Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 28 - The EMI Advantage: The Future of Infrastructure in Embedded Finance

Transcript

Ep. 28 - The EMI Advantage: The Future of Infrastructure in Embedded Finance · The Payments Shed

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  Welcome to the Payment Shed Podcast, the weekly podcast that
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  dives into the big topics, trends and people shaping the
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  world's of payments, fintech and business leadership of your two
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  Co hosts, myself Grant Evans and Justin Hannah.
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  Welcome back to the Payment Shed podcast.
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  Today, we're lucky enough to be joined by Lou Murray, Chief
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  Sales Officer Equals Money Rouser.
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  Lou, thanks for joining us today.
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  Tell them more about yourself. Yeah, tell me, tell about
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  myself. OK, great.
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  So Chief Sales Officer, Rouser, as you said, easy for me to say.
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  I had a long career in trading and finance before I joined
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  Fintech about 10 years ago. One of the first women traders
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  I'd say in the city late 80s early 90s and had a wonderful
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  career. Worked for Barclays and CIBC and
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  some interest in hedge funds and then had it's an entrepreneurial
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  type businesses before moving into fintech.
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  And what was it specifically that attracted you going from
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  that banking world to payments in fintech at the time you you
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  made the jump? Yeah, so I would say there's a
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  bit of a shelf life on trading. So I needed to to find something
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  new to do. And a friend of mine actually
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  said, oh Lou, there's a new thing going around called
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  fintech. And I put myself in a Wework,
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  one of the, I think it's the largest one in the world at the
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  time says Wework more mortgage. And I went round about 300
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  offices, door stopped, lots of people and just said, oh, tell
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  me about your business. And the great thing is that
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  everyone wants to talk about their business.
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  There's very few that didn't, but lots of different people.
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  And one of the people I did meet said to me, oh, if you want to
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  know about fintech, you should go and speak to that guy over
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  there and pointed to somebody. And I said, oh, OK, then who?
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  What's his name? And he said, oh, it's Nigel
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  Verdon, he's got a little office down here.
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  So I said, OK, link him with him, that'd be good.
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  This is you looking for a job. Sorry.
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  So you took yourself to a Wework?
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  Industry morning. Just started knocking on doors,
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  yeah. Literally just looking for an
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  industry, you know, I tried a few things, looked at a few
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  things, and yeah, did the doorstop in.
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  Loved it. Tried to link him with Nigel.
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  He ignored my LinkedIn message and then saw him in the, in the
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  in the lift and said hi, you haven't, you know, you haven't
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  accepted my LinkedIn. And he said I'm sure I have, but
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  he haven't. And then we started chatting and
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  you know, similar ages, similar, similar careers, although he
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  came from a tech background. He introduced me to his Co
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  founder Clive Mitchell. And yeah, we started talking.
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  We did a bit of office sharing because I'd come from a trading
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  background. They needed a bit of help still
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  and some of the FX trading that they were doing.
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  And then they went off to an accelerator programme, came back
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  and they said, Lou, you know, will you work with us?
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  And yeah, it was, it was kind of fortuitous.
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  You know, I thought actually this is really interesting.
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  You know, coming from a trading background, you really think
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  about how the money moves or anything like that.
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  Just, you know, you do a trade and money ends up and you you
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  crack on the next day. This is what happens in the
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  background. This is the actual banking
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  rails, inverted commas. And yeah, started to, you know,
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  get a bit more involved. And, you know, I loved the kind
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  of innovation and the type of things we could potentially
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  allow customers to do. And that was before the platform
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  went live, but it seemed a really interesting business.
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  And you know, I got cracking on speaking to people.
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  I'd said to the guys first or well, you know, I'll do some of
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  these sales. And they said, well, no, you
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  weren't, you're a trader. You know, I come may may have
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  been a trader, but I'm very sales orientated.
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  I'd have to jump on a plane on a Monday morning to go and meet
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  the pension funds in, in Amsterdam, get back, do a trade.
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  And you know, that was my life. So always been very customer
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  facing and that's what I did. Started the sales team at
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  Railser or Rails Bank in those days.
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  Nice. And kind of what's been the
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  biggest lessons for you that you mentioned about kind of building
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  out a commercial function? What's been the biggest lesson
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  you've learnt? Well, there's lots of different
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  lessons I've learnt. I'd say in this kind of
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  business, it doesn't suit everyone for sure.
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  You know, you have to, you know, I've, I've tried a lot of people
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  working with them and, and some take to it like ducks to water
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  and for others, you know, it's not, not the right business for
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  them. You can't do lots of hand
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  holding. You need self starters.
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  You know, if you're, especially when you're building global
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  teams from scratch, you need people who can, you know, get
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  themselves up to speed on the product.
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  And you, yeah, you need, you need people ambitious, you know,
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  can talk to all different levels as well.
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  It's not like financial services where you're going in at a
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  certain level, you know, you could be speaking to founders of
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  companies or you can be speaking to product people, tech people.
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  So you need sales people that can cover a lot of lot of
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  spaces. Yeah.
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  And how do you feel like the the sales world has evolved in
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  fintech when you compare it to more traditional finance?
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  Yeah, I think so. I'd say it's very collaborative.
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  Yeah. With this, with those type of
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  businesses, you have to sell inside the companies as well as
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  externally because you need bench strength.
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  Yeah, especially when you're, if you're a smaller company
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  pitching to bigger companies, you need to strove bench
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  strength. So you need to, you know, be
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  able to bring tech people along on the journey.
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  You need to be able to bring compliance people along on the
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  journey. And I'm not sure, I mean, as I
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  say, it wasn't pure sales in financial services, but I think
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  you were a bit more on A1 track. Whereas here you've got to,
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  you've got to bring lots of people on that journey with you.
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  Expression bench strength. It's really, yeah.
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  It's really what there's, you know, all those kind of no eye
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  in team and things like that. But you really need to and I've,
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  you know, I've been there on pitches with big companies
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  where, you know, for one meeting I bought certain people on the
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  in the meeting, some others I bought other people to the point
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  where we had a really good team in in Newcastle instead.
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  I've got some good people in Newcastle but those, the nice
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  voices, the dependability and things like that really work in
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  certain situations. And you've generally had quite a
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  sizable partnerships team as well when you compare that to to
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  direct sales as we would. Turn it absolutely.
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  And I think I think partners for me just as important as as
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  salespeople, partnership people. And when we went back into
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  growth, it was the first hire I made was, you know, a very
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  strong partnership lady to join me.
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  And it's all, you know, building that ecosystem because, you
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  know, it builds out other sales channels, doesn't it?
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  You know, for channel sales for me, you know, the Visas, the
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  Mastercards and things like that, it's super important.
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  We've seen that evolution events as well.
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  We were talking about money 2020 this year in in the European
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  edition just as the call out. But from the year before, we
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  shouted a lot about still seeing businesses taking dozens of
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  direct sales people and having them on stands there and not
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  understanding that taking the world of payments in Fintech B
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  to B partnership selling is probably more prevalent in some
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  ways than. Absolutely, absolutely.
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  And you're, you're building that ecosystem for yourself, aren't
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  you? And it's, yeah, it's, it's
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  always been very important. And in in good times, it's great
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  to have partners, but in bad times also you've got those
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  partners, they're propping you up and, you know, supportive in
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  other ways and joint events and great things like that that you
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  can do together. And how have you taken that that
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  kind of commercial strategy to to equals money rails there?
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  How have I taken it to that? Well, I'd say we're coming at it
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  in slightly different ways at Equals, Rowser.
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  So Equals have historically got a very strong affiliate network.
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  Yeah. So that's where they get a lot
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  of their leads and build out their ecosystem that way,
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  whereas the Rowser has been more the channel sales way.
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  So we've got big partners, you know, always tend to be bigger
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  than us. We also need our partners.
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  Yeah, we it's important for us because we're just
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  infrastructure. Not not so much now, but when we
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  were on our own, we were just purely infrastructure.
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  So how do you bring a proposition to life?
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  Yeah, it's a tricky sell, especially if you're selling an
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  embedded finance proposition where it's just pipes and
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  plummets, isn't it? So, you know, some of our
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  strongest partners have been those with the the front end
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  capability that can you know, help U.S. market can bring those
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  propositions to life on pitches. But also we can do the proof of
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  concepts and that MVPS and we've won a lot of deals doing that
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  with our partners. So when we kind of talk about
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  the Emis, I mean, firstly for our listeners, are you right
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  just to explain what EMI is? Yep.
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  So it's electronic money institution.
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  So it it means that we can hold customer funds.
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  So we're regulated to hold customer funds.
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  We can't lend those funds out, but 100% of those funds are kept
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  in a safeguarding account. And as we kept a tier one bank
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  in the Bank of England because we're a direct participant of UK
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  Faster Payments. But it basically, you know, we
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  were, we were one of the first non banks to become a direct
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  participant of UK Faster Payments.
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  So we've got the pipes and plumbings, just as Barclays,
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  HSBC have. Yeah, that's really interesting.
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  I think the the role of Emis has just on to a whole other level
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  in the last two or three years in particular.
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  And you know, why do you think Emis are so well placed to
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  support sort of fast growing platforms and you know, embedded
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  finance models particularly? Yeah.
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  So, so lots of reasons. You know, they're agile.
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  So they're much more agile than banks.
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  They are able to innovate a lot quicker than you can at banks.
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  Not like turning around the Queen Mary, you know, with this,
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  we tend not to build for bespoke reasons, but we can make some
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  tweaks when we need to, whereas there's no way you can do that
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  at a bank. We can specialized in certain
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  verticals as well and really build out, you know, a full go
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  to market for that range. Again, it's not something that
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  the banks can do. So that you know, there's,
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  there's many, many things that you know, ways that we can work
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  as an EMI as well. So we can potentially make our
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  customers agents or distributors of our license.
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  So rely on them to on board their customers do transaction
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  monitoring, but with a very strict kind of monitoring of
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  what they're actually doing. Or we can work with them in
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  other ways where, you know, we on board the customers and they
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  can concentrate on their marketing and front end.
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  Do you think that there's a route where Emis will kind of
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  take over some of the roles that are kind of being dominated by
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  banks or do you think they'll start to complement what banks
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  are doing well? I think that's already happened.
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  Yeah. So I do think they have taken
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  away some of those and and some banks wanted to give us that
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  kind of thing. You know, they want to give you
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  the ability to maybe take on the non regulated customers, the
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  smaller customers, you're adding in another layer of compliance
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  monitoring and things like that. By doing that, we're eating into
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  their margin for sure. And you know that I'm sure that
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  will carry on. But you know, the compliment
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  there is that we still need to put our money somewhere.
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  We still need to put the customers money somewhere.
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  You know, the, the banks of, you know, strong regulation, strong
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  infrastructure in most cases. And we need that.
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  We still need that. But I, I, I think, I think the
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  interesting part will, will be fintech, yeah.
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  And they'll be just left with the, you know, the, the legacy
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  parts of it. And as I say, I think the the
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  majority of this has happened. And you know, I'd like to ask
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  you about the most exciting use cases that you're really seeing
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  in that EMI space at the moment. But just to kick that off, can't
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  not really talk about marketplaces and platforms.
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  I think that's obviously one of the key areas where Emis have
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  started to particularly develop their customer growth.
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  Is that one of the big call outs that you would have?
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  Marketplaces for sure. Yeah.
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  So for us, a marketplace is a really interesting vertical.
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  Yeah, I've been looking at this for a few years now since I
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  spoke to a very large retailer, let's just say in in Spain and
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  you know, they were early adopter of this type of thing.
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  And then there's obviously there's lots of, there's been
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  lots of other different fashion websites and things come along.
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  But I think the interesting part of it is it's not there just to
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  transact. You're building a big ecosystem.
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  So yeah, maybe in the first instance it's just to, you know,
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  receive money and you know, move it around.
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  But then you can start to add in loyalty plays, fund it, embedded
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  finance, all sorts of things. So you're building an ecosystem
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  totally bespoke for your customers.
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  Yeah. And you can concentrate then on
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  the on the whole customer experience, the rewards for your
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  customers. And yeah, so I think it's
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  really, really what I'm trying to say here.
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  Sorry. We're going to have to think of
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  something. I think it's a really strong
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  proposition and really compelling for especially for
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  new marketplaces to just start with that, you know, rather than
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  adding it on at the end. You mentioned around embedded
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  finance. I think it's probably gone from
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  being a buzzword to actually a real value proposition that
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  businesses are using more and more.
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  How do you see Emis enabling that more for businesses?
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  Yeah. So I think with the Emis, you
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  know, go back to something I said just now, it's with an EMI,
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  you can embed that in at the beginning.
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  Yeah. So it's not just an afterthought
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  that you spin somebody off somewhere else.
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  I mean, I've spoken to lots of the the football teams and
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  things like that where they said, Oh yeah, it's great to
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  have embedded finance in our app, but we don't want it in the
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  app. How are they doing that?
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  That's an interesting sort of use case.
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  Football teams, What are they doing in their apps with
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  embedded finance? Yeah.
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  So I think they're still in discovery on it, but I think I
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  think they're quite slow to adopt that into that their
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  offering that they got at the moment.
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  So, you know, whilst they're fine to say, oh, you know, we've
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  got a credit card, actually it's not the the whole process of
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  signing up to that credit card or, or you know, another
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  proposition is not through their own website.
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  So they haven't taken that step or very few have taken that step
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  to embed it. It spins you off to another
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  website where, you know, you can sign up and for all intents and
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  purposes, you might as well just be doing it, you know, with any
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  old company. So, you know, spend, spend a lot
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  of time speaking to the football clubs.
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  They're all at different stages of digitalization.
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  Yeah, some are, you know, better than others.
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  I'm not mentioning any names, but there's, there's a huge, you
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  know, market there. If somebody would actually say
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  right, yeah, we're going to do this and we're going to go.
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  We know we're not going to go down the sponsorship route
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  because we believe in this so much to get the data, get the
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  engagement from our fans. But I I haven't seen that take
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  place yet. Yeah, it's an interesting one
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  kind of in in the football club space 'cause there's so much
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  opportunity to really start understanding more on your
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  consumers and then what else you can offer that consumer, not
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  just by coming to watch 1 football match every week,
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  right? There's so much more that.
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  Consumers like the especially the fans outside the stadium,
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  the fans in different countries and things.
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  I mean, it's, you know, it's easier said than done to put
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  something like that together because of global issuance and
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  things. But there's there's definitely
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  something that no one is is embracing at the moment.
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  What's holding them back then, other than global, global
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  issues? I think I think their mindset is
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  not quite where where's they use a lot of data on players, yeah,
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  on, you know, which are the best players to buy and from, you
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  know, for, for transfers and things like that.
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  I don't think they've got to the level of of data of their fans
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  and which, you know, short sighted because that could feed
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  into sponsorship or or, you know, different, different kinds
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  of deals they can do outside that.
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  I don't think they I. Think they've given a lot of it
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  away. I mean, the the football was
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  sports ecosystem is really interesting because, you know,
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  putting our core payments of card issuing, card acquiring,
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  sorry, how on you know, the retail operations have been very
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  heavily outsourced to, you know, fanatics, for example, have
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  probably 80% of the Tier 1 market.
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  They have all of the NFLNBA, whatever it might be in America
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  and they literally man the club shops.
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  It's their payment facility, it's their kit.
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  And then in the hospitality side of that, you've got Levy Compass
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  group essentially. Again, they're manning the
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  concourses. It's their flow from, but clubs
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  are giving away really rich data around.
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  Grant has a season ticket. What does he spend in the club
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  shop every year? Does he have a family?
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  Does he buy stuff for them? When does he buy stuff for them?
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  How much food and drink does he spend?
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  And you could build loyalty and campaigns around all of this
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  data, but one area where I feel they've really given away some
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  of their core. I won't offer your favorite.
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  It may be you brought this last year, this this football shirt
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  with your favorite player next year, because we know he's still
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  your we think he's your favorite player.
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  He's 5. He's 5% off a shirt, whatever it
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  might be. And then you always have a hot
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  dog at half time or you always have a soft drink.
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  Don't offer Grant a free beer if Grants never brought a beer at
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  the stadium. Exactly.
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  I mean, I did. I mean one.
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  I did meet one club and I met the CFO and the CTCTO for the
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  top three club and I said, oh, you know, what's the pain
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  points? We want to sell more beer at
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  half time. So it's not really me you should
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  be speaking on that. You need quicker pumps.
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  That's what you need. If that, if that's your kind of
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  resin debt for building the business up and everything and
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  getting employing better players and things like that.
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  Well, they've started to do stuff with that.
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  I mean, we're going very off topic here, but some of the some
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  of the cue busting stuff, I mean you go to Twickenham Stadium or
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  the rugby stadiums, they have the bottom pouring pints.
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  So they're pouring 12 pints in very quick succession.
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  They're just sat there ready to go.
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  But it's the key busting for me. You know, certain sports fans
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  will drink more than one beer at half time if they have the
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  ability to do so, right? They've got 15 or 20 minutes if
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  they miss a bit of the start of the second-half, you're not
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  capturing that demand because of the queues.
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  So they've brought in queue busting but every Sports Club
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  should have click and collect pre ordering at half time.
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  But then the mobile networks don't work very well in stadiums
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  and we're still struggling with that particularly.
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  Bad on your. Phone you need like an offline
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  solution on your phone to pre-order your food and drink
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  for click and collect at a window and it's done.
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  And you know, it just seems mad that they're not there already.
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  But you know, that's just my little gripe.
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  Said it all out what what sectors then do you see moving
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  for coming coming off football? What sectors do you see moving
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  fastest in adopting some of these embedded finance models
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  beyond professional? Sports.
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  So there's there's two areas I'm kind of excited at the moment
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  and we see you know quite a lot of lot of traction.
• 19:25
  I'd say there's a few, few more than two, but one in particular
• 19:29
  is niche credit I would say. So I've got quite a few
• 19:34
  prospects and, you know, getting get out to go live.
• 19:37
  You elaborate on niche credit. Yeah.
• 19:39
  So it's it's, it's not just what there's the normal, you know,
• 19:43
  just a credit card or loans, that type of thing.
• 19:46
  But this is credit for just a particular reason.
• 19:49
  I'm going to say plastic surgery for one of them, or lots of,
• 19:52
  lots of different, lots of. Different transplant in Turkey
• 19:55
  next year. Well, not quite.
• 19:57
  It's limited to UK and another country, but yeah, these those
• 20:01
  kind of niche, niche areas that they found, they found a market,
• 20:05
  you know, they're working on buy now, pay later and they're going
• 20:08
  to turn that into a credit card. Another one would be, so that's
• 20:11
  a small one, but it's got lots of potential I would say.
• 20:14
  And another one is large scale loyalty programs.
• 20:19
  So some big names are not making the most of their brands
• 20:24
  basically. So it's offering large scale
• 20:28
  programs, not, you know, with actual real rewards and things
• 20:33
  behind it. So you actually can see what you
• 20:35
  don't can touch what you're going to potentially get if you
• 20:38
  go through different levels and things.
• 20:40
  So yeah, lots and lots of different.
• 20:42
  What's? Stopping them sectors from doing
• 20:43
  that today. Do you just think it's the
• 20:45
  unknown? Yeah.
• 20:46
  Yeah, I think, I think with the non financial services type
• 20:49
  companies it's what's the art of the possible with that.
• 20:53
  So a lot of we a lot of the I don't say pitching, but a lot of
• 20:57
  the the conversations we have are did you know you could do
• 21:01
  this? I mean for instance, this is
• 21:03
  this is something that happened to me yesterday.
• 21:05
  I met the CEO of, I think their third largest insurance broker
• 21:11
  in the UK, 6,000,000 end user or 6,000,000 customers.
• 21:16
  And he didn't know the type of products that we could enable
• 21:20
  him to do. He didn't know that we could
• 21:23
  enable him to be, you know, in effect, a neo bank.
• 21:25
  So not just have, you know, a once a year kind of touch point
• 21:31
  with their customers when they renew, if they renew, if it's
• 21:34
  cheap enough or if something bad happens, he didn't know, you
• 21:38
  know, he can offer this kind of these kind of products where
• 21:40
  they can embed, you know, themselves into a customer's
• 21:43
  life with a count a card rewards for those that do stay more than
• 21:48
  just on other discounts. It could be, you know, and and
• 21:51
  marketing to, you know, the wider circle of the customer
• 21:55
  they've got I. Think it's such a great sector
• 21:56
  call out the insurance sector. It does need educating on, you
• 22:00
  know, the art of the possible. But we started to see this
• 22:02
  creeping out. I mean, I'm a trained line
• 22:04
  loyalist because I like the split fast stuff and all the,
• 22:07
  the bells and whistles that they, they put into their
• 22:10
  platform. But you see now with train line
• 22:13
  that they offer you insurance on your tickets.
• 22:15
  So that's right. So that's a new embed from them.
• 22:17
  It's embedded finances, you know, do you want to risk this?
• 22:20
  And it creates that moment you're heading by like £2.50 or
• 22:24
  £1.50, you know, ensure you're full fair.
• 22:26
  They don't need massive adoption on that with their customer base
• 22:29
  for that to become a huge VAS product from an income point of
• 22:33
  view for them and the third party platform that they're
• 22:35
  using. And that's a great example of
• 22:37
  embedded finance really starting to kick in.
• 22:39
  And that can go into music events, festivals, it can go
• 22:42
  into de risking acquirers in high risk sectors as well.
• 22:46
  There's so much that can be done with embedded insurance. 100%
• 22:49
  and and we've got we've got some interesting use cases.
• 22:51
  What they do need to do though, in train line is do AJV with
• 22:56
  Costa. So my coffee is waiting there as
• 22:58
  well, embedded into my whole 90 lbs ticket I'll buy.
• 23:02
  Seat frog, I'm amazed that's not what seat Frog.
• 23:05
  Yeah, like seat Frog should surely be working with train
• 23:07
  line now so you can get your upgrade.
• 23:08
  But anyway, Yep, definitely, definitely.
• 23:11
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• 23:15
  the market intelligence and lead generation platform built for
• 23:17
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• 23:21
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• 23:24
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• 23:27
  And it really has become the go to solution for the payments and
• 23:30
  fintech industries. So Justin and I have used the
• 23:33
  tool in previous organizations that we've been in and we really
• 23:35
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• 23:37
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• 23:40
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• 23:42
  You really won't regret it. So the equals money rowser
• 23:45
  merger, Lou, tell us a little bit more about it.
• 23:51
  So, yeah, so we, we that came to close in April of this year.
• 23:56
  So we were, we were two companies at probably slightly
• 24:01
  different ends of of the fintech journey and came with very
• 24:07
  strong capabilities from both sides and quite complementary
• 24:11
  equals were listed company, aim listed company and we were VC
• 24:15
  backed came together bought by two private equity companies, JC
• 24:19
  Flowers and Tower Brook. And I think you know we've by by
• 24:25
  merging with being able to bring to market probably the largest
• 24:31
  embedded finance provider in the UK and Europe.
• 24:34
  So really exciting as I say, different propositions.
• 24:38
  We come from that banking as a service enabler type of company,
• 24:45
  whereas equals money, more international payments and FX
• 24:50
  embedding themselves in customers, but directly actually
• 24:54
  on boarding the customers. So yeah, 600 people, most of us
• 24:59
  based in the London office in Uptown St. and yeah, two Co
• 25:03
  CEOs. So that's a quite a different
• 25:06
  way of working, although Tower Brooks one about investors have
• 25:10
  a Co CEO as well, so they couldn't go against that.
• 25:12
  How do you manage that as a people leader when you've got 2
• 25:15
  organizations, you know, clashing together like this?
• 25:17
  Two teams, different leadership groups?
• 25:19
  How have you managed that as you know a CSO?
• 25:22
  Yeah. So I want everyone, yeah, to be
• 25:25
  selling my products, Yeah. And our products.
• 25:28
  So we want everyone to be on this journey with us.
• 25:30
  So you have to be collaborative. Yeah, you have to.
• 25:34
  I mean, I put myself in the office every day, almost nearly
• 25:37
  every day, just to be there, speak to people, have touch
• 25:41
  points. People got questions of
• 25:44
  different ways of working and things.
• 25:46
  You just got to be there to speak to people.
• 25:48
  It's all about the relationships and say, go back to that
• 25:51
  fintech, you know, making friends within your company.
• 25:55
  You have to do that. I mean, it's not easy.
• 25:58
  And you know, believe me, it doesn't always go smoothly, but,
• 26:02
  you know, we can have those conversations.
• 26:04
  Some, you know, a good conversation, some are right.
• 26:06
  How do we do this? But you've got to be
• 26:08
  collaborative as a team do. You think companies have lost
• 26:11
  some of that collaboration by going to the the remote end of
• 26:14
  the? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:15
  And I'm, I'm sure, you know, there's lots of ways of doing it
• 26:18
  and, you know, and, and everyone has their own way.
• 26:22
  For me, it's, you know, I want to, I want to look somebody in
• 26:25
  the eye and say, right, how can we do this together?
• 26:28
  We want to be successful. We've got big plans, you know,
• 26:30
  we've got big targets to hit. So we have to do this well.
• 26:36
  And for me, it's getting in there and bringing everyone
• 26:39
  along the journey with us. So whether that's the tech
• 26:42
  people, product people, compliance people, you know,
• 26:45
  let's bash our heads together and work out how we can do this.
• 26:48
  And you know, from a, from a revenue base team, we're about
• 26:52
  95 people. So that's, you know, customer
• 26:54
  success and sales and some FX traders and things in there.
• 27:00
  And you know, everyone's very nice.
• 27:02
  And I think, I think we've got, we've all got the same ambition.
• 27:06
  Maybe we go about it in different kind of ways, but we
• 27:09
  all want to be successful and, you know, turn this into a, you
• 27:12
  know, a great company and. How do the product sets
• 27:14
  complement each other from the two different organizations?
• 27:17
  Yeah. So as I say, you know once very
• 27:19
  much on the international payments, lots of multi currency
• 27:22
  accounts and things like that. I think we do that 28 different
• 27:25
  currencies. That's the equal side of it for
• 27:27
  us. It's having that that history
• 27:30
  and expertise in banking as a service.
• 27:35
  Yeah. So being able to make our
• 27:36
  customers successful and they, you know, they want to do this
• 27:39
  in their own right as agents and distributors and being able to
• 27:44
  oversee what they do without interrupting business.
• 27:47
  But you need to be really finger on the pulse.
• 27:51
  And I think that's something we've had some ups and downs
• 27:54
  ourselves on that our business model has changed.
• 27:56
  We've gone from when you're on board having a shiny customer
• 28:00
  success person and now you get 2 shiny compliance people and
• 28:05
  that's, you know, they, they look after you from, you know,
• 28:08
  all the way through KYB all the way to implementation to going
• 28:11
  live and allowing our customers to grow, but in a compliant.
• 28:15
  Way is that the EMI space growing up though, right?
• 28:19
  100% So you're, you're a pseudo regulator, yeah, as an EMI.
• 28:23
  So if you're as, as an EMI in the enabling space that we're
• 28:26
  in, you are a pseudo regulator. So you've got to get your stuff
• 28:30
  together to ensure that you're, I think about to swear.
• 28:33
  Then we gotta get your, you gotta get your shit together
• 28:36
  before your customers can get their shit together.
• 28:39
  And, and that's what we've, you know, this, this model works for
• 28:42
  that type of model. Now the other side, the equal
• 28:45
  side, our, our new side is where we on board the end user
• 28:51
  ourselves and take that burden as we see it away from our
• 28:55
  customers. And some on that, some don't.
• 28:57
  And I, you know, I can totally see if you're a wealth manager,
• 29:01
  you're already on board in your customer yourself, you already
• 29:03
  know who they are. So you don't want us doing it as
• 29:05
  well. So you take care of that and you
• 29:07
  know, wherever, see what you do. Whereas if you're near a shiny
• 29:11
  retailer, maybe you don't want to be doing KYC on your
• 29:15
  customers. And what opportunities then does
• 29:18
  the combined entity allow you to go after?
• 29:21
  Now maybe you couldn't do it as a stand alone companies.
• 29:26
  I'd say not that we couldn't do it, but bigger opportunities,
• 29:30
  yeah, we're profitable company, you know a couple of 100 million
• 29:33
  revenue potential this year. So we've got that strength of
• 29:37
  balance sheet where you know, we might not have had on our own
• 29:44
  the full different the different models.
• 29:47
  Yeah. So they couldn't do equals,
• 29:49
  couldn't do the agent distributor Top Model and we
• 29:52
  couldn't do that direct on boarding.
• 29:54
  So we're now with, you know, I hate to kind of say this phrase,
• 29:57
  but we could be everything to everyone if we wanted.
• 30:01
  I think we're actually one of the few that does that model or
• 30:07
  those models for consumers and corporates because a lot of
• 30:11
  these type of companies, not that there's loads of them, but
• 30:14
  these type of companies tend to specialize in corporates or all
• 30:17
  consumers where we do all. And again, with your CSO hat
• 30:24
  back on, you had your your strategy playbook there for for
• 30:27
  Rails are ready to go for the next few years.
• 30:29
  Did that get ripped up? And alright, I need what's the
• 30:32
  new plan with the command not? Necessarily, actually, yeah,
• 30:35
  we've, we've spent a lot of time, I mean, you know, go back
• 30:38
  a few years and rather looking at different verticals,
• 30:41
  different kind of economies. Yeah.
• 30:43
  So I think we did, we did a study three or four years ago
• 30:47
  where there was about 27 different economies around
• 30:53
  potential of embedded finance. And I think with the merger
• 30:57
  maybe some of those verticals have changed a little bit
• 31:00
  because we've got expanded products.
• 31:03
  So we're looking at one in the kind of the maritime travel that
• 31:10
  type of vertical because we're very strong on the multi
• 31:14
  currency aspect and international payment aspect.
• 31:17
  So that's something we do want to double down on.
• 31:21
  I think that the retail we've always done and we'll carry on
• 31:26
  doing that wealth management, you know, that's something I'm,
• 31:30
  you know, I've loved for years. And I think there's still huge,
• 31:33
  I say disruption, but I think there's still huge potential in
• 31:37
  that vertical. And yeah, I think there's in the
• 31:41
  marketplaces as well, you know, fitting into that.
• 31:44
  I think the combined the product offering a few more tweaks that
• 31:48
  we've got to make, but I think, you know, we'll have a very
• 31:50
  proposition, a very strong proposition for all of those.
• 31:54
  So let's talk about leadership a little bit as well.
• 31:56
  And you've, you've worked in some fascinating sectors and
• 32:00
  with some really interesting founders and, and, and leaders
• 32:04
  in your view that what makes a great commercial leader in the
• 32:07
  financial services fintech payment sector today?
• 32:10
  Yeah. So I think, I think you can't
• 32:13
  just be a figurehead. Yeah, there's, there's, there's
• 32:16
  got to be a lot of depth to you to be able to, to, I'd say to
• 32:22
  survive at the very least in there.
• 32:25
  So there's, there's, there's many facets as a leader that
• 32:28
  you've got to have. So obviously you've just got to
• 32:30
  be building relationships all day long.
• 32:32
  You know, that should be a you building those relationships.
• 32:35
  You've got to have a good tech. How deep does that go though
• 32:39
  that, you know, the relationship building with that you know does
• 32:43
  a really great lead and I know it's restricted by size of
• 32:45
  entity sometimes, but should they really get to know as many
• 32:48
  people as they possibly can within the organization?
• 32:50
  I think within the organization, but externally as well, you've
• 32:55
  got to be, yeah, I'm not saying you've got to be a thought
• 32:57
  leader wherever you go or anything like that.
• 32:59
  But you need to, you need to have be able to have a
• 33:03
  conversation with your partners, whether that's a high level or
• 33:07
  not. And they've got to see that
• 33:08
  you're engaged and, you know, want to, you know, they want you
• 33:11
  want to work with them. So I think it goes back to the
• 33:14
  very beginning relationships, you know, on my on my safety
• 33:19
  net. I would say in good times and
• 33:21
  bad strategy, yeah, you've got to, you know, strategy for day,
• 33:26
  but you to for today. But you want to also need a
• 33:29
  strategy for two years time, three years time.
• 33:31
  Where's this going? Because it's moving quickly.
• 33:33
  So if you plod along the same kind of trajectory, you're not
• 33:37
  going to get very far just. Be a fun one with two CE as.
• 33:41
  Yeah, Yeah, they're quite different.
• 33:44
  They're quite different. But yeah, I think, yeah, a
• 33:48
  project like product LED thinking, yeah, with that
• 33:51
  technical kind of NAFS behind it as well.
• 33:53
  So you've got to be able to speak the language of a techie.
• 33:57
  Yeah, as as you have any old salesperson these days because
• 34:00
  speak the the language of a techie.
• 34:02
  You say that, but I completely agree, by the way, salespeople
• 34:06
  should have good technical action in these days, and it's
• 34:09
  so, so important. Yeah, but I also think it's
• 34:11
  still massively lacking in a lot of.
• 34:13
  Areas, Yeah, No, I agree. I agree.
• 34:15
  I mean, it was something we did back in our early days is that
• 34:20
  we would test everyone. And that was not just a techie.
• 34:24
  You would have to use our APIs. Use Postman to, you know, open a
• 34:27
  couple of accounts, send money in and out.
• 34:30
  You know the product you're actually selling to a.
• 34:32
  Well, that's an interest one because I've worked at
• 34:34
  businesses where I probably wouldn't want to bring the CEO
• 34:39
  into a meeting with me with a customer because I fundamentally
• 34:42
  believe that the CEO would not be able to do a good enough job
• 34:47
  in talking about the business. They'll probably end up doing
• 34:50
  that sales and that's how I'm trying to to to talk about more
• 34:54
  Jeopardy and their actual benefits.
• 34:56
  Yeah, it is, It is really important.
• 34:58
  I think. I think there's no better way.
• 35:00
  And the best sales people I've worked with, especially, you
• 35:03
  know, in, in this, these type of businesses have had a product
• 35:06
  background. Yeah, because they just know
• 35:09
  what's under the under the bonnet of it.
• 35:11
  And it's easier to sell, literally is easier to sell.
• 35:14
  My daughter, I've got three children, but my, my, my
• 35:16
  daughter is in a distribution at one of the asset managers.
• 35:20
  And I said start in a product role.
• 35:22
  So you get that grounding in it. And she's very, you know, very
• 35:25
  personable and actually worked in one of my customer, one of my
• 35:28
  customers for a year. I loved it but wanted to go and
• 35:32
  get that product background before, you know, she moved into
• 35:35
  a rule. Relax Payments had it when I was
• 35:37
  there. They had, you know, a team
• 35:38
  called integration support or insurance.
• 35:41
  And most people, certainly, you know, grads and, and maybe
• 35:45
  people coming in more junior roles would start in INS, they'd
• 35:48
  cut their tea, but insurance was you, you learn the product and
• 35:51
  the technical knowledge inside out.
• 35:52
  And then they'd find product managers from there they'd find,
• 35:56
  you know, customer support people, account managers.
• 35:58
  It was kind of like an incubator that would feed other
• 36:01
  departments. And then the expectation even
• 36:03
  coming in later in that journey to a commercial team was, you
• 36:07
  know, you get an integration support or, or Technical Support
• 36:11
  person for a few demos to start with.
• 36:13
  But the expectation was you learned from them.
• 36:14
  You didn't just have these people come out with you and
• 36:16
  they would do all the technical stuff.
• 36:18
  You're doing a big RFP. You might have them there
• 36:20
  anyway. But certainly you were expected
• 36:22
  to learn that knowledge. And our commercial team came
• 36:25
  very, very technically astute. And I think that actually stood
• 36:28
  us apart against the competition when we were, you know, one of
• 36:30
  the foremost gateways back then. But I just don't think it
• 36:33
  happens enough and it it should be more.
• 36:35
  Widely done. It allows you then to sell at
• 36:37
  different levels. It allows you to, you know, as
• 36:39
  you said there impress the CEO because you've got some
• 36:42
  technology or sell directly to a CTO.
• 36:45
  So it's it's so much more powerful As for a salesperson.
• 36:48
  And how do you see the ecosystem evolving over the next five
• 36:52
  years from a payments and fintech perspective?
• 36:54
  Oh. Dear, put my crystal ball
• 36:59
  together. I think there's enormous
• 37:01
  potential. I wouldn't be sitting here
• 37:03
  talking to you guys if I didn't think there's, there's enormous
• 37:06
  potential in the industry. We're already seeing
• 37:10
  involvements. You know, we're, we're lucky in
• 37:12
  the UK because we've got UK faster payments and it's pretty
• 37:15
  fast, but it's not elsewhere. So I think that, you know,
• 37:19
  there'll obviously be more adopters of that, different
• 37:21
  countries adopting that stable coins, that type of thing.
• 37:25
  You know, we're already doing that.
• 37:26
  We're going to release something, watch this space very
• 37:28
  soon. But what else?
• 37:31
  Maybe there'll be some changes on KYC if, you know, we get
• 37:35
  these new cards come in here in the UK, but yet huge potential,
• 37:41
  you know, beyond my kind of remit on what that could be.
• 37:44
  But I think there'll be some exciting things I had.
• 37:48
  With your equals money rails a hat on, what excites you the
• 37:51
  most about that next phase for for the business?
• 37:54
  Yeah. So for me, I've got a team
• 37:56
  there, a really big team. Everyone's very engaged.
• 37:59
  So you know this you've we've got, we've got the bench
• 38:03
  strength that we go back to there.
• 38:05
  I think the exciting thing is some new products that we've got
• 38:09
  come around, but some new geographies as well.
• 38:11
  So we we get, I've made a few kind of forays into it, but we
• 38:16
  get back to that true global experience.
• 38:18
  Yeah. And you and use everything that
• 38:23
  we've learned over the last few years to be successful on
• 38:26
  Australia and be successful in Singapore, you know, maybe even
• 38:30
  the States, we might be successful Canada and places
• 38:32
  like that. But it's to it's to use
• 38:35
  everything that you know that we've learned to to scale.
• 38:38
  Nice. And we've spoken a bit today on
• 38:41
  on on partnerships, which is great from obviously from
• 38:45
  YouTube's perspective, that's. How we met.
• 38:47
  Exactly right, Exactly right. Look, if you could give one
• 38:50
  piece of advice to fintechs that may be navigating partnerships,
• 38:54
  what would that be? Choose wisely.
• 38:57
  Yeah. Choose a partner for the future
• 39:01
  as well as now. So especially if you're, you
• 39:03
  know, going to work with an infrastructure partner, you
• 39:07
  know, infrastructure takes a while to integrate, but also,
• 39:10
  you know, takes the world to scale and it takes a long while
• 39:15
  to move to migrate. So choose wisely a strong
• 39:18
  balance sheet experience. And you know, I've had lots of
• 39:21
  customers that you'd have started to scale.
• 39:24
  They couldn't do it with the, you know, the partners that they
• 39:27
  were with at the time and they'd come to us.
• 39:29
  So they can scale from a tech point of view, also from a from
• 39:33
  a commercial point of view. Not everyone is set up for large
• 39:36
  scale companies to build on top of them do.
• 39:39
  You think they should be negotiating more heavily around,
• 39:43
  you know, predicting growth and putting markers in the sand as
• 39:49
  far as pricing structure is concerned because you talk about
• 39:51
  how sticky that infrastructure is.
• 39:53
  I've seen loads of cases where people sign up to a price, they
• 39:56
  are really sticky and then they lose all of their negotiating
• 39:58
  power because they've not said we think we can go to this
• 40:00
  level, but if we do go to this level.
• 40:02
  The pricing shifts with us, right?
• 40:04
  Absolutely, Yeah. I mean, we, we, I would always
• 40:07
  price like that. So I would price for scaling.
• 40:09
  So let's start low and not kill you for the first year.
• 40:14
  Then we kind of bottom out. But if you really scale top out,
• 40:19
  if you really scale, then you get some really aggressive
• 40:21
  pricing. And and all my biggest
• 40:24
  customers, I would be in that position that'd be coming back
• 40:27
  to us say right, you know, we're ready now for that next push.
• 40:30
  We've got some really big prospects that we can on board
• 40:33
  and we're going to we're going to get over those levels that
• 40:36
  you gave us at the beginning. One thing I've always, always
• 40:38
  had a thought about when I'm speaking to whether it's
• 40:41
  customers or or partners is say what you're going to do.
• 40:45
  And if you say what you're going to do, it allows us to then also
• 40:49
  say what we're going to do. Yeah, be honest.
• 40:52
  Yeah. Definitely be honest.
• 40:53
  I mean, there is the other way. Whereas I've had a lot of
• 40:57
  startups that have worked with us and you know, if I had a
• 41:00
  pound for, you know, the time everyone said, oh, we're going
• 41:02
  to get 50,000 cards in two weeks, You're not.
• 41:05
  Yeah, just, you know, be realistic, but be honest.
• 41:09
  Yeah, I think that's good advice.
• 41:11
  So just the final section of our show for you now, Lou, the the
• 41:15
  Shelf of Shame. We ask all of our guests to
• 41:17
  nominate something from Fintech payments or on Brit business
• 41:21
  more broadly to present to Justin and I and banish forever
• 41:26
  or have rejected from the shelf. Yeah.
• 41:28
  Well, this is something, I don't really want it banished forever,
• 41:32
  but it's it's something I think that should change maybe, which
• 41:36
  is fintech. Yeah.
• 41:38
  For me, fintech gives the, when I say it to people who don't
• 41:41
  know what it is, it gives the impression of something small
• 41:44
  and, you know, just starting, which for me, it's mainstream
• 41:48
  now. Yeah, Revolut have got, you
• 41:50
  know, more customers in Barclays, HSBC and everything.
• 41:53
  Fintech is financial services. Yeah, I like that.
• 41:57
  Yeah. So the stigma around fintech
• 42:01
  presenting as a small start up only ecosystem.
• 42:04
  Yeah, it's not. Yeah, I think I happily put that
• 42:07
  on the shop. It's really, really cool out
• 42:09
  actually. You know, it's like fintech was
• 42:11
  a new shiny thing a few years ago and it's been around for a
• 42:14
  long time now. So let's not think out of it how
• 42:16
  we did 10 years ago. You.
• 42:18
  Do the bank, the banks? Yeah, it's financial services,
• 42:21
  all of it. Brill.
• 42:22
  And where can you be contacted from a equals Rails point of
• 42:28
  view? Yeah, and yourself as well.
• 42:30
  Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah, I've got a few followers
• 42:32
  on LinkedIn, but I'm also luisaarouser.com.
• 42:36
  Brilliant. Thanks for coming into the
• 42:38
  payment show. It's.
• 42:38
  Been really enjoyable, thank you for having me.