Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 17 - Driving the Next Chapter of Open Banking with James Neville, CEO and Founder @ Yaspa

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Ep. 17 - Driving the Next Chapter of Open Banking with James Neville, CEO and Founder @ Yaspa · 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 to the next episode of the Payment Shed podcast.
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Today we have James Devil, the CEO and founder of Yasper.
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These guys are driving the next chapter of Open Banking.
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James, please give us an introduction and a little bit
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more about you guys. Thank you.
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Good to be here. Thanks for the invite.
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So I'm James, I'm the CEO of Jasper.
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We're an intelligent payments business that combines identity
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and money on a singular transaction.
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You know, our goals are to reduce fraud and friction in the
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regulated spaces, IE those spaces that typically have high
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fraud rates. You need to have KYC acceptance
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and need a way to connect the persons identity to the actual
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transaction. So we leverage open banking, AIS
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and PS, combine that in a singular flow and we've been
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operating across Europe and about to open in the US.
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So yeah, lots of good stuff to talk about.
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Fantastic. And kind of before we talk more
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about Yasper, kind of what's your experience before Yasper?
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Why Yasper? Why Yasper?
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So I just planned how far you want to wind back.
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But like 20 years in in tech, you know, I started my own
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business as an entrepreneur before, before Google and Amazon
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was the things I've been coding since I was like 8 years old.
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Now it's a damn long time ago. You know, most recently before I
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started this, you know, I was supporting that for a few years.
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I was just eat for a while. I was at well paid for a while
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before all of this kind of acronym soup of GDPR and SCA and
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3DS23D secure for those that that don't know, all coming
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together with PSD 2 around the time of, you know, early open
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banking and a lot of the payment space being very concerned about
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conversion of what that would mean when we introduced stronger
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identity control. So fraud and friction to us has
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always been like a, it's a bit of a seesaw, right?
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So, you know, you relax your fraud controls and you relax
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your fraud controls and it, it makes things much more
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difficult. So we've always been about
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making things simpler to transact, but reducing forward
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at the same time in well pays lands, I know your your ex will
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pay as well. You know, the concern was a
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conversion. Secondly, how do we kind of make
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that repeatability of name, address, date of birth on
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presentation of a card transaction simpler?
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So we start the business to tokenize identity and initially
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the business was called Citizen, which is clear why you called it
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that. We worked for a while with the
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banks and then GDPR obviously came along and the banks got
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really scared about sharing identity.
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We pivoted, we got our PSDT license kind of authorized
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payment issue with with the FCA and we've kind of been building
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ever since through that, through that.
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We recognize after a while that Europe had some of its
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challenges in, in, in payments, particularly around kind of
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chargebacks and kind of return rates as you call them in, in
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the US And we've been constantly building into the a 2A space.
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And the same is true of the US of course has got some
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challenges too. But I guess we'll kind of come
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to that after. What would you say would be the
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the earliest challenges that you had launching an open banking
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business as well? So when we, when we saw that we
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wanted to integrate every single bank.
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And I think when you look at how the space has evolved and you've
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got, you know, the banks, obviously, you know, combined
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with, you know, the various aspects of Europe to build the
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rails, then you've got the aggregators over the top.
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We realised after a while that we, we shouldn't really be an
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aggregator. We can create the banks as we,
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as we see fit, but the game for us was not in infrastructure.
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It was more in the payment flow itself.
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And actually getting reach across Europe has been probably
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the, the toughest job. I think I mentioned it to you
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earlier, we had late 2019 and stuff.
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We got a license. One of the banks say, you know,
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we, we need to have the inclination or the resources to
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comply with regulations. So a lot of this has been the
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journey for open bank for all of us infrastructure and, and
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onwards as being like some of the pushback from banks and the
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broader ecosystem. As much as we say open, the
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banks don't think they want to be part of an openness.
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So that's probably the earliest challenge is getting some kind
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of critical mass and getting over that whole hump of banks
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not wanting to, to, to play ball.
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But you know, we're in the UK. Banks have been much, much
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better in the UK than they, they have been across Europe.
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But then I think, you know, just beyond here, the other
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challenges really are the things we were supposed to do in 2019
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and 2020 when COVID first kind of kicked off.
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We haven't done half it. The road map was there.
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We're supposed to have been done.
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We're trusted beneficiaries. VRPI mean, I know you go on
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about VRPA lot. It's been the bane of lots of
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people's lives. But you know, we're four or five
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years in and we still haven't done a commercial VRP outside of
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offering, outside of outside of sweeping.
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So I just think there's there's a lot of work to do.
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And I think the regulator has a really strong job to play in
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trying to make some of these things happen because they are
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of benefit to consumers, not necessarily just to the bank.
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I feel like 2025 is real and going into 26 is quite a
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poignant time for open banking as well.
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You know, we it's been a very busy market, lots and lots of
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start-ups, scale UPS within the open banking ecosystem.
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We've seen some larger players like Kevin obviously
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disappearing from the market. More recently order were
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acquired and then obviously pulled out of that market by
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that that that the company that acquired them as well.
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What really differentiates Yasper, but I guess has also
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given you that longevity to stabilise.
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I know you talked about hiring up recently as well and and
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you're scaling when others are maybe more slightly in decline
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in in the sector. Yeah, so we, we, we lost Vine as
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well to, to terrible, not lost, but you know, vine, Vine sold.
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I think it's really sectoral for for us.
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We, we, we started this journey saying it would be fantastic if
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you could identify and pay on a single transaction.
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So why you having to go through a registration form like KYC and
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then ultimately pay? You've got models like bank ID
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in Sweden that allow you to do the same thing on a transaction.
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Also a PayPal allows you to do a whole element of of that.
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But pay by bank, whatever you want to call it, we, we
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recognize that as like the strongest time.
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We did a survey last year that determined that pay by bank
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works where you've got a kind of captive volume in account to
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account transfer. I, you know, we talked earlier
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about kind of DCMS in, in the car space making a deposit to a
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car dealership. It's high value.
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It doesn't have to be done in 10 seconds.
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It can be done in 30 or 30 minutes and there's recourse
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after the, after the payment that kind of suffers some of the
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things around settlement timings and and and so forth.
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E-commerce to us buying a new pair of Nikes, he's got some
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Nikes on if you have as well, like I know I don't today, but
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buying a new pair of Nikes and doing that on a single
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transaction, you arrive on a list of payment options, a
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pallet if you will. You've got corner in there,
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you've got Apple Pay in there. You know, even if Pay by Bank
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was on there, I'd be inclined just to do Apple Pay or PayPal,
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something that's like familiar and almost habitual in nature.
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So and people are creatures of habit, right?
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But it's quicker though, right? Apple Pay is quicker than open
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banking. There you go, there you go.
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So if you then to look at a sector like trading, FX gaming,
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anywhere where there's a KYC element where people are
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familiar with making larger transfers, crypto's a good
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strong example of of that people are not using Apple Pay to buy
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Bitcoin, right? There's an open goal there in
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the manual nature of that operation.
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So account to account kind of fills that you talked a little
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about when you mentioned Kevin, we, we hummed in hard a while
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about kind of point of sale type type situations and we've
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integrated with kind of retail machines.
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But that's been the hardest job even in the UK because if
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something doesn't happen in person within, you know, 10, 15
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seconds, what's the recourse, right?
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You're not going to make another payment.
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So you, you almost need to predetermine when the payment
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hasn't settled and almost refund instantly to go either try again
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or, or, or, or do something else.
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I think that's been the, the kind of lack of focus on unhappy
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paths. There's been some of the
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challenging and user experience with with Pay Pipe Bank.
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You, you talked about that automotive examples when I talk
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about automotive quite prevalently, as you know, that
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high average transaction value sector.
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And you said, you know, the guy at the, the dealer kind of
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winced when you pulled your card out, like to, to pay for your,
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your deposit or your card. But then, but then you've got a
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difficult situation probably where that individual within the
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deal has been told by their management team try and get
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people away from card where we can, we've got paid by bank now
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is there still then you're obviously not going to need
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educating on that. But as someone that doesn't know
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pay by bank, that staff member has to explain what it is, how
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it works. They might not be able to do it
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on their their app or they might not be familiar with it.
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You create a friction point then with what is you could have just
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put your car into the card machine and and paid that
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amount. Yes, there would have been a
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higher charge, but there's also then that could they bake that
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in that car costs into their top line price for the.
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Vehicle well, some people are yeah, right, people will charge
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you, but you're not in Carter you're not supposed to be
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surcharging for card payments right in any way whatsoever.
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So I do think there's there is an education piece that has to
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happen, but it's, you know, it was all part of the Obie.
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There was plans to do lots of, you know, customer consumer
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education. It never really happened.
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You look at other markets like, you know, the Netherlands, you
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know, they had ideal for years, you know, you used to walk
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through Amsterdam and if you could go to a shop, there'd be
9:33
like no cuts, it'd be like ideal cash.
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So they're very familiar with those schemes, you know, so
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forth. There's familiarity there in
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Germany PES. Olympics, right?
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Right. If you want it to happen, you
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make people aware of exactly what's happening.
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Yeah, but then you need to make the the experience work, right.
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So in the UK you can scan AQR code, There's familiarity.
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You've got to remember going back to coronavirus, QR wasn't
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really a thing. Now it's ubiquitous and everyone
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knows because they, you know, they bought their eat out to
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help out type stuff on a on a table.
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And that familiarized our whole population with, with, with QR.
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But we've also got app to app redirection in the UK where it's
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like Europe doesn't really have that.
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So your European experiences scan QR code, open up a bank
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screen, type your iband. Most of them are familiar with
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it. They've got their iband saved
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somewhere. It's you know, it's, it's pre
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filled for them. But the experience is subpar,
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right? So you've got to, you've got to
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fix these parts of user experience, which, you know, we
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obsess about conversion, you know, clever things around how
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we represent ibands skipping screens.
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And we do that on a bank by bank basis and country by country
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basis. the US then presents all the challenges around open
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banking needs a login and password, right?
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Are people going to store that? Is that going to be in their
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password manager, BitLocker, whatever that happens to to be?
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Do they feel safe about sharing username and password?
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You remember the early days of trustee, you know you would log
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in with username and password, trustee would go off and
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effectively screen scrape your payment.
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And people got familiar with it early.
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Not sure people are comfortable with that now.
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That's their right where people they want to, they want to
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gamble, they want to play, they're probably going to go
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through the payment method that they're they're told to right.
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So it's a sector element to that as.
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Well, the US is largely driven by that, right?
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There's very little O authors, no app redirection.
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It's username and password consent presented, and then we
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make a payment by. It's actually like a push ACH,
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but that's a consented push. But you know the chargeback
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rates or return rates are likely to go up as a consequence.
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Well, we and we talk about some of the open banking platforms
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that have gone down and maybe some of the open banking
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platforms that have been quite successful are probably on open
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bank platforms that are selling to some high risk sectors and
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being able to get good margins on open bankings as an APM as
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opposed to not wanting to offer card payments because the
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acquire is saying no, the charge rates etcetera, etcetera.
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Open bank, there's a niche definitely in some sectors for
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open banking. A conversation I've had with
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many of the issue is, is why would we offer it when we're
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making 20 basis points in change fees, right.
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So that's always going to be that.
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It has to be an alternative and sit alongside card payments as
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opposed to replace it. Yeah, but we said that initially
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that there's there's always a commercial opportunity for
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banks, you know, so share of revenue there was premium data,
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I remember what it was called now premium data was muted as as
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a way for the banks to commercialize onboarding use
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cases, you know like 50 pence between you know the TPP and the
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bank makes a whole heap of sense.
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You've got then a direct identify and pay type solution,
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a couple of banks, we did some PO CS on that, but you've got to
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get every single bank on board with that.
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Whereas you know, the UK and Europe visitors the kind of the,
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the US way of doing things. the US has had commercialization
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through the plaids etcetera of this world for years now.
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So they've already built the commercial relationships with
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every single bank in in the US. So 1033 and all those things I
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think you want to talk about like the commercialization
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there. There doesn't need to be the
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same level of openness to make it work, because America just
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works on commercial agreements. So we've seen Visa's decision to
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exit the US market. I'm saying exit because we don't
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know it's going to be an exit until they really exit.
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What do you think that's going to tell us about about the rest
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of the world when it looks like one of the biggest markets wants
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to? Wants to put out, I think, I
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think, you know, back to what I said about commercialization,
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maybe that's already there. Maybe they're worried about not
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having market share and, you know, bringing their previous
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investments across Europe over there and making them work when,
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you know, the lion share is Plaid MX acquire and Finicity,
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right? Finicity has a great share.
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Then then Visa and that's a MasterCard company.
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So maybe they don't want to be seen as competing and losing.
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I mean, I can't really speak for, you know, what their
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broader strategy is, but again, it's been commercialized.
13:55
There are mainstays there that work really, really well right
13:58
now. Maybe it's just not Visa's game
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to play and all that. There's also everything that's
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happening in the States. We were all positive last year
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as Vegas 2020, 1033 just passes. And then you have like the
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notion that the financial data exchange FTX will start
14:14
enforcing standards. And then we come into a Trump
14:17
presidency and it's not necessarily open banking.
14:20
It's, you know, just get rid of lots and lots of government
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departments. All of a sudden 1033 is weakens
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and maybe people players like Visa just want some stability
14:30
and and regulations to. 5 plus years in the making right as
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well for that and then overnight just gone pretty much.
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But look how long it took the the UK to standardize, right?
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Like, you know, true layer, Tink, Gapoli have all spent
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inordinate amounts of money to get the banks to conform to what
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effectively as a standard. But they're all very different.
14:50
They're putting like a normalization layer on top of
14:53
the banks doing various different things.
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Try doing that. Even greatest company, we've got
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like 9 banks. We care about big banks in the
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UK. Try to do that in the US.
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It's just wild. I mean, Germany as well, when
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when you look at German institutions, you've always got
15:06
the big banks, but then they've got, you know, federal by
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federal. There's like thousands of banks
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in Germany. This is, this is quite a scale
15:14
challenge to do. And it's probably the same in
15:17
in. Well, it is the same in the.
15:18
US there is some providers right, like Vault for example
15:21
that seems to be doing quite a good job in putting out the
15:24
rails for businesses to to use their platform, right?
15:28
Yeah, I mean, look, Tom, I hope he gets well soon.
15:31
That's really, really, really sad news.
15:33
Like he did a really good job in trying to push a standardization
15:36
forward for the PS PS I mean, we'd be more niche than than the
15:40
Vault have in a lot of respects. But, you know, there's also the
15:43
challenge there of making all of that normal.
15:45
They they said they're going into the US didn't really make
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it work in the the short term for exactly the same reasons
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that, you know, Visa's a little bit concerned about the whole
15:53
thing. You know, bringing Fed now and,
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you know, RTP or RFP together in in one unit, it's a valiant way
16:02
forward. He picks together under on on
16:04
one integration as well. But you know, the US is still
16:07
challenging that it's expensive, right?
16:09
The Fed now is, you know, it's 10s of cents on the amount of
16:12
want to talk about commercial rates with with parties, but
16:15
compared to the cost of ACH being so low, there's been
16:18
premiums now charged for for instance.
16:21
So we just need a bit of time for everyone to realize that the
16:24
play, the playing field is being levelled and then to bring those
16:27
costs down to be able to par with either a cheaper card
16:30
payment or with something like ACH or it's older equivalents.
16:33
And what does the you, you've obviously moved to the US as
16:36
well. You've, you've launched an
16:37
office out there. What, what does the US market
16:39
look like for you, just for them in terms of your growth out
16:43
there, your focus out there with all of the moving parts that
16:45
you've? Kind of, yeah.
16:46
So, so we we talked about kind of the regulated market
16:49
generally. I think one thing that US
16:52
offers, there's the commercial nature of like consented data,
16:57
right, There's that's been weakened somewhat, but let's
16:59
hope that that somewhat holds. We've got the ability to get
17:03
more data from the US banking system than you get from the UK.
17:08
Let's say premium data happens, we commercialize it, great, but
17:11
there's a bigger market opportunity there with deeper
17:13
data. We then have lots of different
17:16
types of rails. So we have all the variants of
17:18
ACH, same day, next day. We need to work towards a
17:22
guaranteed offering and actually we spend a lot of time in Europe
17:26
making separate credit transfer, much like separates.
17:29
And so we take a lot of risk on our transactions.
17:31
We look at, we poll banks, we look at the state change
17:35
messages from all them. We know with levels of certainty
17:38
what the settlement time will look like.
17:39
We will do the same thing in the US, but there is a big opening
17:43
there for what we already do in Europe to take into the
17:46
regulated gaming sector. For example, we just took on a,
17:50
a 12 million investment round in order to stand up the US, purely
17:53
stand up the, the US. So that's one opportunity.
17:56
And, and there's lots of other stuff going on, which is the
17:58
genius act past crypto is growing, stable coin offerings
18:01
are going to be growing over over the next year.
18:03
So we see the US as an evolution in our journey.
18:06
It's not necessarily like going to be the the the main pillar in
18:10
the next year, but I think a lot of cool things are happening to
18:12
to support where we want to go. Playing into those sectors where
18:15
you know that the growth exists is the right call as well.
18:18
We've seen open banking providers that focused on the
18:20
shiny retail brands, the things that they think they they see as
18:24
what are the best poster, Charles, for case study that
18:26
show we're doing well in the sector even though we're not
18:28
making any money. Well, you can actually say,
18:30
well, the AISP side thing, the monetization, I mean, Plaid
18:33
probably don't get enough credit for what they've done,
18:35
particularly in the States, right?
18:37
I mean, but then also you talk about trustee and the gambling
18:40
stuff. You guys focusing on gaming
18:42
gambling and and then monetizing AISP data.
18:46
Why shouldn't we be doing that in the UK in terms of some of
18:48
the, the stuff that it, it, it drives, right?
18:51
So KYC onboarding solutions we've talked about for financial
18:55
services businesses, you've got accessibility to lending for
19:00
people that maybe you wouldn't get that facility without the
19:03
benefits of open banking. Like why not put a price on
19:06
that? We get charged quite often in
19:08
the payments world of payments are too expensive.
19:10
What's it being able to tap a card and get that money same day
19:13
or next day? But you know, it's not far off
19:14
open banking these days, right? There are real tangible benefits
19:18
to the card payment ecosystem. And it's always like how drive
19:20
that price though or drive that price though, but.
19:22
Not even on just a payment, but like you say on the AIS side of
19:26
things, your bank identity A is probably more qualified than the
19:32
passport you pull out. Whether it's AI faked or
19:35
otherwise, I did try early in the journey to see if a great
19:37
passport for myself and I could. You can't now on most of the
19:39
major platforms, but you know you can get James level 1 long
19:44
straight London from the bank. That's generally a better
19:46
representation of a passport and then the deeper part that you
19:50
get from someone's transaction history effectively financial
19:53
health, right? You've got stronger earlier
19:56
signals of someone's degrading credit standing financial health
20:01
than before the Cras see it so. You can see somebody's regular
20:05
card payments or loan payments, you can see them stop.
20:09
Have they repaid the loan or did they miss a payment, right?
20:12
What was their balance at that moment?
20:13
In times you can start to see all these early indicators.
20:16
But given we were very deeply now in the I gaming sector, we
20:20
recognize there's a lot of problem there with harmful
20:22
behavior as well. So we're able to look at
20:24
somebody's transaction history and determine have they had
20:28
changes in behavior in their depositing, you know, has that
20:30
influence other factors in their spend?
20:33
Are they gambling, gaming within disposable income, Right?
20:37
There's a big difference between if somebody's got 10,000 in
20:40
their bank account and they're gambling £100 between someone's
20:42
got 500 and doing, doing the same.
20:44
And the regulators in UK and the Netherlands are all moving
20:48
towards what we call an affordability regime, which is
20:51
valiant. And it's probably the right
20:52
thing to do, right? Because there are, there are a
20:55
handful of people, it's a fraction of a percent of people
20:58
that do have gambling addiction. So how do you notice that
21:01
earlier? How do you kind of figure out
21:03
that somebody has started to change behavior and alert
21:07
yourselves as an operator and then to the fact they should
21:10
cool down? I think that's quite a good
21:12
space to go. But affordability in Europe has
21:14
been very much about hard limits.
21:16
So let's make sure you only gamble €200 in a month or 400.
21:21
I think it's like depending on the on your age range, but
21:24
that's very different between someone again with you know €400
21:26
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Merchants, if you're, if you're collecting payments, whether
22:08
it's via sweeping in the future maybe or even like car payments,
22:11
I'll be using AASP right now to to see that that customer's
22:16
data. Can they afford for us to
22:19
attempt to take that payment tomorrow?
22:21
If they can not because the money is not in the bank, I
22:23
should be communicating with that consumer and saying hi
22:27
James, you've got a payment of X amount coming out tomorrow.
22:30
If you are struggling, please contact us because you know the
22:34
customer doesn't have the money in the bank.
22:35
To me, what are you looking after your customer?
22:38
You're also saving yourself fees.
22:41
I mean the same with direct debits in this country.
22:43
Exactly the same, right? You know I've.
22:45
Used AISP. I've not managed my current
22:46
account right and I've bought something in a crap that direct
22:49
travel camera the next day and it needs to be.
22:50
There's all that kind of stuff that you go through in the US
22:54
it's kind of even slightly different because you're making
22:56
a payment without, you're doing it within a number of days.
23:01
So like you know, ACH, even the same day could be the next day.
23:04
You don't know the current balance, you don't know if
23:06
somebody's done your previous returns.
23:08
You can do a quick scan of the banking out and determine the
23:10
risk against that transaction. Do we need though to do it's a
23:13
great point, but the consumer has to give their permission
23:17
right at some point to say I'm going to let you see an active
23:20
balance of of my account. And I think in the in the world
23:23
of Brits particularly, there is a fear of sharing some of our
23:27
data. We seem a little bit more
23:28
reserved than than other parts of the world.
23:30
That's my. Gambling money, don't touch it.
23:31
Kind of. Well, the US, just the US is
23:33
unfettered. So, you know, they, they just
23:35
have a different approach to data.
23:37
Whereas over here, and I think we, we tried an ID card in the
23:41
Blair era, we like put it out there and everyone kind of
23:44
firmly resisted it. And I think that goes all the
23:46
way back to the, the Second World War if we trace its
23:48
origins. But you know, in Estonia you can
23:50
just do digital ID and no one really don't really get it.
23:53
It's like it's seen as a as a benefit.
23:55
You know, a lot of the earlier open banking journeys were about
23:59
explicit consent. So when you went I'm going to
24:01
interrogate your bank account for balance transactions, blah,
24:05
blah, blah for the singular purpose.
24:07
That's a big wall of text and it's like terms and conditions.
24:10
It's quite scary. And the word consent is quite
24:12
scary word. It's not like authority or
24:16
approval. Consent is quite, it's an
24:18
awkward word that we don't use very often in lots of contexts.
24:20
So, you know, I think we got an open banking parlance some of
24:23
that wrong and we made it quite complicated for for people that
24:27
we didn't really that we didn't really need to is there.
24:30
A marketing reason for that, like have we marketed open
24:32
banking? I've been calling it open
24:34
banking for a start. Obviously you say banking was
24:35
the wrong word. Pay by bank is better for the
24:38
payment element. But we always talk about, we
24:40
walk down the street and we ask 10 people what open banking are
24:42
they? No a clue.
24:43
But then you explain they probably paid their credit card
24:45
off last month using it. They're like, oh, that's open.
24:47
Banking, we all live in a little bubble where it seems quite
24:49
nice. No, but fine.
24:50
That seems quite helpful and. Useful, but it's self-employed,
24:53
What open banking is. They might not know what it is,
24:54
but they used it in January. Yeah.
24:56
Basically, I don't want my bank to be open.
24:58
I don't want my bank to be open. It's kind of that you see, it's
25:00
just the nomenclature around some of this is a is a little
25:03
bit is a little bit wonky. That we've kind of covered the
25:06
US great Geo expansion for you there and congratulations on the
25:10
the raise as well. Exciting times for the business.
25:12
Obviously add to that a new office opening in a city that's
25:16
very close to my heart, where I studied and met my wife.
25:19
So you you've honed in on man. Thank you very much.
25:22
I actually lost my wedding ring on a beach the other day.
25:23
So I'm not in the good books though.
25:24
But yeah, I know dealing with the insurance company at the
25:27
moment. Get some banking involved for
25:29
the pay out there in terms of it, you know, Leeds itself,
25:33
Manchester's little sibling potentially Manchester always
25:36
gets the the attention is kind of the northern powerhouse.
25:39
There's some amazing companies based in Leeds.
25:40
So explain that decision. Why Leeds?
25:43
You know what does that bring for you guys as a business
25:45
opening up shop? So I don't think it's just
25:46
Leeds, although we've just made a big investment in scanning
25:49
A-Team there. It goes all the way back to the
25:51
start of the business and actually, you know, really early
25:54
days coronavirus hits. So you're like, what is the
25:57
point of having everybody centralized in the expensive
26:00
office in London just as that hit, Luckily our lease would run
26:03
out. So we're like, let's not renew
26:04
it, Let's just go fully remote. We were meeting people in
26:07
Victoria Park in the east of London.
26:09
We're playing Frisbees with each other and, you know, having a a
26:12
couple of drinks and getting together a couple of times every
26:15
month. And then we realized, well, if
26:17
you're going to behave like this, why we hide just in
26:20
London? Why would he hide that won't
26:21
hide somewhere else. So I ended up I had a product is
26:24
in Manchester, our CFO is in Manchester.
26:27
I had a compliance was in Manchester.
26:28
She's just moved. We're like, OK, so that works.
26:31
People are good at working remotely and kind of coming
26:34
together. And then we said, well, where
26:36
would we set up a new office? And actually there's a good tech
26:39
cluster in Leeds as a consequence of the gaming sector
26:41
being kind of one of them. But comparing that to London
26:45
where we can hire, it's expensive.
26:49
You're now fighting with the banks because the banks have
26:52
opened up remote working for everyone and going back on their
26:55
their old selves. Now unfortunately people want to
26:58
work one day a week in the office, but they still want
27:01
London rates, which seems like a really awkward way to, but hey,
27:04
so you've got kind of tech teams that some of them want to come,
27:06
some of them don't. Why would you not just go
27:09
somewhere else and see if you can set up another cluster?
27:11
And there's a big tech undertaking over there at the
27:14
moment, so we figured that was the right thing to do.
27:16
We had a couple of people already working in the area and
27:18
we scaled it up. So we'll see how it goes.
27:20
I'm a Yorkshireman by birth, so I'm a Middlesbrough lad.
27:22
You wouldn't tell by my accent, apologies for that.
27:26
But yeah, I have Yorkshire deer in my heart.
27:28
Very good. And you know, I think there's
27:30
definitely a bit of a fintech hub opening up in in that part
27:34
of the world. When I was there, I know Sky,
27:36
but had a big office there. They did a incubator programme
27:39
with Sheffield University. I think it was with grad schemes
27:42
for mainly focusing on techies, like you say, product orientated
27:46
people and and having that emerging talent pool available
27:49
at their their disposal. And then Direct Line, Channel 4,
27:51
there's some really big brands going in that you're going to be
27:53
in and amongst in in Leeds. So great for the area to to have
27:57
another great employer opening up there.
27:58
Thank. You so looking across kind of
28:00
the next 12 to 18 months, obviously with your new offices
28:02
being open and the investment, what do you think will be the
28:05
biggest kind of challenges for you and the industry over the
28:08
next kind of year or two? I think there's a, there's a mix
28:12
of stuff going on. So, you know, across Europe
28:15
you've got the kind of mandate for separate instant.
28:18
That could be a real benefit for all of us.
28:20
It could equally be another fight that we all have for for
28:24
two years. You've got PSD 3 normalizing
28:27
kind of some of that. Let's see what the the adoption
28:29
of that looks like. It's commercial.
28:31
Deal. Isn't it PSD 3?
28:32
Oh yeah. I'd be consultants out there
28:34
rubbing their hands with PSD three, wouldn't they?
28:36
Yeah. I mean, I started this business
28:37
when PSD 2 was just about to be a thing and it still took
28:40
another 2-3 years. You know, there's a lot of stuff
28:44
happening in the UK with respect to kind of commercial VRPI still
28:48
think without, yeah, without a dispute model and all the things
28:52
that normally go with kind of schemes and DD.
28:54
That's that's going to be a bit of a challenge for for anyone.
28:57
But VRP doesn't really feature too much in our world over here
29:00
right now. Let's let's get as you've
29:02
mentioned it, then let's get your take on commercial VRP and,
29:05
and where we stand at the moment, because we're, we're
29:07
back into that. It's coming again.
29:09
There's more banks signed up now we're you know, what's the.
29:12
Reality, seeing the engagement I'd like to see so I'm going to
29:16
let everybody else kind of follow and, and figure it out
29:19
because it's not the strongest use case for us just yet, but I
29:22
still think it's, it's a while away and like I said, dispute
29:25
management, all those other things have to hang together.
29:27
There was a point where Visa and MasterCard were playing around
29:31
with various different schemes. You know, they approached us and
29:33
we've all talked and we all tried, you know, maybe there's
29:36
an apathy to wanting an existing card scheme to run a scheme for,
29:41
for A, to a. So there's lots of just
29:43
everybody being a bit protective and a bit cautious I think at
29:46
the moment. So, you know, for for us, we'll
29:49
focus on the US and I think that's a big enough challenge to
29:53
see where the dust settles in Europe.
29:55
What are your thoughts Grant on commercial VR PS.
29:58
I think it's quite well known what my thoughts are on on
30:01
commercial VR. PS I I still think we're in this
30:04
stage of certain individuals making out like it's very
30:08
imminent and it's going to replace direct debit and I just
30:11
don't see it happening for a long time.
30:14
Direct debit payments still make up 7 in 10 recurring payments in
30:17
the UK. They still grow month for month.
30:19
They're an established solution. Consumers know it, they trust
30:22
it. There's protection that exists
30:24
with with it like like you say. So the elements of what we've
30:28
seen deployed as so-called commercial VRP is an initial
30:30
open banking payment that rolls into standing order.
30:33
It's not truly utilizing open banking.
30:35
I mean, where we, where we first talked about it, the combination
30:38
of trusted beneficiaries with limits and be able to say, you
30:42
know, this margin can do up to £100 or you know, you can do it
30:45
with a prescribed frequency and people can't just keep.
30:48
And you can manage that with, you know, consents within the
30:52
app experience and any kind of changes to that you can be,
30:56
we're not anywhere near close to that.
30:57
And I, I don't want on personally, I wouldn't want
30:59
uninfected DD access to my bank account.
31:02
Like SOS are fine and ADD for the same amount, but like an
31:06
open-ended book and VRP? Don't think so.
31:08
Yeah. I think my biggest concern with
31:11
commercial VR PS is we're trying to build a product that's maybe
31:14
not needed in the industry because you have direct debit,
31:18
you have standard orders, you have card payments.
31:21
Why would you need a different way of?
31:22
I think DDS and SOS, the problem with them is like the process to
31:26
establish them and and change them.
31:28
It's the mandate that's hard. So it's not flexible and
31:31
nobody's really. It's a setup of it, right?
31:33
Right. So no one's really gone to the
31:35
level of being able to kind of change that mandate or adjust it
31:38
in real time. That's the, that was the promise
31:40
of VRP was like moving those limits around.
31:42
But you know, I think we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get
31:45
there. But it's a little bit of a
31:47
hammer looking for a nail at the moment.
31:48
Absolutely. Yeah, I'd, I'd be surprised if I
31:52
see it this year, but I've seen so many businesses say it's
31:54
coming this year. I'm also really interested to
31:57
see what a simple use case is, because I don't know what a
31:59
simple use case is. I mean, I guess the simplest 1
32:02
is like SAS Subs, something like that, you know, where you're on
32:06
one tier and you want to shift to another and you don't want a
32:08
different DD mandate or something like that, right?
32:10
That that's nice, right? That's nice.
32:12
There's a lot of payments in SAS that people would prefer not to
32:15
be against the card. But but do they prefer to be not
32:18
against the card? What we do as a business, yeah,
32:21
100%, yeah. Because some of them go against
32:23
my card and then somewhere against someone else's intent,
32:26
their expenses card. And it's just, it's an absolute
32:28
mess. Can we squash it down into one
32:30
thing that would be much better than manage all that within your
32:34
corporate business treasury type account?
32:37
That makes sense. And do you think the next stage
32:39
is going to be driven more by banks and fintechs or merchants
32:43
themselves? I don't think it's banks,
32:47
apologies to anyone out there from a, from a, from a bank.
32:50
They've not really pressed innovation forward.
32:53
I think, you know, we've got desires as fintechs for things
32:56
to be better and a lot of it's not really new features.
33:00
It's just about similar capabilities and standardization
33:04
and, and normalization. So there's always a big push
33:06
for, for that. I think on the the merchant
33:10
side, you know, we have lots of demands.
33:12
So various different things that we can do right now, obvious
33:16
ones would be like reverse payments.
33:18
Can we combine AIS on a reverse payment would be the most
33:20
fantastic thing in the world was on the road map and you mean to
33:23
go suddenly disappeared for it. So these little things like that
33:26
and then you're off pushing things like apps to app
33:30
redirection in Europe would be fantastic.
33:33
That's the stuff that gets conversion numbers, higher
33:36
conversion numbers, Dr. Merchant acceptance, right?
33:40
Reduced cost and good conversion.
33:42
At the moment, a lot of places are you've got pockets of good
33:45
conversion in certain countries and poor ones in others.
33:48
So merchants kind of look at it of, well, I've got this kind of
33:51
fragmented way of taking payment for certain markets.
33:55
You know, you could be seen as being an APM of choice for
33:58
certain areas, but others that would just rely on cards.
34:01
Until we've got that conversion, standardization ubiquity that I
34:05
think PSD 3 already start enforcing, I think you won't get
34:09
much draw from merchants. You get it more from the
34:13
fintechs. We were talking over coffee
34:15
before a little bit, as you mentioned Europe there around
34:18
some of the challenges in the European market, the EPI and,
34:21
and where and what they're looking to build obviously taps
34:24
into quite a lot of A to a payment methods.
34:26
What sort of challenges do you think they they're going to face
34:28
on that journey to try and create a singular sort of
34:31
payment wallet across all of Europe?
34:34
Lawsuits, I mean, look, it's security generally is, is
34:37
probably going to be the the strongest thing.
34:38
We're going to go back to, you know, EI desk to all the banks
34:42
and a standard there. Like the banks are all
34:44
challenged with new ways of, of doing things.
34:47
Generally it's going to be about everybody agreeing to stuff at
34:52
the end of the day, like, yeah, quorum across the sector.
34:56
And I think we're far from core and one even the basics right
35:00
now. So it'll it'll get built and
35:02
it'll slowly get built, but I think it's going to take you in
35:05
the space of a decade rather than a few years.
35:08
And there is momentum in open banking, right?
35:11
And it is moving and more people are starting to understand who
35:13
maybe didn't understand it 6/12/18 months ago.
35:17
Do you think regulators are stopping that momentum or do you
35:21
think they will improve their speed for the rest of the
35:25
industry to get things moving a little bit quicker?
35:27
I mean, regulators, the only thing that they've got to give
35:31
really is making sure that people or banks and the sector
35:35
generally conforms to a normalized behaviour.
35:37
That's the best thing they can do.
35:39
Again, PSD 3 is trying to do some of that.
35:43
And the regulator needs to think about what an independent scheme
35:49
looks like for dispute management.
35:51
That's been a big hole for for a long time.
35:54
And again, what we do in what we do in the UK with respect to
35:59
kind of premium data, data security, consent, data sharing,
36:04
like what is that? What does that all mean?
36:06
Because the banks aren't going to figure that out for
36:07
themselves. They're going to leave it well
36:09
alone. So unless that regulator comes
36:11
at it from the perspective of determining the banks that own
36:16
customer data, they don't own that customer data.
36:18
The customer owns that data, and the regulator can make that more
36:22
portable in the same way that they made switching of accounts
36:26
portable as the initial driver from the CMA 9 and open banking.
36:30
That's the role they've got to play, but they're underfunded.
36:34
They're looking at all kinds of other things.
36:37
Getting another Obie that has some teeth all the way across
36:41
Europe I think is a very tall ask right now, but I'd love it
36:44
to happen. What are your thoughts on
36:47
orchestration platforms for open banking?
36:49
Do you think is a thing? I mean to, to an extent we do an
36:53
element of it. That's kind of what Volt does is
36:55
it's kind of main, main thing it will put together picks with,
36:58
you know, with RTP. In fact, now we do orchestration
37:02
to orchestration as well. So in those markets that we
37:05
don't have direct bank connectivity because we're not
37:08
an infrastructure player, you know, we use all the the main
37:11
aggregators. We will route some traffic
37:14
through one and some traffic through another, you know, so I
37:16
think there's a lot of merit in that because some people have
37:20
better integrations with the banks.
37:21
Don't tell me why, but some people have high conversion.
37:24
Everyone's done it slightly differently.
37:26
Again, let's all do it the same way would be really, really,
37:28
really, really helpful. So we we have an orchestration
37:31
platform that allows us to use other TPPS ourselves.
37:35
We have various different ways of kind of doing an IIS and PIS
37:38
journey. We don't do it the same way in
37:40
every country. In fact, we don't do it the same
37:42
way with every bank. And that was.
37:44
That's fuel optimization though, right?
37:45
Yeah, yeah. And if we then, and you've
37:48
touched on elements of it, but then if we look at the road
37:50
ahead for, for the Aspen in terms of where the business is
37:53
going, I guess a couple of things.
37:55
Your your biggest opportunities as you see in the next few
37:57
years, given some of the challenges we've talked about
37:59
regulation, different markets, the US you've you've obviously
38:03
mentioned as well. But you know, if you're
38:04
achieving your vision for the business over the next few
38:07
years, where does that see you go?
38:10
It sees us go into lots of different verticals.
38:15
And again, there's a bit of a mental road map for me that is
38:20
firstly about regulation and bank capability, second around
38:24
consumer education and adoption, thirdly around how the rails
38:28
develop in certain geographies. I mean, Africa's a hugely
38:31
appealing market. You know the Asias as well.
38:34
But we've already seen how fragmented Europe alone is,
38:36
without trying to bring the whole of Africa or the whole of
38:38
Asia together in in in kind of one piece, I think.
38:42
I'll ask you about LATAM on that as well, because you've met
38:44
named some continents obviously a lot of.
38:47
I think LATAM is driving towards picks, right?
38:49
So unless we just become like a picks orchestrator, like it's
38:53
already, they've already done that right at national level.
38:56
We might see that other countries do that at a national
38:59
level again, part to Europe. Do we want to be, you know, an
39:03
instant payments orchestrator or not?
39:05
I mean, we can be, you know, there's we, there's more than we
39:07
do outside of a fast or payment or or a pix payment that brings
39:11
that whole journey together. You know, it's part of our kind
39:14
of general USP, but you start to see kind of pix type
39:17
proliferation across Latam as well.
39:19
So in a way you've got to be led by the regulators, the banks,
39:23
the schemes, etcetera. Look at what cameras is doing
39:26
right? It's Vocalink driving the RT
39:29
that was supposed to be essentially ready last year.
39:31
It's probably going to be another year from here, but what
39:34
does that look like? Is that in track?
39:36
Is it, is it an independent like what does it look like?
39:39
Can we add value by pulling that together with some of the other
39:42
aspects we do don't know just yet.
39:44
I mean, my when we set to build this business, we looked at
39:48
things like bank ID as a a beautiful way, although very
39:53
limited in its reach of singular country to bring together all
39:56
the things you'd want to do online from a narrow funnel all
39:59
the way through to A to a payment.
40:01
So the more ubiquitous I can make that internationally would
40:04
be one of my core goals. Quick question, completely off
40:08
topic. Jasper.
40:11
What does Jasper mean? It's pay ASAP.
40:14
It's an acronym of that, an anagram with that.
40:17
Yeah, we, we threw a lot of kind of stuff into the mix.
40:20
We had a, we had a big kind of whiteboarding session through,
40:25
we had a whole wall full of stickies and we, we saw that as
40:29
you know. What kind of things do you like?
40:31
Can you expressions? I think one of them was
40:33
somebody's name which actually got included in it.
40:35
And then we, we got the acronym out of it.
40:39
No, I think it was one of our, one of our staff names is her,
40:42
her nickname is Yaz, or at least the start of her name is is Yaz.
40:45
So that went up on the wall. Pay went up on the wall.
40:47
When you start putting all these things together, you come up
40:50
with something. I mean, I'm a surprise.
40:51
Anyone else that Yasper has a five letter domain name was
40:53
available? Yeah, I'd be surprised at that
40:56
as well. And and you mentioned that
40:59
around open banking industry and where you want Yasper to go.
41:03
What do you want Yasper to be known as?
41:07
Been the role of open bank in the future.
41:10
I mean, for us, it's about connecting identity and money.
41:13
That's been our kind of North star ever since.
41:15
It's like the singular way to make a verified payment in less
41:19
than 10 seconds ubiquitously. Fantastic.
41:22
And before we go, James, one of our favorite parts of the show,
41:25
The Shelf of Shame. So for us, we'd like to know
41:29
from your perspective, what would you like to bring to the
41:31
Shelf of Shame? And we'll make that decision if
41:33
we banish it forever or we allow it to carry on in in the world
41:37
of payments and fintech. No kind of buy now, pay late
41:40
particularly, but the application of buying now, pay
41:43
later and particularly into like having something like that on
41:46
just 8, right? That that makes me, I mean,
41:49
sometimes I don't want to pay £50 for a take away because I've
41:52
spent a lot of money this month and the kids are not going to
41:53
get it. They're going to get fish
41:54
fingers or whatever we normally do as a family.
41:57
But like when I pay later on a £50 take away that that disturbs
42:01
me and that kind of low value commodity type sale and the
42:05
application of it absolutely needs to go into bed.
42:07
So you should. Buy now, pay later for small
42:09
items so you'd. Particularly consumables, right?
42:12
Yeah, it's an interesting one. I always have a thought on this
42:15
and it was actually someone within within the finance sector
42:19
mentioned team. You have a a single mother with
42:21
three children, which just had a newborn and she's deciding
42:24
whether or not she puts her nappies on buying our pay later.
42:27
That's wild and it sounds crazy. However, and and and this is the
42:31
point is that nappies may be on special offer today.
42:34
Yeah, and buying a big pack to spread it out, but still
42:36
spreading over months because it's not.
42:38
The way the most retailers are looking at it, right, they're
42:40
doing it for a reason. They're trying to help people
42:42
that may. Be valuable.
42:43
I'm not. I'm not a big fan.
42:44
Of down the rabbit hole, I think that one will come up quite a
42:47
lot and I think we're quite happy to to put that on the
42:48
shelf for sure. So yeah, I know I would agree
42:50
with that as well. So just just to conclude then,
42:53
where can people find you? Socials?
42:56
Get in touch. Find out more about Jasper as
42:58
well. So we're at www.yasper.com,
43:00
you'll find us on Instagram, you'll find us on LinkedIn,
43:03
you'll find us all the usual channels.
43:06
I mean, you'll find me James level on on LinkedIn.
43:08
If anyone's got anything interesting to talk about, happy
43:11
to connect, happy to chat, feel free to reach out.
43:13
Brilliant. Perfect.
43:14
Thanks very much for the payment shed.
43:15
More than welcome. Thank you.