INSIGHTS

In this video, we talk with Chris Heaslip, CEO of Pushpay Holdings. We discuss how the idea originally came about, and how much more potential there is for growth. Questions covered include:

1. Was your 44% revenue growth driven by new customer wins or existing customers?
2. Looking ahead, how are you thinking about the balance between revenue growth and profitability?
3. What are Pushpay’s key points of difference in the digital payments space?
4. How are you looking to grow the Xero eco-system?
5. How large is Pushpay’s addressable market? Do you see opportunities beyond your core market?
6. How did the original idea for Pushpay come about?

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Craigs: Was your 44% revenue growth driven by new customer wins or existing customers?

Chris:Well it’s a little bit of both – with over 70% of our revenue coming from payment processing, it takes some time for our customers who we’ve newly acquired to ramp up and hit maturity over maybe one or two quarters. And so a lot of the great wins that we’ve experienced in the last quarter won’t show up in the revenue line for a couple of quarters.

Craigs: Looking ahead, how are you thinking about the balance between revenue growth and profitability?

Chris: We’ve set a bold, ambitious goal about 18 months ago to be cash flow break even in December this year, and moving forwards. So the business has had a really keen eye on expenses and expense management over the last year or so, to ensure that we achieve that goal. As we see opportunities to continue to invest in growing, beyond where we are today, we’ll continue to take those opportunities.

Craigs: What are Pushpay’s key points of difference in the digital payments space?

Chris: The church and non-profit space is a sleepy segment that hasn’t had a lot of attention. And one of the things that we really set out to do is bring world class technology to a space that hasn’t seen innovation for many, many years. So one of the key parts of our business is continuing to invest in building world class technology. And we set a goal for ourselves that our technology should be so good, that if it was in any other market it would be world class.

Craigs: How large is Pushpay’s addressable market? Do you see opportunities beyond your core market?

Chris: Giving to churches alone is about $130 billion a year, which represents a TAM (total addressable market) of just under a couple of billion dollars. And as we continue to make good in roads in that market and expand our product functionality, we’ll look to expand in to other verticals as well, such as the education or non-profit verticals which are about one and two billion dollars respectively of TAM opportunity, for about $5 billion in total.

Craigs: How did the original idea for Pushpay come about?

Chris: It was born from a personal frustration I’d had that it was possible to buy a song on iTunes in 10 seconds but I wanted to make a donation in church before the bucket gets to me, and of course there’s no way to do that because we don’t carry cash or a cheque book. So we thought, what if we could make it as easy to donate, as it is to buy a song on iTunes. The average donation through Pushpay’s platform is just under $200 per donation. So when people can’t give, actually there’s a lot of money that everyone’s missing out on. So, people enjoy it from the user perspective but also the organisation benefits as well.