hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder catching clouds the leader in e-commerce
accounting and today we're going to continue with our series on solutions
for e-commerce sellers and today we're going to be talking about global
payments and specifically talking about veem so let's get started all right so I
hope that if you watch no other video this is the one you watch because this
is the one that's gonna actually put money back in your pocket and you'll
understand that as I keep talking about this stuff and full disclosure if you
sign up with the link down below it is an affiliate link so I'm gonna get
Commission for you signing up so take that information as you will I wouldn't
be talking about this if I didn't believe in the service and a lot of our
clients use it but I just want you to be aware first off big news out of beam
just a week or so ago they announced that they closed a big strategic funding
round led by Goldman Sachs Google Ventures which I think is now
goes by GB and silicon Bank and some other people were investing in this
round and that is huge news they are looking to basically transform the
global payments space so I think a few years ago they had 590 customers last
year they had 18,000 now they've got 80,000 in 96 countries so they are
growing like gangbusters and I think it's because they're really filling a
strong need in the market for this type of service the biggest thing that
they're transforming is around wires and specifically international wires so
before I've even came along basically it was you you go down to the bank you
stand in line you take 15 minutes for each wire you want to send you pay them
like 40 bucks and then off goes your money and then it goes to the person
you're sending it to and then you call them up and go do you have it yet do you
have it yet do you have it yet and then they say yeah I got it and they pay like
fifteen or twenty bucks so it's expensive there's not a lot of
visibility into the transaction it's not super secure
and it kind of wastes your time but going to the bank you know so so what
beam does is they are using blockchain technology so that when you're sending
payments through their transfer service you you know where it is every step of
the way you know who you're sending it to you know when they've got it
and it's super secure so I think the thing that everybody likes most about
beam is the cost because it's basically free so they're their advantages for
signing up if you're an accounting firm sign up as an accounting firm and you
get better service you get preferred pricing which is basically you don't pay
for any of the transfers of money the only time that there's a cost is when
there's a USD to an International USD account and in that case whoever
receives the money they pay twenty dollars but there's no fee to send the
money if you are any commerce seller then I would recommend you get yourself
hooked up with an accountant who can kind of make sure that you get some
preferred pricing and stuff as well so take a look down below for that link
that I was telling you about before sign up if you don't like I already have an
account that you're working with uses beam or whatever so but definitely if
you're an account check that out go check out their program because it can
help out you and your clients big-time the other benefit is the vMac points so
they just started this program and basically not only do they not charge
you when you're transferring money if you do transfer money they give you
money back so it's pretty amazing and I know that like when I was hearing about
this I was like wait this can't possibly be real because like how do they stay in
business if they're just giving money back and what they do is I think they
take a cut of the currency conversion rates so this is why when you're doing
an international transfer that you're changing from one currency to another
they get a piece of that presumably more than just $40 on the transaction or
something like that so it doesn't come out of you they just cut out the
internet intermediary banks so that they don't have to deal with them they can do
things cheaper so it doesn't come out of your
pocket but they still get paid okay so as the e-commerce seller let's talk
about the operational efficiency of you using the beam so you know you're not
going to have to walk down to the bank you're not gonna have to stand in line
filling out that paperwork you just go online if you have a bill great if you
don't have a bill doesn't matter you can go in and say create payment or you can
say create payment and create a bill and it will send that information over to
zero or QuickBooks Online whatever you're using and so your accountant will
stay in the know while you're making sure you're taking care of what you need
to take care of for your business if you let's say you have a supplier in China
and you place an order for a hundred thousand dollars and they say hey send
me a deposit of thirty percent which is super common for anybody using suppliers
in another country they will ask for a deposit up front you can just go ahead
and say pay thirty percent of this and it will just do part of it but still
keep track of what it relates to so that's really great and also if they
let's say they're in China you're in the US they want to receive it in their
local currency you want to send it in US dollars they can totally handle that no
problem at all now let's say you're an accountant and you need to keep track of
this the great thing about veem is it it has bi-directional sync between
QuickBooks Online and nvm or between zero and beams so whether you create the
bill and beam and go that way it'll show up in your accounting software or if you
create it in Xero it'll go the other way and it will land in beam and it'll be
there ready to pay so the good thing is in either case your accountants don't
have the ability to transact on your account the seller has the ability to
send out the payments the accountant is just in the know because they get the
information back and forth to beam so that the seller can do what they need to
do in the accountant can do what they need to do so that's really great all
right let's talk about timing typically it takes one to three days for just
normal and run-of-the-mill currencies if you have a more exotic currency it may
take two to five days and then the very first time that you send the transfer
its take an extra day or two because FEMA's
gonna contact whoever's receiving the money and say hey can we deposit some
money in your account and then sometimes people are really responsive and it
takes no time at all and other times it takes them a few mud jiz to get them to
accept it so so that first time that you get a transfer is going to take a little
bit longer but then they're confirmed and they're good to go and the the
deposits will speed up after that one other piece of functionality that they
just added is this mass pay where you can go upload a whole bunch of bills all
at once basically you can upload a CSV file you can just drag and drop that
here have the process state and as long as you have all this information it'll
create a whole bunch of bills all at once okay the last thing I want to tell
you about is beam just added functionality so that you can actually
connect beam with Xero for your sales invoices so if you want to collect money
through beam you can add that to your sales invoices you just go into Xero and
change the settings for the payment services that you take their
instructions down below on how to do that it'll add a link to your Xero
invoice that people just click here and then they can pay through veem it's
really slick and easy if you're using QuickBooks Online
they don't have exactly the same thing but veem does have like a standalone
link that you can copy and paste and put onto your invoices you can just
customize your individual invoices and add that there and this is way better
than if you're one of those people who's putting wire information or bank
information on their invoices this is a much more secure option for doing that
so I guess that's it if you don't know much about beam and this was your
introduction I hope it helped you if you like this video please like comment and
share if you haven't already please subscribe and I'll catch you later