In connection with the recent acquisition by The OLB Group, Inc. (“ we ,” “ us ,” “ our ,” or the “ Company ”), through its subsidiaries, of substantially all of the assets of Excel Corporation and its subsidiaries, Payprotec Oregon, LLC, Excel Business Solutions, Inc. and eVance Processing, Inc. (collectively, “ Excel ”), the Company has determined to disclose various risk factors relating to an investment in the Company’s securities.

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. Before purchasing our common stock, you should carefully consider the following risk factors as well as all other information contained in this Current Report and in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones facing us. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently deem immaterial, also may become important factors that affect us. If any of the following risks occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In that case, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and you may lose some or all of your investment.

Risks Related to Our Company

Our recent acquisition of assets of Excel and share exchange with Omnisoft, Inc. and CrowdPay.us, Inc. has collectively formed a new business platform that needs to be integrated, which may create certain risks and may adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

On April 9, 2018, we acquired substantially all of the assets of Excel through a foreclosure sale conducted under the Uniform Commercial Code of the State of New York (“ Excel Acquisition ”). Since closing the acquisition, we have been in the process of integrating our operation with Excel, which includes continuing due diligence on risks to the prospects of the combined business, including undisclosed or unknown liabilities or restrictions assumed in the transaction.

On May 9, 2018, we entered into separate share exchange agreements with the shareholders of Omnisoft, Inc. (“ Omnisoft ”) and CrowdPay.us, Inc. (“ CrowdPay ”), affiliate companies of the Company’s majority stockholder. Pursuant to the share exchange agreement with Omnisoft, the shareholders of Omnisoft transferred to the Company all of the issued and outstanding shares of Omnisoft common stock in exchange for an aggregate of 55,000,000 shares of the Company’s common stock. Pursuant to the share exchange agreement with CrowdPay, the shareholders of CrowdPay transferred to the Company all of the issued and outstanding shares of CrowdPay common stock in exchange for an aggregate of 87,500,000 shares of the Company’s common stock. The share exchange transactions closed on May 9, 2018, on which date Omnisoft and CrowdPay became wholly owned subsidiaries of the Company (the “ Share Exchange ”).

Since the consummation of the Excel Acquisition and the Share Exchange, we have a limited history upon which an evaluation of our performance and future prospects can be made. Our current and proposed operations are subject to all the business risks associated with new enterprises. These include likely fluctuations in operating results as we manage our growth and react to competitors and developments in the markets in which we compete. As we can be considered an early stage company and have not yet generated significant profits, there is no assurance that we will be profitable in the near term or generate sufficient revenues to meet our capital requirements.

As a result, we may experience interruptions of, or loss of momentum in, the activities of one or more of our combined businesses and the possible loss of key personnel. The diversion of our management’s attention and any delays or difficulties encountered in connection with the integration of Excel could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Our failure to raise sufficient funds may result in a default under our loan agreement with GACP and result in a substantial loss of our assets.

In order to finance the Excel Acquisition, we entered into a Loan and Security Agreement (the “ Credit Agreement ”), dated as of April 9, 2018, by and among our subsidiaries Securus365, Inc., eVance Capital, Inc., and eVance Inc., (the “ Purchasers ”) and GACP Finance Co., LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“ GACP ”), as administrative agent and collateral agent (“ Agent ”), and as the initial sole lender thereunder. Under the Credit Agreement, GACP provided a term loan of $12,500,000 (the “ Term Loan ”) to us, which obligations are guaranteed by the Company.

The Term Loan matures in full on April 9, 2021, the third anniversary of the closing of the Excel Acquisition. The Company missed the initial payment of $1,000,000 (“ Initial Payment ”) of the principal amount under the Term Loan that was due on July 15, 2018. An additional $2,000,000 in principal under the Term Loan is due on or prior to October 31, 2018 (subject to earlier repayment under certain circumstances, including if we consummate an equity financing), with the remaining principal due upon maturity. The Term Loan can be prepaid without penalty in part with ten (10) days’ prior written notice to the Agent, and in full with thirty (30) days’ prior written notice. The Term Loan is subject to an interest rate of 9.0% per annum, payable monthly in arrears. Omnisoft and CrowdPay were also each liable as a loan party under the Term Loan. GACP waived the Company’s default due to the missed payment pursuant to Amendment No. 1 to the Credit Agreement dated July 30, 2018 (“ Amendment No. 1 ”). In connection with Amendment No. 1, the Initial Payment was paid by a significant stockholder of the Company through a subordinated promissory note issued by the Company to such stockholder in the principal amount of $1,000,000 with a maturity date of March 31, 2019. Effective as of August 23, 2018, the Company and GACP entered into Amendment No. 2 to the Credit Agreement to extend the delivery date of the Company’s annual financial statements to September 14, 2018.

The obligations of the loan parties under the Credit Agreement are secured by all of their respective assets and the loan parties pledged all of their assets as collateral for their obligations under the Credit Agreement. Additionally, the Company’s ownership interests in Omnisoft, CrowdPay and the Purchasers are pledged in favor of GACP pursuant to the Term Loan.

If we are unable to obtain sufficient financing to meet our payment obligations under the Term Loan, we will be in default under the Credit Agreement. If not cured or waived, such default under the Credit Agreement could enable GACP to declare all outstanding amounts under the Term Loan, together with accrued and unpaid interest and fees, to be due and payable. In addition, GACP could also elect to foreclose on our assets securing the Term Loan. In such event, the Company may not be able to refinance or repay all of its indebtedness or have sufficient liquidity to meet operating and capital expenditure requirements. Any such acceleration of the Term Loan could cause us to lose a substantial portion of our assets and will substantially adversely affect our ability to continue our operations.

We are subject to significant restrictive debt covenants, which limit our operating flexibility.

We are subject to restrictive debt covenants which impose significant restrictions on the manner we and our subsidiaries operate, including (but not limited to) restrictions on the ability to:

These covenants could limit our ability to finance our future operations and our ability to pursue acquisitions and other business activities.

The substantial and continuing losses, and significant operating expenses incurred in the past few years may cause us to be unable to pursue all of our operational objectives if sufficient financing and/or additional cash from revenues is not realized. This raises doubt as to our ability to continue as a going concern.

We have limited cash resources, recurring cash used in operations and operating losses history. As of December 31, 2017, we had a working capital deficiency of $92,541 and a net loss of $398,738 for the year ended December 31, 2017. Our cash flow used in operating activities was $54,080, while $53,500 was provided by financing from a related party. Even with the Excel Acquisition and Share Exchange, these factors among others, raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.

We may not be able to attract financing as needed, or if available, on reasonable terms as required. Further, the terms of any such financing may be dilutive to existing stockholders or otherwise on terms not favorable to us or existing stockholders. If we are unable to secure financing, as circumstances require, or do not succeed in meeting our sales objectives, we may be required to change, significantly reduce our operations or ultimately may not be able to continue our operations. As a result of our historical net losses and cash flow deficits, and net capital deficiency, these conditions raise substantial doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

The financial and operational projections that we may make from time to time are subject to inherent risks.

The projections that we provide herein or our management may provide from time to time (including, but not limited to, those relating to our expansion and other financial or operational matters) reflect numerous assumptions made by management, including assumptions with respect to our specific as well as general business, regulatory, economic, market and financial conditions and other matters, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Accordingly, there is a risk that the assumptions made in preparing the projections, or the projections themselves, will prove inaccurate. There may be differences between actual and projected results, and actual results may be materially different from than those contained in the projections. The inclusion of the projections in this subscription booklet should not be regarded as an indication that we, our management, the placement agent, our auditors or their respective representatives considered or consider the projections to be a guaranteed prediction of future events, and the projections should not be relied upon as such.

We operate in a complex regulatory environment, and failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations could adversely affect our business.

Our operations are subject to a broad range of complex and evolving laws and regulations. As a result, we must perform our services in compliance with the legal and regulatory requirements of multiple jurisdictions. Some of these laws and regulations may be difficult to ascertain or interpret and may change from time to time. Violation of such laws and regulations could subject us to fines and penalties, damage our reputation, constitute a breach of our client agreements, impair our ability to obtain and renew required licenses, and decrease our profitability or competitiveness. If any of these effects were to occur, our operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected.

We may not be able to integrate new technologies and provide new services in a cost-efficient manner.

The online ecommerce industry is subject to rapid and significant changes in technology, frequent new service introductions and evolving industry standards. We cannot predict the effect of these changes on our competitive position, our profitability or the industry generally. Technological developments may reduce the competitiveness of our networks and our software solutions and require additional capital expenditures or the procurement of additional products that could be expensive and time consuming. In addition, new products and services arising out of technological developments may reduce the attractiveness of our services. If we fail to adapt successfully to technological advances or fail to obtain access to new technologies, we could lose customers and be limited in our ability to attract new customers and/or sell new services to our existing customers. In addition, delivery of new services in a cost-efficient manner depends upon many factors, and we may not generate anticipated revenue from such services.

Disruptions in our networks and infrastructure may result in customer dissatisfaction, customer loss or both, which could materially and adversely affect our reputation and business.

Our systems are an integral part of our customers’ business operations. It is critical for our customers, that our systems provide a continued and uninterrupted performance. Customers may be dissatisfied by any system failure that interrupts our ability to provide services to them. Sustained or repeated system failures would reduce the attractiveness of our services significantly and could result in decreased demand for our services.

We face the following risks to our networks, infrastructure and software applications:

Disruptions may cause interruptions in service or reduced capacity for customers, either of which could cause us to lose customers and/or incur expenses, and thereby adversely affect our business, revenue and cash flow.

Our positioning in the marketplace as a smaller provider places a significant strain on our resources, and if not managed effectively, could result in operational inefficiencies and other difficulties.

Our positioning in the marketplace may place a significant strain on our management, operational and financial resources, and increase demand on our systems and controls. To manage this position effectively, we must continue to implement and improve our operational and financial systems and controls, invest in development & engineering, critical systems and network infrastructure to maintain or improve our service quality levels, purchase and utilize other systems and solutions, and train and manage our employee base. As we proceed with our development, operational difficulties could arise from additional demand placed on customer provisioning and support, billing and management information systems, product delivery and fulfillment, sales and marketing and administrative resources.

For instance, we may encounter delays or cost overruns or suffer other adverse consequences in implementing new systems when required. In addition, our operating and financial control systems and infrastructure could be inadequate to ensure timely and accurate financial reporting.

We must attract and retain skilled personnel. If we are unable to hire and retain technical, technical sales and operational employees, our business could be harmed.

Our ability to manage our reorganization and growth will be particularly dependent on our ability to develop and retain an effective sales force and qualified technical and managerial personnel. We need software development specialists with in-depth knowledge of a blend of IT and telecommunications or with a blend of security and telecom. We intend to hire additional necessary employees, including software engineers, communication engineers, project managers, sales consultants, employees and operational employees, on a permanent basis. The competition for qualified technical sales, technical, and managerial personnel in the communications and software industry is intense in the markets where we operate, and we may not be able to hire and retain sufficient qualified personnel. In addition, we may not be able to maintain the quality of our operations, control our costs, maintain compliance with all applicable regulations, and expand our internal management, technical, information and accounting systems in order to support our desired growth, which could have an adverse impact on our operations. Volatility in the stock market and other factors could diminish our use, and the value, of our equity awards as incentives to employees, putting us at a competitive disadvantage or forcing us to use more cash compensation.

We are dependent on the continued services and performance of our senior management and other key employees, the loss of any of whom could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.

Our future performance depends on the continued services and contributions of our senior management, including our Chief Executive Officer, Ronny Yakov and other key employees to execute on our business plan and to identify and pursue new opportunities and product innovations. The loss of services of senior management or other key employees could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our strategic objectives. In addition, some of the members of our current senior management team have only been working together for a short period of time, which could adversely impact our ability to achieve our goals. From time to time, there may be changes in our senior management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We do not maintain key person life insurance policies on any of our employees other than a policy providing limited coverage on the life of our Chief Executive Officer. The loss of the services of one or more of our senior management or other key employees for any reason could adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results and require significant amounts of time, training and resources to find suitable replacements and integrate them within our business, and could affect our corporate culture.

Our success depends on our continued investment in research and development, the level and effectiveness of which could reduce our profitability.

We intend to continue to make investments in research and development and product development in seeking to sustain and improve our competitive position and meet our customers’ needs. These investments currently include streamlining our suite of software functionalities, including modularization and improving scalability of our integrated solutions. To maintain our competitive position, we may need to increase our research and development investment, which could reduce our profitability and cash flows. In addition, we cannot assure you that we will achieve a return on these investments, nor can we assure you that these investments will improve our competitive position or meet our customers’ needs.

Risks Related to Our Business

CROWDPAY.US, INC.

We operate in a regulatory environment that is evolving and uncertain.

The regulatory framework for online capital formation or crowdfunding is very new. The regulations that govern our operations have been in existence for a very few years. Further, there are constant discussions among legislators and regulators with respect to changing the regulatory environment. New laws and regulations could be adopted in the United States and abroad. Further, existing laws and regulations may be interpreted in ways that would impact our operations, including how we communicate and work with investors and the companies that use our platforms’ services. For instance over the past year, there have been several attempts to modify the current regulatory regime. Some of those suggested reforms could make it easier for anyone to sell securities (without using our services), or could increase our regulatory burden, including requiring us to register as a broker-dealer before we choose to do so. Any such changes would have a negative impact on our business.

We operate in a highly regulated industry.

We are subject to extensive regulation and failure to comply with such regulation could have an adverse effect on our business. Our subsidiary, CrowdPay is currently not registered as a funding portal. Certain restrictions and rules applicable to us, including potential FINRA fines, could adversely affect and limit some of our business plans.

In the event we are required or decide to register as a broker-dealer, our current business model could be affected.

Under our current structure, we believe we are not required to register as a broker-dealer under federal and state laws. Further, none of our officers or our chairman has previous experience in securities markets or regulations or has passed any related examinations or holds any accreditations. We comply with the rules surrounding funding portals and restrict our activities and services so as to not be deemed a broker-dealer under state and federal regulations. However, if we were deemed by a relevant authority to be acting as a broker-dealer, we could be subject to a variety of penalties, including fines and rescission offers. Further, we may decide for business reasons or we may be required to register as a broker-dealer, which would increase our costs, especially our compliance costs. If we are required but decide not to register as a broker-dealer or act in association with a broker-dealer in our transactions, we may not be able to continue to operate under our current business model.

We may be liable for misstatements made by issuers on our funding portal.

Under the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, issuers making offerings through our funding portal may be liable for including untrue statements of material facts or for omitting information that could make the statements made misleading. This liability may also extend in Regulation Crowdfunding offerings to funding portals, such as our subsidiary CrowdPay. There may also be circumstances in which we are liable for making misleading statements in connection with Regulation A and Regulation D offerings. Even though due diligence defenses may be available; there can be no assurance that if we were sued we would prevail. Further, even if we do succeed, lawsuits are time consuming and expensive, and being a party to such actions may cause us reputational harm that would negatively impact our business.

Our compliance is focused on U.S. laws and we have not analyzed foreign laws regarding the participation of non-U.S. residents.

Some of the investment opportunities posted on our platform are open to non-U.S. residents. We have not researched all the applicable foreign laws and regulations, and therefore we have not set up our structure to be compliant with all those laws. It is possible that we may be deemed in violation of those laws, which could result in fines or penalties as well as reputational harm. This may limit our ability in the future to assist companies in accessing money from those investors, and compliance with those laws and regulation may limit our business operations and plans for future expansion.

CrowdPay’s product offerings are relatively new in an industry that is still quickly evolving .

The principal securities regulations that we work with, Regulation A and Regulation Crowdfunding, have only been in effect in their current form since 2015 and 2016, respectively. Our ability to continue to penetrate the market remains uncertain as potential issuer companies may choose to use different platforms or providers (including, in the case of Regulation A, using their own online platform), or determine alternative methods of financing. Investors may decide to invest their money elsewhere. Further, our potential market may not be as large, or our industry may not grow as rapidly, as anticipated. With a smaller market than expected, we may have fewer customers. Success will likely be a factor of investing in the development and implementation of marketing campaigns, subsequent adoption by issuer companies as well as investors, and favorable changes in the regulatory environment.

CrowdPay and its providers are vulnerable to hackers and cyberattacks.

As an internet-based business, we may be vulnerable to hackers who may access the data of our investors and the issuer companies that utilize our platform. Further, any significant disruption in service on our platform or in its computer systems could reduce the attractiveness of the platform and result in a loss of investors and companies interested in using our platform. Further, we rely on a third-party technology provider to provide some of our back-up technology as well as act as our escrow agent. Any disruptions of services or cyberattacks either on our technology provider or on our Company could harm our reputation and materially negatively impact our financial condition and business. 

CrowdPay currently relies on one escrow agent and technology service provider.

We currently rely on Microsoft Azure to serve as our technology provider and all escrow accounts are held at MVB Bank, Inc. Any change in these relationships will require us to find another technology service provider, escrow agent and escrow bank. This may cause us delays as well as additional costs in transitioning our technology.

We are dependent on general economic conditions.

Our business model is dependent on investors investing in the companies presented on our platform. Investment dollars are disposable income. Our business model is thus dependent on national and international economic conditions. Adverse national and international economic conditions may reduce the future availability of investment dollars, which would negatively impact revenues generated by CrowdPay and possibly our ability to continue operations at CrowdPay. It is not possible to accurately predict the potential adverse impacts on the Company, if any, of current economic conditions on its financial condition, operating results and cash flow.

We face significant market competition.

We facilitate online capital formation. Though this is a new market, we compete against a variety of entrants in the market as well likely new entrants into the market. Some of these follow a regulatory model that is different from ours and might provide them competitive advantages. New entrants could include those that may already have a foothold in the securities industry, including some established broker-dealers. Further, online capital formation is not the only way to address helping start-ups raise capital, and the Company has to compete with a number of other approaches, including traditional venture capital investments, loans and other traditional methods of raising funds and companies conducting crowdfunding raises on their own websites. Additionally, some competitors and future competitors may be better capitalized than us, which would give them a significant advantage in marketing and operations.

Our revenues and profits are subject to fluctuations.

It is difficult to accurately forecast our revenues and operating results, and these could fluctuate in the future due to a number of factors. These factors may include adverse changes in: number of investors and amount of investors’ dollars, the success of world securities markets, general economic conditions, our ability to market our platform to companies and investors, headcount and other operating costs, and general industry and regulatory conditions and requirements. The Company’s operating results may fluctuate from year to year due to the factors listed above and others not listed. At times, these fluctuations may be significant and could impact our ability to operate our business.

EVANCE, INC.

Our ability to anticipate and respond to changing industry trends and the needs and preferences of our merchants and consumers may adversely affect our competitiveness or the demand for our products and services.

The financial services and payments technology industries are subject to rapid technological advancements, resulting in new products and services, including mobile payment applications and customized integrated software payment solutions, and an evolving competitive landscape, as well as changing industry standards and merchant and consumer needs and preferences. We expect that new services and technologies applicable to the financial services and payment technology industries will continue to emerge. These changes may limit the competitiveness of and demand for our services. Also, our merchants and consumers continue to adopt new technology for business and personal uses. We must anticipate and respond to these changes in order to remain competitive within our relative markets. In addition, failure to develop value-added services that meet the needs and preferences of our merchants could adversely affect our ability to compete effectively in our industry. Furthermore, merchants’ or consumers’ potential negative reaction to our products and services can spread quickly through social media and damage our reputation before we have the opportunity to respond. If we are unable to anticipate or respond to technological or industry standard changes on a timely basis, our ability to remain competitive could be adversely affected.

Substantial and increasingly intense competition worldwide in the financial services and payment technology industries may adversely affect our overall business and operations.

The financial services and payment technology industries are highly competitive, and our payment services and solutions compete against all forms of financial services and payment systems, including cash and checks, and electronic, mobile, ecommerce and integrated payment platforms. If we are unable to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and drive value for our merchants, we may not be able to compete effectively. Our competitors may introduce their own value-added or other innovative services or solutions more effectively than we do, which could adversely impact our current competitive position and prospects for growth. They also may be able to offer and provide services that we do not offer. In addition, in certain of our markets in which we operate, we process “on-us” transactions whereby we receive fees as a merchant acquirer and for processing services for the issuing bank. As competition in these markets grows, the number of transactions in which we receive fees for both of these roles may decrease, which could reduce our revenue and margins in these jurisdictions. We also compete against new entrants that have developed alternative payment systems, ecommerce payment systems, payment systems for mobile devices and customized integrated software payment solutions. Failure to compete effectively against any of these competitive threats could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, some of our competitors are larger and have greater financial resources than us, enabling them to maintain a wider range of product offerings, mount extensive promotional campaigns and be more aggressive in offering products and services at lower rates, which may adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Potential changes in the competitive landscape, including disintermediation from other participants in the payments chain, could harm our business.

We expect that the competitive landscape will continue to change, including:

Failure to compete effectively against any of these or other competitive threats could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Global economic, political and other conditions may adversely affect trends in consumer, business and government spending, which may adversely impact the demand for our services and our revenue and profitability.

The financial services and payment technology industries in which we operate depend heavily upon the overall level of consumer, business and government spending. A sustained deterioration in general economic conditions (including distress in financial markets, turmoil in specific economies around the world and additional government intervention), particularly in North America or Europe, or increases in interest rates in key countries in which we operate, may adversely affect our financial performance by reducing the number or average purchase amount of transactions we process. A reduction in the amount of consumer spending could result in a decrease of our revenue and profits.

Adverse economic trends may accelerate the timing, or increase the impact of, risks to our financial performance. These trends could include:

We are subject to U.S. governmental regulation and other legal obligations, particularly related to privacy, data protection and information security, and consumer protection laws across different markets where we conduct our business. Our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.

In the United States, we are subject to various consumer protection laws (including laws on disputed transactions) and related regulations. If we are found to have breached any consumer protection laws or regulations in any such market, we may be subject to enforcement actions that require us to change our business practices in a manner which may negatively impact revenue, as well as litigation, fines, penalties and adverse publicity that could cause our customers to lose trust in us, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation and business in a manner that harms our financial position.

We collect personally identifiable information and other data from our consumers and merchants. Laws and regulations in several countries restrict certain collection, processing, storage, use, disclosure and security of personal information, require notice to individuals of privacy practices, and provide individuals with certain rights to prevent use and disclosure of protected information.

Future restrictions on the collection, use, sharing or disclosure of personally identifiable information or additional requirements and liability for security and data integrity could require us to modify our solutions and features, possibly in a material manner, and could limit our ability to develop new services and features. If our privacy or data security measures fail to comply with applicable current or future laws and regulations, we may be subject to litigation, regulatory investigations, enforcement notices requiring us to change the way we use personal data or our marketing practices, fines or other liabilities, as well as negative publicity and a potential loss of business.

Our inability to protect our systems and data from continually evolving cybersecurity risks or other technological risks could affect our reputation among our merchants and consumers and may expose us to liability.

In conducting our business, we process, transmit and store sensitive business information and personal information about our merchants, consumers, sales and financial institution partners, vendors, and other parties. This information may include account access credentials, credit and debit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, names and addresses and other types of sensitive business or personal information. Some of this information is also processed and stored by our merchants, sales and financial institution partners, third-party service providers to whom we outsource certain functions and other agents, which we refer to collectively as our associated third parties. We have certain responsibilities to card networks and their member financial institutions for any failure, including the failure of our associated third parties, to protect this information.

We are a regular target of malicious third-party attempts to identify and exploit system vulnerabilities, and/or penetrate or bypass our security measures, in order to gain unauthorized access to our networks and systems or those of our associated third parties. Such access could lead to the compromise of sensitive, business, personal or confidential information. As a result, we proactively employ multiple methods at different layers of our systems to defend our systems against intrusion and attack and to protect the data we collect. However, we cannot be certain that these measures will be successful and will be sufficient to counter all current and emerging technology threats that are designed to breach our systems in order to gain access to confidential information.

Our computer systems and our associated third parties’ computer systems have been, and could be in the future, subject to breach, and our data protection measures may not prevent unauthorized access. The techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and are often difficult to detect. Threats to our systems and our associated third parties’ systems can derive from human error, fraud or malice on the part of employees or third parties, or may result from accidental technological failure. Computer viruses and other malware can be distributed and could infiltrate our systems or those of our associated third parties. In addition, denial of service or other attacks could be launched against us for a variety of purposes, including to interfere with our services or create a diversion for other malicious activities. Our defensive measures may not prevent downtime, unauthorized access or use of sensitive data. While we maintain cyber errors and omissions insurance coverage that may cover certain aspects of cyber risks, our insurance coverage may be insufficient to cover all losses. Further, while we select our associated third parties carefully, we do not control their actions. Any problems experienced by these third parties, including those resulting from breakdowns or other disruptions in the services provided by such parties or cyber-attacks and security breaches, could adversely affect our ability to service our merchant customers or otherwise conduct our business.

We could also be subject to liability for claims relating to misuse of personal information, such as unauthorized marketing purposes and violation of data privacy laws. We cannot provide assurance that the contractual requirements related to security and privacy that we impose on our service providers who have access to customer and consumer data will be followed or will be adequate to prevent the unauthorized use or disclosure of data. In addition, we have agreed in certain agreements to take certain protective measures to ensure the confidentiality of merchant and consumer data. The costs of systems and procedures associated with such protective measures may increase and could adversely affect our ability to compete effectively. Any failure to adequately enforce or provide these protective measures could result in liability, protracted and costly litigation, governmental and card network intervention and fines and, with respect to misuse of personal information of our merchants and consumers, lost revenue and reputational harm.

Any type of security breach, attack or misuse of data described above or otherwise, whether experienced by us or an associated third party, could harm our reputation and deter existing and prospective merchants from using our services or from making electronic payments generally, increase our operating expenses in order to contain and remediate the incident, expose us to unbudgeted or uninsured liability, disrupt our operations (including potential service interruptions), distract our management, increase our risk of regulatory scrutiny, result in the imposition of penalties and fines under state, federal and foreign laws or by card networks and adversely affect our continued card network registration and financial institution sponsorship. If we were to be removed from networks’ lists of PCI DSS compliant service providers, our existing merchants, sales and financial institution partners or other third parties may cease using or referring our services. Also, prospective merchants, sales partners, financial institution partners or other third parties may choose to terminate their relationship with us, or delay or choose not to consider us for their processing needs. In addition, card networks could refuse to allow us to process through their networks.

We may experience failures in our processing systems due to software defects, computer viruses and development delays, which could damage customer relations and expose us to liability.

Our core business depends heavily on the reliability of our processing systems. A system outage or other failure could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations, including by damaging our reputation or exposing us to third-party liability. Card network rules and certain governmental regulations allow for possible penalties if our systems do not meet certain operating standards. To successfully operate our business, we must be able to protect our processing and other systems from interruption, including from events that may be beyond our control. Events that could cause system interruptions include fire, natural disaster, unauthorized entry, power loss, telecommunications failure, computer viruses, terrorist acts and war. Although we have taken steps to protect against data loss and system failures, there is still risk that we may lose critical data or experience system failures. To help protect against these events, we perform a significant portion of disaster recovery operations ourselves, as well as utilize select third parties for certain operations, particularly outside of the United States. To the extent we outsource any disaster recovery functions, we are at risk of the vendor’s unresponsiveness or other failures in the event of breakdowns in our systems. In addition, our property and business interruption insurance may not be adequate to compensate us for all losses or failures that may occur.

Our products and services are based on sophisticated software and computing systems that are constantly evolving. We often encounter delays and cost overruns in developing changes implemented to our systems. In addition, the underlying software may contain undetected errors, viruses or defects. Defects in our software products and errors or delays in our processing of electronic transactions could result in additional development costs, diversion of technical and other resources from our other development efforts, loss of credibility with current or potential merchants, harm to our reputation or exposure to liability claims. In addition, we rely on technologies supplied to us by third parties that may also contain undetected errors, viruses or defects that could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. Although we attempt to limit our potential liability for warranty claims through disclaimers in our software documentation and limitation of liability provisions in our licenses and other agreements with our merchants and partners, we cannot assure that these measures will be successful in limiting our liability. Additionally, we and our merchants and partners are subject to card network rules. If we do not comply with card network requirements or standards, we may be subject fines or sanctions, including suspension or termination of our registrations and licenses necessary to conduct business.

Degradation of the quality of the products and services we offer, including support services, could adversely impact our ability to attract and retain merchants and partners.

Our merchants and partners expect a consistent level of quality in the provision of our products and services. The support services we provide are a key element of the value proposition to our merchants and partners. If the reliability or functionality of our products and services is compromised or the quality of those products or services is otherwise degraded, or if we fail to continue to provide a high level of support, we could lose existing merchants and partners and find it harder to attract new merchants and partners. If we are unable to scale our support functions to address the growth of our merchant and partner network, the quality of our support may decrease, which could adversely affect our ability to attract and retain merchants and partners.

Acquisitions create certain risks and may adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We may make acquisitions of businesses or assets in the future. The acquisition and integration of businesses or assets involve a number of risks. These risks include valuation (determining a fair price for the business or assets), integration (managing the process of integrating the acquired business’ people, products, technology and other assets to extract the value and synergies projected to be realized in connection with the acquisition), regulation (obtaining regulatory or other government approvals that may be necessary to complete the acquisition) and due diligence (including identifying risks to the prospects of the business, including undisclosed or unknown liabilities or restrictions to be assumed in the acquisition).

The process of integrating operations could cause an interruption of, or loss of momentum in, the activities of one or more of our combined businesses and the possible loss of key personnel. The diversion of management’s attention and any delays or difficulties encountered in connection with acquisitions and their integration could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Continued consolidation in the banking industry could adversely affect our growth.

The banking industry remains subject to consolidation regardless of overall economic conditions. In addition, in times of economic distress, various regulators in the markets we serve have acquired and in the future may acquire financial institutions, including banks with which we partner. If a current financial institution referral partner of ours is acquired by another bank, the acquiring bank may seek to terminate our agreement and impose its own merchant services program on the acquired bank. If a financial institution referral partner acquires another bank, our financial institution referral partner may take the opportunity to conduct a competitive bidding process to determine whether to maintain our merchant acquiring services or switch to another provider. In either situation, we may be unable to retain the relationship post-acquisition, or may have to offer financial concessions to do so, which could adversely affect our results of operations or growth. If a current financial institution referral partner of ours is acquired by a regulator, the regulator may seek to alter the terms or terminate our existing agreement with the acquired financial institution.

Increased customer, referral partner or sales partner attrition could cause our financial results to decline.

We experience attrition in merchant credit and debit card processing volume resulting from several factors, including business closures, transfers of merchants’ accounts to our competitors, unsuccessful contract renewal negotiations and account closures that we initiate for various reasons, such as heightened credit risks or contract breaches by merchants. In addition, if an existing sales partner switches to another payment processor, terminates our services, internalizes payment processing functions that we perform, merges with or is acquired by one of our competitors, or shuts down or becomes insolvent, we may no longer receive new customer referrals from the sales partner, and we risk losing existing merchants that were originally enrolled by the sales partner. We cannot predict the level of attrition in the future and it could increase. Our referral partners are a significant source of new business. Higher than expected attrition could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, in certain of the markets in which we conduct business, a substantial portion of our revenue is derived from long-term contracts. If we are unable to renew our referral partner and our merchant contracts on favorable terms, or at all, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be adversely affected.

We incur chargeback liability when our merchants refuse to or cannot reimburse chargebacks resolved in favor of their customers. Any increase in chargebacks not paid by our merchants may adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

In the event a dispute between a cardholder and a merchant is not resolved in favor of the merchant, the transaction is normally charged back to the merchant and the purchase price is credited or otherwise refunded to the cardholder. If we are unable to collect such amounts from the merchant’s account or reserve account (if applicable), or if the merchant refuses or is unable, due to closure, bankruptcy or other reasons, to reimburse us for a chargeback, we are responsible for the amount of the refund paid to the cardholder. The risk of chargebacks is typically greater with those merchants that promise future delivery of goods and services rather than delivering goods or rendering services at the time of payment, as well as “card not present” transactions in which consumers do not physically present cards to merchants in connection with the purchase of goods and services, such as ecommerce, telephonic and mobile transactions. We may experience significant losses from chargebacks in the future. Any increase in chargebacks not paid by our merchants could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. We have policies and procedures to monitor and manage merchant-related credit risks and often mitigate such risks by requiring collateral (such as cash reserves) and monitoring transaction activity. Notwithstanding our policies and procedures for managing credit risk, it is possible that a default on such obligations by one or more of our merchants could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Failure to maintain or collect reimbursements from our financial institution referral partners could adversely affect our business.

Certain of our long-term referral arrangements with our financial institution partners permit our bank partners to offer their merchant customers lower rates for processing services than we typically provide to the general market. If a bank partner elects to offer these lower rates, under our contract the partner is required to reimburse us for the full amount of the discount provided to its merchant customers. Notwithstanding such contractual commitments, there can be no assurance that these contractual provisions will fully protect us from potential losses should a bank partner default on its obligations to reimburse us or seek to discontinue such reimbursement obligations in the future. If we are unable to collect the full amount of any such reimbursements for any reason, we may incur losses. In addition, any discount provided by our financial institution partner may cause merchants in these markets to demand lower rates for our services in the future, which could further reduce our margins or cause us to lose merchants, either of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Fraud by merchants or others could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We may be liable for certain fraudulent transactions and credits initiated by merchants or others. Examples of merchant fraud include merchants or other parties knowingly using a stolen or counterfeit credit or debit card, card number, or other credentials to record a false sales or credit transaction, processing an invalid card or intentionally failing to deliver the merchandise or services sold in an otherwise valid transaction. Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated methods to engage in illegal activities such as counterfeiting and fraud. Failure to effectively manage risk and prevent fraud could increase our chargeback liability or cause us to incur other liabilities. It is possible that incidents of fraud could increase in the future. Increases in chargebacks or other liabilities could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Because we rely on third-party vendors to provide products and services, we could be adversely impacted if they fail to fulfill their obligations.

We depend on third-party vendors and partners to provide us with certain products and services, including components of our computer systems, software, data centers and telecommunications networks, to conduct our business. For example, we rely on third parties for services such as organizing and accumulating certain daily transaction data on a merchant-by-merchant and card issuer-by-card issuer basis and forwarding the accumulated data to the relevant card network. We also rely on third parties for specific software and hardware used in providing our products and services. Some of these organizations and service providers are our competitors or provide similar services and technology to our competitors, and we do not have long-term or exclusive contracts with them.

Our systems and operations or those of our third-party vendors and partners could be exposed to damage or interruption from, among other things, fire, natural disaster, power loss, telecommunications failure, unauthorized entry, computer viruses, denial-of-service attacks, acts of terrorism, human error, vandalism or sabotage, financial insolvency, bankruptcy and similar events. In addition, we may be unable to renew our existing contracts with our most significant vendors and partners or our vendors and partners may stop providing or otherwise supporting the products and services we obtain from them, and we may not be able to obtain these or similar products or services on the same or similar terms as our existing arrangements, if at all. The failure of our vendors and partners to perform their obligations and provide the products and services we obtain from them in a timely manner for any reason could adversely affect our operations and profitability due to, among other consequences:

We depend, in part, on our merchant and sales agent relationships and strategic partnerships with various financial institutions to grow our business. If we are unable to maintain these relationships and partnerships, our business may be adversely affected.

We depend, in part, on our merchant and sales and distribution agent relationships and partnerships with various financial institutions, including our partnerships with independent sales organizations, or ISOs, to grow our business. These relationships take on different forms, including consolidated subsidiaries, equity method investments, joint ventures and revenue sharing arrangements. For our financial institution partners, we typically enter into long-term, exclusive referral arrangements with our partner banks, either contractually or through a separate legal entity. Our bank partners act as referral sources for the bank’s merchant customers and, in some cases, also provide card association sponsorship. We typically provide transaction processing and related functions. Both we and our partners may also provide management, sales, marketing and other administrative services. These arrangements allow us to be the processor for multiple financial institutions, any one of which may be selected by the merchant as its bank partner. We rely on the growth of our merchant and other strategic relationships, and our ability to maintain these relationships and other distribution channels, to support and grow our business. If we fail to maintain these relationships, or if these partners fail to maintain their brands or decrease the size of their branded networks, our business may be adversely affected. In addition, our contractual arrangements with our merchants and other strategic partners vary in length, and may also allow for early termination upon the occurrence of certain events. There can be no assurance that we will be able to renew these contractual arrangements on similar terms or at all. The loss of merchant relationships or other strategic partners could adversely affect our business and result in a reduction of our revenue and profit.

We rely on various financial institutions to provide clearing services in connection with our settlement activities. If these financial institutions stop providing clearing services, we must find other financial institutions to provide those services. If we are unable to find a replacement financial institution we may no longer be able to provide processing services to certain merchants, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, certain financial institutions that provide clearing services to us require us to prefund settlement payments. In the event of a chargeback, merchant bankruptcy or other failure to fund, or other intervening failure in the banking card network system, we may be unable to recoup these prepayments, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We also maintain intraday and overnight credit facilities with various financial institutions to fund our daily settlement obligations. These facilities are generally short term in nature. If these sources of financing become unavailable, we would have to seek alternative credit arrangements. Any alternative arrangements we obtain may contain higher interest rates or other terms less favorable to us than our current facilities, which in turn could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Our risk management policies and procedures may not be fully effective in mitigating our risk exposure in all market environments or against all types of risk.

We operate in a rapidly changing industry. Accordingly, our risk management policies and procedures may not be fully effective to identify, monitor and manage all risks our business encounters. If our policies and procedures are not fully effective or we are not successful in identifying and mitigating all risks to which we are or may be exposed, we may suffer uninsured liability, harm to our reputation or be subject to litigation or regulatory actions that could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

A significant number of our merchants are small- and medium-sized businesses and small affiliates of large companies, which can be more difficult and costly to retain than larger enterprises and may increase the impact of economic fluctuations on us.

We market and sell our products and services to, among others, small and midsized businesses (“SMBs”) and small affiliates of large companies. To continue to grow our revenue, we must add merchants, sell additional services to existing merchants and encourage existing merchants to continue doing business with us. However, retaining SMBs can be more difficult than retaining large enterprises as SMB merchants:

SMBs are typically more susceptible to the adverse effects of economic fluctuations. Adverse changes in the economic environment or business failures of our SMB merchants may have a greater impact on us than on our competitors who do not focus on SMBs to the extent that we do. As a result, we may need to attract and retain new merchants at an accelerated rate or decrease our expenses to reduce negative impacts on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business depends on a strong and trusted brand, and damage to our reputation, or the reputation of our partners, could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We market our products and services under our brand or the brand of our partners, or both, and we must protect and grow the value of our brand to continue to be successful in the future. If an incident were to occur that damages our reputation, or the reputation of our partners, in any of our major markets, the value of our brand could be adversely affected and our business could be damaged.

Our operating results and operating metrics are subject to seasonality and volatility, which could result in fluctuations in our quarterly revenues and operating results or in perceptions of our business prospects.

We have experienced in the past, and expect to continue to experience, seasonal fluctuations in our revenue, which can vary by region. In North America, our revenue has been strongest in our fourth quarter and weakest in our first quarter. In Europe, our revenue has been strongest in our third quarter and weakest in our first quarter. Some variability results from seasonal retail events and the number of business days in a month or quarter. We also experience volatility in certain other metrics, such as number of transactions processed and payment processing volumes. Volatility in our key operating metrics or their rates of growth could result in fluctuations in financial condition or results of operations and may lead to adverse inferences about our prospects, which could result in declines in our stock price.

Our ability to recruit, retain and develop qualified personnel is critical to our success and growth.

All of our businesses function at the intersection of rapidly changing technological, social, economic and regulatory environments that require a wide range of expertise and intellectual capital. For us to successfully compete and grow, we must recruit, retain and develop personnel who can provide the necessary expertise across a broad spectrum of intellectual capital needs. In addition, we must develop, maintain and, as necessary, implement appropriate succession plans to assure we have the necessary human resources capable of maintaining continuity in our business. The market for qualified personnel is competitive and we may not succeed in recruiting additional personnel or may fail to effectively replace current personnel who depart with qualified or effective successors. Our effort to retain and develop personnel may also result in significant additional expenses, which could adversely affect our profitability. We cannot assure that key personnel, including our executive officers, will continue to be employed or that we will be able to attract and retain qualified personnel in the future. Failure to recruit, retain or develop qualified personnel could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

There may be a decline in the use of cards as a payment mechanism for consumers or adverse developments with respect to the card industry in general.

If consumers do not continue to use credit or debit cards as a payment mechanism for their transactions or if there is a change in the mix of payments between cash, credit cards and debit cards our business could be adversely affected. Consumer credit risk may make it more difficult or expensive for consumers to gain access to credit facilities such as credit cards. Regulatory changes may result in financial institutions seeking to charge their customers additional fees for use of credit or debit cards. Such fees may result in decreased use of credit or debit cards by cardholders. We believe future growth in the use of credit and debit cards and other electronic payments will be driven by the cost, ease-of-use and quality of services offered to consumers and businesses. In order to consistently increase and maintain our profitability, consumers and businesses must continue to use electronic payment methods that we process, including credit and debit cards.

Increases in card network fees and other changes to fee arrangements may result in the loss of merchants or a reduction in our earnings.

From time to time, card networks, including Visa and Mastercard, increase the fees that they charge processors. We could attempt to pass these increases along to our merchants, but this strategy might result in the loss of merchants to our competitors who do not pass along the increases. If competitive practices prevent us from passing along the higher fees to our merchants in the future, we may have to absorb all or a portion of such increases, which may increase our operating costs and reduce our earnings.

In addition, in certain of our markets, card issuers pay merchant acquirers such as us fees based on debit card usage in an effort to encourage debit card use. If these card issuers discontinue this practice, our revenue and margins in these jurisdictions could be adversely affected.

If we fail to comply with the applicable requirements of card networks, they could seek to fine us, suspend us or terminate our registrations. If our merchants or sales partners incur fines or penalties that we cannot collect from them, we may have to bear the cost of such fines or penalties.

In order to provide our transaction processing services, several of our subsidiaries are registered with Visa and Mastercard and other card networks as members or service providers for member institutions. Visa, Mastercard, and other card networks, set the rules and standards with which we must comply. The termination of our member registration or our status as a certified service provider, or any changes in network rules or standards, including interpretation and implementation of the rules or standards, that increase the cost of doing business or limit our ability to provide transaction processing services to or through our merchants or partners, could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

As such, we and our merchants are subject to card network rules that could subject us or our merchants to a variety of fines or penalties that may be levied by card networks for certain acts or omissions by us. The rules of card networks are set by their boards, which may be influenced by card issuers, and some of those issuers are our competitors with respect to these processing services. Many banks directly or indirectly sell processing services to merchants in direct competition with us. These banks could attempt, by virtue of their influence on the networks, to alter the networks’ rules or policies to the detriment of non-members including certain of our businesses. The termination of our registrations or our status as a service provider or a merchant processor, or any changes in network rules or standards, including interpretation and implementation of the rules or standards, that increase the cost of doing business or limit our ability to provide transaction processing services to our merchants, could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. If a merchant or sales partner fails to comply with the applicable requirements of card networks, it could be subject to a variety of fines or penalties that may be levied by card networks. If we cannot collect the amounts from the applicable merchant or sales partner, we may have to bear the cost of the fines or penalties, resulting in lower earnings for us. The termination of our registration, or any changes in card network rules that would impair our registration, could require us to stop providing payment processing services relating to the affected card network, which would adversely affect our ability to conduct our business.

OMNISOFT.IO, INC.

Our growth may not be sustainable and depends on our ability to attract new merchants, retain existing merchants and increase sales to both new and existing merchants.

We principally generate revenues through the sale of subscriptions to our platform and the sale of additional solutions to our merchants. Our subscription plans typically have a one-month term, although a small percentage of our merchants have annual or multi-year subscription terms. Our merchants have no obligation to renew their subscriptions after their subscription term expires. As a result, even though the number of merchants using our platform has grown rapidly in recent years, there can be no assurance that we will be able to retain these merchants. We have historically experienced merchant turnover as a result of many of our merchants being small- and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs, that are more susceptible than larger businesses to general economic conditions and other risks affecting their businesses. Many of these SMBs are in the entrepreneurial stage of their development and there is no guarantee that their businesses will succeed. Our costs associated with subscription renewals are substantially lower than costs associated with generating revenue from new merchants or costs associated with generating sales of additional solutions to existing merchants. Therefore, if we are unable to retain merchants or if we are unable to increase revenues from existing merchants, even if such losses are offset by an increase in new merchants or an increase in other revenues, our operating results could be adversely impacted.

We may also fail to attract new merchants, retain existing merchants or increase sales to both new and existing merchants as a result of a number of other factors, including: reductions in our current or potential merchants’ spending levels; competitive factors affecting the software as a service, or SaaS, business software applications market, including the introduction of competing platforms, discount pricing and other strategies that may be implemented by our competitors; our ability to execute on our growth strategy and operating plans; a decline in our merchants’ level of satisfaction with our platform and merchants’ usage of our platform; the difficulty and cost to switch to a competitor may not be significant for many of our merchants; changes in our relationships with third parties, including our partners, app developers, theme designers, referral sources and payment processors; the timeliness and success of new products and services we may offer in the future; the frequency and severity of any system outages; technological change; and our focus on long-term value over short-term results, meaning that we may make strategic decisions that may not maximize our short-term revenue or profitability if we believe that the decisions are consistent with our mission and will improve our financial performance over the long-term.

Additionally, we anticipate that our growth rate will decline over time to the extent that the number of merchants using our platform increases and we achieve higher market penetration rates. To the extent our growth rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly dependent on our ability to retain existing merchants and increase sales to existing merchants.

If we fail to improve and enhance the functionality, performance, reliability, design, security and scalability of our platform in a manner that responds to our merchants’ evolving needs, our business may be adversely affected.

The markets in which we compete are characterized by constant change and innovation and we expect them to continue to evolve rapidly. Our success has been based on our ability to identify and anticipate the needs of our merchants and design a platform that provides them with the tools they need to operate their businesses. Our ability to attract new merchants, retain existing merchants and increase sales to both new and existing merchants will depend in large part on our ability to continue to improve and enhance the functionality, performance, reliability, design, security and scalability of our platform.

We may experience difficulties with software development that could delay or prevent the development, introduction or implementation of new solutions and enhancements. Software development involves a significant amount of time for our research and development team, as it can take our developers months to update, code and test new and upgraded solutions and integrate them into our platform. We must also continually update, test and enhance our software platform. For example, our design team spends a significant amount of time and resources incorporating various design enhancements, such as customized colors, fonts, content and other features, into our platform. The continual improvement and enhancement of our platform requires significant investment and we may not have the resources to make such investment. Our improvements and enhancements may not result in our ability to recoup our investments in a timely manner, or at all. To the extent we are not able to improve and enhance the functionality, performance, reliability, design, security and scalability of our platform in a manner that responds to our merchants’ evolving needs, our business, operating results and financial condition will be adversely affected.

We store personally identifiable information of our merchants and their customers. If the security of this information is compromised or otherwise subjected to unauthorized access, our reputation may be harmed and we may be exposed to liability.

We store personally identifiable information, credit card information and other confidential information of our merchants and their customers. The third-party apps sold on our platform may also store personally identifiable information, credit card information and other confidential information of our merchants and their customers. We do not regularly monitor or review the content that our merchants upload and store and, therefore, do not control the substance of the content on our servers, which may include personal information. We may experience successful attempts by third parties to obtain unauthorized access to the personally identifiable information of our merchants and their customers. This information could also be otherwise exposed through human error, malfeasance or otherwise. The unauthorized access or compromise of this personally identifiable information could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Even if such a data breach were to affect one or more of our competitors, the resulting consumer concern could negatively affect our merchants and our business.

We are also subject to federal, state, provincial and foreign laws regarding privacy and protection of data. Some jurisdictions have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals of data security breaches involving certain types of personal data and our agreements with certain merchants require us to notify them in the event of a security incident. We post on our website our privacy policy and terms of service, which describe our practices concerning the use, transmission and disclosure of merchant data and data relating to their customers. In addition, the interpretation of data protection laws in the United States, and elsewhere, and their application to the internet, is unclear and in a state of flux. There is a risk that these laws may be interpreted and applied in conflicting ways from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and in a manner that is not consistent with our current data protection practices. Changes to such data protection laws may impose more stringent requirements for compliance and impose significant penalties for non-compliance. Any such new laws or regulations, or changing interpretations of existing laws and regulations, may cause us to incur significant costs and expend significant effort to ensure compliance. Because our services are accessible worldwide, certain foreign jurisdictions may claim that we are required to comply with their laws, including in jurisdictions where we have no local entity, employees or infrastructure.

Our failure to comply with federal, state, provincial and foreign laws regarding privacy and protection of data could lead to significant fines and penalties imposed by regulators, as well as claims by our merchants or their customers. These proceedings or violations could force us to spend money in defense or settlement of these proceedings, result in the imposition of monetary liability, diversion of management’s time and attention, increase our costs of doing business, and materially adversely affect our reputation and the demand for our solutions. In addition, if our security measures fail to protect credit card information adequately, we could be liable to both our merchants and their customers for their losses, as well as our payments processing partners under our agreements with them. As a result, we could be subject to fines and higher transaction fees, we could face regulatory action, and our merchants could end their relationships with us. There can be no assurance that the limitations of liability in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. We also cannot be sure that our existing insurance coverage and coverage for errors and omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or that our insurers will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceeds our available insurance coverage, or changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If our software contains serious errors or defects, we may lose revenue and market acceptance and may incur costs to defend or settle claims with our merchants.

Software such as ours often contains errors, defects, security vulnerabilities or software bugs that are difficult to detect and correct, particularly when first introduced or when new versions or enhancements are released. Despite internal testing, our platform may contain serious errors or defects, security vulnerabilities or software bugs that we may be unable to successfully correct in a timely manner or at all, which could result in lost revenue, significant expenditures of capital, a delay or loss in market acceptance and damage to our reputation and brand, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Furthermore, our platform is a multi-tenant cloud based system that allows us to deploy new versions and enhancements to all of our merchants simultaneously. To the extent we deploy new versions or enhancements that contain errors, defects, security vulnerabilities or software bugs to all of our merchants simultaneously, the consequences would be more severe than if such versions or enhancements were only deployed to a smaller number of our merchants.

Since our merchants use our services for processes that are critical to their businesses, errors, defects, security vulnerabilities, service interruptions or software bugs in our platform could result in losses to our merchants. Our merchants may seek significant compensation from us for any losses they suffer or cease conducting business with us altogether. Further, a merchant could share information about bad experiences on social media, which could result in damage to our reputation and loss of future sales. There can be no assurance that provisions typically included in our agreements with our merchants that attempt to limit our exposure to claims would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. Even if not successful, a claim brought against us by any of our merchants would likely be time-consuming and costly to defend and could seriously damage our reputation and brand, making it harder for us to sell our solutions.

We may be unable to achieve or maintain data transmission capacity.

Our merchants often draw significant numbers of consumers to their shops over short periods of time, including from events such as new product releases, holiday shopping seasons and flash sales, which significantly increases the traffic on our servers and the volume of transactions processed on our platform. Our servers may be unable to achieve or maintain data transmission capacity high enough to handle increased traffic or process orders in a timely manner. Our failure to achieve or maintain high data transmission capacity could significantly reduce demand for our solutions. In the future, we may be required to allocate resources, including spending substantial amounts of money, to build, purchase or lease additional data centers and equipment and upgrade our technology and network infrastructure in order to handle the increased load. Our ability to deliver our solutions also depends on the development and maintenance of internet infrastructure by third-parties, including the maintenance of reliable networks with the necessary speed, data capacity and bandwidth. If one of these third-parties suffers from capacity constraints, our business may be adversely affected. In addition, because we and our merchants generate a disproportionate amount of revenue in the fourth quarter, any disruption in our merchants’ ability to process and fulfill customer orders in the fourth quarter could have a disproportionately negative effect on our operating results.

Our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties.

We anticipate that the growth of our business will continue to depend on third-party relationships, including relationships with our app developers, theme designers, referral sources, resellers, payment processors and other partners. In addition to growing our third-party partner ecosystem, we intend to pursue additional relationships with other third-parties, such as technology and content providers and implementation consultants. Identifying, negotiating and documenting relationships with third parties requires significant time and resources as does integrating third-party content and technology. Some of the third parties that sell our services have the direct contractual relationships with the merchants, and therefore we risk the loss of such merchants if the third parties fail to perform their obligations. Our agreements with providers of cloud hosting, technology, content and consulting services are typically non-exclusive and do not prohibit such service providers from working with our competitors or from offering competing services. These third-party providers may choose to terminate their relationship with us or to make material changes to their businesses, products or services. Our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to third parties to favor their products or services or to prevent or reduce subscriptions to our platform. In addition, these providers may not perform as expected under our agreements or under their agreements with our merchants, and we or our merchants may in the future have disagreements or disputes with such providers. If we lose access to products or services from a particular supplier, or experience a significant disruption in the supply of products or services from a current supplier, especially a single-source supplier, it could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.

If we fail to maintain a consistently high level of customer service, our brand, business and financial results may be harmed.

We believe our focus on customer service and support is critical to onboarding new merchants and retaining our existing merchants and growing our business. As a result, we have invested heavily in the quality and training of our support team along with the tools they use to provide this service. If we are unable to maintain a consistently high level of customer service, we may lose existing merchants. In addition, our ability to attract new merchants is highly dependent on our reputation and on positive recommendations from our existing merchants. Any failure to maintain a consistently high level of customer service, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality customer service, could adversely affect our reputation and the number of positive merchant referrals that we receive.

We use a limited number of data centers to deliver our services. Any disruption of service at these facilities could harm our business.

We currently manage our services and serve all of our merchants from two third-party data center facilities. While we own the hardware on which our platform runs and deploy this hardware to the data center facilities, we do not control the operation of these facilities. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, failures at the third-party data centers where our hardware is deployed from time to time. Data centers are vulnerable to damage or interruption from human error, intentional bad acts, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, war, terrorist attacks, power losses, hardware failures, systems failures, telecommunications failures and similar events. Any of these events could result in lengthy interruptions in our services. Changes in law or regulations applicable to data centers in various jurisdictions could also cause a disruption in service. Interruptions in our services would reduce our revenue, subject us to potential liability and adversely affect our ability to retain our merchants or attract new merchants. The performance, reliability and availability of our platform is critical to our reputation and our ability to attract and retain merchants. Merchants could share information about bad experiences on social media, which could result in damage to our reputation and loss of future sales. The property and business interruption insurance coverage we carry may not be adequate to compensate us fully for losses that may occur.

Our agreements with our third-party data facility providers are on a month-to-month basis. The agreements do not provide for early termination without cause, as defined therein. Upon expiration of the initial term, both agreements will automatically renew for successive 12-month periods unless appropriate notice is provided. However, when our agreements with the third-party data facilities terminate, the owners of the data facilities have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if the owners of the data facilities decide to close such facilities, we may be required to transfer to new data center facilities and we may incur costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so.

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to conduct commerce, and if our solutions do not operate as effectively when accessed through these devices, our merchants and their customers may not be satisfied with our services, which could harm our business.

We are dependent on the interoperability of our platform with third-party mobile devices and mobile operating systems as well as web browsers that we do not control. Any changes in such devices, systems or web browsers that degrade the functionality of our platform or give preferential treatment to competitive services could adversely affect usage of our platform. Effective mobile functionality is integral to our long-term development and growth strategy. In the event that our merchants and their customers have difficulty accessing and using our platform on mobile devices, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

Our business and prospects would be harmed if changes to technologies used in our platform or new versions or upgrades of operating systems and internet browsers adversely impact the process by which merchants and consumers interface with our platform.

We believe the simple and straightforward interface for our platform has helped us to expand and offer our solutions to merchants with limited technical expertise. In the future, providers of internet browsers could introduce new features that would make it difficult for merchants to use our platform. In addition, internet browsers for desktop or mobile devices could introduce new features, change existing browser specifications such that they would be incompatible with our platform, or prevent consumers from accessing our merchants’ shops. Any changes to technologies used in our platform, to existing features that we rely on, or to operating systems or internet browsers that make it difficult for merchants to access our platform or consumers to access our merchants’ shops, may make it more difficult for us to maintain or increase our revenues and could adversely impact our business and prospects.

The impact of worldwide economic conditions, including the resulting effect on spending by SMBs, may adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.

A majority of the merchants that use our platform are SMBs and many of our merchants are in the entrepreneurial stage of their development. Our performance is subject to worldwide economic conditions and their impact on levels of spending by SMBs and their customers. SMBs and entrepreneurs may be disproportionately affected by economic downturns. SMBs and entrepreneurs frequently have limited budgets and may choose to allocate their spending to items other than our platform, especially in times of economic uncertainty or recessions.

Economic downturns may also adversely impact retail sales, which could result in merchants who use our platform going out of business or deciding to stop using our services in order to conserve cash. Weakening economic conditions may also adversely affect third-parties with whom we have entered into relationships and upon which we depend in order to grow our business. Uncertain and adverse economic conditions may also lead to increased refunds and chargebacks, any of which could adversely affect our business.

We may be subject to claims by third-parties of intellectual property infringement.

The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patents and other intellectual property rights. Third parties have in the past asserted, and may in the future assert, that our platform, solutions, technology, methods or practices infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate their intellectual property or other proprietary rights. Such claims may be made by our competitors seeking to obtain a competitive advantage or by other parties. Additionally, in recent years, non-practicing entities have begun purchasing intellectual property assets for the purpose of making claims of infringement and attempting to extract settlements from companies like ours. The risk of claims may increase as the number of solutions that we offer and competitors in our market increases and overlaps occur. In addition, to the extent that we gain greater visibility and market exposure, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims.

Any such claims, regardless of merit, that result in litigation could result in substantial expenses, divert the attention of management, cause significant delays in introducing new or enhanced services or technology, materially disrupt the conduct of our business and have a material and adverse effect on our brand, business, financial condition and results of operations. Although we do not believe that our proprietary technology, processes and methods have been patented by any third party, it is possible that patents have been issued to third parties that cover all or a portion of our business. As a consequence of any patent or other intellectual property claims, we could be required to pay substantial damages, develop non-infringing technology, enter into royalty-bearing licensing agreements, stop selling or marketing some or all of our solutions or re-brand our solutions. We may also be obligated to indemnify our merchants or partners or pay substantial settlement costs, including royalty payments, in connection with any such claim or litigation and to obtain licenses, modify applications or refund fees, which could be costly. If it appears necessary, we may seek to secure license rights to intellectual property that we are alleged to infringe at a significant cost, potentially even if we believe such claims to be without merit. If required licenses cannot be obtained, or if existing licenses are not renewed, litigation could result. Litigation is inherently uncertain and can cause us to expend significant money, time and attention to it, even if we are ultimately successful. Any adverse decision could result in a loss of our proprietary rights, subject us to significant liabilities, require us to seek licenses for alternative technologies from third-parties, prevent us from offering all or a portion of our solutions and otherwise negatively affect our business and operating results.

We may be unable to obtain, maintain and protect our intellectual property rights and proprietary information or prevent third-parties from making unauthorized use of our technology.

Our trade secrets, trademarks, trade dress, domain names, copyrights, trade secrets and other intellectual property rights are important to our business. We rely on a combination of confidentiality clauses, assignment agreements and license agreements with employees and third parties, trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks to protect our intellectual property and competitive advantage, all of which offer only limited protection. The steps we take to protect our intellectual property require significant resources and may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property. We may be required to use significant resources to monitor and protect these rights. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our platform and use information that we regard as proprietary to create services that compete with ours. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer and disclosure of our proprietary information may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions and foreign countries. Further, we hold no issued patents and thus would not be entitled to exclude or prevent our competitors from using our proprietary technology, methods and processes to the extent independently developed by our competitors.

We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to our proprietary information and trade secrets. The confidentiality agreements on which we rely to protect certain technologies may be breached, may not be adequate to protect our confidential information, trade secrets and proprietary technologies and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, trade secrets or proprietary technology. Further, these agreements do not prevent our competitors or others from independently developing software that is substantially equivalent or superior to our software. In addition, others may independently discover our trade secrets and confidential information, and in such cases, we likely would not be able to assert any trade secret rights against such parties. Additionally, we may from time to time be subject to opposition or similar proceedings with respect to applications for registrations of our intellectual property, including our trademarks. While we aim to acquire adequate protection of our brand through trademark registrations in key markets, occasionally third parties may have already registered or otherwise acquired rights to identical or similar marks for services that also address our market. We rely on our brand and trademarks to identify our platform and to differentiate our platform and services from those of our competitors, and if we are unable to adequately protect our trademarks third parties may use our brand names or trademarks similar to ours in a manner that may cause confusion in the market, which could decrease the value of our brand and adversely affect our business and competitive advantages.

Policing unauthorized use of our intellectual property and misappropriation of our technology and trade secrets is difficult and we may not always be aware of such unauthorized use or misappropriation. Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights, unauthorized third-parties may attempt to use, copy or otherwise obtain and market or distribute our intellectual property rights or technology or otherwise develop services with the same or similar functionality as our platform. If our competitors infringe, misappropriate or otherwise misuse our intellectual property rights and we are not adequately protected, or if our competitors are able to develop a platform with the same or similar functionality as ours without infringing our intellectual property, our competitive advantage and results of operations could be harmed. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. As a result, we may be aware of infringement by our competitors but may choose not to bring litigation to enforce our intellectual property rights due to the cost, time and distraction of bringing such litigation. Furthermore, if we do decide to bring litigation, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits challenging or opposing our right to use and otherwise exploit particular intellectual property, services and technology or the enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management’s attention and resources, could delay further sales or the implementation of our solutions, impair the functionality of our platform, prevent or delay introductions of new or enhanced solutions, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our platform or injure our reputation. Furthermore, many of our current and potential competitors have the ability to dedicate substantially greater resources to developing and protecting their technology or intellectual property rights than we do.

Our use of “open source” software could negatively affect our ability to sell our solutions and subject us to possible litigation.

Our solutions incorporate and are dependent to a significant extent on the use and development of “open source” software and we intend to continue our use and development of open source software in the future. Such open source software is generally licensed by its authors or other third-parties under open source licenses and is typically freely accessible, usable and modifiable. Pursuant to such open source licenses, we may be subject to certain conditions, including requirements that we offer our proprietary software that incorporates the open source software for no cost, that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. If an author or other third party that uses or distributes such open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our solutions that contained or are dependent upon the open source software and required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of some of our solutions. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our platform. The terms of many open source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts. As there is little or no legal precedent governing the interpretation of many of the terms of certain of these licenses, the potential impact of these terms on our business is uncertain and may result in unanticipated obligations regarding our solutions and technologies. It is our view that we do not distribute our software, since no installation of our software is necessary and our platform is accessible solely through the “cloud.” Nevertheless, this position could be challenged. Any requirement to disclose our proprietary source code, termination of open source license rights or payments of damages for breach of contract could be harmful to our business, results of operations or financial condition, and could help our competitors develop products and services that are similar to or better than ours.

In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties, controls on the origin or development of the software, or remedies against the licensors. Many of the risks associated with usage of open source software cannot be eliminated and could adversely affect our business.

Although we believe that we have complied with our obligations under the various applicable licenses for open source software, it is possible that we may not be aware of all instances where open source software has been incorporated into our proprietary software or used in connection with our solutions or our corresponding obligations under open source licenses. We do not have robust open source software usage policies or monitoring procedures in place. We rely on multiple software programmers to design our proprietary software and we cannot be certain that our programmers have not incorporated open source software into our proprietary software that we intend to maintain as confidential or that they will not do so in the future. To the extent that we are required to disclose the source code of certain of our proprietary software developments to third-parties, including our competitors, in order to comply with applicable open source license terms, such disclosure could harm our intellectual property position, competitive advantage, results of operations and financial condition. In addition, to the extent that we have failed to comply with our obligations under particular licenses for open source software, we may lose the right to continue to use and exploit such open source software in connection with our operations and solutions, which could disrupt and adversely affect our business.

We rely on search engines and social networking sites to attract a meaningful portion of our merchants. If we are not able to generate traffic to our website through search engines and social networking sites, our ability to attract new merchants may be impaired. In addition, if our merchants are not able to generate traffic to their shops through search engines and social networking sites, their ability to attract consumers may be impaired.

Many of our merchants locate our website through internet search engines, such as Google, and advertisements on social networking sites, such as Facebook. The prominence of our website in response to internet searches is a critical factor in attracting potential merchants to our platform. If we are listed less prominently or fail to appear in search results for any reason, visits to our website could decline significantly, and we may not be able to replace this traffic.

Similarly, many consumers locate our merchants’ shops through internet search engines and advertisements on social networking sites. If our merchants’ shops are listed less prominently or fail to appear in search results for any reason, visits to our merchants’ shops could decline significantly. As a result, our merchants’ businesses may suffer, which would affect the ability of such merchants to pay for our solutions.

Search engines revise their algorithms from time to time in an attempt to optimize their search results. If search engines modify their algorithms, our website and our merchants’ shops may appear less prominently or not at all in search results, which could result in reduced traffic to our website and to our merchants’ shops.

Additionally, if the price of marketing our solutions over search engines or social networking sites increases, we may incur additional marketing expenses or may be required to allocate a larger portion of our marketing spend to search engine marketing and our business and operating results could be adversely affected. Furthermore, competitors may in the future bid on the search terms that we use to drive traffic to our website. Such actions could increase our marketing costs and result in decreased traffic to our website. In addition, search engines or social networking sites may change their advertising policies from time to time. If any change to these policies delays or prevents us from advertising through these channels, it could result in reduced traffic to our website and sales of our solutions. As well, new search engines or social networking sites may develop, particularly in specific jurisdictions that reduce traffic on existing search engines and social networking sites. And if we are not able to achieve awareness through advertising or otherwise, we may not achieve significant traffic to our website through these new platforms. If we are unable to continue to successfully promote and maintain our websites, or if we incur excessive expenses to do so, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

Activities of merchants or the content of their shops could damage our brand, subject us to liability and harm our business and financial results.

Our terms of service prohibit our merchants from using our platform to engage in illegal activities and our terms of service permit us to take down a merchant’s shop if we become aware of such illegal use. Merchants may nonetheless engage in prohibited or illegal activities or upload store content in violation of applicable laws, which could subject us to liability. Furthermore, our brand may be negatively impacted by the actions of merchants that are deemed to be hostile, offensive, inappropriate or illegal. We do not proactively monitor or review the appropriateness of the content of our merchants’ shops and we do not have control over merchant activities. The safeguards we have in place may not be sufficient for us to avoid liability or avoid harm to our brand, especially if such hostile, offensive, inappropriate or illegal use is high profile, which could adversely affect our business and financial results.

If third-party apps and themes change such that we do not or cannot maintain the compatibility of our platform with these apps and themes, or if we fail to provide third-party apps and themes that our merchants desire to add to their shops, demand for our platform could decline.

The success of our platform depends, in part, on our ability to integrate third-party apps, themes and other offerings into our third-party ecosystem. Third-party developers may change the features of their offerings or alter the terms governing the use of their offerings in a manner that is adverse to us. If we are unable to maintain technical interoperation, our merchants may not be able to effectively integrate our platform with other systems and services they use. We may also be unable to maintain our relationships with certain third-party vendors if we are unable to integrate our platform with their offerings. Further, third-party developers may refuse to partner with us or limit or restrict our access to their offerings. Such changes could functionally limit or terminate our ability to use these third-party offerings with our platform, which could negatively impact our solution offerings and harm our business. If we fail to integrate our platform with new third-party offerings that our merchants need for their shops, or to adapt to the data transfer requirements of such third-party offerings, we may not be able to offer the functionality that our merchants and their customers expect, which would negatively impact our offerings and, as a result, harm our business.

We rely on computer hardware, purchased or leased, and software licensed from and services rendered by third parties in order to provide our solutions and run our business, sometimes by a single-source supplier.

We rely on computer hardware, purchased or leased, and software licensed from and services rendered by third-parties in order to provide our solutions and run our business, sometimes by a single-source supplier. Third-party hardware, software and services may not continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Any loss of the right to use or any failures of third-party hardware, software or services could result in delays in our ability to provide our solutions or run our business until equivalent hardware, software or services are developed by us or, if available, identified, obtained and integrated, which could be costly and time-consuming and may not result in an equivalent solution, any of which could cause an adverse effect on our business and operating results. Further, merchants could assert claims against us in connection with such service disruption or cease conducting business with us altogether. Even if not successful, a claim brought against us by any of our merchants would likely be time-consuming and costly to defend and could seriously damage our reputation and brand, making it harder for us to sell our solutions.

We may not be able to compete successfully against current and future competitors.

We face competition in various aspects of our business and we expect such competition to intensify in the future, as existing and new competitors introduce new services or enhance existing services. We have competitors with longer operating histories, larger customer bases, greater brand recognition, greater experience and more extensive commercial relationships in certain jurisdictions, and greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we do. As a result, our potential competitors may be able to develop products and services better received by merchants or may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, regulations or merchant requirements. In addition, some of our larger competitors may be able to leverage a larger installed customer base and distribution network to adopt more aggressive pricing policies and offer more attractive sales terms, which could cause us to lose potential sales or to sell our solutions at lower prices.

Competition may intensify as our competitors enter into business combinations or alliances or raise additional capital, or as established companies in other market segments or geographic markets expand into our market segments or geographic markets. For instance, certain competitors could use strong or dominant positions in one or more markets to gain a competitive advantage against us in areas where we operate including: by integrating competing platforms or features into products they control such as search engines, web browsers, mobile device operating systems or social networks; by making acquisitions; or by making access to our platform more difficult. Further, current and future competitors could choose to offer a different pricing model or to undercut prices in an effort to increase their market share. We also expect new entrants to offer competitive services. If we cannot compete successfully against current and future competitors, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be negatively impacted.

We plan to make future acquisitions and investments, which could divert management’s attention, result in operating difficulties and dilution to our stockholders and otherwise disrupt our operations and adversely affect our business, operating results or financial position.

From time to time, we evaluate potential strategic acquisition or investment opportunities. Any transactions that we enter into could be material to our financial condition and results of operations. The process of acquiring and integrating another company or technology could create unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. Acquisitions and investments involve a number of risks, such as:

In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

Acquisitions and investments may also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities, which could adversely affect our share price, or result in the incurrence of debt with restrictive covenants that limit our future uses of capital in pursuit of business opportunities.

We may not be able to identify acquisition or investment opportunities that meet our strategic objectives, or to the extent such opportunities are identified, we may not be able to negotiate terms with respect to the acquisition or investment that are acceptable to us. At this time we have made no commitments or agreements with respect to any such transaction.

New tax laws could be enacted or existing laws could be applied to us or our merchants, which could increase the costs of our solutions and adversely impact our business.

The application of federal, state, provincial, local and foreign tax laws to solutions provided over the internet is evolving. New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be enacted at any time, possibly with retroactive effect, and could be applied solely or disproportionately to solutions provided over the internet. These enactments could adversely affect our sales activity due to the inherent cost increase the taxes would represent, and could ultimately result in a negative impact on our results of operations and cash flows.

State tax authorities may seek to assess state and local business taxes and sales and use taxes. If we are required to collect sales and use taxes in additional jurisdictions, we might be subject to tax liability for past sales.

There is a risk that U.S. states could assert that we are liable for U.S. state and local business activity taxes, which are levied upon income or gross receipts, or for the collection of U.S. local sales and use taxes. This risk exists regardless of whether we are subject to U.S. federal income tax. States are becoming increasingly active in asserting nexus for business activity tax purposes and imposing sales and use taxes on products and services provided over the internet. We may be subject to U.S. state and local business activity taxes if a state tax authority asserts that our activities or the activities of our non-U.S. subsidiaries are sufficient to establish nexus. We could also be liable for the collection of U.S. state and local sales and use taxes if a state tax authority asserts that distribution of our solutions over the internet is subject to sales and use taxes. Each state has different rules and regulations governing sales and use taxes, and these rules and regulations are subject to varying interpretations that change over time. We review these rules and regulations periodically and, when we believe we are subject to sales and use taxes in a particular state, voluntarily engage state tax authorities in order to determine how to comply with their rules and regulations. If a state tax authority asserts that distribution of our solutions is subject to such sales and use taxes, the additional cost may decrease the likelihood that such merchants would purchase our solutions or continue to renew their subscriptions.

A successful assertion by one or more states requiring us to collect sales or other taxes on subscription service revenue could result in substantial tax liabilities for past transactions and otherwise harm our business. We cannot assure you that we will not be subject to sales and use taxes or related penalties for past sales in states where we currently believe no such taxes are required. New obligations to collect or pay taxes of any kind could increase our cost of doing business.

We are dependent upon consumers’ and merchants’ willingness to use the internet for commerce.

Our success depends upon the general public’s continued willingness to use the internet as a means to pay for purchases, communicate, access social media, research and conduct commercial transactions, including through mobile devices. If consumers or merchants become unwilling or less willing to use the internet for commerce for any reason, including lack of access to high-speed communications equipment, congestion of traffic on the internet, internet outages or delays, disruptions or other damage to merchants’ and consumers’ computers, increases in the cost of accessing the internet and security and privacy risks or the perception of such risks, our business could be adversely affected.

We may face challenges in expanding into new geographic regions.

Our future success will depend in part upon our ability to expand into new geographic regions, and we will face risks entering markets in which we have limited or no experience and in which we do not have any brand recognition. Expanding into new geographic regions where the main language is not English will require substantial expenditures and take considerable time and attention, and we may not be successful enough in these new markets to recoup our investments in a timely manner, or at all. Our efforts to expand into new geographic regions may not be successful, which could limit our ability to grow our business.

Risks Related to Laws and Regulations

Failure to comply with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or the FCPA, anti-money laundering, economic and trade sanctions regulations, and similar laws could subject us to penalties and other adverse consequences.

We currently operate our business in the U.S. and Canada. We are subject to anti-corruption laws and regulations, including the FCPA, and other laws that prohibit the making or offering of improper payments to foreign government officials and political figures, including anti-bribery provisions enforced by the Department of Justice and accounting provisions enforced by the SEC. These laws prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials and political parties by the U.S. and other business entities for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. We have implemented policies, procedures, systems, and controls designed to identify and address potentially impermissible transactions under such laws and regulations; however, there can be no assurance that all of our employees, consultants and agents, including those that may be based in or from countries where practices that violate U.S. or other laws may be customary, will not take actions in violation of our policies, for which we may be ultimately responsible.

In addition, we are subject to anti-money laundering laws and regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act, as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, or the BSA. Among other things, the BSA requires money services businesses (such as money transmitters and providers of prepaid access) to develop and implement risk-based anti-money laundering programs, report large cash transactions and suspicious activity, and maintain transaction records.

We are also subject to certain economic and trade sanctions programs that are administered by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, which prohibit or restrict transactions to or from or dealings with specified countries, their governments, and in certain circumstances, their nationals, and with individuals and entities that are specially-designated nationals of those countries, narcotics traffickers, and terrorists or terrorist organizations. Other group entities may be subject to additional foreign or local sanctions requirements in other relevant jurisdictions.

Similar anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing and proceeds of crime laws apply to movements of currency and payments through electronic transactions and to dealings with persons specified in lists maintained by the country equivalents to OFAC lists in several other countries and require specific data retention obligations to be observed by intermediaries in the payment process. Our businesses in those jurisdictions are subject to those data retention obligations.

Failure to comply with any of these laws and regulations or changes in this regulatory environment, including changing interpretations and the implementation of new or varying regulatory requirements by the government, may result in significant financial penalties, reputational harm or change the manner in which we currently conduct some aspects of our business, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Failure to enforce and defend our intellectual property rights may diminish our competitive advantages or interfere with our ability to market and promote our products and services.

Our trademarks, trade names, trade secrets, know-how, proprietary technology and other intellectual property are important to our future success. We have a pending trademark application for “CrowdPay.us Crowdfunding & Compliance Platform”. We believe our trademarks and trade names are widely recognized and associated with quality and reliable service. While it is our policy to protect and defend vigorously our rights to our intellectual property, we cannot predict whether steps taken by us to protect our intellectual property will be adequate to prevent infringement, misappropriation or other violation of our rights. We also cannot guarantee that others will not independently develop technology with the same or similar functions to any proprietary technology we rely on to conduct our business and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Furthermore, we may face claims of infringement of third-party intellectual property that could interfere with our ability to market and promote our brands. Any litigation to enforce our intellectual property rights or defend ourselves against claims of infringement of third-party intellectual property rights could be costly, divert attention of management and may not ultimately be resolved in our favor. Moreover, if we are unable to successfully defend against claims that we have infringed the intellectual property rights of others, we may be prevented from using certain intellectual property and may be liable for damages, which in turn could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, the laws of certain non-U.S. countries where we do business or may do business in the future may not recognize intellectual property rights or protect them to the same extent as do the laws of the United States.

New or revised tax regulations or their interpretations, or becoming subject to additional foreign or U.S. federal, state or local taxes that cannot be passed through to our merchants or partners, could reduce our net income.

We are subject to tax laws in each jurisdiction where we do business. Changes in tax laws or their interpretations could decrease the amount of revenues we receive, the value of any tax loss carry-forwards and tax credits recorded on our balance sheet and the amount of our cash flow, and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Recently enacted U.S. tax legislation has significantly changed the U.S. federal income taxation of U.S. corporations, including by reducing the U.S. corporate income tax rate, limiting interest deductions, permitting immediate expensing of certain capital expenditures, adopting elements of a territorial tax system, imposing a one-time transition tax, or repatriation tax, on all undistributed earnings and profits of certain U.S.-owned foreign corporations, revising the rules governing net operating losses and the rules governing foreign tax credits, and introducing new anti-base erosion provisions. Many of these changes are effective immediately, without any transition periods or grandfathering for existing transactions. The legislation is unclear in many respects and could be subject to potential amendments and technical corrections, as well as interpretations and implementing regulations by the Internal Revenue Service, or the IRS, any of which could lessen or increase certain adverse impacts of the legislation. In addition, it is unclear how these U.S. federal income tax changes will affect state and local taxation, which often uses federal taxable income as a starting point for computing state and local tax liabilities.

While some of the changes made by the tax legislation may adversely affect us in one or more reporting periods and prospectively, other changes may be beneficial on a going forward basis. We continue to work with our tax advisors to determine the full impact that the recent tax legislation as a whole will have on us.

Additionally, companies in the electronic payments industry, including us, may become subject to incremental taxation in various tax jurisdictions. Taxing jurisdictions have not yet adopted uniform positions on this topic. If we are required to pay additional taxes and are unable to pass the tax expense through to our merchants, our costs would increase and our net income would be reduced.

Failure to comply with, or changes in, laws, regulations and enforcement activities may adversely affect the products, services and markets in which we operate.

We and our merchants are subject to laws and regulations that affect the electronic payments industry in the many countries in which our services are used. In particular, our merchants are subject to numerous laws and regulations applicable to banks, financial institutions, and card issuers in the United States and abroad, and, consequently, we are at times affected by these foreign, federal, state, and local laws and regulations. The U.S. government has increased its scrutiny of a number of credit card practices, from which some of our merchants derive significant revenue. Regulation of the payments industry, including regulations applicable to us and our merchants, has increased significantly in recent years. Failure to comply with laws and regulations applicable to our business may result in the suspension or revocation of licenses or registrations, the limitation, suspension or termination of services or the imposition of consent orders or civil and criminal penalties, including fines which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We are also subject to U.S. and international financial services regulations, a myriad of consumer protection laws, including economic sanctions, laws and regulations, anticorruption laws, escheat regulations and privacy and information security regulations. Changes to legal rules and regulations, or interpretation or enforcement of them, could have a negative financial effect on us. Any lack of legal certainty exposes our operations to increased risks, including increased difficulty in enforcing our agreements in those jurisdictions and increased risks of adverse actions by local government authorities, such as expropriations. In addition, certain of our alliance partners are subject to regulation by federal and state authority and, as a result, could pass through some of those compliance obligations to us, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

In particular, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (the “Dodd-Frank Act”), recently significantly changed the U.S. financial regulatory system. Among other things, Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act established a new, independent regulatory agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, to regulate consumer financial products and services (including some offered by our merchants). The CFPB rules, examinations and enforcement actions may require us to adjust our activities and may increase our compliance costs.

Separately, under the Dodd-Frank Act, debit interchange transaction fees that a card issuer receives and are established by a payment card network for an electronic debit transaction are now regulated by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or the Federal Reserve, and must be “reasonable and proportional” to the cost incurred by the card issuer in authorizing, clearing, and settling the transaction. Effective October 1, 2011, the Federal Reserve capped debit interchange rates for card issuers operating in the United States with assets of $10 billion or more at the sum of $0.21 per transaction and an ad valorem component of 5 basis points to reflect a portion of the card issuer’s fraud losses plus, for qualifying card issuers, an additional $0.01 per transaction in debit interchange for fraud prevention costs. Regulations such as these could result in the need for us to make capital investments to modify our services to facilitate our existing merchants’ and potential merchants’ compliance and reduce the fees we are able to charge our merchants. These regulations also could result in greater pricing transparency and increased price-based competition leading to lower margins and higher rates of merchant attrition. Furthermore, the requirements of the regulations and the timing of their effective dates could result in changes in our merchants’ business practices, which could change the demand for our services and alter the type or volume of transactions that we process on behalf of our merchants.

Risks Related to Our Capital Stock

We could issue additional common stock, which might dilute the book value of our capital stock.

The Company may issue all or a part of its authorized but unissued shares of common stock. Any such stock issuance could be made at a price that reflects a discount or a premium to the then-current trading price of our common stock. In addition, in order to raise future capital, we may need to issue securities that are convertible into or exchangeable for a significant amount of our common stock. These issuances, if any, would dilute your percentage ownership interest in the Company, thereby having the effect of reducing your influence on matters on which stockholders vote. You may incur additional dilution if holders of stock options, whether currently outstanding or subsequently granted, exercise their options, or if warrant holders exercise their warrants to purchase shares of our common stock. As a result, any such issuances or exercises would dilute your interest in the Company and the per share book value of the common stock that you owned, either of which could negatively affect the trading price of our common stock and the value of your investment.

As a “thinly-traded” stock, large sales can place downward pressure on our stock price.

Our stock experiences periods when it could be considered “thinly traded”. Financing transactions resulting in a large number of newly issued shares that become readily tradable, or other events that cause current stockholders to sell shares, could place further downward pressure on the trading price of our stock. In addition, the lack of a robust resale market may require a stockholder who desires to sell a large number of shares to sell the shares in increments over time to mitigate any adverse impact of the sales on the market price of our stock.

Shares eligible for future sale may adversely affect the market for our common stock.

As of September 1, 2018 there are 1,200,000 warrants to purchase shares of our common stock outstanding. The warrants are exercisable at an exercise price of $0.25 per share. If and when these securities are exercised into shares of our common stock, the number of our shares of common stock outstanding will increase. Such increase in our outstanding shares, and any sales of such shares, could have a material adverse effect on the market for our common stock and the market price of our common stock.

In addition, from time to time, certain of our stockholders may be eligible to sell all or some of their shares of common stock by means of ordinary brokerage transactions in the open market pursuant to Rule 144, promulgated under the Securities Act, subject to certain limitations. In general, pursuant to Rule 144, after satisfying a six month holding period: (i) affiliated stockholders (or stockholders whose shares are aggregated) may, under certain circumstances, sell within any three month period a number of securities which does not exceed the greater of 1% of the then outstanding shares of common stock or the average weekly trading volume of the class during the four calendar weeks prior to such sale and (ii) non-affiliated stockholders may sell without such limitations, provided that we are current in our public reporting obligations. Rule 144 also permits the sale of securities by non-affiliates that have satisfied a one year holding period without any limitation or restriction. Any substantial sale of our common stock pursuant to Rule 144 or pursuant to any resale prospectus may have a material adverse effect on the market price of our securities.

Because certain principal stockholders own a large percentage of our voting stock, other stockholders’ voting power may be limited.

As of September 1, 2018 two large stockholders, Ronny Yakov and John Herzog, owned or controlled approximately 98.0% of our outstanding common stock. If those stockholders act together, they will have the ability to have a substantial influence on matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election and removal of directors and the approval of any merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. As a result, our other stockholders may have little or no influence over matters submitted for stockholder approval. In addition, the ownership of such stockholders could preclude any unsolicited acquisition of us, and consequently, adversely affect the price of our common stock. These stockholders may make decisions that are adverse to your interests.

We are subject to penny stock regulations and restrictions and you may have difficulty selling shares of our common stock.

Our common stock is subject to the provisions of Section 15(g) and Rule 15g-9 of the Exchange Act, commonly referred to as the “penny stock rule.”  Section 15(g) sets forth certain requirements for transactions in penny stock, and Rule 15g-9(d) incorporates the definition of “penny stock” that is found in Rule 3a51-1 of the Exchange Act.  The SEC generally defines a penny stock to be any equity security that has a market price less than $5.00 per share, subject to certain exceptions. We are subject to the SEC’s penny stock rules.

Since our common stock is deemed to be penny stock, trading in the shares of our common stock is subject to additional sales practice requirements on broker-dealers who sell penny stock to persons other than established customers and accredited investors.  “Accredited investors” are persons with assets in excess of $1,000,000 (excluding the value of such person’s primary residence) or annual income exceeding $200,000 or $300,000 together with their spouse. For transactions covered by these rules, broker-dealers must make a special suitability determination for the purchase of such security and must have the purchaser’s written consent to the transaction prior to the purchase. Additionally, for any transaction involving a penny stock, unless exempt the rules require the delivery, prior to the first transaction of a risk disclosure document, prepared by the SEC, relating to the penny stock market. A broker-dealer also must disclose the commissions payable to both the broker-dealer and the registered representative and current quotations for the securities.  Finally, monthly statements must be sent disclosing recent price information for the penny stocks held in an account and information to the limited market in penny stocks. Consequently, these rules may restrict the ability of broker-dealer to trade and/or maintain a market in our common stock and may affect the ability of the Company’s stockholders to sell their shares of common stock.

There can be no assurance that our shares of common stock will qualify for exemption from the Penny Stock Rule. In any event, even if our common stock was exempt from the Penny Stock Rule, we would remain subject to Section 15(b)(6) of the Exchange Act, which gives the SEC the authority to restrict any person from participating in a distribution of penny stock if the SEC finds that such a restriction would be in the public interest.