 From London, England, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 19, EMEA, brought to you by Coupa. Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin on the ground in London, at Coupa Inspire 19. Very pleased to welcome to theCUBE for the first time. We have Dean Henry, the EVP of Business Financing and Supplier Management from American Express. Dean, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, happy to be here. So let's talk about payments. Those of us in our day lives as consumers, the B2C transactions are so easy these days, right? You can transact from your phone, from your watch, it's, we're doing everything. We're paying bills, we're buying things, yet in the B2B space, business payments haven't had as rapid as innovation as we've seen on the consumer side. Talk to me a little bit about the business to business payments industry from Annex's perspective before we get in to what you guys are doing with Coupa. Yeah, well, first comment on the innovation. You're absolutely right. The innovation that's happening in retail payments hasn't made its way to B2B payments. I think that's mostly a function of a consumer having the ease to try something new, download an app and change the way that they transact a bit at a store or a bit with whoever they're paying. Whereas a big business has a lot of processes that drive their business spend and the way that they manage it in systems and as we're here talking with Coupa today, the processes that they automate and that they bring are critical to making payments happen. And because of that, there's just barriers to entry that make B2B payments harder to mirror the speed that you see in the retail side. That said, there's a lot of exciting things happening. B2B payments is a $127 trillion market globally. It's a big profit pool that a lot of players are innovating in. And when you look into the landscape and you consider who's playing out there, there's the traditional big banks that have been sort of the stalwarts of global payments. There's obviously a large and growing FinTech community with new companies every day that are in the media offering new capabilities to clients. And then there's players like American Express. And I think we're actually uniquely positioned in that landscape with not too many exactly like us. And when you look at the big banks and some of the challenges that they have when I talk to our customers about fees and processes that take a while or money that moves with relative uncertainty in terms of how much is actually gonna show up in the beneficiary's account based on lifting fees as money moves between banks. And then you look at the FinTech community that's new innovative solutions, but you're not sure that they're always going to be around after the next funding cycle. I think we're trying to play in the middle where we're a great alternative to the FinTech community. We're a global platform for payments. We're a global platform for lending. So we can really do all the things that a FinTech can do, all the things that a bank can do in many instances and do that with the brand and the certainty that is AmEx. And so we're excited about the space and we're investing a lot of time and energy and partnering where we need to in order to make sure our customers can transact where they want us to help them facilitate commerce. Right, that point of enabling a customer to transact where they want. What influences are you, as American Express, seeing and being able to infuse into your partnerships from the consumer side, from that consumer who buys something with a clicker swipe on Amazon and wants to be able to do something similar in their business day job. Tell me about the influence that American Express is seeing and what that position that you just described is allowing you guys to say, all right, this is the direction that we're going to go in because we know we need to meet you, Mr. Customer, where you are. Right, well, I think part of it is demographics to be perfectly honest. If you look at Gen Y and Gen Z, they're more of the decision makers in today's management. They will be even more in tomorrow's management and so they, to your point, have that expectation that their business life shouldn't be that much more complex than their personal life. So what we're trying to do is find the partners that have the best user experience and make sure our solutions work seamlessly there. That's step one, that's what we're doing here with Koopa. Step two is we're also trying to make sure that our capabilities on AMEX, digital real estate works just as easily as our retail side of our business. And we're doing that with the unifying principles at American Express, which is the trust and the service and the brand that we offered our clients, but then also the merchant rewards. So there's a rich history of American Express providing a differentiated value proposition with the credit card rewards that exist and we take that capability into our business relationships and make sure that it's a value add to those customers that want it. So let's talk about what American Express is doing with Koopa, what was it just announced with Koopa Pay? So yeah, Koopa Pay, I was impressed by the stats that Rob put up there, they're growing quickly and we want to be part of it. We're candidly following the requests of our clients who want American Express as a payment option inside Koopa Pay. We offer a tremendous value prop inside of Koopa Pay. The data that flows with the payment, the data that we're able to collect that differentiates us from our competition helps our clients reconcile their payments, eliminate the paper, realize the efficiencies that Koopa's clients are excited about. And so we're there simply enabling American Express to be a payment option and my hope and I think Koopa's hope is that that's step one of a partnership and we'll be able to do more together to serve our collective clients. So this is enabling American Express virtual cards to be available as a payment option within Koopa Pay? Yes. And what is a virtual card? So a virtual card is a virtual credit card number. It can be a one-time use or multi-use. And our clients use it for several different reasons. Buyers of goods use a virtual card in order to make the payment of a supplier easier to get more data along with the transaction so that they can reconcile a payment to a purchase order and to associated invoices. The suppliers get benefit as well in that they too get enhanced data to reconcile a payment that they receive on their end. There's also working capital benefit in that if a buyer chooses to pay early an invoice, we can extend financing and pay the supplier earlier so that they have more working capital to operate their business. And so it's a real balanced value prop where both parties are realizing value. Is this going to enable a buyer to have benefits like increased security with the way the virtual card works? Yeah, well, increased security in so far as a virtual card is encrypted, the fact that American Express stands behind all of our card payments with our brand and our promise, that differentiates from a traditional bank payment, ACH and other low-value clearings that don't have those guarantees along with it. And so that is a big differentiator. But I think candidly, the biggest benefit our clients see is the enhanced data and the working capital. I think that's where we're trying to enrich both sides of the transaction, give more data to enable the automation that's happening in the industry and extend credit so that businesses can operate more efficiently and buy the things that they need to buy and hire the people they need to hire. Is this also something that will give suppliers and buyers more visibility? You talked about enhanced data. Will they now have more visibility over buyers like different supplier options or suppliers with different ways that they can get paid? So certainly enhance visibility on when a supplier's getting paid and relative to the invoice date. And what we're trying to do is work with Koopa and work with our partners around, well, how do we enhance the data so that as Koopa talks about the community of suppliers, that their buyers utilize, how can we be part of that? How do we support the buyers and making decisions? The suppliers and utilizing American Express as a source to be a verified business that has gone through all the legal checks that are required in commerce and bringing both of those capabilities to a transaction on the Koopa network. One of the stats that Rob mentioned this morning, and I love stats, I really geek out over them. I don't know why. He said there's five million plus suppliers on the Koopa platform. Is that an advantage that American Express sees to help extend the footprint of your virtual cards? Absolutely. What I'm candidly more excited about is the millions and millions of suppliers that are on the American Express network. And that's an asset that I see personally as something that we can work with Koopa and other partners to bring the businesses that are already verified that are on our network that we personally talk to every year and bring those verified profiles to the commerce networks like Koopa so that it's easier to transact on Koopa if you have an American Express card. Got it. And then last question for you is if we look at this partnership, what was announced today, this is launching in the UK and Australia first and then you'll roll it out more globally. Can you tell me a little bit about why those two regions, when that's going to be available for customers to use? So the honest answer is we wanted to be fast to market and quick out to our customer base. The UK and Australia are two very important geographies for us, so we're launching first in those places by the end of the year and then looking at rolling out in the US in early 2020 and then from there expanding alongside Koopa. Excellent. Well, Dean, thank you for joining me on theCUBE this afternoon, sharing what's new with MX and Koopa. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Really happy to be here. Oh, excellent. For Dean Henry, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Koopa Inspire London 19. Thanks for watching.