Finance Day sits down with Lyall Cresswell to unpack TEG’s 25-year, bootstrapped journey from a neutral subscription platform to an integrated fintech used by 9,000+ logistics firms. He explains how removing onboarding, compliance and settlement friction is unlocking industry-wide collaboration, and what’s next as TEG invests in practical AI and enterprise scale.
What inspired you to pursue a bootstrap model for TEG instead of chasing external venture capital, and how has that influenced your company’s culture and strategy?
When we launched in 2000, the tech world was obsessed with raising funds – many saw it as a measure of success rather than actually solving problems. We took a different approach because we believed in building something sustainable that could serve the entire industry neutrally, without being beholden to investor agendas that might favour certain players over others.
After just four months with our minimal viable product, businesses were willing to pay a monthly subscription because they saw tangible benefits in how we facilitated genuine collaboration. This problem-solving mentality has shaped everything we do – we remain truly independent and neutral, focusing on creating value for all participants rather than extracting maximum returns for external investors. It’s created a culture of authenticity, honesty and doing the right thing for the entire logistics ecosystem.
Over 25 years, how did you evolve TEG from a subscription-based business into an integrated fintech platform serving 9,000+ logistics firms?
We started with a vision of solving real world problems for our customers in what was a fragmented, inefficient industry. The transformation happened gradually, but the real paradigm shift came when we realised that true collaboration required removing all the friction points that prevented logistics businesses from working together effectively.
Settlement and finance were two of the missing pieces. For years, we were helping businesses find each other and work together, but manual processes including mountains of paperwork and hours of manual data entry, lengthy payment terms, and lack of transparency created friction and cost that limited partnerships.
Today, we’re the neutral end-to-end platform that enables thousands of logistics businesses to collaborate seamlessly – from carrier sourcing and compliance to real-time visibility and instant payments through SmartPay.
Processing B2B payments in under 60 minutes is a radical shift from standard 60–90 day terms. What operational innovations made that possible?
The key was building everything as an integrated system rather than bolting on payment solutions as an afterthought. SmartPay isn’t just a payment processor – it’s deeply integrated within our platform including in our compliance frameworks, automated invoicing, and freight audit tools.
We can process payments so quickly because we’ve fully integrated the payment network. This means both customers and suppliers are onboard and can work with each other instantly through a common platform.. Our freight audit tools catch discrepancies instantly, reducing invoicing errors before they become payment delays. When everything from job matching to invoice approval happens on one platform, you eliminate the manual handoffs that create bottlenecks.
We’ve also built non-recourse finance options directly into the platform, so carriers can access funds in less than 60 minutes while buyers get extended terms. It’s not just about moving money faster – it’s about unlocking cashflow for carriers and drivers in a low-margin industry using a flexible tool. Flexible cashflow is better for everyone as it allows businesses to invest and not wait around to get paid. .
In an industry traditionally reliant on manual, paper‑based processes, how did you win customer trust for a digital payments solution?
Trust comes from our track record of serving the industry for over 25 years and supporting household brands, whilst being genuinely neutral and transparent. Over this time, we’ve proven we’re the independent platform that benefits everyone equally.
Most importantly, we demonstrated that digital payments enable better collaboration. When logistics providers saw they could work confidently with hundreds of new carriers because payments were guaranteed and transferred instantly, rather than being limited to their traditional supplier base, the value became undeniable. We’re not just digitising payments – we’re enabling industry-wide collaboration that was previously impossible.
How do recurring revenue models drive both customer adoption and long‑term profitability at TEG?
Our commercial models align our commercial success with our customers. This keeps our customers happy because pricing scales with value, and keeps us focussed on investing and building great solutions that drive more value for our customers.
Our pricing combines subscription elements with flat-fee transaction pricing, which reinforces our role as the neutral collaborative platform. Unlike percentage-based models where we might be incentivised to favour high-volume players, our approach means we succeed only when all our members are collaborating successfully and getting genuine value from the platform.
This model has given us the independence to invest heavily in platform capabilities that benefit everyone – that 25% of revenue we spend on innovation goes toward removing barriers to collaboration rather than maximising transaction fees.
For customers, the subscription model provides predictable costs and ensures they have access to all platform capabilities and the ability to respond to spikes in demand. It’s particularly valuable for enterprise clients who need to budget accurately and want assurance that the platform will continue evolving to meet their needs.
What do you see as the biggest “hidden” fintech opportunity in transport and logistics, and how is TEG positioned to capitalize on them?
The biggest opportunity is enabling true collaboration across the entire logistics ecosystem by removing financial friction. The industry is incredibly fragmented, but most attempts at collaboration fail because of payment delays, lengthy onboarding, compliance concerns, and lack of transparency between parties.
We’re positioned uniquely because we’re the neutral end-to-end platform that removes the onboarding, compliance and payment headaches, allowing individual operators to connect and engage effortlessly… Our data from 2.5 million annual loads gives us insights into what genuine collaboration looks like, while our 25-year track record proves our commitment to serving the entire industry fairly.
The real opportunity is creating financial infrastructure that enables on-demand collaboration – where any logistics provider can work confidently with any carrier in our network, knowing that compliance, payments, and transparency are all handled seamlessly. This level of industry-wide collaboration creates value that pure fintech players or traditional logistics companies simply can’t access.
Can you share a case study where faster payment processing materially improved a client’s cash flow or operational efficiency?
One of our clients, Speedy Freight, a premier time-critical freight business, had accounts payable team members spending days every month processing and paying up to 4,000 suppliers. It was a massive administrative burden that tied up valuable resources and created cash flow complications.
Using SmartPay, they’ve radically cut down this processing time. Instead of days of manual work reconciling thousands of invoices, the system handles it automatically. This freed up their finance team to focus on strategic work rather than administrative tasks, while their suppliers got paid in under 60 minutes instead of waiting weeks or months.
The operational impact went beyond just payments – they could work with a broader network of carriers because the payment friction was removed, which improved their service offerings and resilience during peak periods. On the other side of the coin, carriers now want to collaborate with Speedy Freight over and above other players because they know they can get paid within 60 minutes, rather than having to wait 60 days. That’s huge.
As a contrarian who prioritises profitability over valuations, what advice would you give other fintech founders about balancing growth and sustainability?
Know your market and find a genuine need that you can meet from day one. Too many founders get caught up in the fetishisation of fundraising rather than focusing on building something valuable.
We proved that businesses would pay for our solution after just four months, then as we added value, we gradually increased pricing. This approach forces you to really understand your customers’ problems and build solutions they’ll actually pay for, not just use.
The recognition of bootstrapped businesses is growing because investors are realising that companies built for profitability tend to be more resilient and make better long-term investments. Focus on creating value, price appropriately for it, and growth will follow naturally.
How do you maintain service quality and platform reliability when scaling to process millions of transactions without external funding?
It comes down to disciplined investment and building systems that scale efficiently. Because we’ve been profitable, we can invest our own money in infrastructure and talent rather than hoping investors will back our promises.
We’ve built our platform to handle scale from the beginning – it’s not something we’ve retrofitted. Our focus on automation means that increasing transaction volume doesn’t proportionally increase operational overhead.
What are the next strategic initiatives or product enhancements you’ll focus on to further cement TEG’s leadership in logistics fintech?
We’re investing heavily in AI to streamline processes and provide actionable insights, but in practical ways that solve real problems rather than for the sake of having AI. For example, we’ve found AI to be even more accurate than humans in compliance document checking, which means more businesses are able to collaborate easily.
We’re also expanding our enterprise footprint with solutions that help larger logistics providers scale flexibly while reducing operational costs and build more resilience.
The goal remains the same as it was 25 years ago: making TEG a fundamental part of the logistics landscape that businesses can use to remove barriers to collaboration and therefore operate more efficiently and profitably.
