Hum Client Spotlight: Passport Technology
Our Client Spotlight series features business leaders, entrepreneurs, and company executives from high-growth companies who have successfully fundraised via Hum’s Intelligent Capital Market. Each Q&A will discuss why they started the company, challenges they faced in scaling, and why they chose to partner with Hum.
Passport Technology is a leading developer of tech-based solutions and services for the highly regulated payments, gaming, and financial services markets. Through its privileged gaming licenses and payment sponsorships, Passport has securely and responsibly settled over $45 billion in funds to casino floors across the globe.
Cleve Tzung joined Passport as CEO in September 2021 to lead the company to the next level of its evolution. In this Client Spotlight Q&A, Tzung discusses why Passport raised capital to scale the business and invest for the future and shares their experience on what it was like working with Hum.
Q: Thanks for taking the time, Cleve! First, can you provide a brief overview of Passport, its technology, and core solutions?
A: Passport develops software and hardware that facilitates payments, loyalty, and back-office automation primarily for the global gaming market. Our core solutions facilitate the processing of transactions such as cash advances, loyalty points redemption, and cash recycling/dispensing for casinos. We’ve created our technology to provide easy to use, frictionless solutions within a highly regulated environment. We support our technology to provide the highest level of customer service, reliability, and accuracy.
Q: You’ve been CEO for a little over a year now. Which Passport achievements are you most proud of over the last year?
A: We merged a US company (ASAI) with an international company (Passport) and folded in an acquisition of a loyalty company (Lush) through the course of the year. While I’m proud of everything our teams have done to combine, improve and grow, I’m never satisfied. We’ve set the table for tremendous growth with scalable systems and product innovation and we’re excited about our upcoming prospects.
Q: Why did you and the team decide to raise outside capital to help grow the business?
A: We’re at an inflection point where we want to scale our internal systems while growing our base of business and investing for the future. We’re a cash flow positive business, so we could easily have managed growth in a measured way to conserve cash. But with the capital infusion, we can speed up the growth trajectory at the same time we innovate on product.
Q: What aspect do you believe is most important when evaluating an investor or lender?
A: It’s most important to have an investor that understands your business and works with you to productively deploy capital. There will always be speed bumps and hiccups in any business plan which are better navigated when you have a partner that can be constructive in problem-solving and knows when and where to get involved.
Q: How did you and Passport discover Hum and what was your experience like working with Hum’s team and raising capital via the Intelligent Capital Market (ICM)?
A: Hum’s team reached out to me and laid out the process which sounded attractive. It was quite easy and Hum’s team allowed us to maintain a good level of control over the process. It was critically important to me to control timing and be able to shut off any non-productive discussions early and at our discretion.
Q: Can you tell us about the investor Passport matched with? What stood out about their investment proposal that drew you to raise capital from them?
A: We matched with Peak Rock Capital who has been a great partner for us. Their investment proposal was attractive from a total investment amount and from a cost standpoint. I pay a lot of attention to the types of questions and the level of diligence that gets done, because it tells me what kind of partner I’m getting and what their hot buttons are. Peak Rock asked a lot of good questions and did a lot of focused work so I knew they would be a constructive partner for us.
This testimonial may not represent the experience of all clients and is not indicative of future performance or success.
