Jacob Margulies from Reah on Agentic Neobanks

[00:00:00] Jacob: We think finance is one of the best use cases for AI just because there can be manual repetitive workflows that finance teams and CFOs had to traditionally do.

[00:00:08] Jacob: So the agentic intelligence, you'll have your own AI CFO natively integrated. So agents can manage money on your behalf within the guardrails that you set within the role that you do assign it.

[00:00:20] Jacob: It can run payroll, it can rebalance treasury, it can prepare, approve, and initiate transactions.

[00:00:26] Jacob: So it can take a lot of responsibilities that maybe other members on the finance teams used to have.

[00:00:32] Umar: Welcome to The Accountant Quits podcast, where we help accounting and finance professionals learn how to manage a business using crypto.

[00:00:40] Umar: Jacob Margulies is the Co-Founder at Reah, a financial operating system that unifies fiat banking, digital assets, and an AI-powered execution in one platform.

[00:00:53] Umar: It provides global bank accounts, payments, treasury, cards, and invoicing for businesses worldwide, all governed by one programmable policy engine.

[00:01:05] Umar: Reah describes itself as non-custodial. Customers have complete control of their assets, and Reah says it cannot access, freeze, or move their funds.

[00:01:16] Umar: In this episode, Jacob will even provide you with a demo of Reah.

[00:01:22] Umar: Today with Jacob, we'll discuss what an agentic neobank is, how custody works, and the business model of being self-custodial, moving stablecoins and fiat within Reah, different features around treasury, cards, invoicing, their ledger, and much more.

[00:01:42] Umar: The Accountant Quits is the official podcast of the Onchain Finance Institute, the leading educational provider for finance teams using digital assets. Their programs, the Crypto Accounting Academy and Crypto Treasury Management Academy, focus on practical knowledge, including tools required to work with digital assets.

[00:02:04] Umar: Inside their platform, you can also connect with peers working in web3, join focused chat groups, access job opportunities, and attend practical workshops on onchain finance.

[00:02:16] Umar: You can join the community for free by heading to onchainfinanceinstitute.com/community.

[00:02:22] Umar: The link is also in the show notes. Now let's get into my conversation with Jacob.

[00:02:32] Umar: Jacob, welcome to the show, and thanks making the time to be here.

[00:02:37] Jacob: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm glad we finally have the opportunity to connect and chat.

[00:02:42] Umar: Yeah, same here, Jacob. And for the listeners, this will be a very special episode today because we'll actually have a demo of Reah, so make sure to stick around until the end of the episode.

[00:02:52] Umar: To start the episode, Jacob, could you share your background, how you became interested in blockchains, and maybe the origin story of starting Reah?

[00:03:01] Jacob: Yeah, of course. So I first got into crypto, I would say, five, maybe six years ago. I had a friend who, you know, he made me create my first Metamask wallet, and, we were buying all sorts of, you know, garbage, to be honest.

[00:03:14] Jacob: NFTs, tokens. It was, it was kind of a free-for-all. But, um, yeah, that was my first introduction to crypto. I got more familiar with the space, you know, did a few different things onchain, and I figured out, I said, "Hey, um, this is a space that I wanna work in, I wanna be a part of." So really what happened, was I quit my job.

[00:03:32] Jacob: I think this was summer Summer '21, you know, took the summer off and, you know, the goal was to really find a, a role and, a job in the crypto industry. So I ended up finding, finding something a few months later. Was working in a company called Republic doing, you know, Reg CF, fundraising for, you know, all sorts of startups, crypto companies that were looking to raise from accredited, unaccredited investors.

[00:03:55] Jacob: And then shortly, you know, thereafter, I met my co-founder now at Reah, Charles. I joined Galxe, which was one of his first companies. I was an early employee there. Joined in May 2022. And, um, yeah, it was really an amazing experience. I loved it, and I think that kind of validated my feelings from a year earlier where it's like, "Hey, I wanna work in the crypto space," in something more exciting, than what I've, you know, had the, opportunity to experience in the past.

[00:04:18] Jacob: And then, yeah, I think, the motivation to really, you know, start Reah, it comes from, you know, uh, the premise of not having, you know, the proper financial stack as a crypto-native team at Galxe to, you know, operate, in a very, you know, seamless way. We were banking in different places, OTC in another, cards in another, wallets in another.

[00:04:40] Jacob: Managing five, six or, you know, sometimes even s and portals and tying everything of that together in spreadsheets, to get really a, a real-time view of what was going on. And because everything was so fragmented, we had no idea of what our current finances really were in real time.

[00:04:56] Jacob: And another thing that we realized is that, Galxe worked with so many different blockchains. There was no wallet that was made for CFOs or finance teams. We were using Safe wallet, and Safe wallet's a really, really great tool. But it's designed for smart contract developers.

[00:05:11] Jacob: The Metamask, Phantom wallets, other EOA wallets, they're designed for either individuals or traders. So we thought, "Hey, there's no wallet with the proper corporate finance controls, audit trails, approval workflows. So let's create a finance-grade wallet and then plug in an entire operating system around it to create this unified financial experience, break down the fragmented stack, and streamline financial operations for not only crypto-native teams, but also traditional businesses as well that are beginning to adopt, you know, stablecoins and other sorts of, crypto assets."

[00:05:41] Jacob: So that was really the motivation to starting Reah. And yeah, so far it's really been an amazing and incredible experience and, uh, yeah, we're grateful to be here.

[00:05:50] Umar: Now, I wanna start with what actually an agentic neobank is. Reah describes itself as an agentic neobank.

[00:05:58] Umar: Just for a bit of context for the listeners, neobanks, which I'm pretty sure most of you have or are already onboarded on a neobank, but these are digital banks with no physical branches.

[00:06:09] Umar: Most of them, they don't usually hold a banking license themselves. Instead, they would partner with traditional regulated banks to hold customer deposits. Some of the major web2 neobanks for businesses, for example, are Wise, Mercury, Brex.

[00:06:26] Umar: Now, these web2 neobanks, for most of them, they don't allow for crypto incoming and outgoing transactions, but Reah does.

[00:06:36] Umar: And, an AI agent, very simply, it's a program that can autonomously complete task. So with that context, could you explain what an agentic neobank is, and why does Reah describe itself as one?

[00:06:50] Jacob: Yeah. So we're really working on a lot of agentic capabilities, on the intelligence and execution side. I think when you really think about it, when it comes to finance, we think finance is one of the best use cases for AI just because there can be, you know, a lot of errors, and, you know, manual repetitive workflows that, finance teams and CFOs had to traditionally do.

[00:07:08] Jacob: So, you know, with AI it really, makes things a lot easier, make things a lot quicker. It helps with reporting. It makes month-end close much quicker and, um, it saves a lot of time that you, you never used to have. So the agentic intelligence, you'll have your own AI CFO natively integrated, you know, within the platform proprietary to your own entity, and it can really, you know-- It's like using, Claude or any of the other AI tools.

[00:07:33] Jacob: You can, talk to it. It can, you know, recommend next best steps. It can give you real-time context and, data on everything that's going on within your, your entity. And because it's integrated natively, you're always going to have up-to-date information. Every transaction that comes out, that comes in, treasury deposit, it's going to be right there.

[00:07:50] Jacob: So you'll always have an idea of really what's going on with the business and the finance side. And on the execution side, it really goes back to breaking down these manual repetitive workflows and AI being a really, really strong use case or finance being a really strong use case for AI. So agents can manage money on your behalf within the guardrails that you set within the role that you do assign it.

[00:08:12] Jacob: It can run payroll, it can rebalance treasury, it can prepare, approve, and initiate transactions. So I think it's, um, it's interesting because the agent can take a-away, um, It can take a lot of responsibilities that maybe other finance, members on the finance teams used to have. Yeah, and it's really exciting.

[00:08:30] Jacob: So we're preparing to introduce this feature, very soon to all our customers. And that's really what an agentic neobank is or how we're describing it, is the ability, how can you really leverage, these AI capabilities within your platform?

[00:08:45] Umar: And for the listeners, a lot of what Jake was just describing will make a lot more sense later when we'll go through the actual demo.

[00:08:53] Umar: That's something I'm actually very excited about right now. Now, Reah has actually just been launched in end of June 2026, but I mean, it's only been two to three months right now. But could you share maybe some of the early growth and traction you've already seen at Reah?

[00:09:10] Jacob: Yeah, absolutely. So we launched private beta April 13th.

[00:09:13] Jacob: Public beta was early July. So it's been a, I would say four or five months, and the traction has been, it's been quite strong, I would say. You know, we're happy with it. It's, it's very exciting. We have over, 100 businesses using Reah daily.

[00:09:27] Jacob: We also have seen really strong transaction volume, money coming in, money coming out, in the nine figures.

[00:09:33] Jacob: And in terms of total deposits, we've seen close to nine figures in deposits. Especially when it comes to wallets, banking, and treasury, a lot of our customers are getting very excited by the different treasury tools and, and strategies, that we've been offering them. But in terms of growth, it's been very, very exciting and, uh, we have a lot of, big plans and, uh, things to introduce and announce as the, weeks and months roll on to the end of the year.

[00:09:58] Umar: Now, the next part of our conversation is on custody. So Reah is non-custodial by design. On your website, it reads that customers' assets are held in wallets that they control, that Reah cannot access, freeze, or move customer funds, and that private keys are secure using hardened infrastructure and never exposed.

[00:10:21] Umar: First of all, uh, could you clarify what this hardened infrastructure means? But I understand that your wallet infrastructure runs on Turnkey, and so maybe that's the first question, and then I'll have a follow-up question. Yeah,

[00:10:33] Jacob: Definitely. So our, our infrastructure runs on Turnkey. We have, you know-- It, it's a completely non-custodial solution.

[00:10:39] Jacob: We have no access into the user's wallet, being able to touch, move, or send their funds. But I think, you know, that's the really exciting thing about Reah, and one of the big fundamental differences is that this, you know, entire architecture is non-custodial from, you know, your banking balance to your wallets, to your treasury, to your cards.

[00:10:58] Jacob: It's all run on a non-custodial infrastructure. And really lately, what I've been seeing, especially with traditional banks, definitely a lot of horror stories where, your money is, being held or frozen by the bank because they custody it and, maybe they're freezing it for compliance reasons or, some sort of review or whatever it may be.

[00:11:13] Jacob: But with Reah, and when I do see this, it's, it's interesting because that can never happen with us. There's no counterparty risk. The bank never custodies your funds. The bank is only used for sending and receiving payments. As a customer, I'm always in control of my funds at all times. So I think moving forward, you're going to see, a lot of, businesses at least begin to adopt or try out non-custodial solutions, and move away from, you know, some banks that, you know, can custody their funds just to make sure to eliminate these sorts of things and not leave it up to chance.

[00:11:43] Jacob: Because when your, when your funds are frozen, it really is a serious problem because what, what do you do? You just wait on the bank to tell you, "Hey, well, okay, you can now move your funds." So I think that's one of, the really big advantages that we have over at Reah.

[00:11:56] Umar: So everyone is probably not very familiar with Turnkey, but could you explain how private keys are secured?

[00:12:02] Umar: And probably that's best to explain with a concrete example. Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, Reah shuts down tomorrow. Could you walk us through maybe how a Reah customer would move their funds, let's say, without your interface?

[00:12:17] Jacob: Absolutely. So if Reah was to ever shut down, if it was to ever be unavailable, you can't access the website, because we have a non-custodial solution, we have something called emergency exit, and what you're able to do in this scenario is you're able to export your private keys to another wallet, where now you can have access to your funds.

[00:12:35] Jacob: So no matter what happens, you know, moving forward in the future, you're always going to have a, a way to access your funds to recover them and export those private keys. And we have the documentation on our support site. It's called Emergency Exit. So it's been well thought out in terms of all these different scenarios and, and what could potentially happen.

[00:12:53] Jacob: And that's the, the beauty with a non-custodial solution and, you know, being in control of your private keys.

[00:12:59] Umar: Now, I understand for crypto that, okay, Reah is noncustodial as you've just explained it, but for fiat currencies, who is then the custodian? Is the fiat currency that the customer is seeing a tokenized representation in a stablecoin, or how does that work?

[00:13:16] Jacob: So the way it works is, you know, fiat is used, to send and receive. However, on the way in and on the way out, it's converted to stablecoin. So your banking balance on Reah is held in stablecoins in USDG, and we create an abstracted experience. So if you send in a, $1,000 to Reah, it's converted to stablecoins, 1,000 USDG.

[00:13:37] Jacob: However, what happens is, you know, your banking balance is going to say, "Hey, you have $1,000." So we abstract it as a USD balance. And that's how it works

[00:13:46] Jacob: So there isn't any sort of custody, or a-anything of that nature.

[00:13:50] Umar: Yeah. Okay. So Reah doesn't have a partner bank like how was-- I was explaining earlier that how traditional new banks usually have a partner bank for customer deposits.

[00:14:00] Jacob: We work with a partner bank. Really just the fundamental difference is that these banks don't custody the funds.

[00:14:05] Jacob: But, you know, the bank is used to send and receive funds, but you get a bank account in your own name. We work with a few different banks, you know, we work with Lead Bank, Portage Bank, SSB Bank. Those are the banks that we do use. And you sign up for Reah, you get an account in your name, and then you can send and receive funds just like any other bank.

[00:14:22] Jacob: The only difference is that the balance is settling in stablecoins, USDG. And we, we abstract the balance away as, $1,000 or maybe 5,000 USD. So it's represent- it's representative of a USD balance.

[00:14:36] Umar: Got it. Now, I noted that Reah integrates with 13 chains, mostly EVM chains, but also Solana, Bitcoin, Tron.

[00:14:43] Umar: Let's say when a, when a customer creates a Reah account, they have a default wallet. They can create as many wallets as they need, and each wallet would have its EVM chain equivalent, Solana, Bitcoin, and Tron wallet. Now, when a user does a cross-chain swap, how does custody then work for each chain? I understand this could be somehow technical to, to explain, but if it could be explained in a simple way for the listener.

[00:15:09] Jacob: Oh well, think of it like this. For our crypto native audience that is doing a swap from their Metamask wallet, it works the, the exact same. So we have a few integrations, you know, with, some, uh, DEXs, meta aggregators. And if I wanna go from, Solana to Ethereum, we have a convert engine, and you can bridge, you can swap.

[00:15:26] Jacob: You say, "I wanna go from Ethereum to USDC." Basically, what happens is you execute the transaction. Yeah, and then the, the asset is swapped into your wallet. So there's really no sort of custody issues. It works just like you're using any sort of, you know, DEX on chain that you're most likely familiar with if you're swapping with a Phantom wallet or a Metamask wallet.

[00:15:44] Jacob: And we just create an abstracted experience. You know, you tell us what you're looking to swap, and then we handle that transaction for you.

[00:15:51] Umar: Got it. Now, for folks listening and hearing maybe for the first time that Reah is non-custodial, probably they're thinking, so what's the business model of Reah?

[00:16:03] Umar: So that's the next topic that I want to go through because I think custody, it creates an interesting problem for you. With traditional banks, customers would deposit funds , earn interest. The bank would then lend the money out at a high interest, interest rate, and they keep the difference.

[00:16:19] Umar: It's the entire reason why banking works.

[00:16:22] Umar: Neobanks would also usually earn a share of interest with their partner bank, on the customer's deposits. In Reah's case, you don't custody funds, and you don't have a partner bank.

[00:16:33] Umar: So what's Reah's business model?

[00:16:36] Jacob: Yeah, it's a great question. Well, we think A- the, you know, an AUM business model is a very good one, and it really works the same way, especially these days with stablecoins, right? We're actually able to collect yield on customer balances that are being held in, you know, Reah banking accounts.

[00:16:51] Jacob: So we work directly with Paxos, banking balance settled in USDG. We're part of the Global Dollar Network, and we, get yield off our customer balances that are held in USDG, and we're actually able to pass some of that yield back to our customers. So, banking with Reah, you're able to get, 1% back on that overall balance, which is of course very exciting because most business checking accounts, they're either giving 0% or, you know, very, very, very little yield.

[00:17:16] Jacob: So it really works the same way, and obviously as the space evolves, you're probably going to see, more of this where, customers and neobanks can actually, collect yield and rewards on these, um, you know, on, on these stablecoins.

[00:17:30] Jacob: It's basically what Circle's doing. It's the same thing as Circle, but Circle just doesn't share any of the yield. You know- Yeah

[00:17:35] Jacob: USDG shares the yield, and it's the same thing as Open Standard, right, with that bridge thing. They're sharing the yield too. So they're doing exactly what USDG and Paxos are doing. And it's the same setup as, as Circle, but they're also sh- you know, they wanna share the yield. So that's just, yeah, that's how it works, if that makes sense.

[00:17:51] Jacob: If you're a smart neobank and a capable team, then this is the sort of structure, the business model that you're going to want to have. I think money movement, a lot of these, you know, rates are going to zero, at least we think they are.

[00:18:03] Jacob: So it's like you need to find a, you know, another way to monetize, and there's good stickiness there.

[00:18:08] Umar: Now, moving on to understanding how transactions work. So prior to recording this episode, I went to, I went ahead to open an account with Reah. I want to have a better understanding of the product.

[00:18:19] Umar: My first impression is on why you need Reah, for the listeners, is what we've been speaking about this whole time, is you have a single platform now to manage fiat and stablecoins.

[00:18:29] Umar: Also, my other impression that Reah does feel very geared towards the savvy web3 user, and we'll go through some, some of those features why.

[00:18:39] Umar: So first of all, chains are not abstracted. There is something called a gas station that you need to top up, you know, money in this gas station before you swap, before, you are sending funds. It also differentiates whether the user holds USDC on different chains.

[00:18:58] Umar: I mean, my question to you is, why should the user care on which chains those stablecoins are being held when it's inside of Reah?

[00:19:07] Jacob: Well, I think it depends on the business and your use case. You know, we see a lot of businesses that are, you know, using USDT on Tron, they're using USDT on BNB, they're using other networks to send stablecoins to their providers or, you know, vendors or suppliers or whoever it may be.

[00:19:23] Jacob: So I think it's very specific to use case. As we see more businesses, adopt stablecoins, you know, you'll probably see, more chains being used. And it'll be interesting to see which one is the most popular chain, that these stablecoins are flowing through. I think Tron is king.

[00:19:38] Jacob: It's been king for a while, and it seems to, you know, be keeping its place. But, uh, we do really create an abstracted experience. Even though you can, you know, you have different chains to send stablecoins on, it really is an abstracted experience. So, like, look at other wallets, right? You know, you have to, really toggle through different chains if you wanna, send to a different chain or if you wanna receive on a different chain.

[00:19:58] Jacob: You just have one wallet on Reah, and you choose, okay, well, I wanna receive on, you know, Ethereum, I wanna receive on Tron. It's the abstracted experience where you're not having to switch between different wallets. It's all included in the same wallet. And we have an abstracted gas experience.

[00:20:12] Jacob: We actually give, a $5 credit per month to a lot of our pro plan users, as a gas station credit. But there's two ways to pay gas. Of course, you can pay from your wallet. You know, you can go from your banking balance, a-and you can on-ramp, to your wallet to, of course, pay for funds.

[00:20:26] Jacob: But this gas station is really, really important because you can fill it up once with any asset, and no matter which chain you're making a transaction on, you don't need to hold the native token. It's always going to pull from the, you know, that unified balance and, um our customers really like that because they don't need to think, "Oh, I need to have Ethereum on, on ETH," or, "I need to have Ethereum on Base."

[00:20:47] Jacob: They can just go and make the transaction, and not have to worry about any of those sorts of things. So we are trying to really abstract away a lot of the complexities. I think there's still a lot of, work to do and room for improvement. And of course, like our, our background is, is crypto native.

[00:21:02] Jacob: You know, we're newer to the fintech space, so we've really been able to learn a lot and, uh, yeah, very excited about, the direction and approach that we're taking and, it, it's also, obviously you created your account the other day for the first time. It's been a good, good experience for you so far, but we're also introducing, you know, kind of a new branding and a new interface very, very soon.

[00:21:22] Jacob: So, um, yeah, that's gonna be very exciting, and I think you'll like that for sure.

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[00:22:53] Umar: I mean, I must say kudos to the team because, you guys have just launched and, the platform is impressive so far.

[00:23:01] Umar: Those were just some of my first impression, and I've hardly used it. I just used it for, like, hardly a few hours, while preparing the podcast.

[00:23:09] Umar: Now, I wanna go through maybe off-ramping crypto to fiat. That's probably one of the big use cases, for people using Reah. One of the main reasons that finance teams use stablecoins, or we're trying to get more TradFi companies to use stablecoins, is for cross-border payments and this instant settlement.

[00:23:28] Umar: So you can send stablecoins and your counterparty, maybe they receive fiat locally. In your article you published where you have an integration with Li.Fi, you describe how that works. So Li.Fi would route the on-chain conversion, then Reah converts the stablecoin into the payout currency and sends it through a local bank rail.

[00:23:49] Umar: Let's say, for example, I'm a US company. I'm paying a supplier in Singapore. I wanna pay in stablecoins, and they receive Singaporean dollars. Is that possible with Reah today? And maybe if you could explain to listeners what's happening under the hood here.

[00:24:06] Jacob: Yeah, it, it is possible today. So we have local payout rails supported at the moment.

[00:24:11] Jacob: It's Euro, it's GBP, it's AED, it's SGD, HKD, and CNY, and we have the capabilities to turn on, you know, many more local rails as well. I think over, you know, 30 to 40 different rails that we plan on activating, in the future. But yeah, you can take your stablecoin balance, you can take your banking balance, and if I need to pay...

[00:24:31] Jacob: This is really, really good for, you know, teams that are operating, you know, cross-border, that have entities, in different locations as well. But, um, yeah, what happens is they select the contact in terms of who they want to send this asset to, and what happens is we route the transaction through the appropriate providers, and then that currency is then delivered to the recipient.

[00:24:52] Jacob: So you select the contact, how much you wanna send, and then, you go ahead and initiate the approval, execute, and then it's there. Very easy, very straightforward. So we try and make it as, uh, as seamless and as easy to understand as we possibly can.

[00:25:07] Umar: Is there anything else on transactions that you'd like to share with the listeners?

[00:25:11] Umar: Because the next topic I'd like to go through is somehow different.

[00:25:16] Jacob: Yeah. I, I think when it comes to transactions, you know, because everything is in the same place, we have this unified ledger and It may sound simple, but it's really, really powerful because, you know, now teams can really manage all of their digital assets alongside their fiat balances, and then have a ledger that captures literally everything in one place across both rails, bringing context to on-chain transactions, making month-end much easier and faster.

[00:25:41] Jacob: So I think, when it comes to transactions, that's, it's a really, really powerful tool because everything's in one place. You don't have to stitch everything together and, you know, that's one of the goals that we wanted to accomplish with Reah.

[00:25:52] Umar: All right. So the next topic I wanna go through is, um, somehow related to AI.

[00:25:59] Umar: So in the current age that we're living, the AI age that we're living, rather, there's an argument that the barrier to launching a neobank has collapsed. I was reading an article published by Dakota, another crypto neobank, where they claim that one of their team members built a production-ready neobank in nine hours.

[00:26:19] Umar: The argument goes that if the technology stops being the different, differentiator, what's left is the compliance stack. I wanna ask you is, like, if, if someone can build the same crypto neobank like product in a weekend, what's the moat then for a crypto neobank like Reah?

[00:26:40] Jacob: Yeah. I think maybe it's quicker to get to market, but I think just because you can, you know, build one much quicker than what you've been able to do before, there's a lot of other things that go into it in terms of, like, how the architecture is designed, what are the flow of funds, the capability of the team.

[00:26:57] Jacob: You know, What's, what's their approach in terms of going to market? But I think, um, the fundamental approach for Reah is, I think, one is our noncustodial architecture. Most neobanks don't have a noncustodial architecture. It's the ability to have, you know, digital asset infrastructure and fiat infrastructure in the same place, where now you have a unified ledger that captures everything across both rails.

[00:27:21] Jacob: We're able to break down the fragmented stack. And with the wallet, you know, a lot of these traditional neobanks, they support stablecoins, sure, but how are they supporting stablecoins? It's really just a, um, when you think about it, a tacked on payment method. That's it. You can't hold or manage it.

[00:27:37] Jacob: It's just pay in and pay out. But with a wallet, there's a lot more that you're able to do holding stablecoins, really manage them, all sorts of other assets, all sorts of other chains, and kind of goes back to the use case. We see a lot of people using different chains for stablecoins and, not only that, but the wallet really gives you access to the entire on-chain economy.

[00:27:58] Jacob: So all these different sorts of products and yields that your traditional neobank isn't offering, these different sorts of stablecoin vaults, and also tokenized RWAs. You know, tokenization is a really, really big thing, and, um, it allows people with a non-custodial wallet, they could access these sorts of products.

[00:28:16] Jacob: And we can touch... We can, you know, I'll continue to talk about treasury, but treasury is a really, really big part of Reah. And I think what's really amazing, around, you know, our borderless treasury section and tokenization is we're able to give access to, this BlackRock, you know, AAA iShares ETF, you know, Black Opal, which is a Brazilian private credit market.

[00:28:33] Jacob: You know, we're gonna do T-bills. We have a f- a few other, you know, RWAs that we're going to, integrate. But unless you were living in, you know, these jurisdictions in which they, were offered, you could never get access to these products, especially if you were a traditional SMB in Hong Kong or, or Singapore, for example.

[00:28:49] Jacob: Their local bank was never offering, like, BlackRock ETFs or T-bills or other, you know, products, similar like these. And because of tokenization, you know, what was once impossible is now completely accessible, and treasury strategies really evolve and change because, because of this.

[00:29:06] Jacob: So I think when you really think about it, it's quite amazing that, these businesses can... could access these products that, only larger institutions in their, regions or jurisdictions could access before. And that's really the beauty and the benefit of a non-custodial wallet, the, you know, access to the entire on-chain economy.

[00:29:25] Jacob: And, there's really, you know... I think the tacked-on payment method is very limited. Kind of when I think about, you know, the next six, twelve or a few years about what you can actually do with these stablecoins. Sure, it serves a use case, but I think having a non-custodial wallet is, is pretty critical and the capabilities are much greater.

[00:29:44] Umar: And because you are self-custodial by design, what licenses does a business like Reah actually need then?

[00:29:52] Jacob: Yeah, we're completely out of the flow of funds, you know? And because we're non-custodial, we, um, don't need any licenses at the moment. Our banking partners and card partners are the regulated ones that, hold the appropriate licenses.

[00:30:02] Jacob: And another thing about Reah and what I really, really love and, and appreciate about what we're doing is the platform is incredibly accessible. If you wanna use wallets and treasury, you can use that without having to go to our license providers to KYB for cards and banking. If you wanna activate cards and banking, you need the KYB, but we have people using Reah, you know, simply for wallets and treasury only, you know.

[00:30:27] Jacob: And I think that's really the cool thing about it. People are using us for all different things and, there's no minimums, there's no, "Hey, you need to hold X amount of balance." The platform is incredibly accessible for any sort of use case.

[00:30:40] Umar: And if they want that full experience with banking and they want to do their KYB, are there any jurisdictions today where Reah is, let's say, not available?

[00:30:49] Jacob: Yeah, we serve businesses in over 150 different countries. As long as you're not, you know, on like the OFAC list or one of the banned countries, and we can work with you. And, uh, yeah, we're, our KYB time is, our turnaround time is pretty quick, and we- we're always like looking to, continue improving that turnaround time.

[00:31:06] Jacob: But, we can get businesses onboarded in an average of, you know, I would say 48 to 72 hours. And I think in your case, yours was, uh, I don't know, was it even 12 hours? I don't think so.

[00:31:16] Umar: Yeah, not even. Mine was lightning fast. Probably under three hours my account was approved. Yeah. And also my cards was, account was approved in less than an hour, I believe.

[00:31:27] Jacob: So what that means is if you have a perfect application, approval becomes even quicker.

[00:31:33] Umar: Yeah. Now, Jacob, the crypto neobank space is, is very competitive, right? I mean, we've had a few on this podcast before. I'm gonna mention a few names, but maybe the listeners know them already.

[00:31:46] Umar: Companies like Slash, Meow, Altitude, who we had recently, and web2 neobanks as well are now offering stablecoin products like Ramp and Brex. Now, if a CFO is choosing between, let's say Reah and its closest alternative, what's the one thing that maybe decides they should onboard with Reah?

[00:32:08] Jacob: Well, I also think it kind of depends on the use case and the business.

[00:32:12] Jacob: You know, the Ramp, the Mercurys, we don't even compete with them. They're also US-based businesses. We serve really global businesses, any business that is looking for a USD account. I know there's a lot of limitations for Ramp and Mercury when it comes to that.

[00:32:26] Jacob: I think you mentioned Meow. I would say they're a fiat-first neobank, and it kinda goes back to, you know, that tacked-on, you know, payment method, and that's kinda how they support crypto, and that's the same thing with Ramp and I, I think Mercury as well. Uh, Altitude, I would say, is a, um, probably a closer competitor.

[00:32:44] Jacob: All, all these companies have great products, great teams. Altitude is Solana-focused. I think, the main difference with us is, we support fourteen or fifteen different blockchains. So if you wanna hold assets on Bitcoin, sure. If you wanna move assets on Tron, sure. If you wanna use Ethereum, we can do that too.

[00:33:01] Jacob: Base, Arbitrum. So I think that's the really, really exciting thing. And with these fiat-first neobanks, that I mentioned earlier, it's really a tacked-on payment method. If you have, you know, digi-- if you have all sorts of digital assets, Reah is probably a really, really good solution for you because you can manage it alongside your fiat.

[00:33:18] Jacob: But, uh, yeah, I, I would... You know, those are my thoughts, you know, regarding that.

[00:33:22] Umar: Now, at the beginning of the podcast, I did mention that this is a special episode today, and we'll have a demo of Reah. So I think this is the time, Jacob. Most of our audience, as you know, they already work at web3 companies.

[00:33:35] Umar: They probably already using some kind of neobanks, web2 or web3 neobank. Maybe some of them are hearing Reah for the first time today. So if you're open to it, I'd love for you to share your screen and maybe walk us through the platform. Let's do it. I think we're gonna start first with the business, side of it, and then we'll go through how the agentic side would work.

[00:33:59] Jacob: Welcome to Reah, everybody. This is what you're going to see when you first log in. It's your homepage. It's going to surface all of your top accounts, all of your top assets across fiat and crypto. These are your finance-grade multisig non-custodial wallets. This is what it looks like. You can have as many wallets as you need for all different sorts of purposes, you know, a revenue wallet, a performance wallet, an operational wallet.

[00:34:26] Jacob: Maybe you even have a payroll wallet. You have good portfolio, management tools below. So this is a fully abstracted experience. This is available on all, you know, the 15 chains that Reah supports. It's easy to create a new wallet. You can create right here. This is our gas station, and this is the, you know, if you're making a transaction, on Ethereum.

[00:34:48] Jacob: You don't need to hold Ethereum. It's always going to pull from this unified balance, and this is what it looks like. You can deposit with any asset, and this is exactly how it works. We have banking. So you can see these accounts are in your name. It'll show you, hey, which bank, are we working with.

[00:35:04] Jacob: You have ACH, Wire, SWIFT functionality. We're able to give, you know, banking rewards on your banking balance here.

[00:35:12] Jacob: We have corporate cards, so these are Visa cards, they're virtual. You can add it to your Apple or Google Pay with expense management, programmable spend controls. So this is really, an exciting product, and we have our treasury, and this is really the, the beauty of a, of a non-custodial wallet and what you're able to do and access.

[00:35:31] Jacob: So you can see we have all these different products. We have some tokenized RWAs as well too. You can click into the product. We give you an idea of what exactly it is, you know, where the, the yield is coming from, any sort of estimates that you can expect for a return, the redemption.

[00:35:49] Jacob: And we see a lot of our customers really leveraging our treasury. We even see customers coming over from Mercury to get access to some of these products where it's like, your traditional or local bank probably isn't offering these products. And if you want maybe higher yield, or different sorts of strategies Reah is a really good, great place to access them.

[00:36:08] Jacob: And I think what's interesting as well is, you know, we have these different wallets, right? A lot of assets sitting in them, and we have a way for people just to... You don't even need to deposit into Treasury, but what you can do here is, this is like opting into a money market fund, and you're able to earn two percent on any USDC or USDT just sitting in your wallet, and you don't have to withdraw it from Treasury.

[00:36:28] Jacob: If I need to make a payment or send it out, really what happens is you'll continue earning, and the balance will pull, and you'll be able to make the payment. Whereas in Treasury, you have to deposit, withdraw. With this, you know, sort of smart balance is what we call it, you don't have to do that at all.

[00:36:43] Jacob: You'll always continue earning, and you can continue to make payments whenever you need to. Our unified ledger, this is what it looks like. This is what it is. We're bringing a lot of context to on-chain transactions, you know. So there's no more 0x one thousand, and what does that mean? Really what's going on here, if I click into one transaction, it's going to show me, hey, when was this initiated at?

[00:37:05] Jacob: When was it finished at? The type of transaction, how it was facilitated. You can create your own tagging system for it, and this is really what's capturing all of your on- and off-chain transactions in one place. So no more stitching it together. You'll be able to see everything that's in progress, completed, transaction that failed, that have failed, and then really strong granular filtering capabilities.

[00:37:26] Jacob: If you just want to look at, you know, a specific rail, a specific asset, counterparty, really whatever it may be, you can surface. And with Reah, everything runs in approval workflows. There's audit trails for everything, you know, more than just money movement. If I'm creating a wallet, if I'm adding somebody, you can see exactly what it looks like.

[00:37:42] Jacob: And when I say, "Hey, we're really bringing in, a lot of, context to these transactions," this is actually giving you more detail in terms of, hey, you know, when was it actually initiated at, started at, finished at? Things that finance teams and CFOs, you know, things that are critical to their operation.

[00:37:57] Jacob: And then we'll really show you, hey, this is what the approval flow looked like, how many people needed to approve, when it was initiated at. So all things that are really, really important, to a finance team's operation. But we have invoicing, we have recurring invoicing. You can create an invoice with AI.

[00:38:15] Jacob: We call it smart invoice. But you can invoice in fiat, you can invoice in crypto, you can invoice in stablecoins. You know, we make it really, really easy for you. The ability to bulk send. So we have a lot of customers, customers that are using bulk send for, you know, employee payments. Maybe they're paying contractors or suppliers, and they wanna do it in bulk.

[00:38:32] Jacob: At least for me, like, it's always been very frustrating to have to send, you know, if I'm sending ten transactions, to send s- ten individual transactions. But with bulk send, what I can do is I can download this template, CSV, I can upload it. Instead of, you know, sending ten different transactions, I can send it all in one workflow.

[00:38:47] Jacob: And maybe if you have, a much larger amount of transactions to do, 100, for example, instead of doing 100 different transactions, what I can do here, I can do it all in one approval workflow. So this is really, really exciting, and we've seen a lot of customers take advantage of this specific tool.

[00:39:03] Jacob: This is our convert engine, the ability to swap and bridge all in one place, and the ability to on- and off-ramp in one place. And we also, you know, we do have zero fee on- and off-ramp, so that's something that's really, really exciting. We have a contact book, so you can see. You can add all your contacts, all of their information.

[00:39:20] Jacob: You know, for example I can add bank accounts. I can select the different currencies. We have these different local payout rails. And then you can go ahead and send a transaction in SGD, HKD, AED, whatever you may need.

[00:39:35] Jacob: I'll show you how our policy engine works. So you can have all sorts of different flows across the entire Reah operating system.

[00:39:44] Jacob: And I think, you know, with everything being in one place, governance really stays consistent, and this is really good for, like, team continuity. If somebody leaves, the new person needs to understand, hey, you know, how does everything work? And that's the beauty of this. So this is how money movement can be configured in Reah programmable policy engine, and this applies across wallets, treasury, cards, banking.

[00:40:05] Jacob: It can apply to everything or maybe you want to-- you want this to apply to specific accounts. So you can have policies for a specific wallet, a specific bank account for two, four different things. It's really as configurable as you, really want it to be. So high-value transactions over a hundred thousand, the admin and the owner need to approve.

[00:40:28] Jacob: So what's happening here, you can set the flow, maybe after seventy-two hours it goes back to the beginning. Maybe I want to set the multisig threshold, maybe just any one of the nine admins need to apply. Now, the same thing happens in the owner box. What also happens is I can choose how I want to be notified.

[00:40:50] Jacob: Really, really, really important, you know, for lower value transactions, what can happen is they can be auto-approved. Maybe for medium value transactions, it just goes through the admin. So really, really cool stuff. We have a notification center that I also love for how people can be notified of incoming, outgoing amounts. What's the best way to be notified?

[00:41:10] Jacob: We have role-based access controls

[00:41:13] Jacob: All sorts of things that are important to how a finance team operates.

[00:41:18] Jacob: So when it comes to our agentic features, this is really what it looks like. Your CFO copilot integrate, integrated natively within Reah. You can ask it anything. It can, you know, recommend next best steps, action items based on, uh, the real-time context of your finances.

[00:41:37] Jacob: And also you can add images, files. It can run tasks for you, rebalance payroll. You can see the credits right here. Approve, prepare, initiate transactions. We have a Slack integration and a Lark integration coming soon. So really what happens here is you can tag the Reah agent from Slack.

[00:41:55] Jacob: "Hey, Reah agent, I want you to prepare this transaction or, you know, to send tomorrow." Now, what's gonna happen is that it will receive your instructions, and it will begin to prepare the transaction. So you can really treat the agent as a senior finance manager or a finance intern based on the role that you give it and, based on its role, it can then begin to act accordingly.

[00:42:20] Jacob: So this is how it works on the intelligence side, giving you intelligence about what's going on within your organization. But this is how it also works on the execution side and it actually being able to run, tasks for you. And when I talk about roles, this is what it looks like when I'm saying, "Hey, treat it like a finance intern or a finance manager."

[00:42:40] Jacob: And the agent will have its own role and its own authorization for what it can do and what it cannot do.

[00:42:47] Jacob: This is Reah, so a lot of exciting good things to come, especially on the banking side. We'll look to do, we have a virtual account set up right now. We'll look to do DDA accounts as well with FDIC insurance. We're continuing to improve and evolve everything from treasury and cards to wallets, yeah.

[00:43:12] Jacob: It, it's been a, it's been a great experience so far.

[00:43:15] Umar: If I may interrupt you. So because the podcast is listened by a lot of accountants, would, do you already have, integrations with accounting platforms like, you know, QuickBooks or Xero? Yes. Or is that coming?

[00:43:26] Jacob: So that's actually in progress and, you know, we're actually, you know, releasing it very soon. It, it's been a top priority because a lot of our customers are asking us for this, so we're on top of it. We hear you, and we understand that this is pretty critical. So what we've been seeing teams, you know, the way that they've been circumventing this is, you know, we have monthly statements that they can use for, you know, you know, their own accounting purposes.

[00:43:46] Jacob: But we also have export capabilities, and they've been exporting, you know, this and uploading it into their QuickBooks or their Xero or other accounting softwares. And this is also pretty configurable in terms of, "Hey, you know, what do I wanna export? You know, which account should I use? And, you know, what, columns and information do I really want to pull?"

[00:44:03] Jacob: So we have... Our, our customers have been using this so far, but yes, that integration is, you know, very, very soon.

[00:44:10] Umar: And Jacob, we did go through the business model of Reah earlier. Could you share a little bit more about the pricing?

[00:44:17] Jacob: Yeah. So we have a free plan, we have a pro plan, and we also have an enterprise plan. A lot of people are using our free, you know, I would say our most common, plan is a pro plan. Everything that's available in the pro plan is available in the free plan. You would just get some better rates and some spreads on the pro plan.

[00:44:31] Jacob: But, you know, the way to activate the pro plan is, you know, holding a minimum of a, minimum of a hundred thousand dollars in your banking balance. You could also hold a minimum of a million dollars in treasury, or it's an eighty-nine dollar per month SaaS fee. If you wanna do it yearly, it's fifty-nine dollars per month.

[00:44:47] Jacob: But the most common way, people park a hundred thousand dollars in their banking balance, and that automatically activates, Pro. But, you know, there's no onboarding fees, there's no account minimums. As I said earlier, we're, um, a very accessible platform and, no matter how much you're holding or what you wanna do with Reah, we can certainly support you and, uh, it'd be our pleasure to do it.

[00:45:08] Umar: And, uh, the episode is, soon, drawing to an end. Could you maybe share some of the upcoming features, of Reah?

[00:45:16] Jacob: Yeah. We're doing a, a nice, like, redesign rebrand, which I think is going to make the, the UI, even better, which is very, very exciting. We're, you know, continuing to improve our, uh, banking relationships, the capabilities on that end, local payout rails for additional currencies, that businesses can pay out to.

[00:45:35] Jacob: We're continuing to improve our treasury section, introduce more tokenized asset, uh, real-world assets there for businesses to deposit into and get exposure to. And I think also the, um, our agentic features, we're continuing to improve those and, there's really going to be a lot that you can do, to make your life a lot easier as a CFO and accountant.

[00:45:54] Jacob: So really, uh, so many things that are upcoming and that we're really, really excited about.

[00:46:00] Umar: Great. We look forward to it. And yeah, kudos again to, to the team. Now, the title of the episode today, Jake, was Agentic Neobanks. As closing thoughts, has there been anything that maybe we didn't touch on that you'd like to share with the listeners?

[00:46:17] Umar: Or maybe how would you just summarize this episode for the listeners?

[00:46:21] Jacob: Yeah, I think we touched on so much, and I wanna thank you for the conversation. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate it. But yeah, I would describe Reah as a modern financial platform for, you know, not only crypto native teams, but, you know, really for traditional businesses and, that's what we're focused on.

[00:46:35] Jacob: We want to provide them with amazing infrastructure, that can support the needs of a modern business. You know, we see many more businesses that are beginning to bank with, a neobank, you know, and, and fintech platform rather than a traditional business. We see, the trend of businesses adopting stablecoins and using them more in their daily financial operations and beginning to move, the, these stablecoins on chain.

[00:46:56] Jacob: So, uh, yeah, I, I would really describe Reah as your, as your modern day financial platform, that can support all of your financial needs in one place.

[00:47:05] Umar: Great. And I do have a last question on this podcast, it's a tradition on the podcast, is do you have a favorite quote or let's say like a maxim that you live by or let's say you regularly repeat to yourself?

[00:47:19] Jacob: I like the question. I think, listen, I take things day by day. I, I focus on, you know, being present, you know, and, uh, handling, what's in front of me, and then, focusing on the next day after that. But, um, I think, yeah, working hard and, uh, you know, treating people the right way is always, you know, what I live by.

[00:47:37] Umar: If people want to reach out to you, if they want to learn more about Reah and they wanna get onboarded to Reah, what's the best way to do that?

[00:47:44] Jacob: Yeah, they can onboard at reah.com . They could also reach me on Telegram at jakemargulies, my first and last name. You can reach me on WhatsApp too.

[00:47:53] Jacob: Happy to, you know, find a way for you guys to contact me. But yeah, I'm always available for my customers. Our, our main priority is making sure that our customers are supported and we're maximizing their use case, within the platform. But yeah, I'm always willing to connect, over Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever it may be.

[00:48:13] Umar: Fantastic. We'll be sharing all of those in the show notes. Jacob, it was a fantastic conversation, and, thanks a lot for coming. Thanks for everything that you've built with, Reah. It, it's a fantastic platform, and, uh, I wish you be-best of luck, and we'll stay in touch.

[00:48:29] Jacob: Absolutely. Let's do it again soon.

[00:48:30] Jacob: Thank you.