Summary of Katherine’s AMA session with Judah Hirsch from Salarium (January 29th, 2018)

In this episode of AMA, we are proud to introduce to you Salarium CEO Judah Hirsch to talk about Salarium and its blockchain payroll system SALPay, hosted by our VP of Marketing Katherine Ng.

Katherine: Can you give us a quick description of SALPay and what it is trying to solve in the marketplace today?

Judah: At Salarium, we are an existing fintech and payroll solution in the Philippines that has been in operation for about 4 years now. In a quick nutshell, we give away HRIS (Human Resource Information System) and payroll solutions to companies essentially for free; provided that if they pay their employees using our e-wallet and debit card platform, which is called SALPay. A lot of our clients are BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and multinational corporations, where these multinational corporations have to inject funds from Singapore, USA, etc, into our ecosystem. In return, we are using our solution software to disperse these funds to their employees, by unloading these funds onto our SALPay system.

Katherine: How does the e-wallet and the SALPay card work? How does an overseas worker send money back to their home country (e.g. the Philippines) seamlessly through the SALPay network? How are the transaction cost and transaction time made lower and faster?

Judah: For us, the SALPay token acts like a native currency for the fiat currencies involved. We are just tokenizing the currencies and the transactions. The SALPay token will reduce transaction time and cost because the exchanges that we are going to establish in those countries will allow fiat currencies to be converted to SALPay tokens at market rate from the sender’s side, and the SALPay tokens will be converted back into the receiver’s currency at the local market rate.

Katherine: Let’s say if I work in Australia and I would like to send money to my family in Malaysia, how long would the transaction take?

Judah: For Malaysia, we have plans to serve the region in the next year or so. As for the transaction timeline, ideally, we are looking at one or two hours, with a 1% fee or less, that we are targeting. The experience for the receiver is that we have the app and the card. Not only we enable employees to receive money seamlessly, we also have micro-financing services in our ecosystem. We are also looking forward to introducing micro-insurance (sometime this year), savings account, bills payment, and other financial products. Ultimately, this ecosystem allows them to do more with their money, which is at center of our business model.

Katherine: So you are essentially working on building the utility of the SALPay token (loan, insurance, etc), on top of it being used as a remittance token?

Judah: SALPay is both a cryptocurrency company and a fintech stored value system. What the token does is connecting various stored value systems; we will build the stored value system in Australia and Singapore, while we already have the system in the Philippines. SALPay tokens will connect the systems by allowing the users to either hold or sell the tokens, or convert it to other ERC20 based tokens. Card holders can also spend their tokens directly from the card. But the primary use case we are initially addressing is the cross-border remittance for businesses, wherein the South East Asia (SEA) region, this is a 250 billion dollar problem each year. Thus, we think that the global market is ripe for such a disruption, to address this multi-trillion remittance bottleneck. While there is a lot of B2C in the industry, there isn’t a lot of B2B services yet.

Katherine: When you quantify the 250b USD market, was that in terms of total value or total fees?

Judah: Total value transferred.

Katherine: How does the money and SALPay tokens get transferred across exchanges?

Judah: The primary purpose behind our ICO is to license [our technology] and to provide liquidity for these exchanges that we are building. For instance, we have a BPO in Australia wanting to load $10k dollars to pay their employees in the Philippines, during a certain payroll period. They load the money into any of the bank accounts that we service; we work with about fourteen banks in the Philippines that can fund the accounts. Once the account gets funded, then we can allow them to transfer directly to the SALpay cards and wallets of their employees. So that is the value proposition. They will use our software to keep track on their employees, schedule, leaves, and how much to pay them.

Katherine: OK, so this is something like an open market on your exchange in a sense?

Judah: It is like a looped market where we can pull [fiat] from the market, as well as push [fiat] back into the market. We have spent a lot of time on the mechanics to ensure that the appreciating value of the SALPay tokens will not pose a threat to the sustainability of the entire Salarium ecosystem. Essentially, the price of the SALPay token should not be influenced by the fiat-to-fiat demand from our customers.

Katherine: What made you decide to setup your own exchanges? Would you be partnering and are you partnering with other countries?

Judah: Eventually we may partner, but the whole thing is really about achieving that 1% fee that we aim for, which is inclusive of fees and et cetera. Ergo, in order to achieve that, you really need to own the buying and selling platforms. Granted that there is a huge volume and demand for the SALPay tokens in the future, it may be possible for us to partner with exchanges and get them to lock-in or set a commission rate.

Katherine: What is the perception of cryptocurrencies like in the Philippines? How does that impact your business operations there?

Judah: Philippines is one of the most forward thinking country in the SEA, and our central bank here is one of (if not) the most forward thinking central banks in the region in understanding cryptocurrency and how it could be used to help people. Philippines is also one of the first countries to create a license, and that is one of the primary purposes of our ICO; to raise enough capital for the legal fees to get that license. Our banking partner here in the Philippines is the Union Bank, we have recently announced a big partnership with them and Visa. They are very blockchain-friendly and they are the first member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA).

Katherine: It is certainly great to hear that the Philippines is pro-crypto and is heading towards the licensing path!

Judah: Oh yea, absolutely. There are already two licensed exchanges here, and 16 more in the application process!

Katherine: Oh wow, that is really interesting! Japan was the first to react to the Mt. Gox exchange hack, to regulate the cryptocurrency players, and it seems like the Philippines is following suit!

Judah: Right, if you look at Australia, everything has to be fully legal and licensed. While Singapore does not necessarily have a license yet, but the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) is very crypto-friendly I would say.

Katherine: Based on your roadmap, are you are looking forward to expanding your presence in crypto-friendly countries such as Singapore and Australia? Any other countries in your roadmap?

Judah: Of course, for now we are stuck at a 12-month roadmap. We did not want to produce a 3–4 year roadmap as plans and situations could change very drastically especially in the crypto space. Nonetheless, we are looking at expanding our presence in Malaysia and Thailand in 2019. We would also really like to rollout in Indonesia as well, if we could get a clear legislation from them (as it is really up to the regulators).

Katherine: I have worked in Indonesia for five years, and I noticed that people there have just leapfrogged from using desktops and credit cards to using mobile payment solutions.

Judah: Right, the reason why you see so many fintech companies and solutions coming out of the SEA region is because the banks there are very traditional; they do not provide lending, and many other services. Yes, we do have fintech companies coming out of the Europe, but the banks there are already providing high quality services to their customer. Therefore, there remains a huge gap between the banks and the customers in the SEA.

Katherine: Are there any other considerations that you have looked at before deciding to do it in the Philippines?

Judah: When you want to do a solid card program, it is really important to roll it out country by country. Thankfully, we have a very good relationship with Visa and Mastercard, therefore it is not that hard to find partners, also because the way that we run our business operation is very much aligned to what they are looking for. So if we want to look for bank partners, we look for one that has a crypto-friendly environment and market.

Katherine: How are you making contacts with other banks in the other regions?

Judah: We already have our partners in Singapore and Hong Kong for card and wallet distribution. Meanwhile in Australia, we are talking with a couple of groups, in which we are about to close one of them very soon. In terms of regulation, our legal teams and their respective law firms are filing the paperworks for the various region; MAS in Singapore, Australia, etc. So far, everything is on track, and we are happy.

Katherine: You have just concluded your ICO is that right?

Judah: Yes, our ICO has ended before many people have even heard of our project. Part of it is because we did not allow Singaporeans, Chinese, and US citizens from participating in the ICO. Post-ICO, we started have a tremendous amount of demand for the SALpay token, but now that our ICO has concluded, we are looking forward to the listing at QRYPTOS.

Katherine: As much as we would like to offer the best services possible, I would like to know, in your own words, why choose QRYPTOS?

Judah: We see QUOINE and QRYPTOS as becoming one of the top ten exchanges very soon, because of the transparency and the pleasant experience in dealing with the listing. We also like the appeals from the security side, where QRYPTOS has never been hacked, and the fact that you guys have put a lot of time and energy into that.

Katherine concluded the AMA session with words of thanks to Judah, the CEO of Salarium, and wishes for more future collaborations between QUOINE and Salarium.

About Salarium

Salarium token: SALPay
Company site: https://www.salarium.com

Telegram groupchat: @SALPayICO

Contacts:
Judah Z Hirsch — Founder and CEO — [email protected]

Eduadro Guiterrez — Communication Director — [email protected]

Arvie De Vera — Fintech Group Head Unionbank — [email protected]

Paolo Baltao — Senior Vice President EON Group Unionbank — [email protected]

Transcribed by Kester Wong