1001. News - After Dark: Starling's glow-up, Gen Z’s saving streak and WhatsApp moves into SME payments

24:05Ross Gallagher:no I love it spot on I also love that you're out here giving people homework it's just 322 episodes

24:10Kate Moody:guys at your leisure I almost got a t-shirt printed but you know yeah but but I think look

24:15Ross Gallagher:bringing it back to the headline I think one thing we can probably all get behind is the mission right you know we can all absolutely back the idea of helping normal people build their financial literacy get good with money build better financial habits and behaviors and a better financial future um so hats off on that all right let's move on to our next story um this one comes from payments with a headline banks face loyalty crisis as gen zed trades institutions for influencers When are Gen Z not causing crises? Right, according to recent research from Payments, the financial lives of Gen Z, Gen Z, consumers based out of the US look very different to the financial lives of previous generations.

25:01Ross Gallagher:Data from the 2025 data books report by Payments Intelligence shows that, I'm going to go Gen Z this time, are saving more aggressively than their older counterparts, squirreling away 36 % of their income over the past six months versus 27 % for other age groups. How their saving is also different, with their savings typically diversified across things like digital wallets and crypto, alongside traditional checking and savings accounts. According to the report, 81 % of Gen Z said that their financial decisions were shaped by influencer recommendations. Now, if this trend continues, the traditional banking business models based on deposit lending spreads could potentially come under threat.

25:41Ross Gallagher:with the report calling this a warning sign for banks. Sarah, I'll come to you first on this one. I suppose what's your immediate reaction? Do you think it's as fundamental as those sort of warning signs suggest?

25:56Kate Moody:I think there's some interesting things in this. I think the diversity of what this report calls savings, and for those listening, I'm doing little bunny ears, is interesting because they're talking about putting the money into crypto or kind of putting their money into stocks and bonds. And I'm like, well, that's investing and that's a different thing. And therefore, drawing a point out of that about kind of the traditional banks, you know, commercial models is not really relevant. I think what is interesting is that this age group seem to be, for better or worse, more interested in finding out about finances.

26:32Kate Moody:And if that does mean, I think the article also references how many of them are using social media and Finfluences and TikTok to find out about what they should be doing their money. I think that level of interest is something that should be encouraged. I think the fact that they are diversified where they're putting their money is actually very sensible. And I think that there are some of us in the other age groups who could look at that as well. You know, people who just go, I'm going to max out my ISA every year, particularly with the current government mooting what they're mooting. So I think it's an interesting survey.

27:02Kate Moody:I think it's worth looking at the data in a bit more detail. And obviously, I would say that because it's me. but I think what we should be applauding this generation for is basically having an awareness of what they're doing their money and trying things and being creative with things and we just have to make sure that as financial services providers we're making sure that there are some guardrails in place that doesn't mean that Finfluencers don't have a place look at me and the sort of person who uses the word Finfluencer now anyway there isn't a place for them because there is, there absolutely is and if you look at some of the brands we've literally talked about in the previous story, they're all getting on board with it you know monzo's tiktok account's got over 100 000 subscribers what's really interesting just to go off on a little bit of a tangent not that much of a tangent i promise is that monzo's most recent piece of you know brand advocacy marketing if you like is to write a book and publish a physical book called the book of money and obviously i blink and love that but the point is it ties back to this point about financial literacy financial education and trying to help people understand what they should be doing.

28:06Kate Moody:And the point being that the reason that Monzo has so many TikTok subscribers and Instagram followers and whatever it is, is that young people are engaging. I mean, obviously some people my age as well, but presumably most people younger than me because I do not have a TikTok account.

28:19Ross Gallagher:Yeah. I think there's parallels actually to one of the points that we made on the previous story, which is, I suppose, where does the responsibility lie to help people build those better financial habits and behaviors and if the banks aren't going to do it then there are these influencers out there and people can go and i know we all straight away i think my brain defaults to like scammers on tiktok trying to get you to put your money into fake crypto accounts whatever but you know there's actually a whole heap of very legitimate people that are offering very sound advice on channels like youtube or substack or whatever else um and it's just it's in a media it's in a format that people want to consume um it's out there should we necessarily be that scared that people are obviously it's not regulated but that people are consuming this type of content and trying to learn

29:09Kate Moody:about i think we have to worry about it because we don't know what they're interacting with and and therefore when is it regulation when is it unregulated and when do they know um so i think you know that's the challenge yeah in back in my day you know we would be told by your parents you must go and get a job and you must save a deposit for a house and you must get on the housing ladder and then spend the rest of your life paying off your mortgage so that your kids can then sit there and do the same as you. And that's just not the same now. They're not given that aspiration because getting on the housing ladder is impossible.

29:39Kate Moody:So therefore we're looking at a completely different way of interacting with money where you're trying to save for something, but it's not a house. And you're trying to enjoy life along the way. So you might be saving for a holiday, but not necessarily a house. And you might think about saving. I think people are quite savvy about pensions, interestingly. because they probably haven't got the assets that we aspire to have. So you take my focus group of one, a fintech savvy 17-year-old, who probably tells me more about fintech than I need to know. But, you know, it's just fascinating how she does it.

30:11Kate Moody:You know, I was really worried when you went, oh my God, you know, she needs to have cash because cash, you want to understand the value of cash. And of course, then nobody pays you in cash. So eventually she's on her Monza account. And she said the other day, she still keeps cash in the drawer, interestingly. She goes, oh, and I keep saying, it doesn't make any interest in the draw so it's devalued and she says yeah but the good thing with cash is it doesn't really mean anything does it because you just spend and it's gone I don't want my bank balance to go down I'm like wow I thought it would be the other way and she just thinks cash is like a piece of paper whereas the stuff in her account she goes oh I'm not touching my account I'm sitting there and so how we've changed that and so that's changed even the last two or three years of how people are interacting with it and I think because of all the apps we were talking about on the challenger banks and they're not really challenging banks anymore, just new banks, is that they are able to understand this now and get a better feel of where the money's going to.

31:02Kate Moody:So I think we've got another few years where you're going to see a journey. But yeah, so she's also, you know, telling me about sweat coins and crypto and how the guy on crypto who can make a guaranteed 100 % return on her 500 pounds. I mean, can you imagine? Yeah, I know more than you, mum. Yeah, so I just think, yeah, we're going to have to work out how we're going to interact with them and how we're going to educate them. But they're not going to listen to their parents. I can tell you that.

31:25Ross Gallagher:That shift is fascinating because I think the traditional wisdom for older generations was exactly the opposite. It was the only way that you can keep track of your spending is if it's in physical cash and if you're using a card you don't see it and it's going to go down. It's really interesting. Okay one of the things we talked about on the previous story as well was the partnerships between banks and for example football clubs. Do you see an opportunity here for banks to partner with some of these influencers to sort of I suppose reach a different demographic that they're not necessarily engaging today yeah i mean i think as we've

31:56Kate Moody:mentioned i think lots of banks are are doing that they are trying to form partnerships um obviously i'm sure there are significant teams of people in large banking organizations who are out there researching the best influencers at most align with brand values and always other important things um but i think i mean i'm sure influencers would have become a thing anyway but i think they are having the cut through they are having because we still have this enormous advice gap that we just haven't solved for you when I joined 11FS seven years ago now it was probably one of the first things that kind of kept consistently coming up in conversation when we went into our organizations this brick wall of we want to be able to help customers more but we just don't have the regulatory clarity about you know where that advice guidance boundary is and seven years later I just mean again maybe I've missed it but it doesn't feel like anything has really been worked out.

32:46Kate Moody:It doesn't feel like we've made a decision as an industry about how we are going to provide advice at scale in these digital environments. People are now starting to experiment and push the boundaries but the influencers are stepping into a gap. So I can understand absolutely criticism of them and we do need to regulate it but I think it's one of my main frustrations I think is that we haven't worked out as an industry how to make advice work in the digital space yet because it feels like we're letting a lot of people down.

33:16Ross Gallagher:Yeah, that advice guidance gap is huge. And I think the impact that it's having is absolutely enormous. Marcin, I know at Marchetta you guys recently released your state of payments report. I'm sort of keen to hear some of the insights from that and maybe if there's anywhere that you've seen a little bit of overlap or difference in the statistics we've been discussing. Thank you. I don't think that it's different. and I think it's quite a line, to be honest. So starting from just realize that more than 70 % of UK consumers aged 18 to 34 years, they don't imagine they want integrated app that offers all the payment optioning.

34:07And I think what it really means is what historically was a competitive advantage that is convenience

34:16Ross Gallagher:and choice, that becomes a new baseline. This is coming as granted for everyone who raised in reality of everything that fintechs built. It's nothing super, it's nothing extra, it's just granted, it's by assumption, should be coming. And I think in this world, the only way to further differentiate is provide further personalization. It's go beyond the standard, offer very unique and contextual rewards, and try and build. And I think this is a holy grail of financial services that is very hard to build. Build the emotional connection. I think historically I've seen many financial services companies believing that by nature of what they do they build an emotional connection.

35:05Ross Gallagher:It's not really there, right? But I think this is holy grail, how to build that, again, emotion in context of financial service. That's possibly something that is possible. Completely agree. Sarah, we've talked about savings, we've talked about investments, we've talked about payments. What about sort of Gen Z as it relates to sort of debit versus credit? The traditional wisdom has always been that Gen Z don't really like credit. Of course, we've seen things like buy now, pay later really take off over the last few years. We've seen Klarna with their sort of headline grabbing IPO. What are your thoughts around that space?

35:47Kate Moody:Yeah, so buy now, pay later is really interesting as a financial instrument. I, funnily enough, I wrote an article about it recently, and I emailed about 15 people, as I always do, saying, you know, do you want to talk about this? And they all got back to me, which has never happened before, so I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people about buying our pay later. But I think what's really interesting is two points. Well, there's probably three points to it. I think there's a quote that, and lady, I'm going to read it out of my notes so I don't get her name wrong, but Professor Selin Atalay, who's the head of marketing and consumption group at the University of Bristol, she said the amazing thing about buy now pay later is that it unconstrains the financially constrained now to hark back to charlotte's point who is the most financially constrained demographic right now you could easily argue it was gen z of course there are people across all demographics who are who are struggling but you could you could easily argue that it's them and so that's perhaps one reason why they're so drawn to the idea of buy now pay later i think another thing is um and then professor, honestly, I could have chatted to her for hours.

36:51Kate Moody:But another thing that she said is that once you've used my nail payer data once, you're far more likely to use it again because it basically triggers excitement and the reward centre of your brain. So once you've used it, you're far more likely to go back and you're also far more likely to put more into your basket. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a whole other topic of conversation. But what it does mean is that you have this generation of people who are interested and willing to try out new digital tools of which Buy Now Pay Later through apps like Klarna is one. And they're sort of essentially, if you like, getting hooked is the wrong word, but that's kind of how they think about credit as opposed to the idea of a Barclay card.

37:30Kate Moody:No offence to Barclay card, first one that came to my mind. You could also say Amex, any other credit card group. And I think the third thing is that the association of credit has sort of slipped away a bit within the ecosystems that organisations like Klarna are building. so when some of the people who use Klarna regularly think about Klarna they don't think about it as buy now pay later they think about it as how they shop so anything they want they go to Klarna it's all in an ecosystem they can pay to Martian's point in many different ways should they so desire to do so with a debit card a credit card a bank transfer but that's an ecosystem which in their head is is shopping Klarna is shopping it's not like me who would go to google and type in you know what's the what's the best running shoe obviously i don't run but there was a conversation earlier about running i might hike but like you know that's how i might shop is go and look at a load of different reviews for the hiking shoes or whatever it is whereas the people who are using planner are now sort of that's their ecosystem and therefore buy now pay later is part of it and that's how they think about credit so a very convoluted answer to your question but i think it's really important one that we continue to consider when we think about how younger people envisage the entire financial ecosystem and what the different terms of savings, debit and credit mean.

38:45Kate Moody:To go right back to the beginning of the point, some people think that putting their money in crypto is saving. And that's not their fault. That's just the way that the ecosystem has evolved. Spot on.

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41:02Ross Gallagher:Okay, let's move on to our third story. This one also comes from payments. With the headline, Meta lets small businesses offer in WhatsApp payments. Sorry, I'm really over-articulating that. It's quite a hard thing to read. Meta has introduced a new feature allowing small businesses to accept payments directly within the WhatsApp business app. Merchants can now share QR codes with customers in a single tap, enabling quick and efficient sales closures as customers can pay using their preferred payment method within WhatsApp. Businesses can simultaneously use the WhatsApp Business app for daily interactions and the WhatsApp Business platform for handling increased customer messages and automation, all without changing their phone number.

41:48Ross Gallagher:Meta fresh-tested payments in India with similar in-chat payment capabilities already available in markets like Singapore and Brazil, but no timeframe has been confirmed to roll out the feature elsewhere. Kate I'm going to come to you first on this one I know there was a little bit of debate and confusion among the panel before the show about how this actually worked and the value what's your reaction?

42:16Kate Moody:Yeah I just couldn't work out if I was being really dense I was trying to understand what the benefit is of receiving a QR code on your phone in WhatsApp rather than having it physically somewhere for you to scan

42:29Ross Gallagher:if I did my boring explainer of how it actually works.

42:32Kate Moody:But I think, yeah, Martin and I were having a good conversation about this before, and I think, obviously, I think this is just reflective of where India is as a market, where just the use of QR codes has just massively taken off, obviously with the success of UPI, just the uptake of digital payments, generally of which QR codes has played a huge part, I think just means that maybe what seems mad to me as somebody that kind of still struggles to scan a QR code on my phone when I'm in a restaurant and want to pay. I'm probably not able to understand what it is like for an Indian consumer who receives this.

43:10Kate Moody:So I think it's obviously anything which provides small businesses with more optionality about how they can allow a customer to purchase something is a good thing for small businesses. We know how difficult it is for small businesses to run and to thrive, and they're juggling so much just from trying to find ways to accept payments, finding ways to have backups for when those payments inevitably probably fail, whilst also trying to reconcile different payment methods, stay on track over their earnings, and report things the way they need to report them, depending on their geography. So, yeah, I think it's a really exciting potential initiative.

43:49Kate Moody:I just couldn't quite get my head around it and was panicking about what I would do if I received a QR code in WhatsApp. But maybe that's just a sign of how desperately millennial I am and now obviously redundant.

44:01Ross Gallagher:Yeah, we did spend a little bit of time kind of when we were prepping the show, researching how it actually worked for anyone that is interested. You get the QR code sent to you in WhatsApp. You open it. You download it to your camera roll. You then open the PayTM, the Indian Payments app, or your Google Pay app, for example, click, scan a QR code, then it opens the camera, but there's also an option to upload the QR code, which you can then upload from your camera roll, and then you can initiate your payment. You know, make of that journey what you will. But Martin, Kate quite rightly made the point that you explained quite well maybe what some of the reasons or the drivers for that demand in those markets could be.

44:49Ross Gallagher:I think it would be interesting if you could share that with our audience. I think it's down to understanding what is the real need, what is the real problem beyond a customer group or geography. It's saying on a very high level, but I think what the particular problem is may be very, very different in very different customer segment, geography, etc., etc. And I think what it seems to solve is the enablement and bringing something that for us may seem not even very convenient, but the needs it's satisfying are even more fundamental and basic. I think translated to, again, the UK market and the SMB market in the UK and what we see in the report, I mean, SMB sees still payments as such as their way to solve and helping them optimize their expenses, their operational efficiencies.

45:54Ross Gallagher:agencies, payments that large companies on accepting or paying for solved very efficiently. But SMBs are not always having the access to those solutions and they still struggle to focus on what's important for them, which is make the business happen. And they have very limited resources operationally to tackle with the complexity of multiple systems related to payments, orders, customer communication. So that said, I think there may be a value that we are missing to see having our understanding of the needs and the needs somewhere else may be very very different. Charlotte, it's a really interesting point isn't it?

46:40Ross Gallagher:You know I mean as much as we describe the journey and it might sound super clunky, there's also a point here maybe about reaching consumers where they are, WhatsApp being one of the most used messaging and social media platforms in the world. There's sort of like a scale and a reach point here as well that you don't want to overlook.

47:01Kate Moody:I'm going to respectfully disagree on this one because having seen the journey in emerging markets and the impact of QR codes, that is what they rely on. This is how it works. And they've made the user journey work for them. So what we're going to do is translate that to Martin's point on bringing that back to the UK. It's going to be a different experience. And QR codes are still really taking off here. But you go to Brazil and you pay by PICS. I don't know if anyone's paid by PICS. And you sit there and say, oh, this is a really terrible journey. Oh, my God, I've got to pay by PICS. And you'll have millions of Brazilians saying, don't be so stupid.

47:37Kate Moody:And the same in India, same in Indonesia, same in the Philippines. because those QR codes allowed people to pay for the first time when they didn't have a bank account. And that was the method of transferring money or value from one to the other. So I think we have to be careful saying, well, yes, of course that journey doesn't work. Some of the open banking journeys, sorry, OBLT, because I know you're in the audience, that doesn't work because it's not single click. But that bit will all be sorted. And finding different ways of doing it through the big tech firms is probably the bigger thing.

48:09Kate Moody:and anything that helps SMEs have a single point checkout has got to be a good thing because how many people do they lose along the way? And that's the challenge we have. We talked about Klarna being a different way of paying. Why do people like Klarna? Yes, because it's a different way of paying. It's all in one place, but also it's just a really easy checkout journey and that's what we want. So at the moment, yes, it's not going to work here. We've got to take a picture of the QR code, but emerging markets have got this sorted and they are flying on the data they're collecting on the back of that payments journey.

48:39Ross Gallagher:I think it's such a good call out because it's easy to sit here for us and say, oh, it's a clunky journey, but fundamentally what you're talking about is inclusion.

48:48Kate Moody:It's inclusion and it's just, it's realising we have a lot to learn from the emerging markets of how they're doing it and we're never going to follow the same journey because we've got legacy banks, legacy infrastructure that's really difficult to move, but they have a lot to learn from us on the thought leadership piece and how we're doing it and then I think the best way is when you learn from each other and I think that's not what we're so good at here. But I can tell you, the Brazilians are going, what are you doing next on open banking? And we're like, my God, you've rolled out open finance to everybody and now going down to SMEs and the same in India and vice versa.

49:19Ross Gallagher:Such a great point, Charlotte. Sarah, what was your reaction to this one?

49:25Kate Moody:Well, I'll be honest, and it's highly amusing quite how many WhatsApp messages were exchanged between me and Kate this morning going, I don't, I can't, what? And entirely to Charlotte's point, we couldn't work out how it was supposed to work. I would argue that there is this smidgenous bit of kind of a really poorly written brush release involved in that as well but I think the points have already made a really interesting and I think what we're seeing, WhatsApp or any other channel aside is the point that payments can now be conducted through any channel and you know Charlotte already touched on it but you now expect to be able to pay at the point in the journey that you are making the purchase you don't want to go somewhere else, you don't want to go to a different page, you know for all the security ads, opening your phone app up to go, yes, this is me making a transaction on your phone whilst you're making a purchase on your laptop or your tablet or whatever it is, takes you away from that payment journey.

50:18So I think, for me,

50:19Kate Moody:the takeaway was, well, yes, of course, if this is how people buy things in that part of the world, then of course that's how they want to pay for things. If that's how they're shopping for things, if that's how they're finding things, if that's kind of the channel by which they interact with that business, then of course they want to be able to pay through that channel as well and I think it's going to be really interesting as we see the development of agentic commerce how that evolves and whether we continue to have these sort of segmented payment channels or whether it just becomes, it doesn't matter where you are or whatever you're doing your agent's like yeah I'll pay for that because you've agreed that's what you want to buy and that's the price you want to pay for it so yeah, I will fully hold my hands up and go yeah I hadn't got a clue was completely baffled by the QR code piece, but the important piece from my perspective is I want to pay on the channel at which I'm looking at to make that purchase.

51:10Kate Moody:And that could be TikTok, it could be WhatsApp, it could be, I'm sure that somebody out there will tell me a channel I've never even heard of, but, you know, that's the point. I think it's going to be really interesting that as customers have more and more options for different ways to pay, obviously the guys at Fireblock's talked about stablecoin payments coming in, there's going to be so many different ways for customers to pay, and it's great that things like this are giving businesses more options to receive payments. But I know from speaking to small business owners that they then have huge amounts of...

51:38Kate Moody:The more complex the variety of payments in, obviously it's great for increasing your revenue and your turnover, but the amount of administrative complexity that that could create for some of these small businesses, I think unless the systems at the back end can adapt and can start to sink all of these different data sources in, we've seen the success of things like Square because they took the physical point of sale terminal and then were able to sync all of that data through into kind of the cash flow and lending and all these other things which have helped small businesses to kind of automate and access credit and things like that.

52:14Kate Moody:I just hope that these two things can grow in balance so that, yes, we get more choice for customers, but we don't give small business owners an even bigger headache when they were just starting to get their heads around how they might use some of these platforms to streamline because small business owners have gone through a heck of a lot. I mean, forever, but especially in the last few years.

52:36Ross Gallagher:It is a great point because it's one thing making payments a lot more seamless and convenient, but if you don't solve for the reconciliation and the financial reporting and all of that sort of stuff, then maybe you're solving one problem and creating another. Jump in, Charlotte.

52:52Kate Moody:Do you think we're thinking a bit 1990s here, though? I mean, surely we're going to say, right, here you can take payments by WhatsApp because everyone wants to pay by WhatsApp. app okay that's going to go straight through to your counter c software and you know there are plenty of people in this room who would be able to sort out that journey so i think you know i agree at the moment it's we can't see it through because we're not thinking back to the original customer but i i i personally think somebody could solve that in a weekend if they wanted to it just depends whether it's the right thing for uk businesses to what you were saying okay and at the moment that wouldn't be the right thing from whatsapp but it may be something else that comes along and completely changes the way we work.

53:29Ross Gallagher:Yeah, completely and look Kate, I mean as you said you've done a lot of research into small medium businesses, the sort of journey aside I guess you can see this solving a particular pain point particularly for sort of micro businesses and solo entrepreneurs.

53:46Kate Moody:Yeah, absolutely I completely agree with Charlotte, I think this could be, I think we've definitely seen the pace of change we've seen in the technology available to SMEs that we know that a lot of these capabilities are available and I definitely think this could be solved. I just don't want us to get so excited about options for customers and forget about also solving for the SMEs at the administrative side as well. At the risk of being that person, Ross. I promise I'll make it quick. To get back to my point about agentic commerce, what's really interesting, if you look at Google's A2P protocol, is the number of partners that are involved.

54:19Kate Moody:So you've got MasterCard, you've got WorldPay, you've got PayPal, and they're all working together. and I think maybe that is kind of part of the evolution that you were talking about, Kate, which is that as a merchant, it doesn't really matter to me how I get this money. What matters to me is that the person who's buying is the person they say they are and that this is a secure transaction. And however that comes to me, I don't really mind. So I think that network, building a network capacity is something that as we see these new payment solutions come to the fore, it's something we've really got to watch out for.

54:50Kate Moody:Like the payment providers are going to have to work together on this exactly to your point to overcome that really significant pain point on the merchant side.

54:57Ross Gallagher:Absolutely. Excellent. I love how we flipped that story on its head. It almost like it started quite negatively and now I think we're finishing on a really positive note. Thank you, Charlotte. That's it. We do have a very special celebration, a little surprise lined up for you all. You were all given, or they were on your seats when you came in. Party poppers, you've either lost them or you've been holding onto them for a long time now. just hold on to them for a few more minutes now over the years and over a thousand episodes we have had hundreds of amazing guests and some absolute legends join us on Fintech Insider so to mark our thousand episode we thought we'd take a short trip down memory lane and play you the OG introduction I know all the panel are looking I'm getting so nervous on what's happening over this side of the panel please do just hold them just for another second

55:50Kate Moody:we're reading the instructions Yeah, yeah, that's right. Safety conscious over here.

55:54Ross Gallagher:Oh, my God. Chaos. I'm not joking when I say this is the first After Dark that we've done where we had to get a health and safety briefing before we came on stage.

56:02Kate Moody:Pyrotechnics. You've never had pyrotechnics before.

56:07Ross Gallagher:So we thought we'd play you the OG introduction we used for episode one, many moons ago, just so you guys can see how far we've come, if you'll indulge us. You are in for a treat, so let's hear it right now. Good afternoon, my name is David Breer. Welcome to the very first Fintech Insider. On a weekly basis, you're going to be hearing from some of the smartest people in the industry. The four of us will bring you the latest news from around the globe in fintech banking, but firstly, I should probably introduce to you the hosts. And yeah, so just for the record, that was the first podcast episode ever recorded underwater.

56:38Ross Gallagher:We do have the Guinness Book of World Records. Like I said, we've come a long way. Guys, thoughts on that? Some fun pictures? I don't know that you could actually hear any of what was said but

56:51Kate Moody:Was that David?

56:52Ross Gallagher:I think so

56:53Kate Moody:Oh wow, yeah

56:54Ross Gallagher:Even when he's not here he still gets his little piece Good, alright Well look, just before we go to our final surprise that wasn't a surprise I'd like to say thank you so much to today's guests Martin, Charlotte and Sarah and thanks again to our wonderful sponsors Marquesa, Fireblocks and Sackle for all those spicy puns a huge thank you to all of you in the room thank you for all of your wonderful participation and those of you of course who are listening at home you're all incredibly valued members of the FinTech Insider community and we couldn't do it without you but before we go one last thing we were going to go full birthday party and light up a cake with a thousand candles but apparently that's even more health and safety briefings so we decided that we were going to mark the occasion properly.

57:43Ross Gallagher:So I'm going to give you a little countdown. It's going to come up on the screen. I would love for you all to grab your party poppers, like stand up, get ready, help us celebrate a thousand episodes of FinTech Insider in Style. We're going to count down from five to one. Yeah, panel, stand up. I can't hold my mic and let mine off, so I'm just going to let you guys do it. All right, Alex, let's have that countdown. Five, four, three, two, one.

58:16Ross Gallagher:Thank you, everyone. Hope you had a great night. We'll see you guys at the bar. Go get some beers. Go get some food. Enjoy the night. Thank you.

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59:08Kate Moody:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great. you