When Nazym Ashina Son first co-founded his company, Soul of Nomad, he had a strong concept and an entrepreneur’s vision to create a designer brand in the heart of Silicon Valley, combining the area’s business know-how with a wide assortment of Italian craft products. This vision came to life in 2015, when he established the company and began selling Italian-made travel gear all over the world. As the company grew, it regularly needed to send more money overseas to its suppliers, research and development teams, and other business partners.
“When we were just doing e-commerce, we could transfer money to the factory using our bank,” said Ashina Son. “But as we expanded our customer base and product demand, the fees associated with wires became significant.”
And those international wire transfers quickly became a resource drain, with fees eating at the company’s revenue. Ashina Son knew he needed to find an alternative payment option to balance operational costs. He began looking for a transparent, navigable, and affordable experience, and in 2017, he found exactly that in Veem.
Ashina Son soon discovered one of Veem’s primary benefits: transparency. When paying suppliers and manufacturers overseas, the payee often wanted to know when a payment would be arriving. With wire transfers, that timeframe was often nebulous, depending on banks on both ends of the transaction. Veem’s structure ensured that both Soul of Nomad and their partners had line of sight into the payment, providing them with an extra level of assurance.
“With Veem, it’s easy to track the money,” Ashina Son explained. “With a bank, the money is just out there and somebody on the other side has to tell you when they receive it. With Veem, you can see where the money is, and it gives you a sense of where it’s moving.”
Soul of Nomad also benefits from Veem’s ease of use. In fact, one of Ashina Son’s favorite parts of Veem is the user interface, which he decrees simple and straightforward. In addition, the solution’s integration with QuickBooks streamlines the full accounting process for the organization.
“I think the biggest benefit of Veem is the easy-to-use interface,” said Ashina Son. “The UX [user experience] is very straightforward, and it makes us happy to use Veem.”
And Veem’s user-friendly platform allows for another benefit: time savings. Coordinating international payments takes precise work, and for a start-up moving at lightspeed, time is of the essence. Veem creates a more efficient payment process and frees up the Soul of Nomad team to focus on the business—not the payment. In fact, Ashina Son reports that Veem can ultimately save hours of accounting processing time, creating much-needed breathing room for these entrepreneurs.
“Just 30 minutes saved can be 30 more minutes of rest, or 30 more minutes to spend with your children,” pointed out Ashina Son. “It’s better than messing around with crazy back-end bank systems.”
And it’s safe to say that Veem still fulfills Soul of Nomad’s original need: saving money. According to Ashina Son, Veem has saved his company thousands of dollars by avoiding wire transfer fees, freeing up that money for product development.
“The savings were drastic, and we saved at least $10,000 on transfers,” he shared. “Over the long run and with our continued use of Veem, that amounts to a lot of savings.”
Overall, Veem addresses a number of Soul of Nomad’s chief concerns: providing transparency into the international payment process; serving as a simple, user-friendly payment experience; saving time for the company and its employees; and decreasing operational costs.
“Coming as a founder who started a brand from a garage, I think Veem is like the Swiss Army knife of modern international banking,” Ashina Son explained. “They have to wear many hats in order to cater to small businesses. I would definitely recommend Veem to the entrepreneurs out there.”
Veem is a global payments network built for businesses. We began in 2014 with the intention of making international money transfers as simple as purchasing a cup of coffee. Since then, we’ve revolutionized the way businesses pay and get paid around the world by empowering owners, accountants, and financial professionals to take control over their payment processes. We level the playing field by providing enterprise-level financial tools and negotiating power to the small businesses who need it most.