Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 32 - Inside Pismo: From Cloud-Native Challenger to VISA acquisition and what comes next, with CEO Vishal Dalal

Transcript

Ep. 32 - Inside Pismo: From Cloud-Native Challenger to VISA acquisition and what comes next, with CEO Vishal Dalal · The Payments Shed

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Payment Shed Podcast, the weekly podcast that
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  dives into the big. Topics, trends, and people
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  shaping the world's of. Payments, fintech and business
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  leadership with your two Co hosts myself.
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  Grant Evans and Justin Hannah. Welcome to the Payment Shed
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  podcast. I'm your host Grant Evans,
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  joined by my Co host Justin Hannah as ever.
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  And today, we are very lucky to be joined by Vishal Delal,
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  Global CEO of Pismo. Michelle, welcome to the show.
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  Thank you very much for having me.
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  We'd just like to find out, I guess before we kick off, we'd
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  like to find a little bit about our guests and their kind of
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  history and financial services in business and and then we'll
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  obviously get into your career in Pismo.
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  Sure. Yeah, I've, I've, you know, I've
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  been with Prismo for five years now.
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  You know, I started off as employee number one outside
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  Brazil. My remit was to take Prismo
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  outside Brazil. Before joining Prismo, I was a
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  partner at McKenzie and Company for 10 years and before that
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  spent 14 years implementing core banking and payment platforms,
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  largely at City and then Barclays.
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  And then for that, started out as a software engineer like most
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  of us I guess. And you've, you've obviously
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  built that career across large financial institutions, global
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  markets. What experiences that you took
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  from those prior roles kind of prepared you for this CEO role
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  at Pismo, do you think? Yeah, I do think about that
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  question now in retrospect that, you know, the journeys turned
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  out to be successful. And the way I like to think
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  about it is for the 1st 14 years of my career, I sort of did the
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  stuff. So implemented core banking and
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  payment platforms. Then for 10 years I talked about
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  it. And so I think when this
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  opportunity came, it was almost an opportunity to put everything
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  that I knew into practice, right.
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  So it was almost as if I was saying to myself, you know,
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  you've done this stuff for 14 years, hands on, you've spoken
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  about it for 10 years. Can you now run a business and,
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  you know, put your money where your mouth is, right?
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  And see if everything that you did validates itself, right?
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  So I looked at it like that. So I think everything helped.
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  You know, obviously being hands on with the technology and
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  implementing it and seeing how it actually works in a bank was,
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  you know, existentially life changing.
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  But then I think the McKinsey stint was also very important
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  because you got to discuss, right or sort of talk about all
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  of this from many different points of view.
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  All I was doing earlier was implementing it, which was
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  obviously important. But then here, you know, you got
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  to sort of attack the problem from many different points of
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  view. So, you know, you would sort of
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  have one problem where, for example, someone wanted to buy a
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  core banking platform and you had to sort of, you know, think
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  about how should they evaluate it?
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  Or you had a regulator coming to you saying, you know, my top
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  five banks have like legacy core banking platforms.
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  How should I think about it as a risk?
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  Or you know, you sort of had, for example, you know, various
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  selection processes, right. So you got to sort of look at it
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  from every different point of view and, and I think that was
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  invaluable as well, right? So.
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  I think Brazil's a really interesting country at the
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  moment as well and and LATAM in general there's, it seems to me
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  like the next big emerging breakout fintech market.
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  Was that something you kind of considered before taking the
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  role as well? I did you know, if you, if you
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  sort of read the literature around what's happening and, and
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  you know, Prismos started, we'll talk about it more obviously,
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  but Prismos started off as a payments platform.
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  Now it's a payments and a banking platform, but I think in
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  many ways Brazil like, you know, fortuitously seems like, you
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  know, almost the right place to start it off from, right?
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  Very advanced payments ecosystem.
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  They have pics, right? Very similar to India's UPI.
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  Obviously, India has much higher volumes, but in terms of digital
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  maturity, in terms of sophistication, in terms of how
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  important it has been to the economy over there and
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  transforming the economy over there, right?
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  You couldn't have start asked for a better sort of, you know,
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  starting place essentially. So that was #1 2nd, if you think
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  about it, you know, your competition tends to force you
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  to be the best version of yourself.
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  And you know, we grew up, for example, with all of our clients
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  saying, you know, can you be as good as New Bank or can you help
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  us get as good as new bank? Because new bank was sort of
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  coming up at that point in time. So everything in that respect
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  now, you know, just looking at it retrospectively seems to have
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  been exactly the right ingredient, right?
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  I don't know if this would have worked in another country as a
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  startup, right? And how do you think working
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  across different regions and organizations shaped you how you
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  scaled that business as the first employee outside of
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  Brazil? You're very honestly, when I,
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  when I started, I had no idea what I was basically doing
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  right. I, I mean, I had all of that
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  experience. Well, no, I mean, you know, we
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  actually, I remember a conversation, you know, we had
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  with the founders thing. So what are the countries we
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  should go to 1st, right. And logical question to us,
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  because I was the CEO for sort of outside Brazil.
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  We were starting off with literally a clean slate.
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  I just had my laptop and nothing else, right?
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  You know, and so we, we were sort of thinking as
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  simplistically as, OK, let's go over the countries which meet 4
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  criteria. 1 is, you know, they have to speak either English or
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  Spanish or Portuguese because that's all our engineers
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  understand to sort of, you know, they have the volumes because we
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  are a SAS platform, we charge on volume basis.
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  So they have either the volumes or the, or, you know, or they
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  won't haggle about the price. So for example, India makes a
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  lot of sense. You have like 1 billion people,
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  600 million debit cards in force, right?
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  The volumes are there highly sophisticated payments
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  infrastructure like UPI. So you know, we basically just
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  had a list of three or four criteria saying, OK, you know,
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  we don't know any better. This is what we're going to
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  stake our future on. And so we literally then just
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  learnt as we went along, right? We won our first client in
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  India, I think three months after I joined, which is very
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  quick. It gave me the confidence that I
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  could sell. I hadn't sold anything before in
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  my life apart from myself as part of consulting, right?
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  So, you know, and a lot of those moves worked out, right?
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  So we got our first client in India fairly quickly.
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  Then we said, OK, let's look for approximate market which meets
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  those criteria. Australia came up on the
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  horizon. We sort of won our client in
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  Australia very quickly. And then you know, obviously we
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  won city, which changed us as a company, right.
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  So, so I think we learned quite a lot, but I think we took very
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  cautious first steps, right, very simplistic, very cautious
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  first steps and said, let's sort of see if this works and then
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  we'll pivot if needed. And I guess if we're kind of
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  level settling for then people that don't know Pismo, what,
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  what is your role and kind of your ambition in the the
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  financial services ecosystem? Yeah.
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  I mean, yeah. So for those of your listeners
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  who are not aware as to what Prismo does, Prismo is a cloud
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  native core banking and cards processing platform.
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  I think in very simplistic terms, that's a bit like saying
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  you're the hard brain and lungs of a bank, right?
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  In, in many ways in, in terms of so, you know, so every time you
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  deal with a bank, right? Every time you're either taking
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  a loan or sort of putting a deposit in place or swiping a
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  card or going to an ATM or asking for a statement.
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  Does this giant piece of software at the back which
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  essentially does all the work, it's priced in the old days it
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  was priced like that as well, right?
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  So a typical implementation would equal the cost of about 5
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  fighter jets, but a large implementation would sort of
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  equal the cost of an aircraft carrier, right?
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  So you're talking about like billions of dollars.
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  And we set up with the notion of democratizing that a little,
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  right? It's almost bring down the cost
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  to the cost of, let's say, a small fleet of cars, right,
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  Rather than like 5 fighter jets. And obviously, some things
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  helped, right? One is the SAS model, right?
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  The growth of the cloud. So theoretically, anyone with a
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  credit card could sort of now own their own core banking
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  platform. And we, you know, with our
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  architecture enabled that. So I think that was #1 #2 I
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  think was the fact that, you know, we saw, I guess, and, and
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  as many people see the end of legacy architectures sort of
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  coming. Obviously, you know, legacy
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  architectures are still 9798%, but at least a tipping point has
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  been reached and it's going up. We saw that coming and we wanted
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  to be sort of the ones in place for that.
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  So just in terms of aims, I think we want to be the
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  platform, the core platform of choice for the large financial
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  institutions, right? We started off like most of our
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  competitors, you know, servicing Greenfield builds like, you
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  know, small digital banks and sort of, you know, small
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  fintechs. But I think when the pandemic
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  hit, we just, we sort of realized that we needed a bit of
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  a reset, right? You know, the, the, the large
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  banks were where the money was. And so we made some very
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  conscious choices, right? Architecturally, we invested a
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  lot in our ability to migrate back books, large back books
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  from sort of legacy platforms to sort of modern platforms.
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  And we're starting to see the, you know, the sort of fruit.
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  What was the sales cycle differential with making that
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  pivot though? It's yeah, The sales cycles
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  haven't yet changed. I think on average for a mega
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  bank you're talking about a Fortune 50 bank.
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  It still takes about a year and a half.
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  That's not too bad. That's not too bad.
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  Yeah, I think that's terrible. Oh no, no, I it isn't.
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  It's it's a huge improvement, but I think, you know, for us,
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  if we were just Pismo, I think we wouldn't have been able to
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  withstand like a one 1 1/2 year payment, you know, sale cycle if
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  that's all we were doing. So we did have to adopt A rock
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  Pebble, sort of, you know, your. Short term wins in your long
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  term. You mentioned that kind of about
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  the problems that legacy card processes and core banking
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  platforms have. Why have they taken so long to
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  make these changes? Like why are they still on
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  mainframe for example? I think mainframes, you know,
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  again, just to be very honest, do serve a purpose, right?
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  They're essentially very stable, right?
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  You know, you know, they'll just keep running in the background,
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  which is what core platforms were supposed to do in the in
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  the back in the day, right? You know, they were just
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  supposed to run. They were supposed to process,
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  you know, don't sort of do anything crazy, right?
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  Just sort of, you know, reliably come up with statements and
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  things like that. I think what's happened is the
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  role of these core platforms are now changed, right?
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  I think, you know, people sort of want product release much
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  faster. So back in the day when I was
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  growing up, and I'm pretty old, right?
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  You know, right, back in the day when I was growing up, if you
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  wanted to release a new credit card product, it would normally
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  take from start to finish for a bank about 14 to 16 months,
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  right? Because some of it was limited
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  by the technology, right? A lot of it was limited by
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  technology. The 1st deployment we did with
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  Pismo, we released from a standing start in a new country,
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  a credit card product. We had nothing, just the
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  contract, we didn't have the infrastructure or the switch,
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  nothing. We released a new product in 45
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  working days, right? So you see the difference from
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  sort of, you know, that's something that people sort of,
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  you know, still take time to get used to, right?
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  You know, it still takes time to process.
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  So you have to remember two or three things are happening in
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  the background. 1 is that to take the business logic from
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  those platforms and to convert it to an API, cloud native
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  architecture is not as easy as it looks.
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  It takes time, right, to then fine tune it to the needs of a
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  bank, right? For example, if an AWS region
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  goes down because we deploy in the cloud the ability to shift
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  seamlessly to another one. So that's like, again, very high
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  precision engineering that takes time.
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  The third thing is that the people who are evaluating these
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  platforms in the banks have now been exposed to this.
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  They still look at all of these systems through the lens of what
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  they were used to earlier, right?
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  So they'll sort of still expect to, for example, see a screen
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  where they can configure interest rates, whereas we work
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  primarily through APIs, right? So it takes time to sort of, you
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  know, mental change of mental model to evaluate these
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  platforms differently. That's really interesting.
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  I think it's something that we constantly see as a miss in
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  start-ups where they've got this amazing API product, but they
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  completely forget that their target audience to sell that
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  product into often has huge volumes of legacy systems
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  infrastructure that that thing has to fit into.
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  And you often see start-ups panicking and working backwards
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  to try and make this shiny product something that may be
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  slightly less shiny, but it will plug into that architecture.
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  Exactly. And even they're thinking,
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  right? I think I would say, you know,
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  you asked what my role was, I would say if I strip out all of
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  the fluff, right? If I strip out, you know, sort
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  of everything that I have to say because I'm a CEOI would say 60%
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  of my job is education, right? Education at the CEO level,
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  right? You know, almost evangelizing,
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  but also educating, you know, how these systems are sort of
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  different, why they're different, why they're good, and
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  very honestly, why in some cases they might not be the right
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  solution, right? And that sort of takes time to
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  percolate globally basically. And where does Pismo sit today
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  then? Is it, you know, do you see you
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  guys sitting at that core banking table, the issuing
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  table? Is it something broader?
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  Has that that evolved over time? We started off as a payments
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  platform. So all we were doing at that
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  point was, you know, card issuing essentially, right?
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  But then our first client essentially sort of said, you
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  know, we looked at your APIs, we think you can do sort of banking
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  as well. Could you just define, you know,
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  design a simple current account for us, right?
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  And so we did it, they liked it, and we said, oh, hang on, you
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  know, we could sort of basically do core banking as well, even
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  though there was like a massive intellectual leap, right?
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  A current account is not the same as a Ledger, which is far
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  more complex. But then, you know, just we
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  went, we kept going product by product and you know, in about 2
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  1/2 years, we did have a core banking system and we found out
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  that was good enough to compete with the rest of the world.
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  And now we're sort of doing lending as well, right?
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  So if you look at it, those are the three main product families,
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  right? You know, cards, banking,
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  lending, even the cards and lending are sort of on the asset
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  side. So we typically now cover the
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  entire balance sheet in terms of like, you know, just being the
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  core processing platform. And kind of let's talk about
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  what really put Pismo on the global radar.
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  What would you say in your eyes really got more businesses like
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  the likes of Visa noticing Pismo?
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  So I think a couple of things happened and again, you know,
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  I'd say it was the vision of the founders, you know, and there
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  was also obviously a bit of luck and timing, which is most
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  platforms who are competitors of ours would typically start off
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  with a very small bank, right, and then sort of grow in size.
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  I think we were lucky that our first client was a Fortune 500
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  bank, right? We grew up under their tutelage
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  and patronage. They helped us make the product
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  better, right? They sort of put in place a much
• 14:44
  more, I would say, rigorous standard of acceptance, right?
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  So, you know, we, there's no point in us being inside a
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  Fortune 500 bank if, for example, we can't migrate
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  millions of accounts from their old books to our new books.
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  We had to do that with our first client, right?
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  You know, so, so essentially, you know, we were fortunate
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  enough to sort of start off with a large Fortune 500 client and
• 15:06
  that gave us the credentials, right?
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  It gave us the scars on her back of being able to handle large
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  clients, migrate large clients, etcetera.
• 15:13
  So I think that was #1 obviously this was Brazil based.
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  But then I think what changed it for us very honestly was I think
• 15:22
  in 2022, right when against all expectations, we were chosen by
• 15:27
  City as the global code Ledger for the for 76 countries, right,
• 15:32
  for their transaction banking. And that's sort of at least in
• 15:36
  my mind, marked a tipping point, right?
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  Because it was the first time a Fortune 50 bank had sort of
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  entrusted the core of the core sort of deposit platform to, you
• 15:47
  know, a cloud native platform like ours.
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  And so I think, you know, just being able to sort of say that,
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  you know, we've basically got the experience of working with
• 15:55
  Fortune 500 banks. We can handle any volume you
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  throw at us. We can handle any speed you
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  throw at us. I think that's sort of, yeah, I
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  think, you know, change the game.
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  It sort of brought us to the attention of.
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  So you've got several rocks at that point and a lot of pebbles
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  and then then Visa come knocking on the door and the acquisition
• 16:13
  billion plus, right And a couple of years now as part of the the
• 16:16
  Visa family. Can you maybe explain a little
• 16:19
  bit how that deal kind of evolved in the background, what
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  the the journey was from from then first engaging to you guys
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  actually becoming part of the the Visa family?
• 16:28
  Well, I, it was like pretty quick, I think.
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  So, you know, just, I think in terms of timeline, I think city
• 16:34
  announced start announced us as Vinos I think beginning of 2023.
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  So I think Jan 2023, I think we first started engaging with Visa
• 16:47
  almost immediately after that, right.
• 16:50
  You know, the sort of formal offer I think was made around
• 16:56
  June or July or August 2023 and the transaction was concluded in
• 17:00
  2024. It was pretty quick, right, in
• 17:02
  that sense. So in Jan 15, Jan 2024, like
• 17:05
  almost exactly 2 years now to the date was when I think the
• 17:09
  deal was concluded. And then we went along on the
• 17:13
  integration journey, right? You know, obviously, you know,
• 17:16
  we sort of got ourselves integrated with Visa, that sort
• 17:19
  of has been an ongoing journey. But obviously, you know, you can
• 17:22
  see what they bring to the table in terms of heft, in terms of
• 17:25
  reach, right, in terms of resources, right?
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  And in terms of expertise, in terms of areas where, you know,
• 17:32
  we were sort of pretty small, we couldn't have sort of competed,
• 17:36
  you know, you can see what they bring to the table, right?
• 17:38
  So, so it was like it, it happened pretty quickly.
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  I think they had a pretty good idea as to what they were
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  looking for. And it wasn't just a processing
• 17:46
  platform. You know, I think the feedback
• 17:48
  that we got was they were looking for someone who was
• 17:51
  equally strong in banking, equally strong in real time
• 17:54
  payments, right? We had integrated with PICS in
• 17:56
  Brazil by the time and with UPI in India by the time, right.
• 17:59
  So those things, sort of, yeah. And where do you see maybe the
• 18:05
  competitors to Pismo around future acquisitions from other
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  businesses? I think without sort of getting
• 18:11
  specific what what I think now that I'm sort of, you know, now
• 18:16
  that I can see this for the benefit of hindsight is it
• 18:21
  depends on what your target audience is.
• 18:24
  So if as you know, a provider like ours, if you're essentially
• 18:28
  looking for, you know, if you're sort of for example, if you've
• 18:32
  decided that your target market essentially is like the small
• 18:34
  players, right, essentially doing the fintechs, you know,
• 18:37
  providing a very quick offering with credit cards and things
• 18:40
  like that. I still think the economics
• 18:43
  work, right? But I think if you're sort of
• 18:45
  going to go with a very large bank, the way we sort of decided
• 18:49
  that our future sort of, you know, at least partly with being
• 18:52
  able to get a large banks, I think structurally doesn't work.
• 18:56
  It's essentially a bit like trying to build, you know,
• 19:01
  trying to build, you know, RAF Typhoon fighter jet in a garage
• 19:07
  in sort of Kennington, right? You know, it doesn't work.
• 19:11
  You in addition to sort of actually being able to build the
• 19:14
  plane, you have to sort of be able to show customers that, you
• 19:17
  know, you've got a proper factory, you've got the
• 19:19
  financial heft to sort of, you know, withstand, for example,
• 19:23
  complex core banking deal, right?
• 19:24
  You know, most of them, for example, will have very strict
• 19:27
  insurance requirements. They'll have very strict
• 19:29
  liability requirements, right? And as a fintech, you can't
• 19:32
  handle that, right? Just one sort of liability
• 19:34
  insurance sort of clause would would have, in the old days
• 19:37
  eaten up our entire balance sheet, right?
• 19:39
  So if you've decided that I think your future is there, what
• 19:44
  I see now is that it's very hard to sort of, you know, stand on
• 19:48
  your own 2 legs as a startup, right?
• 19:50
  So I think some amount of consolidation is inevitable,
• 19:54
  right? And I think, you know, clearly
• 19:56
  even from the legacy players sort of point of view, that
• 19:58
  makes sense. I've dealt with a lot of legacy
• 20:01
  players. They understand the importance
• 20:03
  of API architecture, right? But it is extremely hard to
• 20:07
  cannibalize your own cash cow product, right?
• 20:10
  It's extremely hard to sort of say, OK, I've got this legacy
• 20:13
  platform, I'm going to let it stay in place.
• 20:14
  But I'm going to take a team and I'm going to build an API first
• 20:17
  product, right? It's very hard to do it.
• 20:19
  It's much easier to do if you've got like a 60% ready product and
• 20:22
  then you sort of build on top of it.
• 20:24
  So I think my read with whatever sort of I've seen is that I
• 20:30
  think some amount of consolidation will happen.
• 20:32
  Today's episode is sponsored by ISX Financial.
• 20:36
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• 21:11
  financial and a big thank you to the team at ISX for.
• 21:14
  Supporting the show, I guess the Visa acquisition has, when you
• 21:19
  talk about some of the regulation and certain things
• 21:21
  that you have to have in place for servicing certain customers
• 21:24
  as that really beefed up your proposition by taking some of
• 21:28
  those visa licenses regions they may be operating and allow you
• 21:32
  guys to move into new markets quicker as they've been kind of
• 21:34
  an impact in that sense. Well, I think we've always
• 21:38
  network agnostic in a sense, right.
• 21:40
  So I think, you know, we were sort of servicing everything.
• 21:42
  We were servicing MasterCard transactions, Visa transactions,
• 21:45
  fixed transactions, UPA transactions.
• 21:47
  So in that sense we are a pure tech platform.
• 21:50
  We never sort of need a license to operate, right.
• 21:53
  So it's, you know, we're more of a tech fin than a fintech,
• 21:56
  right? So you know, so I think license
• 22:00
  wise not really because we never sort of were a license type
• 22:03
  player. We're just basically the guys
• 22:04
  getting the code platform in place.
• 22:06
  What has obviously helped is, you know, I think logistically,
• 22:10
  right? So you know, for example, we
• 22:13
  don't now have to open an office everywhere, right?
• 22:15
  We don't have to sort of, you know, the reach helps obviously,
• 22:18
  right? You know, introductions to
• 22:20
  banks, you know, earlier we would have like 7 or 8 channels,
• 22:22
  right? You know, we were talking to ex
• 22:24
  consultants. We were sort of trying to sort
• 22:26
  of find out what the best way of getting into this market was.
• 22:29
  All of that is no longer an issue, right?
• 22:32
  So I think it's helped in different ways very immensely,
• 22:36
  but I think not from the licensing point of view, right,
• 22:39
  because we were never sort of regulated license thing.
• 22:41
  We're just a tech platform in a sense.
• 22:43
  We don't hold money processing licenses.
• 22:46
  And how do you keep your existing customers reassured
• 22:49
  that Pismo is going to remain kind of neutral and customer LED
• 22:52
  now you kind of had the acquisition for a big business?
• 22:56
  Well, I think pre acquisition most of our customers were sort
• 23:01
  of not really you know, I mean, you know, most of our customers
• 23:05
  sort of obviously we talked to them right pre acquisition and
• 23:08
  we said, look, this is what we're doing.
• 23:10
  I think the feedback that we got from a lot of them, especially
• 23:13
  because we already had a lot of large customers, was that and
• 23:17
  they would actually be reassured by this, right?
• 23:20
  You know, they sort of, you know, because look, I think
• 23:22
  regulation takes care of a whole lot of the customer neutrality.
• 23:26
  But you know, you can't as an issuing platform say we're just
• 23:28
  going to process one type of transaction and not the other.
• 23:30
  So no one really had a concern there where people were
• 23:34
  concerned was, you know, how long would we last, right?
• 23:38
  You know, you're a startup, you know, volumes are growing up.
• 23:41
  Do you sort of have the operational and the financial
• 23:44
  heft to basically handle, you know, and larger and larger
• 23:48
  volumes, right? And some of a Fortune 50
• 23:50
  customers, it started deflecting in our contracts, right?
• 23:53
  It started reflecting, you know, if you sort of get acquired by
• 23:55
  someone, what do we do right and things like that.
• 23:59
  So I think a lot of them were reassured by the fact that, you
• 24:02
  know, we would be able to, for example, withstand you know,
• 24:06
  adverse events financially, we would be able to sort of lean
• 24:12
  back on a much larger balance sheet, right?
• 24:14
  We would be able to sort of have someone to continuously reinvest
• 24:18
  in the product, right, because they like the initial product.
• 24:20
  But one of the things that people like about us is, you
• 24:23
  know, we make production releases 10 times a day as
• 24:26
  opposed to right, legacy platforms which do it once a
• 24:29
  quarter, but that 10 times a day, right, perfecting that
• 24:32
  pipeline takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of, you know,
• 24:35
  precision engineering, it takes sort of a lot of the ability to
• 24:39
  put money on the cloud providers and say, give me this, right.
• 24:42
  And that's like something that we're doing at rapid speed.
• 24:44
  And a larger customers said, OK, like we are a bit reassured
• 24:48
  that, you know, we know the investment in money will sort of
• 24:50
  always be there. So I think that's the way it's
• 24:53
  sort of we thought it would play out and that's the way it has
• 24:56
  played out, right. So, you know, most of them are
• 24:58
  sort of far more comfortable with this.
• 25:01
  I think we've played a part as well.
• 25:03
  You know, I think my concerns that people had was, as you
• 25:06
  become larger, is your pace of innovation going to slow down,
• 25:09
  right? So instead of making 10 releases
• 25:11
  a day, are you sort of now going to make 4, right?
• 25:14
  4 is still very good, but it's sort of is a negative signal now
• 25:18
  making close to 17 releases a day, right?
• 25:20
  So, yeah, that is breakneck speed.
• 25:23
  That's much more than most banks can absorb.
• 25:25
  What's led to that there was that more personnel headcount?
• 25:27
  Is it technology improvements? I think we sort of started out
• 25:32
  with what I would call a no compromise architecture, right?
• 25:35
  So we did not, for example, release a market, you know,
• 25:39
  release a product into the market unless our CICD pipeline
• 25:43
  was completely automated, right? And so that's something that
• 25:48
  thankfully, I think, you know, we did not compromise on.
• 25:51
  We didn't sort of say let's get the product out, then we'll
• 25:53
  accumulate tech debt and sort of handle all of that later.
• 25:56
  We essentially said, you know, I think the ability to release 10
• 26:00
  times a day is going to be, you know, crucial to our ability to
• 26:03
  move to a new market very quickly.
• 26:04
  So, and our customers are saying it.
• 26:07
  We basically went live in Netherlands with ABN Amro.
• 26:13
  You know, they didn't know us and, you know, so they were
• 26:15
  like, you know, pretty hesitant. I think the only reason they
• 26:18
  sort of signed on was they're like, OK, at least as we sign
• 26:20
  the background. We launched A proposition from
• 26:25
  standing start and this is public news, right?
• 26:28
  And eight weeks flat, right? Eight weeks flat, which is
• 26:30
  unheard of, right at the scale. And you know, Netherlands isn't
• 26:34
  like a side market for even upwards the main market, right?
• 26:38
  We did it for a client in Thailand, right?
• 26:40
  You know, I think they came expecting that we'd be able to
• 26:43
  sort of release in seven or eight months.
• 26:45
  Again, we did a 10 week release with migrated products, right?
• 26:49
  And they were like shocked enough to sort of say, look,
• 26:51
  we'll bang the table for you whenever needed.
• 26:53
  So. So we've played a part there.
• 26:55
  Where, where do you see the biggest growth opportunities
• 26:57
  then for Pismo next 2-3 years? You mentioned all these these
• 27:00
  markets you'd be going into. Where do you see the
• 27:02
  opportunity? I think in terms of speed of
• 27:07
  adoption, I think the fastest option we're seeing is still
• 27:10
  sort of Latin and I would say Southeast Asia, right?
• 27:14
  It's, it's sort of, you know, you know, there are some
• 27:17
  amazingly digitally sophisticated markets over
• 27:19
  there, right? Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore,
• 27:21
  right? And there appetite for this
• 27:25
  technology is insatiable, right? So in terms of speed of
• 27:28
  adoption, it's there obviously in terms of volumes, right?
• 27:31
  You know, it's the US and the EU, right?
• 27:34
  And I think the EU is sort of turning out to be a very happy
• 27:37
  sort of middle ground for us, right?
• 27:38
  You know, they like the technology.
• 27:41
  And you know, I think because the EU is 1 contiguous zone,
• 27:45
  right, in terms of infrastructure, right?
• 27:47
  So if you sort of deploy in one AWS zone anywhere in the EU,
• 27:50
  it's valid anywhere else. I think it's turning out to be a
• 27:53
  happy sort of hunting ground for us.
• 27:55
  And how do you see the evolution of issuing real time processing
• 27:58
  and core infrastructure playing out globally?
• 28:05
  Given the geopolitics, you know, and you know what's happening
• 28:08
  today, I think the one thing that we are seeing is people
• 28:13
  have realized and countries are realizing that payments
• 28:16
  infrastructure is just as important, you know, or if not
• 28:20
  more than for example, any other strategic reserves that you have
• 28:24
  oil road infrastructure, right? Airports infrastructure, energy
• 28:28
  infrastructure, you know, payments was an afterthought,
• 28:31
  not the case anymore, right? I think it's basically sort of
• 28:34
  being elevated to the same level as those things, right?
• 28:37
  And and so we're sort of seeing movement at almost whiplash
• 28:44
  inducing speed, right in most of these countries, right.
• 28:46
  Most of these countries are essentially now sort of starting
• 28:49
  to talk about having their own real time payment system, having
• 28:52
  a payment system which is reasonably insulated from the
• 28:55
  rest of the world and still serve their domestic economy in
• 28:58
  case of adverse events like war and things like that.
• 29:02
  Now we are essentially sort of starting to see the demand for
• 29:07
  low fees and low friction sort of become significant electoral
• 29:11
  issues right in in sort of countries.
• 29:13
  And so most you know, a lot of countries are starting to think
• 29:16
  about basically low cost servicing alternatives like you
• 29:19
  know, central bank digital currencies and things like that.
• 29:22
  And you know, we are not cliches anymore, right.
• 29:25
  The the pace at which this is happening sort of, you know, 60%
• 29:29
  of my job now is basically becoming, you know, just to sort
• 29:33
  of prioritize resources into new products, right?
• 29:36
  You know, what sort of goes quickly, right?
• 29:38
  And what can we get out more quickly?
• 29:41
  So real time payments, CBDC's, tokenization, you know,
• 29:47
  obviously local schemes and cards, that was always a thing,
• 29:49
  right? So most countries have their
• 29:51
  local schemes, but now sort of almost everyone has it, right.
• 29:54
  So it's it's essentially becoming a non negotiable right.
• 29:58
  You know, it's being treated as the same importance as oil or
• 30:00
  sort of minerals, right? Or sort of, you know, your sort
• 30:03
  of physical infrastructure. And if we were to revisit this
• 30:06
  conversation in five years time, what would you hope that Pismo
• 30:11
  was was best known for? I would like us to be known as
• 30:19
  the platform that essentially stayed stable and scaled in
• 30:25
  spite of all of the sort of scale that was thrown at it,
• 30:28
  right? I think, you know, when I joined
• 30:30
  Pismo just in Brazil, we were basically processing
• 30:34
  transactions, you know, to the value of about I would say about
• 30:37
  $200 billion a year. I think by the time, I think by
• 30:43
  around, you know, by the time we complete most of our large
• 30:45
  projects that are sort of in force now, we will be processing
• 30:48
  the combined GDP of Germany and Japan, right.
• 30:51
  So about, so I'd say about $9 trillion on a platform.
• 30:55
  You see? Yeah, by, by about, you know, if
• 30:58
  you complete all of our projects well, and it looks like we will.
• 31:00
  So by about 20-30, that's what we'll be processing.
• 31:05
  By around 2035, it'll essentially be, if our
• 31:08
  projections are correct, the combined DDP of Germany, Japan
• 31:12
  and India and maybe a part of sort of, yeah, maybe a little
• 31:15
  more, right. That is serious, serious scale,
• 31:18
  right? Being able to sort of handle
• 31:20
  that scale day in, day out at 5, ninth consistency, you know, so
• 31:26
  basically being able to handle adverse events, for example,
• 31:30
  let's say for if a cloud region goes down, being able to
• 31:33
  essentially switch over, you know, in the blink of an eye to
• 31:36
  another region, let's say, for example, from, you know, I don't
• 31:39
  know, from Frankfurt to Dublin without anyone noticing what's
• 31:41
  happened. I think if you can do that with
• 31:44
  a fair level of consistency, I would essentially tell ourselves
• 31:47
  job well done. What's the one biggest block you
• 31:50
  think that would stop that? Every time, every time I've
• 31:57
  tried to predict it, I think it's sort of come wrong, right?
• 32:01
  If you sort of asked me the biggest challenges that I would
• 32:03
  have faced when I took on this role and where I am, right, it
• 32:06
  looks nothing like you know what it was right now, it essentially
• 32:11
  just looks like talent, right? It just looks like talent, the
• 32:18
  people who understand high precision, high scale
• 32:22
  engineering for distributed systems like cloud systems still
• 32:26
  a huge premium, right? Or in the market, you know, you
• 32:30
  will sort of get a program who understands and who can sort of
• 32:32
  write code on the cloud. But the ability to sort of
• 32:35
  orchestrate a system which can handle that volume, right?
• 32:39
  That seamlessly across multiple sort of regions, right, without
• 32:43
  anyone noticing the, the level of automation that requires,
• 32:46
  right? Think of it as the equivalent of
• 32:49
  an Amazon sort of, you know, warehouse where everything is
• 32:52
  automated, everything has to move perfectly In Sync.
• 32:55
  I don't think we even understand the building blocks of that yet,
• 32:58
  right? We're sort of learning that at
• 32:59
  breakneck speed, right? So I think the limiting factor
• 33:03
  is basically going to be talent. You heard it here first, kids.
• 33:06
  That's the jobs to be getting into right there and they're
• 33:08
  going to be the high paid ones. And we've got through a whole
• 33:10
  podcast without talking about AI as well.
• 33:12
  I mean, I presume AI could probably aid some of that that
• 33:15
  journey for you guys too. We're, we're just starting to
• 33:18
  scratch the surface of what it's doing, right?
• 33:20
  I mean, you know, I'll give you one sort of use case.
• 33:23
  And I remember when I first saw it, right, the hairs on my hands
• 33:26
  sort of stood up. So the the biggest, for example,
• 33:29
  blocker for large banks moving, you know, onto a platform like
• 33:34
  this is migration, right? And typically, migration used to
• 33:36
  be a very painful thing. Imagine you had like 10 million
• 33:39
  deposits in a bank, and you have to migrate those deposits and
• 33:42
  all of the transaction history, right, of let's say, deposits
• 33:45
  and savings accounts from there onto sort of a platform like
• 33:49
  ours, right? It's a very painful process,
• 33:51
  right? It's like, you know, basically,
• 33:53
  you know, think of it as like surgery done over like multiple
• 33:57
  months. Even the first step, mapping all
• 33:59
  of the fields in a deposit from a legacy platform onto modern
• 34:02
  platform, it used to sort of take about 3 months, right?
• 34:05
  You had to sort of get every field precision correctly.
• 34:08
  We recently ran a proof of concept, right?
• 34:10
  We basically sort of said, you know, said to an internal LLM
• 34:14
  tool, take a look at the deposit product of that bank.
• 34:17
  All you can see is its website and sort of map it onto the
• 34:20
  Prism platform, right? And the POC ended and 17
• 34:25
  minutes, right? 17 minutes.
• 34:28
  That was the work. Was it good?
• 34:29
  Yeah, it was like perfectly accurate, right?
• 34:32
  17 minutes and and we hadn't sort of fine-tuned anything,
• 34:35
  right. This was just the first thing
• 34:37
  and so you know. How long would that have taken
• 34:40
  previously? 3 1/2 months, 17 minutes, right?
• 34:44
  Well, you can see what it's doing, right?
• 34:47
  You can sort of. So just one use case like
• 34:49
  migration and things like that, it's sort of making a
• 34:51
  difference. It's starting to make a
• 34:54
  difference in the things that really matter to us.
• 34:56
  So for example, one of the strictest SLA is that we are
• 34:58
  held to is like, you know, when something goes wrong, you know,
• 35:00
  we have to fix it in like 1 hour, right?
• 35:02
  Or two hours or something like that for a really large bank.
• 35:06
  And typically what used to happen was before AI, right?
• 35:12
  You know, you depended on the experience of the engineer to
• 35:14
  figure out because 10 things could have gone wrong.
• 35:16
  And you have to sort of depend on the guy's experience and pass
• 35:19
  pattern recognition to sort of see if he could identify it or
• 35:23
  then just go issue by issue and see what went wrong.
• 35:25
  But we're starting to sort of see things where AI is sort of
• 35:28
  predicting, you know, I, you know, just check that, you know,
• 35:30
  I think that's wrong. And, you know, it's increasingly
• 35:33
  getting frighteningly more accurate.
• 35:35
  So, so it's sort of, you know, we're just scratching the
• 35:37
  surface. It's a good problem in my mind,
• 35:39
  the better it gets. You know, absolutely,
• 35:41
  absolutely. 17 minutes versus 3 1/2 months is.
• 35:43
  It's insane. It's insane.
• 35:46
  Fantastic, Michelle. Before we wrap up, it's time for
• 35:49
  one of our favorite parts of the show, The Shelf of Shame.
• 35:52
  What's one thing in payments, fintech, banking infrastructure
• 35:56
  that you'd like to banish forever for that to ensure that
• 35:59
  no one carries on talking about it?
• 36:02
  OK. Let me think about that one,
• 36:04
  right, because there's a lot. Let me sort of think about that
• 36:07
  one a bit. But do you mean as like a
• 36:14
  consumer? Or the grinds of gears, really.
• 36:16
  Yeah. So, you know, we we have all
• 36:18
  sorts of things nominated. It can be some examples.
• 36:22
  Physical cards have been put on the the shelf of shame in the
• 36:25
  past. You know, people live in their
• 36:27
  their digital wallet now, right? Do we need physical loyalty
• 36:29
  cards? We've had stuff like that, you
• 36:31
  know, something that you just think we don't need this
• 36:33
  anymore. We don't need to talk about this
• 36:34
  anymore. Or something really functioning.
• 36:36
  I, I can give you 1. So, so I'm like my nature are
• 36:39
  sort of a bit of a paranoid person, right?
• 36:41
  So, you know, I, I sort of, you know, I sort of tend to, for
• 36:46
  example, I'm evil enough that for example, I tend to sort of
• 36:49
  have many different bank accounts and essentially, you
• 36:53
  know, I keep just enough that is sort of insured, for example,
• 36:56
  with the Federal Deposit Insurance scheme of each
• 36:58
  country. So that you know, so I'm very
• 37:00
  paranoid that way and it's a pain to maintain one of the
• 37:03
  biggest bug, you know, pain points over there is a lot of
• 37:06
  the banks still use those multi factor authentication.
• 37:08
  Tokens. They're like the plastic ones.
• 37:10
  Oh God. I have like about 11 of them.
• 37:13
  Right. And so when I'm sort of
• 37:15
  travelling, I don't know what I'll need access to, right?
• 37:17
  So you know. RSA tokens, is that it?
• 37:19
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:20
  RSA tokens, right. I have like about 11 of them in
• 37:22
  different colours and things like that.
• 37:24
  And so, you know, it's every time I pass through airport
• 37:27
  security, right? You'll basically have like, you
• 37:29
  know, it'll sort of go under the scanner and every single time it
• 37:32
  gets pulled out. Can you just walk us through
• 37:35
  what all this is, right? And you would think that the
• 37:38
  move to sort of, you know, phone tokens would sort of be almost
• 37:41
  universal now, right? It's not as complex as
• 37:43
  replacing, you know, full banking platform.
• 37:45
  So yeah, wall of shame right there.
• 37:48
  Nominating countries not keeping up with technology that can make
• 37:51
  people's lives a lot easier for tokenize.
• 37:53
  I agree with that. Yeah.
• 37:54
  Security, yeah, I'll put that on there for sure.
• 37:56
  And where can people find out a little bit more about Pismo
• 37:58
  there and where they where they get in touch with you or your
• 38:00
  sales team? Yeah.
• 38:01
  So I mean, you know, my, my e-mail ID is sort of public.
• 38:05
  You know, people can always write to me.
• 38:06
  I think, you know, people trying to find out what the platform
• 38:09
  can do. All of our documentation is
• 38:11
  unabashedly public. We're very proud of it.
• 38:14
  Our sort of website, just our API documentation website won an
• 38:17
  award, right, as you know, being the clearest in the world,
• 38:20
  right. So I think we're very proud of
• 38:22
  that. It's now AI enabled earlier, you
• 38:25
  know, if you wanted to sort of, you needed to sort of understand
• 38:27
  API to do it. Now you can go and ask things
• 38:29
  like what do I need to do to start a credit card from
• 38:32
  scratch? And it'll sort of respond, you
• 38:33
  know, completely right. So we sort of enabled it, you
• 38:36
  know, we've made it very product friendly, right?
• 38:40
  So all of that is there, right? So LinkedIn, our developer
• 38:43
  website, me personally, our sales team, we're very easy to
• 38:47
  find and we want to be found so. Well, thanks very much for
• 38:51
  joining us. Really interesting chat.
• 38:52
  Thanks for having us.