Ep. 831: Wirecard whistleblower launches Confide, and Google Pay shuts down in the US

from 11fs this is fintech Insider news and I'm your host Ross Gallagher Ventures director here at 11fs thanks for downloading this podcast if you like what you hear please recommend us to a friend this week we're talking Orum launched their deliver API to enhance payments via the Federal Reserve it's one big step towards better payments in the US the wire card whistleblower has launched a new platform conf to help businesses manage and investigate misconduct he's certainly got lots of

experience there and inflation impacts everyone even the Tooth Fairy as research suggests the average compensation for a tooth has tripled since 2001 or iPhones and Louis Vuitton bracelets we get into all this and much more on today's show hello and welcome to episode 831 of

fintech Insider I'm Ross Gallagher vent's director here at 11fs and I'm joined this week on fintech Insider news by three guests who are here to break down this week's biggest news stories in fintech and financial services firstly I am sincerely delighted to be joined by my wonderful colleague and co-host uh naen Timber bordenstein Ventures product lead at 11fs naen like I said delighted that you're here how are you doing I am very happy to have been invited back so this is only my second podcast that

means I must have done an okay job on the first one so yeah feeling very happy to be here more than okay um n why don't you just remind our listeners a bit about yourself and what you do at 11 FS of course so like you said Ross I'm a product lead here at 11fs in our Ventures business and that means that I work with clients to help them create fantastic new Innovative propositions for their customers whether that's new retail banking propositions wealth management business banking Etc we really do cover the full full spectrum here at 11fs awesome thanks naen um now

also joining us this week is Stephanie Kirkpatrick founder and CEO at Orum um great to have you back with us Stephanie maybe you can again just remind our little listeners a little bit more about yourself and and about or yes and I think similar to what was just said I am delighted to be back again thanks for having me I'm taking a break from the women in payments symposium Museum here in Washington DC to come and join you guys so back to back today um and Orum is the simplest API for fast reliable payments and instant bank account

verification so what does that really mean means you can connect with us through a single integration and get access to every type of US bank transfer rail so RTP fed now AC wires um and there's a lot more behind that so we'll talk about it all today as we dig into our new launch of our deliver API and our most recent products in Market yeah definitely exciting time for you guys and thanks for stepping out of the conference and coming to to talk to us about ftech Insider it's great to my pleasure excellent all right and then

finally um a big fin Tech Insider hello and welcome for pav Gil founder confide so pav thank you as well so much for joining us maybe again you can just give us a little bit about yourself and and what you do sure thank you for having me it's a real pleasure um my name is path Gil better probably known as a wire card whistleblower um Germany's logic ftech fraud and largest financial Scandal actually uh currently founder and CEO of confi a governance risk and integrity platform uh with a whistleblowing

solution embedded within it so that's what confite does and yeah happy to get into further details in this podcast excellent Pavia looking forward to getting into kind of your story as well so so thank you again for for jumping on and joining us um yeah so look thank you all for being here um we will start the show very very shortly but firstly a reminder to all of you ftech Insider fans because after dark is coming back to London join us at Village Underground on Thursday the 21st of March to watch David Breer Jamie Campbell and Georgie

Frost record a live episode of fintech Insider news you can find all of the details and secure your spot right now at 11 fs.com afterdark alternatively if you can't get to London on that date or if you're listening to this in the future uh you can also sign up to our mail list to be one of the first to hear about our other events visit 11 fs.com Community for more information uh and with that let's jump into the news so we've teased it Stephanie here we go um the first story

uh so comes with a headline Orum connects to the US Federal Reserve with the launch of deliver so the new deliver API from Orum orchestrates and optimizes money movement through Federal Reserve payment rails on behalf of banking institutions it promises to offer quote access to bank rate pricing all major rails and expanded processing Windows without costly Bank Integrations and is built on a new direct connection to the fed and orchestrates money movement optimizing for Speed and cost the launch

comes just months after orm created a fres ofit kind solution verify that instantly verifies bank accounts and strengthens its relationship with the Federal Reserve the new offering is designed to combat technical challenges and downtime which payment platforms often face and is estimated to cost businesses up to $500,000 per hour according to research highlighted in orm's press release um Stephanie I suppose it's hard not to

kind of think about that $500,000 per hour figure because it's really quite staggering maybe you can just um give us a little bit set the scene on sort of I suppose the problem space that you're trying to solve here yeah yes absolutely I mean I think you know this connection that we've made directly to the Federal Reserve is something we spent years working towards so I think this is a an incredibly High bar across and for us it represents um a number of things that are important to our business and to how we think about the vision and ultimately for us it builds on our mission to solve

the time to money problem and to empower everyday people to have access to their money when they need it the Milestone itself for deliver launching and being integrated to the Federal Reserve bank is now realizing the full extent of instant payments and the promise of money moving faster and because of this connection as you just mentioned we are able to fundamentally shift to lower cost no downtime full coverage and smart efficient routing and that downtime component is really critical because

most banks in the US not all but most banks rely on a core provider fiser of FIS Jack Henry names we all know to make their connection for them to the Clearing Houses um that we have in the US one of which is the Federal Reserve Bank and at Orum by building this direct connection um it changes the ability for us to continue to navigate straight through processing to the FED irrespective of A bank's core or core

infrastructure or in original connection and so when you think about why does it cost you know so much money if there's an outage I think first it's the detection what was the problem what it went into it why are we down there's the containment cost of making sure that whatever happened in the outage doesn't get repeated is stopped from creating further problems Downstream there's all the recovery costs and activities that go into bringing networks back online and there's things that are incredibly

hard to quantify in exact dollars but I would say you know this reputational risk and loss of Revenue is massive many times there's contractual slas and around uptime and A disruption of that uptime is very expensive in terms of both Financial consequence from an economic and revenue perspective of money that would have otherwise been paid during the transaction period um while that outage is out and it often leads to lawsuits some of which are insurmountable and cannot be really

fully recovered from depending on the size of the kind of organization um that was responsible for the payment execution so for us you know again we're always thinking about the mission and vision of delivering on instant payments but to do it in a way that's so fundamentally more reliable with brand new technology it's a real win in today's market to have that yeah I mean those those types of outages um and disruption to that sort of like core service is the kind of thing that keeps Bank Executives up at night right so I

suppose there's like a there's a big piece of mind uh piece there as well right right I mean even for Orum before building this we had those questions for our business and our customers so it gives me a lot more conviction and peace of mind as we write our contracts with uptime ses and commitments to our customers when you think about money movement you know we're talking like bits and bites and API calls and dropping files in the FED think about the individual right one of our recent customers supports real-time payments to

NAFTA truck drivers who drive the NAFTA Corridor these folks need to get paid and outage where they don't get paid is the difference between making rent and not making rent so I think it's important also to contextualize who's on the other side when a payment transaction is occurring and what's the kind of consequence of not having that payment be able to go through trust is the ultimate sort of North Star here in delivering um our products and our services and we've gone a long way in really investing in and partnering with

the FED to do that yeah I think I think you've done a really nice job there of of bringing it to life that was going to be my next question was you know how does this sort of flow through in terms of those end users but actually almost bringing it to life with some of those sort of non-typical um Edge case users is is is a really nice way to I suppose it just underscores um quite how critical this is in terms of in terms of the the the infrastructure I was going to jump in there sorry yeah yeah sorry Jump Ahead no no um Stephanie I mean this is this

is obviously a huge deal for a fintech to be able to connect directly to the fed and and like you said you know you've you've been working on this for years I think fex plays such a crucial role in facilitating new payment advancements in in this kind of landscape so you know you you you mentioned how how long it's taken up until this point what what do you hope this will also achieve for you moving forward and and what are some of the I guess future future Ambitions of of Orum well our Ambitions are endless so I probably can't cover all of them but I think with 80 trillion of money movement

in the US riding on a 50-year-old system called a and with a global economy um impact of a hundred billion dollars when payment transactions don't go through right failed payments when you combine those two problems the ambition to solve time to money and payment speed coupled with payment certainty in our product verify is an incredibly high value and I think very complex thing to achieve and we spend a lot of time thinking about um

how each of our products um are going to advance together you know when I think about a credit card transaction everybody feels good because when I buy Starbucks and I swipe my credit card Starbucks didn't actually get paid but they have the promise to get paid and settlement happens later in Bank transfers we don't have a promise to get paid in fact we fundamentally lack certainty of when you'll get paid which rail it will settle on and whether or not the end account or the account from which funds were being withdrawn is even

valid so when you combine the sort of magnitude of those two problems I would say we've got a cut out for us for the next few years what I Envision happening is that because of our technology with the deliver API not only will we continue to serve our core audience of technology and software companies and financial services companies will'll see a fundamental push to upgrade technology inside of Banks and financial services because you're setting a new standard for excellence and expectation with regard to up times a really simple

example I could give you is that because we use all of the available fed processing windows um many banks uh in the US cut off processing at 2 p.m. central which is not very late in the day and if it's a Friday and it happens to be a batch process payment like a it's not going to go out until Monday so you're talking multiple days of additional delay on settlement with Orum because we process and our cffs are near midnight and the last window is actually 2: am. the next

morning settlement can happen so much faster and can expand the aperture of not even changing the type of payment but actually when the payment can be transacted and executed and since more than half of our country is not in the Eastern Time Zone that cut off it just really changes how businesses operate payables and receivables come and go right so well there's an enduser component and I love thinking about that American wallet think about the business owners just as frequently right at Orum as a business we have to think about

aligning payables and receivables and the more that as a technology company we can help other Financial Services providers software companies and the like streamline the timeline to do payments um I think we're having incredible impact already I remember we I I was on a client on on a project with a client a couple of years ago a us-based client and and we were doing some End customer research and that what you just touched on there with the cut of times was some was something that came up quite frequently because people

were saying you know it makes it so much harder to manage their money effectively sometimes people would actually forget if they had initiated a payment or not because it wasn't processed immediately and it would result in them perhaps initiating the same payment again because you know everyone's time poor and it's it's quite hard to keep track of those things but like you said that should be something that is easy and seamless and something that a customer whether that's an end end user or a business client is able to stay on top of to be able to better manage manage their own situations so I think it's

incredibly important well the irony of all of this is that you know the banks are relying on you know outdated technology and still they're finding ways to charge you fees for the thing they didn't do right they didn't initiate the transfer because the cut off was late you don't see it in your account you fail to realize it hasn't been executed you do the next transaction and suddenly you're in you know a a non-sufficient funds situation where you're getting fees and repercussions those are all preventable problems um and so I do think a lot

about just you know like I said that Simplicity of even just moving much later in the day when you can transact um coupled with being able to orchestrate you know fed now delivers payments instantly 247 365 nights holidays weekends when most people are thinking about money it's definitely not 9 to5 or 9-2 Central on Monday through Friday and so I think being able to combine the orchestration so that the folks that build payments don't have to individualize and think about all those details either they say just like I say

you know I'm going to order something from Amazon I don't care if Amazon sends it UPS Postal Service FedEx their blue vanan I definitely care how much I pay and how certain I am about when it's going to arrive they even have a return feature didn't arrive in Time payments doesn't have that but it probably should don't charge me if it didn't get there in the time I expected so less and less often people are thinking about a wire or an A or a same day A or a Fed now payment and they're thinking about how fast can I get it there what's it going

to cost me to do that and that's where I think the future of payments really is is is what I'm going to call rail agnostic and it's really instead being optimized on the key variable speed risk and cost all of which orm has built into our proprietary technology today and I think that goes a long way again coupled with bank rate pricing coupled with stability and resiliency coupled with um processing Windows to generate a New Foundation from which financial services products can be designed yeah I love that and think of it as foundational I

think just speaks to the the absolute potential and pav I'm really Keen to sort of get your thoughts on this what was your reaction when you when you read the story yeah I mean this is as as someone who's been in the payment space I think this is critical because you know are you're talking about a I was just having a conversation a few days ago with friend of mine and we talking about how in the US they're still you know the checks the whole system of checks is still there and we were laughing about a story where you know one of the planes crashed with millions

and millions of checks in there and then you know all the money was just lost so I think if we can you know a solution like that is definitely critical um and if you talk about the US for example you would it's just mind-blowing why you know with the EU coming up with instant payments and and stuff like that just very recently um will we even see such a such a move in the US anytime soon so so really hope that you know whatever orm's doing would go a long way into solving a

problem which should have honestly long been solved and and it's crazy why no one's even thought about it or is doing something serious about it until now well it's interesting I'm at this payments conference today and I heard some uh heard from a variety of different financial institutions but some banks and they said you know when this thing RTP came out we were like what's the acronym mean how do we work with it right so in the US unlike where you all have been in the UK and in Europe um we're we're we're behind we're catching up and we're actually catching

up quite quickly with faster payments from certain perspectives but we also have a fundamentally different landscape which is we have tens of thousands of different financial institutions five or six thousand of those are actually Banks this isn't just getting to a small population and it's a real shift right to go from a notcha file format and batch-based Technology systems to an ISO 2022 format for messaging which is fundamentally better but it's an overhaul of technology so that's something that we think about a lot which isn't just the speed the

optimization all the fun things that I've talked about but it's really about enablement for all financial institutions and therefore all businesses and consumers in the US to have the opportunity to be paid and pay in real time yeah absolutely and I think overhauling that core foundational layer it exactly right to call it an enabler because then it just becomes about everything that you can build on top of it um there definitely one thing that I would love to get your um thoughts on and you you touched on this a couple of

moments ago but about sort of how this overlays with verify and how those products sort of grow together so I suppose it would be good just to get your thoughts on I suppose we've done a lot on the the benefits here and I think the benefits are huge so it's right to do that but are there potential um challenges and risks moving to more of a sort of like real-time payments model whether it's fraud or whatever it is what are some of the things that you guys are thinking about there right well you know the first thing I think about is just the account as an atomic unit think about fintech think about

financial services a lot of work has gone into knowing if it's Stephanie kyc who's the customer is it really them identity right um and that is one vector of control but very little has been done to actually think about the account you're interacting with whether it's a debit or credit right so whether we're pushing instant payments or we're debiting funds um is it a valid account is it actually a open and is it available for use today has it been frozen due to fraud like how would you know um there hasn't been a system for that and so increasing what we call

payment certainty between sender and receiver both the you know Origin account and the destination account is increasingly important because with speed you know a real-time payment like fed now like RTP cannot be reversed in the US we have a regulation called reg e for a so 60 days from now if I don't like a bank transaction I can go in and say it wasn't me I dispute and reversal happens with RTP we don't have that and we're not even close to what the you know Europe model is starting to model

of risk sharing and so the sakes are much higher when you're going to do a transaction which by the way could be up to a million dollars sent in 15 seconds or less once it's gone it's gone so I think that combined with the fact that just failed payments due to the fact that this the sort of account information is inaccurate think about the number of systems that are not automated people copy paste or they type in or they translate information from point A to point B and when high value wires go out for example the number one

cause of failure is just wrong credentials all of which is solvable and this is costing the global economy like I said hundred billion dollars a year so I think we're going to be chipping away at the problem certainly for a long time um but there's magnitudes of improvement that can happen and this is why when we combined what we're doing on payment speed with payment certainty again I think the foundation for everything that gets created from here on out is safer smarter more secure and we ultimately allow people to build better products because they don't have to spend

engineering or product resources or money on systems trying to figure out those problems those have been sort of taken away and equalized and now we can put our resources towards the really juicy bits of making better and new and different Financial Services products come to life yeah I just have something to also ask if um perhaps you know using verify and certain kyc things could also be expanded to you know even invoicing right because if you've got a six IND digit character code why have we not

reached a stage where we can embed a similar code into the bank transaction or the money transfer transaction that actually links back to an invoice so I think that would really solve like huge headaches which everyone faces on a day-to-day basis yes yeah so maybe something or could also uh look into so when you think about settlement and Reconciliation you're exactly right you know a bunch of wires come into a bank account and then some human has to go figure out who did come from why did it come in was there a reference ID did

they write the information that we were expecting were we expecting to get money who's money and so to your point when you start to build in messaging right which the iso 2022 standard allows us to do it becomes a very powerful tool in being able to identify who why what when where the details and the metadata and we've never had that in the US right we've been relying on predominantly batch-based solution so there's a really big shift and I agree um expect to hear more from us as kind we plan to build out more and more capabilities yeah

that's that's definitely the feeling that we're getting but look I mean this is an incredibly exciting um launch for you guys Stephanie so um as I say thank you so much for coming on and telling us about it and it's definitely will be one that we'll keep an eye on um all right then let's move on to our next story this one comes from fintech Finance uh headline wire card whistleblower launches confi a new reporting platform for corporate bad behavior I read that headline pav though you weren't sort of in the virtual room um right let's uh so

let's let's learn a little bit more about this one confi bills itself as quote a secure platform to uncover and investigate corporate misconduct protecting your brand the company is founded by pavill who is best known for his involvement in exposing the wire card scandal it offers organizations um essential insights into potential quote game over events that senior leadership might otherwise Miss until it's too late by enabling secure and confidential internal reporting confide prevents

concerns from being stifled by middle management or by the absence of safe reporting Avenues uh the tool can also be used to digitize the investigation process and support investigators to collect and manage information now pav it's a real pleasure to have you on the show to uh tell us to tell us more about confide in this really exciting launch I suppose it's it's it's difficult to separate you know sort of where you've got to with confide with you you sort of

own story and your own background at wire card I'd love to hear a little bit more around sort of that and and where this has come from sure so you know I'm a lawyer by training um worked at Southern magic circle firms alen overy Cliff chance and King and Spalding and then I also spent a lot of time in inh housee um as a general counsel and in a few companies and all the time I've seen the same issue which is that every time a misconduct um you know report is is put forward or someone is raising a speak up complaint or any kind of

complaint right the knee-jerk reaction is uh how do we make this go away who's this person why are they reporting and all these things so you know basically how poorly in general companies manage these things um and then obviously from the whistleblowing journey I've also been through the uh that side myself something I never imagined with you know when I started life I didn't think I'll be whistleblower but how do we then put the two together into a product that will benefit you know companies people

and also lawmakers and carrying out the regulatory objectives so that's how the idea sprang to mind uh why not use my entire Journey basically into a into something that's tangible and hopefully create less of me yeah it kind of feels like your whole your whole journey up until now has been building towards confide maybe you can um give us a little bit just on the product itself and sort of I suppose how it's starts to address some of the uh the challenges that that that you mentioned sure so what companies would do is just tell

their employees or their vendors that you know if you have any concerns that are serious you could use confide and here's the link um what's powerful about the solution is it's not two dimensional in nature which is what you tend to see out there a lot of these are like lengthy form fills they're like what I call glorified inbox Solutions where there's no basic even intelligence sorting of reporting right you could have someone complaining about how poor the coffee is in the pantry to you know delay shipment to real fraud harassment or bribery type

situations which trigger urgency and red flag events so there's no real sorting you can't even hold meetings within the platform uh which are encrypted you can't have a live Dynamic encrypted chat um even if you want to ask you know maybe the HR team for case file on whoever is being reported on you have to go outside the existing solutions to email to phone and all all these things so what confide is doing is keeping it all within that platform and in that way the audit Trail is from start to end there's no way you know so if anyone

comes in a regulator comes in you could just generate the report and say this is how it started and this is how it was managed and this is how it ended so basically my message to companies is you need to have an early detection tool in place to really that's actually trusted by your employees and they would use it so that you could sus out you know po as you know game over events or anything and you don't get caught by surprise one day when the media is reporting on it or you get a regular notice right you have

that ability that first step to actually deal with issues and you're also giving employees that ability to discharge their internal protocol kind of obligations because you know every time someone wants to raise an issue the first thing I think that comes to mind is okay who do I go to talk to who do I raise this to I'd love to jump in there I I read an article earlier when when doing some research pav on on your initiative and and your new company which sounds great um I landed on an article around the FCA and a review that they did either last year or the year

before to I guess understand the satisfaction of whistleblowers and and the process that they had been through and I think the stat was that fewer than 20% of whistleblowers actually felt satisfied that the kind of regulator had properly handled their case and the main reason for this was around information Shar ing after the initial complaint was made so I'd love to know how I guess your your solution potentially addresses that that key customer problem yeah I think what all whistleblowers would fear

um is being identified at least at the very outset um and what confide is doing is making that extremely encrypted and secure so unless the Whistleblower or whoever's using the reporting tool themselves want to be identified um and this could be in a scenario where you know a director actually wants to be identified as the one raising this concern so everyone's put on notice right but encryption and security is the key in keeping employees safe what ki's trying to do is strip away the

subjectivity from Raising concerns because often times the knee-jerk reaction is who is this person that made the complaint why are they making it and these are all wrong questions to be asking in my view at least what companies need to be focusing on is not who the person is and all these what their motives are like honestly I don't care if the person raising the concern is someone that was stripped out of a potential fraud and is upset or it's just a disgruntled employee right I don't care all I want to care and all I

should care as an employee or as an executive is is this a event that would potentially have a material adverse effect on my company and if so do I need to deal with it as soon as possible that's all that matters to me I think once we can have that kind of cultural mindset and we can also provide something which is safe and secure I think we will have a different environment where not only are Executives behaving in a better more sensible manner but also employees

speaking up freely because they know they won't be you know identified and and gone after as a result they just I mean some staggering statistics I mean nen's just just referenced one um pav mentioned about one of the major concerns about whistleblowers is not wanting to be identified but we pulled out a couple of Statistics from um confides own website that says that you know up to 30% of companies admit to exposing the identity of whistleblower

so of course that in itself is going to become um a barrier to to to actually becoming a whistleblower um Stephanie what what was your sort of um reaction to confi reaction to this story and do you think that having a tool like this having a platform like this a safe space I suppose in effect would actually encourage people to to come forward U where they wouldn't have previously I have to imagine it encourages people to come forward and I think po to your point it may be on a range of things some not so important some very

important and I think you know it in my in my view this probably isn't just isolated to sort of a large corporate scenario but you know kind of back to wire card there are fintechs there are lots of young new companies whether the sort of thing that's being reported was done intentionally or unintentionally I do think that there are just sometimes things that go sideways in a company and certain types of leaders tend to want to cover that up and make it better and fix it and the reality is that isn't always

possible and certainly not the way you should do it so you know even running a company myself I think a lot about these kinds of things we go through a financial audit you know you get interviewed about fra and all that stuff so I think it's a really compelling product I I heard about it um here in the US through our sort of tech uh you know sort of updates and I was like oh that's so fascinating because it to your point doesn't feel like there's been modern versions of being able to handle this solution properly and I really like the way you framed sort of like flagging

and prioritizing High consequence things that need investigation and then using the platform for secure investigation I can only imagine I've read a lot of murder mysteries I guess this isn't exactly the same but like the number of details it have to be figured out I'm married du awor too so you know through that kind of Discovery there just can't be a small number of things um and certainly to have them not all in one place must be a disaster so I feels revolutionary from that perspective as well um and I'm actually kind of curious pav you know as you sort of self

announced I am uh you know I Am The Whistleblower from wire card what is somebody do when they wake up in the morning and say like today's the day you know do they click the link do they make a phone call like when they interacting with your new product and they feel like today is the day to blow the whistle how do they do it well they just click the link and they can either register their email they can use whatever email they want and password some a lot of people might not find that being too comfortable um but what they could also

do is still make the report but they'll have a magic key associated with the report so they'll always have access to it and what's the beauty of that is that even if they're no longer in the company or they're fired or or any other reason they they still have access to that report with that magic key um and in that way it doesn't prevent the situation like you know I no longer have access to my report and what's going to happen and then it becomes like a he said she said kind of thing or you know just Executives running around wondering how to delete that stuff um and remove

all traceability so so that's where uh and the power is also there because once the report is launched in accordance with like the EU directive um if you're in the EU you would have seven days to acknowledge formally that the to the to the person reporting and you're given three months to you know respond with a detailed report back to the Whistleblower so how you going to do that how you managing that it's very Dynamic you can have that encrypted chat the person could also if they don't want to type out stuff they could leave a

WhatsApp style kind of voice recording which will be overlaid with a different voice and also transcribed because you know often like perhaps if you're working in a mining company um you don't really have access to like a keyboard and wanting to type all that stuff out so that's where it's going to be very useful and that's why over reporting in certain industries is a benefit um like if you're in healthcare you're in mining you want people to be over reporting right you because certain consequences that might appear innocuous or someone's unsure of could have real you know life

and death situations or Consequences on people so yeah it's very different like say from Financial Services in that sense I'm sure it is it's very interesting one more from meav I suppose um it's probably a fair assumption to make that anyone who has been a whistleblower or perhaps is on the journey to to considering making that step would see complete value in in your product in your platform and in feeling more safe and secure and and and trusted during this process one of my reservations is around

you know how how do you get very large organizations who perhaps don't necessarily have the culture already to buy into this themselves cuz ultimately they're the ones who almost have to subscribe to your your product and unfortunately it's not it's not the whistleblowers who who get to choose it so how do you address those cultural barriers I think the way to address it is really to not focus on solely EMP you know employee empowerment because a lot of people like to talk about those things but Executives and companies in

general just pay lip service to it in my rather cynical view everyone is like yeah we like this thing but do you really want to be you know do do how many Executives out there like the union style like oh Pro employee let's speak up thing so what are you trying to what we trying to do is done it around right we're trying to tell the executives look you need to stop getting taken by surprise because if you don't evolve you don't step up the game if you're dealing with people like gen Z these are not you know the new generation is not someone you can say you know keep quiet keep your head down do as you're told and go

home what they'll end up doing is like oh sorry could you repeat what you just said and they'll take out their mobile phone and record you and you on Tik Tok right so that's why we got to evolve with it we got to show the risk of not having the solution to Executives and even if that means saving money on a sanction right you're telling say a bank you need this solution because you want to prevent you want to minimize external whistleblowing because once it goes out you got a PR nightmare you got legal nightmare you got audit nightmare right

and Regulatory nightmares so just have something like that deal with it minimize those unnecessary expenditure don't being reactive all the time be proactive um and it would be in your benefit for the Long Haul and P just just one final one for me and then I will move this on what about Bad actors and and if we look at a wire card or say an FTX for example where that's all the way you know that's at the executive level how do you how do you sort of account for that or do we just need to accept that you're just always going to have a certain number of Bad actors in

the system I mean you're always going to have really messed up companies but I think the difference with confide is in a in a strange way it benefits them because uh it benefits them in a good way right because what's happening is if you're super fraudulent as as a board or as a management team and you've got a solution like confide in place what's actually happening is you're doing a gap analysis on how obvious your fraud is to your own employees the only difference is now you can't go take revenge on them because you don't know who they are so

either you stop doing what you're doing or you like super refine your fraud game right uh is really like one of those two things and also what's more powerful is that you also know that you know the fact that your employees or your vendors are talking about this it's in that system it's immutable you can't do anything about it the audit Trail is there so you really need to now go fix it so I think in that way it's it's really you know putting Bad actors on notice as well and with these things

there's always a trend I mean like two two three years ago no one in their wildest imagination would think that candidates will be asking prospective employees how many trees you're planting and stuff right but it happened it's a movement it's a trend and it's a same for why can it not be for a speakup solution why are candidates not asking potential employers what speakup tool are you using what's your whistleblowing policy and and all these things because that's keeping them safe so that's putting the G as I like to say back in ESG yeah nice yeah and the g is super

important and actually that's a really interesting lens um so thank you for that um and actually also I suppose for me really underscores the importance of like the encryption and privacy elements of the platform um pav thank you so much for uh sort of talking us through it um I feel like you've given us a really good understanding of of of sort of the problem space and and and how it's going to address it so thank you for that um all right we're just going to take a very quick pause here and we'll be back very

shortly okay welcome back before we get back into the second half of the news a note to go check out our most recent fintech Insider Insight show in this episode 11fs CEO David Breer and CTO you and silver get together to discuss cobal which if you're not familiar is the programming language that basically Powers the entire Financial system they discuss if it's still fit for purpose after 60 years the challenges of migrating away from cobal and the opportunities this presents to newer Banks and startups so go check that out

in our podcast feed it's the one just below this one um so now we will get back into the news now this next story comes from finextra uh with the headline Google pay to shut down in the US so in a restructure of IT services Google pay will be permanently replaced by Google Wallet in the US the current Google pay app will disappear on June 4th many features will still be available in Google Wallet including tapping to pay in stores and managing payment methods how however PTP payments will be

discontinued Google Wallet has already replaced Google pay in many countries since it's relaunch in 20202 but now they are finally making the switch in the US in order to simplify the app experience so Stephanie it feels right to kind of come to you first on this one because you're sort of our resident us payments expert um what's your sort of uh read on this what's what's driving it from Google's perspective well first of all like imagine being a consumer in the US standing at point of sale and the

point of sale device is run by square but it's offering all the various forms of payment sort of at the moment Google pay Apple pay cash app like swipe your card as a consumer you're kind of like overload right so I think that's just important to like set the stage we have a lot of ways to pay and check out um I also think you know it's always been a question should Fang including Google and you know everybody that's in that bigger category Facebook you know Amazon

play a role in payments question mark so I don't know I don't personally use Google pay um I'm an apple you know user so I'm not on Android um but I think what I sense is happening is that the uptick in utilization of cash app which generally crosses over with more of an Android profile so I think there's some socioeconomic and sort of consumer profile you know Trends here that you would analyze um is probably high enough that the peer-to-peer component for example and some of the other key things

that people were relying on have been displaced um so you know it is kind of interesting but on the other hand Google pay and Google Wallet have never driven sort of wild outcomes headline worthy and I think that's probably kind of underpinning some of this decision to Sunset change and sort of refocus their strategy while it sounds like keeping the wallet product itself yeah the point about um the PTP element and that sort of falling away in the face of like Fierce competition from cash app and

venmo and all of that sort of stuff right that's not very surprising nen I thought the point about that sort of overload in terms of those options uh checkout was really interesting and I suppose it doesn't feel like Google has gone after payment in the same way as um maybe apple and some of these some of these other big players yeah exactly and I suppose just just building on the point of overload I I I did a quick Google on on Google pay versus Google wallet versus etc etc earlier and I must say just just reading one article as

well around I suppose goog Google's story you know they they started with Google Wallet I think over over 10 years ago and then it became Android pay and then it became Google pay and then it went back to Google Wallet and so I think that's also really important like Stephanie set the scene with the Overload at checkout there's also from me as an outsider because similarly I use apple I feel like there's the overload in well well what was it what has it become and what is it actually trying to do and I think ultimately you know Google Wallet if if I'm referring

to it correctly now and and an apple wallet are solving a a kind of very very similar problem ultimately you know it's a One-Stop shop to to store your different secure documents which could include payment cards and then you're able to actually use your phone just just to tap out at um at kind of the point of sale I think in the UK especially it's become completely part of the way in which payments are made here I was reflecting on it earlier as well and everything I do now is through my phone

I can't actually tell you the last time I had my wallet in my handbag and I well I actually can tell you because I went to the post office last week and I had to do something uh very old-fashioned which was get a postal order um to to send off to get a new driving license basically that that's how I had to pay for my new driving license via postal AUD when I also first heard about this I had to actually Google what what a postal order was but anyway I then got got to the post office to to do this and they said sorry we only take cash and I

actually felt quite uh bere I said oh well C can I draw cash using my my phone using you know my my Apple pay they're like no no sorry so I think it also just highlights the yeah kind of just the evolution of of the payments landscape and going back to I guess the decision to to Sunset to Sunset Google pay in in in favor of Google Wallet I think it does make sense because this overload in terms of of optionality ways ways of doing things um also gets too much you know we often hear from from customers I

just I just want a simple way to manage my money I have this to do that this to do that and and this to do that and I like that separation that compartmentalization so if you know especially in the US consumers are already using cash app or venmo then there's not really a need for the kind of PTP element of of Google so I think strategically it it makes sense from that perspective you make you make a lot of really interesting points I love the point that you made about actually maybe the fact that Google haven't been able to find product Market fit with this this particular proposition is actually

a lot to do with their own sort of identity crisis and sort of you know the the the all of that but then um I think the point around maybe actually that um that space where they can play that the sort of the the really core use case is just sort of firmed up right in terms of like it is about sort of being able to tap your phone to pay and like we are all I'll do you one better I went to desk A Car Rental Desk in Ireland to pick up a car that I had booked having flown over there so that I could drive to visit my parents only to be told that

you can't rent a car without your driver's license and my driver's license was in my wallet back in the UK which isn't very helpful um so yeah lots of lots of great points um pav um we talk a lot about the role of the Gaffers the fangs whatever you want to call them these big Tech Giants moving into financial services and you know we are starting to obviously see them come in in a big way with like the likes of Apple card and all of that sort of stuff but do you think it's something that I

suppose the big established Banks should be concerned about in terms of like really getting disrupted by these these big Tech Giants I think it's just back to this the the fintech issue we've had a few years ago right where there was the same question posed just whether just in the reverse like whether these small companies these fintex would be disrup ING Banking but I think what's ironic is with all the stuff that's happened since then especially say you know if you want to use an extreme example of fintech the crypto space

right I think ironically what's happened in the last two last one year uh one and a half years is that people seem to be trusting Banks even more again um because of things like deposit insurance and all these other things which come with banking products I don't know how much I guess that the thing that the big tech company might bring is the more I would say the ability to sexify um you know financial transaction and linking that with the products that they're offering uh you know whether

it's through gamification or it's through Rewards or anything I think uh or just added benefits I think that's where Banks might find a bit of a challenge um in in trying to match those sure and I think when you think about you know especially Apple's a good example and you know everything that they do on the the user experience inside but actually I think the point that you rais about um trust in the current climate when you think about a cost of living crisis where people are really feeling the squeeze and we've seen people you know revert back

actually to just having cash and paying for things in cash because it's easier to manage something that you can physically hold and see um where you're doing so I think um yeah absolutely look I think this is one that um will run and run I think we've probably actually done quite a good job of um making sense of it this wasn't one of my favorite stories when I saw in the show notes but actually I feel like I've uh I've grown to like it as we've as we've uh gone through discussing it um but I am going to move us on um to our next story uh so

chime partners with Zogo to improve financial literacy so banking app chime is partnering with financial education platform Zogo to bring a suite of Education resources to its members Zogo offers bite-sized gamified lessons where users can earn real rewards like gift cards Charity donations and more and now all chime members have fee free access to more than 25 lesson modules using the Zogo app chime users can explore helpful calculators budgeting tools and

educational modules covering a range of skills including saving and spending insurance and taxes uh quote by leveraging zogos engaging learning modules and tools we're not just educating we're revolutionizing access to financial Health says kirat or head of corporate social impact at chime now we got hold of Sara L am for VP of community at chime who said this time is the most loved banking app

and it continues to be one of the most downloaded banking apps in the country we're revolutionizing access to financial education by meeting members where they're already doing most of their learning on their phones Zogo shares that Tech forward approach making lessons that are are engaging fun and best of all truly helpful with time these lessons pay off in more way than one way allowing users to earn cash rewards while learning time is on a focused mission to unite Everyday People to unlock Financial progress starting with our awardwinning products but also with

programs and resources that help them get ahead including through financial education in this zoga partnership we see supporting our members financial literacy not just as a service we provide but as a part of our responsibility to them by empowering our customers to have confidence in their ability to make informed decisions they take even more control of their financial situation and whatever situation that is we're here to support whether someone's just starting their journey and needs to learn about debt management or wants to maybe build their credit further an increase in knowledge

is going to propel them forward okay naen so I love this and I am absolutely passionate and I talk about it a lot that we should all be doing more to really strive for you know giving people greater tools and education managing their sort of financial literacy and building their confidence better habits and behaviors it's a tricky thing to get right though isn't it absolutely and I think you know

I've seen it before positioned as responsibility you know what is the responsibility of financial services providers in ensuring that they do provide financial literacy education to their customers I think I would reframe it as an opportunity because ultimately if you think back to a time where you needed help or support and you received that from someone and the feeling that you then felt towards that person or institution you know you you trust them now because they have actually helped to

deliver value to you in some way so I really think that not only is it absolutely like corporate responsibility but there's a massive opportunity there with if you can educate you know not just the next generation of of young people who are now beginning to to learn about money but even those in later stages of Life who still perhaps feel slightly unsure about certain Concepts or terms or or elements of their financial life there's such an opportunity to create that trust and

Garner that that loyalty from from your customers so I think it's I also feel super passionate about it actually and and when I was reading the story early it reminded me I previously worked um at Barkley before coming here Barkley's had an initiative called code playground and it was essentially helping Educators whether that was teachers in the classroom or parents wanting to educate their their kids on something about coding and so obviously slightly different to to financial literacy but still along the theme of how how do we

actually equip the Next Generation with the tools and information they need to succeed later in life so as you said Ross it's very hard but I think it starts simple you know you really just have to look at what are those base modules or components that that people need to know about and how do we deliver it in an engaging way perhaps using tools that you know gen Zed are already very familiar with we again do a lot of customer research speak to a lot of customers in that gen Zed profile who go

to Tik Tok they receive a lot of their financial education through Tik Tok and I think on the one hand and that's fantastic because if they are learning things that they would otherwise not have learned then great but of course on the other hand it's it's around well are they actually getting trustworthy sound financial advice and how do you perhaps play a role in that as as The Trusted provider yes it might not be as as exciting or as glamorous or as as sexy as the Tik Tok videos but actually if you can equip someone with knowledge

that then results in a positive outcome I think you are really well placed to kind of gone of that trust and loyalty I think that's such a key problem right which is like where where does trusted advice come from so I'm actually uh though we spend all of our time today on payments I'm actually a certified financial planner by training I maintain my designation I spent most of the early part of my career in financial advice and when I saw this news I was super excited because if you overlay the profile of at least the existing chime customer not necessarily the future

customer um with their financial literacy background you're generally going to find people who have had little to no financial literacy exposure in their lifetime and most financial literacy has passed down essentially from Mom and Dad so if you were in a household that like got in debt you probably get in debt it's like a learned behavior or you skew so you don't ever get in debt you're like the opposing opposite of what you were raised with and like most people would come to financial planning meetings and say like my uncle told me to do X right a family member is like

the most trusted person or now generationally speaking of course social media provides for that but a lot of that is ultimately a derivative of products to buy and there's sort of disadvantages to listening to people who have not necessarily a negative ulterior motive but a financial motive to get you to do a certain thing right versus the fiduciary side of it which is advice only in the best interest of the individual and let's be honest the basics of what we call or what I call Basic Financial Security have not

changed cash savings in case of emergency retirement because you will get older and you will stop working like simple stuff you know life insurance things like that staying on a budget so it's really exciting because I think it does seem like a great Avenue for delivery of relevant information and insights that can fundamentally change people's not only spending Behavior but comfort with and interest in let's say putting a little bit into a high yield savings or a little bit into

an investment account generational wealth transfer is how one segment of the US population stays wealthy and in the 99% there isn't generational wealth transfer by and large so you have to create wealth and these are really important opportunities to figure out how to do that especially now I read a a an article um this week about how Millennials are on track to become the single richest generation in history and it's purely driven by you know the

expected generational wealth transfer overin next sort of 20 years or so um so getting this right now is is absolutely key and I so identify Stephanie with your point about um people turning to family members in the absence of you know I think it's like understanding but I do come back to that point about confidence like some people actually are very good at just getting that sort of holistic view of their finances across all of their accounts and maybe identifying some of

the tasks and actions that they need to do to to to improve their own financial position but they don't then back themselves to actually go out and do those things and I think again that just comes from you just not learning about it when we were young like you said is it the right thing to do one thing um and P would be interesting to get your thoughts on this that stands out to me in um what we heard from Sara in her voiceover was that she said we see supporting our our financial literacy

not just as a service we provide but as a part of our responsibility to them and I think that speaks to me around trust and Stephanie I think you touched on it like this isn't about us selling you a service p in terms of this being a success how important is it that it's positioned in this way like part of our responsibility to the customer and sort of partnering with them to to to help them improve I think that goes a long way and you don't see that very often um you know I'm coming at it from maybe the

more of the risk legal aspect but that's really huge like financial literacy and with those concepts of risk and what you're actually getting into what you're not getting into you know if we look at the insurance example um a lot of these people they just buy products and they don't understand why they then can't benefit from them so I think what is happening here is is actually taking that next step to actually explain and promote that literacy which is something very very lacking in my

view in the banking and insurance space in fact there are probably drivers that work the other way which is you don't want in the insurance space people being super masters of what the insurance contract says right you actually there there are reports where I mean we we all know that there are incentives in place for um for people working in insurance companies for example to minimize insurance claims right so I think that kind of like goes against a lot of these things so what's being done here um is

by by doing the opposite you're actually telling your employees we are in this journey with you and we want to be in this journey with you um and in fact we will actually reward you financially for that um even though it's in small you know but very nice ways with the gift cards and everything so I think that's quite something which will resonate with um with with people I think and that's how that's a beautiful way built your brain I think the other thing that your comment that perhap made me think around is um one of the other things that's so

important when it comes to financial literacy and education especially for that kind of 99% of the population that Stephanie was speaking about who are you know starting from a you know nothing or a very low base is around providing content in digestible and kind of bite-sized chunks and that's what I really liked as well when I was looking on on the Zogo website is that it feels manageable it doesn't feel like I'm going to think oh gosh this just this just confirms that I know nothing this

is far too overwhelming and I'm not even going to bother you know I think that's so important as well when it when it comes to not scaring people away not using too much jargon just really meeting them on kind of their terms and and helping them on that Journey yeah I think that's a really good point because even in say you know the anti-money laundering space to use an example or any kind of training right you have training even in let's not talk about the noral population but in professional settings you know no one really like I

don't know anyone that likes to sit through a 20-minute training session on anti-money laundering right but yet the same people will go back and they'll watch a 10 episode Netflix crime documentary but how do we then bring the two together right how do we bring compelling um lessons and modules and training aspects that would actually engage and have an impact you know you want the you want the person engaged as well and I think that's what's being done in a very strategic way here it's

so true there has to be some sort of overlap between like Financial like financially educational content and like true crime documentaries like what is what sits in the middle of that V diagram I completely agree um but I think one of the things and I'll end on this that is really exciting about this is if they get it right just the sheer potential down to um Chimes reach um in the market and the the the number of customers that they could reach and the impact they could have there so um definitely one that we'll keep an eye on

um okay now for a quick look at some of our more uh click worthy news this week this one comes from finextra with the headline EU forly adopts instant payment rules a couple of weeks ago uh we covered that the news that the European Parliament had agreed to new proposals to improve instant payments in the Euro Zone well the EU have now formally adopted these new rules which will see the introduction of quote 10c transfers the new rules mean Euro payments must be processed immediately regardless of day

or time additionally payment service providers or PSPs will also be required to offer the service of sending and receiving instant payments in Euro at no extra charge there will also be an obligation on providers to verify the match between the iban and the name of the beneficiary provided by the payer uh these rules it is hoped will make Euro payments more accessible more affordable and more secure now I have as Fel would say like zero notes on this I think this

is just a really positive step forward um I think we've all known for basically the last 500 years that the correspondent banking model just inherently doesn't work it's risky it's slow and it's a really poor experience for like all parties involved so I think this is a really exciting step forward for like um International payments across the Euro Zone um and yeah we're just one that will uh love to see sort of get rolled out um and get off and running um and now it's time for the and

finally section of the show a look at something more offbeat from the news so this one comes from Sky News um with a headline the Tooth Fairy hit by inflation as the average cost of a gift triples so according to research from Delta Dental the US national average for a tooth fairy gift has increased from $2 to over $6 since 2001 the poll revealed that some children have received items including video games and even an iPhone as I like

okay that's just that blows my mind so apparently parents or tooth fairies are competing for bragging rights this includes chidera from the UK who gave her daughter 60 hand a silver fairy necklace and a Louis Vuitton bracelet however many people like Natasha Evans from Chesire are sticking to tradition and are still moderately sane she gave her daughter three one

pound coins and two chocolate coins to share with her sister when she lost her first tooth wow pav how about a how about an iPhone from the Tooth Fairy yeah would probably have a whole closet of designer clothes by now um at that young age if that was the case uh I I don't know what can we say just is this a sign of the times or I don't I mean Stephanie your your reaction when I read out the Louis Vuitton bracelet was was priceless

I mean what's your what's your what's your pick of those gifts that are coming through from the the Tooth Fairy so I don't think I'd do the Louis vuon bracelet for my kids but I will say I have a six and a half and eight and a half year old so we're losing a lot of teeth over here my husband masquerades as Zoe and Zoe is our Tooth Fairy she has 225 sisters um wow and they all take care of New York and the globe because of course you know there's a lot of ground to cover as a fery and it has worked out that most of the time we have money lying around but not always US dollars so I guess if you do some fxs

we're probably overpaying ourselves um but it usually comes with a nicely narrated printed story so she can't discern that my husband's handwriting was actually used here and then he even goes so far as to um find glitter in the cupboard and glue and make them sparkly so it's quite the event at our house there's no Louis Vuitton jewelry being given but there's a pen pal status now between the kids and their tooth fairy so um yes hey this

is I'm loving this this is way better than an iPhone like this is interactive plus you're teaching your kids F send you a letter yeah please do please dude and you're teaching your kids FX trading right with all of that farming currency that's right they've got pounds they've got some dollars from Vietnam I brought them something from Serbia although they didn't know that that's where I got it yeah um so yes they're certainly they're getting they're stockpiling some good um currency Investments and some FX opportunities for down the road it plays into the like 225 sisters that work

around the globe as well right because they're getting currency from everywhere nine sorry go ahead no I I just said I I'm I'm seeing a real opportunity here for for a new linking the previous story around Financial education to two theories you know let let's reframe this why why should we give kids money let's give them educational materials and get them to complete a task when when they lose their teeth well my daughters even gave money back one time like a few pennies or whatever they could come up with around the house and uh Zoe

promised the kids she would use it to buy chocolate so we've got quite the dialogue going over here about tooth fairies I don't think there's going to be too many kids that give the Tooth Fairy change no not probably especially not if it's Louis Vuitton I mean you know that's tough or an iPhone I never I never quite know what to expect with those uh those stories at the end of the show but I have to say that was a particularly good one um all right but that does wrap up this week's fintech Insider news um guys thank you

so much it was a really fun show really fun recording let's go around and just um if you could tell us a little bit about where people could find out more about Stephanie how about we we start with you yes we're uh happy to chat all things faster and better payments and all things instant bank account verification you can find us at hello.io or just come hit our website or. um and let's have a conversation excellent how about you pav well if it's confi related you could find it at www.con platform.com

um but if it's whistleblowing related or you just need you know someone to bounce ideas off then I'm always on LinkedIn excellent thanks pav and nen how about you yes similarly on LinkedIn so feel free to connect putp me a message if there's anything specific you want to chat about excellent and as for me I am still on X hanging out with just the last of the Bots and the trolls at Ros gallager 07 um and thank you all for listening do join the conversation on

social media or email podcastfast.com thanks very much and goodbye