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CEO America’s unique CREDITZ™ System is the
world’s first true digital currency, solving a myriad of marketing and business
problems for merchants, manufacturers and others in the payment chain and allowing it to
be utilized online, at retail or on cell phones & PDAS, including payment transactions
down to a hundredth of a penny
Services
Digital Currency
(CEOA-OTCPK)
CEO America, Inc.
2801 South Valley
View Blvd., Suite #1
Las Vegas, Nevada 89102
David Vaters
Chairman and CEO
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
December 29, 2005
BIO:
David Vaters
Chairman & President
Mr. Vaters brings 25 years of entrepreneurial experience to his position as the inventor
and founder of the CREDITZ™ System. Now, as
President and Chairman of CEO America, Inc., David’s expertise in branding, corporate
image, sales, business development, strategic planning, logistical operations, and
conceptualization, make him an unusually seasoned executive.
In February of 1997, David envisioned the CREDITZ™
Digital Currency as a means of improving both the retailer and manufacturer’s ability
to enhance their relationship with the consumer, creating a win/win proposition for
consumer, merchant, manufacturer, and all facets of the payment industry. The system is
also designed to provide an integrated customer intelligence infrastructure solution to
major brand-name companies.
In addition, it was David's goal to empower the consumer to control the data that is
collected through their everyday purchases and giving them a say in who sends them
messages, when and how they receive these messages and offers.
Prior to CREDITZ™, David founded and
operated California Republic, one of Canada’s first theme retail chain, with 14
stores in major shopping centers across the country. He was also a partner in California
Fashion Group and Fabknit Textiles, which manufactured and wholesale-licensed products
such as NHL, MLB, Leggoons and Brooks Running shoes (Kids) to national retail chains
including Wal-Mart, Footlocker, Bata and other major retailers. David has done work
enhancing the corporate images of ITT Hartford, Wendy’s and many other consumer-
oriented franchises and restaurant chains.
As an innovative 21st century business model, the CREDITZ™
system is attracting significant intrigue among celebrities, charities, government
officials and some to the worlds most influential corporations such as IBM.
Company Profile:
CEO America, Inc. (CEOA) is the exclusive licensee of the CREDITZ™ System in the United States. CREDITZ™ is the world’s first Digital
Currency. CREDITZ™ has the ability to
process payments for as little as 1/100 of a cent. One of CEOA’s
transformational plans is to pilot the ability to pay consumers to watch T.V. commercials,
in early 2006.
The CREDITZ™
System combines loyalty, digital payment processing, business intelligence and marketing
communications into a coherent package that provides compelling benefits for consumers,
retailers, marketers, transaction processors and the electronic payment industry.
The CREDITZ™
system is ubiquitous and is complementary to existing reward and loyalty programs.
CEOA does not need to compete with the curent market
participant: rather it will grow the size of the current market. CEOA strategy is
inclusive, not to cannibalize or disrupt the existing business, rather to transform.
70% of purchases in the USA are made with cash, 30% by debit and credit.
CREDITZ™
is partnering with the payment industry to revenue share from CEOA’s cash purchase
side of the market.
CREDITZ™
is paid by merchants to consumers to reward them for their loyalty and pass on
manufacturers’ discounts in Digital Currency. Consumers with a CREDITZ™ accounts can use their earned CREDITZ™ to pay participating merchants for
their goods and services. Just like CASH.
What is CREDITZ™
?
CREDITZ™
is the first and only international “nano payment” (payments as little as 100th
of a penny) system that exchanges cash from consumer to merchant, merchant to consumer,
manufacturer to consumer, and consumer to consumer in stores, online and through cell
phones, including
payments under one cent. The innovative
ubiquitous CREDITZ™ stored value digital
currency card is now available to consumers, retailers and manufacturers through the US, Canada
and United Kingdom. Demand is accelerating as brand name retailers realize the value
added benefits they can now provide their consumers through the convenience and simplicity
offered by the new revolutionary CREDITZ™
Digital Currency System.
What is Digital Currency?
CEO America, Inc. (CEOA) is launching the
world’s first digital currency. CEOA is poisedto become a leading provider of
digital payment transactions and business intelligence services in America. CEOA has
the exclusive license to execute the CREDITZ™
System in the United States. CEOA’s business model as a first mover to partner
with the entire payment
industry to expand the size of the current market.
CREDITZ™ is a universal currency
with the securityand privacy of cash and convenience and scaleabilty of credit/debit
cards. CEO America, Inc. is poised to become the leader in the Payment, Consmer
Rewards and CRM Industries, which is measured in the trillions of dollars.
CEOCFO: Mr. Vater, will
you give us a background on your company?
Mr. Vaters: “CEO America’s unique CREDITZ™
System is the world’s first true digital currency, solving a myriad of marketing and
business problems for merchants, manufacturers and others in the payment chain and
allowing it to be utilized online, at retail or on cell phones & PDAS, including
payment transactions down to a hundredth of a penny.
We have created over the last number of years, a nano payment system, by that I mean that
it is a payment system that can do transactions down to a hundredth of a penny. There have
been online currencies before but this is what we call the world’s first digital
currency because we can utilize it online, at brick & mortar retail stores or on
wireless devices such as the cell phone. CREDITZ™ is cash, in a digital form, and can
be utilized with any worldwide currency, not just US Dollars.”
CEOCFO: Why do we need
it to go to hundredths of a penny?
Mr. Vaters: “Many payments systems have had difficulty
because of their models, in doing micropayments, which are payments under $20.00. The cost
of doing the transaction is high, yet consumer demand for convenience is there. Nano
payments are important because technologies and the internet has changed everything and
the needs for e-commerce to have a nano payment are growing. In the case of having people
answer survey data, our goal is to pay people to watch television commercials, quantifying
the eyeball and in the case of digital radio, quantifying people who are listening to
digital radio commercials. We are empowering consumers to control the data and be paid for
the data that is collected. On the consumer side, these nano payments provide them a
repayment for giving up their data, which they do everyday. Now the consumer is enabled to
be paid for that.”
CEOCFO: Will you tell us
about Creditz and where you are with it today?
Mr. Vaters: “We are now in an execution mode and we are
promoting the product to online. We have about 150 online merchants that award Creditz.
You can redeem Creditz for about 100-150 different retail gift cards online. Our
deployment in the offline world is starting in Santa Monica and in Toronto and soon in London
where we are deploying almost simultaneously. We have merchants signed up and even the
icon amusements like the Santa Monica Pier.”
CEOCFO: Is there a
particular reason you chose those cities?
Mr. Vaters: “We have done several Alpha and Beta tests
in Toronto, Canada, but this is just a ramp-up period where we are testing our systems,
and making sure our customer service is working. We want to make sure of all of our
systems before we roll out a national launch in Q-2 and Q-3 next year.”
CEOCFO: Are merchants
hungry for this or do they need to be convinced?
Mr. Vaters: “Like anything new, it takes a little
explanation. I was a merchant. I had a retail store chain and I was a manufacturer. The
whole idea behind Creditz is to solve problems for merchants and manufacturers. If we do
not do that, there is no reason for us to exist. Merchants still do not know who their
customer is; they know the demographic information, they see the exit surveys and so
forth, but they really do not know who their customer is. They are still using mass media
and they are confused on where to put their advertising dollars because of the extension
of all the television and radio commercials. The old saying of, ‘I know that half of
my advertising dollars are working, I just do not know which half’, is true and it is
getting worse.
Being able to identify your customers and send them relevant offers, which our system
does, is a basic need. The interesting thing about our company is we do not charge for
those messages. The basis of this is if you are a consumer and you join Creditz and you
get a free Creditz account card, which is distributed through merchants and you enter your
information that you do not have a card but you live in down town Los Angeles, our system
promises that you will never get a dog food offer and you will never get a Firestone Tire
offer, but you will get relevant offers that mean something to you. Like any marketer, if
you can send relevant offers to the right customer at the right time, it will increase
sales. We do not charge for these messages, we make our money from the incremental sales
of our merchants. So we go shoulder to shoulder and say you are not going to advertise
with us, we are going to send those messages and then when you win, you win.”
CEOCFO: What
infrastructure is in place to facilitate your services?
Mr. Vaters: “We partnered with EDS (Electronic Date
Systems) in Canada (a wholly owned subsidiary of the global EDS Corporation – NYSE:
EDS) and we spent a million dollars on their infrastructure. We also have several millions
of dollars invested with IBM (NYSE: IBM). We developed our own proprietary systems over
the last eight years and then we bundled that with fragmented technologies that have been
available and out there but had no home enabled for it to work. There are many-fragmented
technologies out there that are just collecting dust. I think merchants are looking for a
turnkey solution, they do not want to buy one piece of a CR solution anymore and then try
to integrate it with their other systems and so forth. They are looking for a turnkey, low
cost, highly effective marketing tool. What we are doing is giving them a tool. The best
marketer, the best company with customer service, the best pricing and the company that
utilizes our system the best will win.”
CEOCFO: Will you tell us
more about new methods?
Mr. Vaters: “Most of the world except North America is
ahead in wireless communications. In Scandinavia, Europe, text messaging and so forth and
trading of text value is going around the world, yet North America is behind that. The
problems with these areas that are using wireless technology to do transactions is that
most experts would agree that it is wrought with fraud and open to money laundering and so
forth. We are involved with several security companies and many advisors to the U.S.
government, World Bank and foreign relations whereby we are about to launch a very secure
wireless transaction processing system. It would include our nano team so that you could
text value to your neighbor, friend, to someone you are selling a used coach to or a
retailer or manufacturer through your cell phone using the Creditz.”
CEOCFO: There are a wide
variety of merchants using Creditz; how do you approach them and how do you decide whom to
target?
Mr. Vaters: “It is any merchants or manufacturer that
wants to grow their business incrementally. What we are doing is taking a multi-channel
sales strategy approach where we have included those in the payment industry as a partner.
This is an inclusion model; it is not an exclusion model where we have said to the payment
industry, “you are making money currently from 33% of the transactions that take
place in the U.S.” We could say that we are branding cash and therefore we get a
transaction fee from cash as well as debit and credit. We have done several deals and some
will be announced shortly. We have partnered with terminal manufacturers that are some of
the largest in the world whereby they have Visa and Mastercard on the swipe terminals.
They have written our code alongside Visa and Mastercard and are as we speak, being
deployed. We have partnered with everyone in the food chain that makes money with Visa and
Mastercard and have given them a value-added merchant product to sell and to also make a
transaction fee from cash, which they are not currently doing. Our goal is if we can turn
that 30% into 30.3%, in the next fifteen months, that 30.3% is a very big number and very
important to the payment industry. We have taken the approach that we need an army out
there and it is best to partner with those that have the armies rather than create them.
We have our own direct sales and referral agreements with our partners as well.”
CEOCFO: What is the
financial picture for the company?
Mr. Vaters: “We have raised combined with the three
countries about $22 million that has been spread over eight years. We have a model that
once you get it up in the air, it drives itself because our model is, unlike traditional
business, we have a model that gets its money upfront and has no accounts receivable. It
has no inventory to ship or keep in a warehouse. It is an interesting business model that
we believe other businesses are evolving to. We are probably a little ahead of the pack on
that. It will take in much more money and we are looking for another large raise in the
May to June timeframe of next year (2006).”
CEOCFO: Why should
potential investors be interested and what goes unnoticed ?
Mr. Vaters: “We believe that we have created the
quintessential 21st century business model. We are enhancing many of the ways
that people conduct business by bringing efficiencies, solving problems and providing
meaningful, relevant marketing solutions for our customers without charging them. With our
marketing communications services, we make our money from a merchant’s incremental
sales, not upfront fees. Inherent in CREDITZ™ Digital Currency is a nano-payment
system: a payment system that can do transactions down to a hundredth of a penny, which
will become much more necessary as the Internet and wireless devices seek new ways of
monetizing content. And, we have a business model that eliminates accounts receivable, has
no inventory and no debt on the company, thereby greatly increasing our chances for
success. Any company that can bring efficiencies to other companies, can offer
enhancements to their business models and help then incrementally grow by going
shoulder-to-shoulder with them, I think has a good chance of being a good investment for
anybody and it is a company that I would invest in. That is what we would say to
investors.”
CEOCFO: In closing; how
do you deal with critics?
Mr. Vaters: “This is a big idea. Big ideas get criticism along the way. I was several
years into the development of CREDITZ and even then, people were saying this isn’t
possible and you will never do it…it will be IBM, Oracle and so forth. The fact is
that none of those companies can do what we are doing because of privacy issues,
restrictions, because they extend credit and because they are not ubiquitous brands. We
took that as a challenge to say that was just an opinion and we are going to see how far
we can take it. Right now, we are very secure where we are today and we have a lot of
champions within all of those companies that have helped us get where we are. I think it
is a testament to the model itself that nothing happens overnight, and Visa wasn’t
built in a week, a day, a month or a year, it took them fifty years to get where they are,
and it took Discover twenty years or more. We intend to get to where these companies are
within 24 to 36 months and working with those companies. We are not out to compete with
Visa or Mastercard, we are there to partner with them and incrementally grow everybody’s
business.”
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