is still relatively new. It's so new that many of the people that are working on it in the marketing department are new to the company. Because historically, the company was able to drive nice revenues and profits without actually thinking very specifically about adding new consumers. I want to baseline that we are now really focused on driving consumers into the product and then making sure they are engaged and delighted when they get there. Versus in some cases, we're self-aware enough to know that many of our solutions exist because when they were first developed, they were necessary because consumers couldn't actually get on the sports betting site with their credit card or their debit card. Now we know there's a lot of competition for consumers and ways they can pay.
Now to get very specific, around the World Cup, we've got a variety of things going on. We're actually doing a fan fest in Peru, where we're going to have people physically there to watch a game together. We've got multiple influencers now that we're working with. That is kind of exciting. We're unrelated specifically to LATAM, but in general, we're sponsoring a couple of influencers on a bus tour here in the U.S. who are going to be going to the various venues. We're going to have folks at each of those stops and have merchants come into each of those stops and that kind of thing. We think there are multiple opportunities to drive buzz around the World Cup. Co-marketing actually is one of the things that have been exciting for us. The World Cup is sort of irrelevant to that.
We're going to do more of it around the World Cup. We've been doing it without the World Cup, where you basically take a meaningful merchant and say, Okay, let's run deals together to drive our PagoEfectivo consumers to your site to transact. We'll have bonuses, prizes, various incentives for the consumer to go to the merchant, make a purchase. We've been doing those things in absurdly small size, and seen real benefits from it already. While the marketing spend in the first half of this year is meaningful to Paysafe, it still feels like the tip of the iceberg for a company that has ambitions to be a meaningful consumer solution. I'm excited about the World Cup. As you might imagine, it would be really exciting if Peru were in the World Cup.
There's still a ton of interest in that market.
Yeah, absolutely. I guess it helps both sides. Around the digital wallet side, this is a clear customer acquisitions point for you. On the merchant side, as you've pointed out previously, you guys didn't really have as much of a presence in this last World Cup. This upcoming World Cup is actually pretty significant for you guys in the sense that the entire product portfolio and footprint is a lot more improved, right?
Absolutely. Our North American iGaming business was nascent when the World Cup happened last. In fact, as we all know, it happened at an unusual time of the year and halfway around the world. Now we've got a North American iGaming business that's got some scale, and it's happening in North America. Likewise, our LATAM business was half the size that it is today. We didn't have the PagoEfectivo wallet as a solution. It's actually hard for me and my team to model and estimate it, but it hasn't been hard to make the decisions around putting spend in place and looking at all the various exciting opportunities we have to co-market and try to drive engagement.
Excellent. Well, I want to stay on this iGaming question or topic just for one more, and then I want to switch over to merchant. Just prediction markets have become a massive theme within iGaming. You guys have a partnership with maybe one or two. I'm curious, what are your thoughts as far as Paysafe's ability just to win in that market as if it were the rest of iGaming or is there any maybe nuance to prediction markets? I know there's some regulatory differences, et cetera, but is there any reason that you guys couldn't win in that market?
No is the short answer. I don't think there are any reasons we can't win in the market. I'd say the limit you hinted at at least one of the limiters, as I think about it, which is unclear regulatory framework. Then I think the second one, and it's probably of equal importance, is the banking system's appetite for it. As folks probably know, one of the things we've been working on over the last year and a half or so is our banking network and trying to go from the assumption that these are our banks to what are the right banks, and should we be pursuing banks who have a risk appetite aligned with our business opportunity and those sorts of things. That's the predictions market for us is, as you said, still relatively small. It's a major opportunity.
We are working in some areas, not with the biggest two independent predictions firms yet. We are working with several of our clients, have predictions elements in their businesses that we're helping them with.
Excellent. Just one more actually before we jump to merchant. The Paysafe Wallet in Europe that just came out, can you maybe just tell us why should investors be excited about this revamped product, and what do you view as some of the key drivers for the record monthly actives you just reported?
I think one key driver is, it's actually a pretty good solution. We're also like with many of the other products, I keep beating the drum on marketing, but we're also trying to be a little smarter with actually trying to market it and get it in front of our users. The PaysafeWallet story in Europe is very much like the story I described in LATAM with the PagoEfectivo wallet. It's kind of a graduation solution for the typical Paysafecash, paysafecard, think eCash-type user, who can then use it much like some of the lightweight neobanks where they can pay for things, they can keep money in it, those sorts of things. It sits on an actual banking institution, but for the consumer, many of them actually don't care.
We're going to continue to put marketing muscle behind it, because we're seeing what we can actually do by leaning into a solution that's working by not trying to hinder its growth.
Excellent. Okay. Just really quick, we only have about three and a half minutes here. On the merchant side, your margins have been impacted by this ISO channel mix dynamic. We touched on this earlier a little bit, but what needs to happen within the direct channel, in the second half and beyond, to kind of drive you back up to upper teens or so margins?
At the risk of repetition, I'll do it faster this time. It is for sure the marketing to sales closing to underwriting funnel. Each piece of that needs to contribute. For bonus points, we had lower attrition numbers in Q1 than our expectation and certainly than what we saw last year. If we can continue to see attrition numbers that are a little better, that will benefit that business as well. We tend to see higher attrition on the direct side because our ISO partners are serving their merchants very well and tend to have lower attrition in their portfolios relative to our direct.
On the enterprise side, you had really strong bookings, great cross-selling. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the improvements you've made within the sales organization that are driving some of this performance and maybe what some of the lower-hanging fruits are in order to really further improve it? On the cross-sell side, how much incremental runway exists?
I'm glad you said cross-sell because I was going to start there. We think there's still a lot of runway on cross-sell and it's, I was going to say global, but it's certainly across our three big geos. We're actually seeing significant cross-sell into LATAM as part of the LATAM growth story, for example. Part of it was really just getting properly organized with the sales force across verticals and geographies. The second piece really was making sure that the company got out of the way of collaboration. We didn't have people battling over turf or worried about who was going to get paid for a cross-sell and that sort of thing, and that's worked really well. We see lots of runway in all three of our big geos.
Switching topics entirely here, you called out that 60% of customer contacts were resolved with digital assistants in the past quarter. What are the other big buckets of potential AI-driven savings? What's your outlook for the amount of OpEx that could possibly be removed as you integrate AI across the organization? Not asking for guidance or anything like that, just your personal thinking on that.
Yeah, I think there's still a decent to decent plus opportunity in the back of the house with AI. We're seeing not just the automated resolution of consumers, but actually the more heavily automated person-to-person resolution as well. Significantly more real-time data to the dashboard of a customer service representative, and they're dealing with it. Significantly smarter systems now in our risk department, for underwriting speed and accuracy, and use cases all over my financial organization as well.
Got you. Last question here. What do you feel is maybe misunderstood by investors that you'd like to leave them with here today about Paysafe?
Misunderstood is hard, but the point I want to make as a final is a reiteration of our commitment to delever and focus on paying down the debt and driving delevering through growing our EBITDA, because we are hyper-focused on our capital structure as well.
Excellent. Well, John, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.
Thank you.