Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
December 1, 2021
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. Welcome, everyone. If you could please take your seats, we'll get started here. So my name is Tim Chiodo. I'm the lead payments processors and fintech analyst here at Credit Suisse. Welcome, everyone, to the afternoon of the second day of our 25th Annual Technology Conference here in Arizona. So first, I just want to thank the entire Shift4 team with Jared, Brad, Taylor and also Tom, new to the company in Investor Relations. Thank you all for making the trip here to Arizona to be with us. And Jared, specifically, thank you for being on stage.
Jared Isaacman
executiveHappy to.
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. Great. We're just going to get right into it because we have about 30 minutes or so, and there's a lot to talk about with Shift4. Coming off of the exciting Investor Day out in Las Vegas, one of the key topics obviously was the medium-term outlook. So maybe we should just recap some of the numbers that were disclosed and some of the confidence that you have around achieving those.
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. So we basically -- I mean, well, let's just rewind the clock a little bit. So a little bit about Shift4. We're an integrated payments company. 99% of all transactions we touch originate through software. We're known for kind of our core verticals, which is really the complex end of the commerce spectrum, where you have a business like this hotel that has multiple revenue centers, hotel, restaurant, golf courses, salons, spas, all using different software, all from different vendors, all in different versions that have to come together through common encryption, tokenization for analytics, merchant settlement, acceptance. And that's generally driven around about 425 unique software integrations that we're connected into. Now since the time of our IPO about 18 months and change ago, we've entered like 7 new verticals. And we've been doing it mostly because of the confidence we have in our core verticals. But we've also been doing it rather quietly. We haven't been coming out and setting a lot of expectations as to what we're -- what are -- like what are the results that we're anticipating as a result of these organic and inorganic initiatives. And that was really the basis for why we wanted to set some midterm outlook is because we just -- we hadn't really shared as much. So we said basically expect to see 50% end-to-end volume growth over the next 3 years, at least 50%, expect to see at least 30% net revenue growth over the same 3 years. Now what this is like based on is kind of our core verticals that's really impossible to replicate. Our unique software integration library has been growing end-to-end payment volume at, call it like, some 45% CAGR over the last several years. And that's through a pandemic. So you really -- even if you were to kind of dial that back a little bit and then look at the next -- which we don't like -- we had over 100% end-to-end volume growth in November. So like we're not expecting it to slow down at all. But even if you were to discount a little bit and then look at the 7 new verticals we've entered since we've IPO, which is e-commerce, sports and entertainment and theme parks, gaming, travel and leisure through airline, nonprofits, health care and just what I'll refer to as sexy tech, which would be like Starlink, you don't have to believe much of what those 7 new verticals will yield, all anchored on signature wins in every one of them in order to plug the gap between, call it, our historical like high 40s percent end-to-end volume growth and the 50% outlook we gave over the next 3 years.
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. Excellent, Jared. Related to that, maybe you could just talk about some of the components of that. You alluded to them certainly. But to the extent you could put some rough kind of mix or numbers around it in terms of how much could we expect gateway conversion to contribute, new verticals, just core share gains in your existing verticals?
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. So we're in a unique situation in that we have $175 billion of volume already on our rails today. So while, call it, $50 billion is end-to-end volume, and we're saying that's what's going to grow at 50% -- at least 50% over the next 3 years, we have $175 billion of volume that's gateway only, which means we're doing all the hard work. It's our platform connected into the software. It's our tokenization. It's our encryption, and then what we're doing is outputting the volume on the back of the gateway to like a legacy merchant acquirer who's adding no value. So 50% of our production over the last 4 years has come from those gateway customers moving to our end-to-end platform, which is as simple as like throwing a switch. And it's about a 4 to 5x uplift in annual gross profit contribution. Now what we're saying is like over the next 3, 4 years, 50% of our production will come from those gateway customers moving to end-to-end just as it's been over the last 4 years, and 50% or more will come from just net new wins and what is a huge addressable market that our 425 integrations talk to. What are like examples of that? Like net new wins leveraging our software integrations would be like Virgin Hotels or Wind Creek Casino and Resorts. Those would be 2 within the resort world. And then like conversions would be Sonesta, which half of their locations were on our gateway move to end-to-end, and the other half were just net new wins because it was by virtue of acquisition. So we'll expect that to continue. Now all that said, it's easy to quantify and it's a natural question. Like it's all addressable. It's all our technology that's powering that $175 billion, and it's not going anywhere. So at some point or another, we're going to want to be rewarded for the solution that we're uniquely able to provide. We deserve the lion's share of the economics because we're doing the hard work of integrating to the platform, tokenizing, authorizing, settling transactions. So at some point, like we're just going to charge the same amount whether you use our gateway or end-to-end. Like that's just an eventuality because like that's what we're entitled to do given the solution we're providing. That's not baked in our multiyear outlook. It's just a lot of our competitors are not gateways, and we don't anticipate doing that necessarily indefinitely into the future either.
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. Thank you, Jared. Before we move on, I just want to -- one more topic related to the Investor Field Day that you had. One of the things that stood out to us was the discussion around the SaaS revenue opportunity. I know you've talked publicly around how the payments revenue, the SaaS revenue, you're sort of agnostic. There's advantages to both. But what is embedded in that outlook that you gave in terms of SaaS revenue?
Jared Isaacman
executiveWell, I mean, right now, the lion's share of our revenue is derived from spread off of volume, which from a quality of revenue perspective, not to like debate, I mean, some people are like really pro Saas. In an inflationary environment, I would take spread off volume all day long. Whereas SaaS revenue would be fixed, we will grow with our customers and their ticket size. And that's been our philosophy for a long time, which is why we've largely either ignored or discounted SaaS revenue in order to grow that variable spread-based payment revenue. As a result, you have some 125,000, just say, restaurants, for example, that we serve, only 15% are we deriving any SaaS revenue from. So there's a lot of opportunity with our new restaurant product, SkyTab POS, which are already in 3,000 locations despite being in beta that we will roll out to the existing customers and just net new customers, which will have a SaaS component to it, which will also have a monetized marketplace, which we've otherwise given for free up until now. And then as we moved into new verticals, we've drawn -- we've made assumptions based on our historical practices in other markets. Like when we acquired VenueNext, which is -- has -- it's been some time since we acquired it, it's now like the category leader in sports entertainment and theme parks, we bought it with the idea we would monetize those relationships and new customer wins entirely off payments. It turns out -- so we modeled that we were going to like run the SaaS revenue to the ground and have this like astronomical rise in payment volume. What's happened is we've had this massive rise in payment volume consistent with plan, and we haven't been able to get rid of the SaaS revenue, which is why we raised our Q4 guide on net revenue to account for the SaaS revenue that we thought we would have traded to payments revenue by now. And the reason is stadiums, theme parks are rolling out our mobile solution very, very quickly. And they're able to do that faster because it's like a CTO decision, then treasury and finance could move payments. So you wind up growing the software revenue really fast, and you're growing the payments revenue. So I guess it's a long way of saying even though historically, we've chosen to monetize almost entirely through payments, I would anticipate, especially as we move into new verticals, especially like nonprofit and health care, that you will not only have a meaningful contribution or a majority contribution coming from payments, but SaaS revenue will grow at a faster pace than it has historically.
Timothy Chiodo
analystPerfect. Thank you, Jared. I want to move into competitive positioning. And I think at the Investor Field Day, I think you characterized it well. You said some kind comments about some of your competitors, and you said, "They're a good company. We're a good company, too. It's not a winner-take-all market." Maybe we could just talk about your view of what makes a winner or a loser over the coming decade.
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. It's a good question. And frankly, I think this has been like the #1 we've been talking about through our various investor engagement today is like, obviously, the payment sector is like not doing well right now. And I'm sure everybody has seen better days than we saw it today. And like there's this general -- like I'm asking questions. Like why do you think this sector is in such chaos? And there's like a general like confusion of like who's winning or losing. So I think having had a few investor engagements today, I've been able to like refine this a little bit. Look, if you're a payments company and you're reporting payment volume and it's growing, you're winning. And if you're a payments company and you've decided to stop reporting payment volume, you're shrinking. It's really that simple. Generally speaking, today, merchants are not idiots. They're doing everything that we're all talking about, which is they're migrating towards technology-enabled solutions in order to deliver a better experience for their customers, period. That's not a mistake. Like you're a restaurant, you need like online ordering and QR code payments. If you're a hotel, you want keyless check-in, right? Like a merchant today who's not leaving one bad provider for another, they're leaving a bad provider for a solution that is tech-enabled to deliver a better commerce experience for their customers, period. We grew end-to-end payment volume 86% year-over-year in October. We grew November over 100% year-over-year. Those are not customers making bad decisions. They're moving to a technology-enabled solution. That's why you're growing payment volume. And it's not just one. There are quite a few out there. Like Square does a great job. Clover does a good job. The problem is that at one point, they processed half the world's transactions. So as much as they do here, they've got a little bit of a drag there. Shopify does a good job. Toast does a good job. We're like doing a good job. I think we have the fastest-growing organic payment volume in the industry. So -- and then those who aren't reporting payment volume anymore are probably optimizing around rate increases and cost expenses, and that's probably where the volume is coming from. That's how you kind of generally understand who's kind of winning and losing in the market.
Timothy Chiodo
analystGreat, Jared. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about today's mix versus tomorrow's mix. So we like to break things down into owned software and partnered software. On the owned side, you've got plenty of platforms. SkyTab POS, you mentioned. You've got VenueNext, Harbortouch, et cetera. And then on the partnered side, you have hundreds of integrations. To the extent you can share what the mix of end-to-end volume coming through owned versus partnered today. Or maybe more -- what would be more helpful is how that might look in 5 years from now.
Jared Isaacman
executiveIt's so hard. So we've been doing integrated payments before there was integrated payments. That's why 99% of our transactions originate through software. And what we've been able to do, which is really hard, is have a build, buy and partner approach. So if we see opportunity -- first of all, the most important thing is have a payment platform that attracts software integrations on the most complex end of the commerce spectrum. That's like foundational and important. Like you're not going to build a product for every vertical. Adyen and Stripe, great organizations, they don't build Uber-specific software and Facebook-specific software. They build a platform that's awesome, that attracts software integrations across various verticals. That's what we do at Shift4. Now we are willing to make bets on certain verticals if we think there's opportunities. So in the hotel like resort world, where we're growing volume very quickly, we play nice with everyone because there's only 3 competitors in the space, and the other 2 have natural disadvantages. And that's why we've been able to grow end-to-end volume very quickly if you look at our Investor Day slide. Now in that case, there's like 50 software companies that make property management system software for hotels. And no one ever changes it out like ever because it does a lot of stuff. It integrates with central reservation systems, OTAs. When you sign up for Internet here and you put your last name and room number in, that talks through a property management system. Nobody wants to mess with that. So what we do is integrate with everyone in the hospitality space. Every property management system in the hotel space is integrated to us. We'd never buy one because we're not going to make bets on that. Now if you go into stadiums, for example, there's 4 software companies, 2 legacy, 2 modern. And the scrappiest, fastest-growing one of them all that had really cool tech, which was VenueNext, we acquired. And it was the only company we ever paid a revenue multiple for because it was winning without a payments fuel value prop. It's winning more with a payments fuel value prop. We announced new stadiums every single month. We're totally the category leader in sports and entertainment. So we're growing SaaS revenue and payments revenue because we were willing to make a bet on one horse to win that one. In the restaurant space, when you touch 1/3 of the restaurants out there and you have thousands of distribution partners that understand a payments fuel value prop, you can build product in that space. We've made our bet with SkyTab POS, and we've been growing restaurant volume for like 15 years within that space and will continue to do so. So foundationally, you want a killer platform that can compete on the most complex end of the commerce spectrum. It's what we do. And then we are willing to build, buy, partner within certain verticals when we think there is an opportunity to differentiate and accelerate growth within that space. So that's what we've done.
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. Excellent. Thank you, Jared. I think we should move on to another one that's sort of mix related but more on the spreads. And we thought at the Investor Day, the Investor Field Day, you did a really nice job of breaking out the spreads by vertical. Clearly, we've talked about this for some time now around how different merchant sizes have different spreads for good reason, and that's across the payments industry. It's not a Shift4 phenomenon. So maybe you could talk a little bit about your mix going forward and what that means for spreads and what's embedded in that medium-term outlook?
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. I mean, so we do discuss spread every single quarter. And we talk about how you're going from like the high 70s and you went up in the mid-70s and everybody is like, "Oh, man, there's tons of competitive pressures driving it down, like that's the only way you win." But generally speaking, guys, like growing payment volume right now is very, very hard. You have to be able to deliver value through technology. Merchants are not making a choice over $0.01 or $0.02 anymore. That was 10 years ago. Like today, they're happy to pay more. Like Adyen spreads, Stripe spreads are very good. They're happy to pay more if you get -- if you deliver good value. The answer in our world is for 17 years, our -- we typically catered to like the Irish pub on the corner, that's 120 basis points. But when you start signing up like Dallas Cowboys stadiums and Allegiant stadiums that are doing 100x the volume but you're getting like 70% less spread, that's a good thing. Like you wind up -- your average revenue per merchant is like off the charts in that case. But yes, we've been -- if you look at -- in our investor deck, like the growth CAGR on our average merchant size has been increasing at like 40% over the last like 3 years. So you're just moving upmarket. And obviously, a restaurant that does $5 million a year in payment volume is probably paying something south of what the Irish pub on the corner is. But these are -- this is fine. Like if you're able to differentiate add value win through technology, even if you start with a stadium that's again like a 20 basis points, hypothetically United Center, you start there and the next thing you know, you're rolling out your restaurant point-of-sale service, which is our SkyTab POS beta, at all their table service applications. And then the next thing you know, you're getting the gaming application. So they're enabling consumer wagering in the stadium. And that comes at like much higher spreads than what you'd have for like ticketing in a stadium, for example. So like the hard part, differentiating, winning. And if you can even do at margin in regards with 38.5 basis points on our EBITDA margin, that's -- or 38.5%, that's a good thing. Then you expand it over time. But generally speaking, just like laws of physics, higher-volume merchants are going to come in at different spreads than lower-volume merchants.
Timothy Chiodo
analystWell said. All right. Thank you, Jared. I think we should move to another topic around new verticals. You certainly alluded to it earlier in some of your prior comments. But the way you sort of broke it down was there's new markets and there's future markets.
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes.
Timothy Chiodo
analystThe new markets are sports and entertainment, gaming and e-commerce. Why don't we start with those?
Jared Isaacman
executiveRight. So it seemed like to us, we were -- jeez, we IPO-ed June 5, 2020, middle of the pandemic, focusing on restaurants and hotels, at least that was our core business at the time. And we grew those markets double digits during that time period. And like for us, the confidence around those core verticals, knowing that you're able to grow your restaurants, your hotels and your specialty retail volume double digit during a pandemic is what really emboldens you to go out and enter into new verticals. Like you have a position that's very hard, if not impossible, to replicate in terms of our integration libraries and the core verticals, the right thing to do is expand TAM and take like the capabilities that allow you to differentiate and win your core verticals into new markets. So where did we go? We went into stadiums. Prior to the IPO, we had Allegiant Stadium, the new Raiders stadium in Vegas, taught us that it's not that different than a hotel, lots of different software that all has to be networked together to deliver commerce experience. We like that. So we looked at the landscape, saw there were 4 players in the space, bought the best one, embedded our payments into it. And we've been delivering stadium wins consistently ever since. Gaming. Gaming went from like the FBI is kicking down your door in the U.S. market to this is a really hot market, which everybody should do it. There was no incumbent in the space. Nobody had any incumbency advantage for gaming in the U.S. market because it was essentially illegal. They were all routing it through overseas transactions if they were doing it at all. We know that half the casinos pretty much in the country, certainly half on the Vegas trip, use Shift4 technology. We tokenize those transactions. We have insight in the consumer. From an in-venue gaming perspective, why would you not want to marry that together to a mobile gaming experience? And also, we're now the category leader in sports and entertainment. We believe people will, in their seats, order a beer and a burger to their seat and probably also wager on the game. So that gave us like -- those are 2 very compelling reasons why we'd have a right to win in gaming. And for the last year and change, we've been getting gaming licenses in every state that's legal in. We've -- pretty much every new like -- majority of the new software integrations to our platform are gaming-related or APM-related. We won BetMGM. We have integrations going with Everi and NRT and Sightline. So we feel pretty confident within that vertical. So that's sports and entertainment, gaming. In e-commerce, we acquired 3dcart, which was like awesome revenue -- or EBITDA multiple deal during the pandemic. We've grown site count on that e-commerce platform probably 5x in the last year.
Timothy Chiodo
analystGreat. Thank you, Jared. I want to make sure we have some time at the end for Q&A. So for those that might want to ask a question, you can just grab the mic or you could raise your hand. But with the time we have left, why don't we shift real quick to those other future markets and some of the 3 anchor tenants that you announced associated with those?
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. I mean, we're -- we announced 3 real signature wins that opened up new verticals for us during Investor Day. So one of them was SpaceX Starlink. It's a 5-year partnership, a commitment to move domestic payment volume over in the next 120 days, but that was 2 months ago. And then that is going to be our key to moving into every international market, no question. Like we've got $1.3 billion in cash. We raised a lot of cash during -- over the last 1.5 years. We haven't deployed it, probably a good thing when you think about where valuations have gone of late. And now we have these 3 signature wins to build around and none more important than Starlink. I mean, that's our ticket into every international market. So whether we're going to deploy it in acquiring PSPs in Europe or in Latin America and then networking together, this is our like yellow brick road to being another Adyen on a global stage. So that's like our highest priority because you're not just -- you may have the strategic rationale to do it for a Starlink, but once you're in Europe or Latin America, there's nothing that prevents you from going after stadiums in those markets. We already have stadiums in international markets using VenueNext. We don't have a payments ability to address it. That will change. Nonprofits in those markets, travel in those markets, hotels, restaurants, gaming in those markets. So like using this 5-year strategic partnership with Starlink to open up, which, by the way, like that could be $100 billion in payment volume in its own right. Like I'm a huge SpaceX Starlink bull. But anyway, that's a signature win there. Allegiant Airlines for travel and leisure, they're vertically integrating hotels and restaurants. We do -- we have those unique integrations, so it gave us a natural right to win there. The dominant travel and leisure payments player in the U.S. is the same one we've been taking tons of hotel volume away from over the last couple of years. We'll do the same in airlines. And in nonprofits, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, obviously, multibillion-dollar platform for donations, it's going to open up the door to a number of other nonprofits in health care. So yes, awesome new verticals, huge TAM expansion, global -- ability to go global and all anchored on some signature wins.
Timothy Chiodo
analystThank you, Jared. Why don't we try and squeeze one more in here before we go to Q&A.? Just one more here. So I think a key stat that you gave also is we had always talked about 350 software integrations, and they were important integrations for you. But that number is now at 425 or something in that ballpark. Can you talk about those incremental 70 or 75 integrations?
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. I mean, we obviously integrate with like hundreds of software companies, right? And as far as I know, not one of them has gone bankrupt. They haven't capitulated and said, "We're out of the software business." What are they doing? They're making software. So we have all the old integrations to Oracle. We also have the Oracle Cloud integrations. Agilisys is -- they're a pretty valuable public company. We have their old software integrations for Agilisys. We have their new cloud integrations. I think what's very important is when you have all these hundreds of software integrations, all these software companies, the first place they're going to integrate their new software to is the one they're already integrated with. Because when they want to go -- when Agilisys wants to go to Caesars Palace, for example, and say, "Look, you've got our old on-premise software. I want to sell you the new software," they want that to be the only decision. They don't want it also to be, "You need the new software, and you should consider using this other payments company we integrate to." Like take as much of that off the table as you can. So like we have this incumbency advantage that will always get us the next new version of the software from every one of our current providers. And they're not just in restaurants and hotels. They're in specialty retail. I mean, Microsoft, their Dynamics 365 is the integration that powers UPS stores. We have some 4,100 UPS stores that are on our end-to-end platform. We took that from JPMorgan. They obviously sell that into more than just like shipping vendors and such. So every one of our software integration supports our core verticals and the new verticals we moved into. Every one of those software companies is still making new software. And when they make new software, they integrate Shift4.
Timothy Chiodo
analystAll right. That's a good summary. Thank you, Jared. I do want to pause now just in case there are any questions from the audience.
Jared Isaacman
executiveSure.
Unknown Analyst
analystSo you did give us a little bit around Starlink in terms of the size. But would you maybe expand on that a little bit with where you think the ancillaries are? And anything you would say on the other 2 just in terms of big sizing?
Jared Isaacman
executiveWell, they're all connected into awesome TAMs, and they're all complicated. So that's all stuff we like. But yes, I mean, if you want like the super bull case on SpaceX Starlink, I'm the guy to talk to on it. Like I mean, I got to see their operations firsthand really well for a year, and they're pretty incredible. But look, I mean, there's 1,760 or so Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit right now. I think the next closest competitor has got like 6. They're vertically integrated. Every time somebody pays them the payload in orbit, of which SpaceX is the world leader in it, they just stuff a couple more Starlinks in there and put them on orbit on somebody else's dime. There's like 400 million school-age kids around the world that have no access to broadband connectivity. You're not going to run fiber across deserts and rain forest. You're going to do satellite-based Internet. Now the reason satellite Internet sucked historically is because it was so expensive to put stuff on orbit. You had to send it into geostationary orbit, which is really far away, which makes it very slow. When you can put up thousands in a very short period of time and 30,000 over the next couple of years, you can put it in lower Earth orbit and then it's very fast, like superfast. That's exactly what SpaceX is doing. They're not just doing it for homes and businesses. Like every airliner is going to have Starlink connectivity, like Gogo has done. Every like ship at sea is going to have this capability. Pretty much, the TAM is world Internet connectivity other than China and Russia. I'm pretty sure those are 2 countries that won't sign up for it. But anyway, pretty incredible. So I couldn't have a better partner. I think there's something like $1 billion in run rate volume right now. And the only reason it's not more is because they're putting up more next-gen laser-based communication satellites so that you can basically create a giant laser mesh on orbit, making it very fast. And then they'll just keep opening up more and more subscribers. But if you believe that like SpaceX is going to put human beings on Mars, they're going to pay for it with Starlink.
Timothy Chiodo
analystOkay. Great. Any other questions from the audience?
Jared Isaacman
executiveYou asked the other verticals? I mean, in nonprofits, I mean, you can't ask for a better partner in St. Jude. I mean, even if you just take the run rate volume of those 3 signature wins of SpaceX Starlink -- I'm sorry, Starlink, St. Jude and Allegiant, it's like 12% of our current run rate volume. And that's without ever expanding beyond just those 3 customers. And of course, you are and that's been like -- obviously, SpaceX is going to expand pretty considerably on its own right.
Timothy Chiodo
analystOkay. Thank you for quantifying that, Jared. All right. Let's move on to organic investments. So understanding is that if there is no additional investment, the sort of natural incremental margins within the business are roughly in the low 60s or so after accounting for commission pay away and then maybe some additional cost. When we think about the incremental margins that we should see over the coming years, and this kind of gets -- the margins weren't really a part of the outlook. Is there any directional context you could give the investment community?
Jared Isaacman
executiveOne, I just find it like ironic that the most highly valued payments companies right now are the ones with no margin. So we're at like 38.5%, I think, as of the last quarter, which was up 500 bps from Q2. And that's while also expanding into a lot of new verticals where you're not naturally entering that space at 40% plus margins. I think the idea is like our high-growth core, which is what's been growing at like, again, high 40s percent end-to-end volume for a while, all that volume is, of course, very incremental. It drops to the bottom line. Like that will continue to expand into the 40s, for sure, and go upmarket. We're just not going to like sit on our hands. Like we're going to enter new verticals like we've done with the 7 new verticals since we IPO-ed. And you're going to hire people if you've got a real right to win and a seat at the table. And like that's OpEx that's going to come in. You're going to invest in R&D, and you're going to grow. And like -- and if you're buying businesses to accelerate growth in that vertical, I can assure you like there's not many 40% EBITDA margin players out there right now. So it's going to take time. But what I'd say is, overall, directionally, the entire Shift4 enterprise will track towards our core, which is, again, like going to be in the 40s. But like you're not going to start in some of these new verticals at the same margins that you're at in a much more scaled element of the business.
Timothy Chiodo
analystMakes total sense. Okay. One last one. We only have a minute or 2 left here. But I just want to talk a little bit about processing coming in-house. So there's sort of a strategic sort of control element to it. And then, of course, there's a cost savings. Maybe you could touch on both of those.
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. So we have all our own rails except one portion of the back end, which is what's responsible for like the most complex calculations of like 1 million interchange variables and ultimately does the saddle up every single day with the card brands, so Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex and the actual merchants themselves. And for that, we had a 7-year contract with TSYS, which comes to an end this year. And for that, we'd paid them, call it, more or less like $0.01 per transaction. We started a project we called Everest 3 years ago to bring that in-house. Nobody has built a back-end backbone in like the last 20 years in this industry. It's a pain. And we have beta merchants on it now. We'll move the entirety of our back end over to it in 2022. That will have like, call it, 150 bps, is that right, Brad, of margin enhancement because we eliminate our entire variable cost per transaction. But a lot of it's controlling your own destiny, for sure, too, especially as we look to more global commerce. That's going to become even more important.
Timothy Chiodo
analystOkay. Great. Thank you so much. All right. So with that, again, I want to thank Jared. I want to thank Brad, Taylor, Tom. Thank you again for coming out here to Arizona to join us. It was a pleasure having you on stage. Thanks again, Jared.
Jared Isaacman
executiveYes. Thank you. Appreciate it.
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