1070. News: Enfuce report calls for more payment choice, Acquired backs UKPI, and TransferMate embraces stablecoins - Live from Money20/20 Europe

22:59And I can tell you, it is very challenging to be in these workgroups because everybody has a different agenda. And most of the people at the table actually don't want to do it. So you know they don't want to do it. And you're going over every single feature. And some people want to do everything. Some people want to do a little bit. So you need to align all these people. And it was hard. The National Payments Vision came out by the government and said, okay, PSR basically, it was not good enough. FCA is going to take over. And the FCA took over. And we must say, like, it's been amazing. Like, the change was massive.

23:36The FCA set up an open banking arm. And again, this working group of all these industry participants, all these TPPs, all these banks, all the regulators came together and tried to actually make it work. Because it was clear, if it wasn't going to work, the regulator was going to step in. And this is where the difference came in. And now it's a scheme. It's like Pay.UK for faster payments and for COP. It's a scheme. We have a set rule, a book of rules, a lot of rules, many pages, where we have identified. how it's going to function, how the chargeback, the disputes is going to be. And everybody's aligned.

24:13The incentives are aligned. There is a commercial model agreed with the banks. There is a single contract. And I think that's the exciting bit. This is the piece that people don't see. This is the piece that goes on behind the scenes of all the work that has been done. And now we are 20 plus shareholders of this new scheme. And I must say, I wasn't sure if it was going to work, this kind of collaborative approach. Again, looking at the different examples in the world. But we are there and five of the largest UK current account holders, they have it live. Like variable recurring payments commercial model is live right now and we're seeing use cases.

24:49Now to be very, to add a little pointer to it, it's limited still to the very first five use cases, which are low risk. And this brings me to acquired, which is financial services are mainly a sector, also government payments and so on. but financial services which is a big chunk of our book because that's for current payments and we are the only ones that is offering cards open banking and direct debit payments because i want to make this very clear there is a payment for everybody at a certain time and that brings us to adoption we don't believe everybody needs to pay with open banking we think that open banking can be the right solution at the right time and i can give you an example later

25:30Ross Gallagher:um i mean i think the um the open the open banking example that you gave is a useful reference point because to bring everybody together from across the industry all of those stakeholders not straightforward and you know i think there's something there around driving alignment there's also the stick element right you know from an open banking perspective it was mandated here in the uk and i think that made all of the difference these things aren't straightforward you know, when we go to the UPI example in India, you know, that's still being, you know, financially supplemented by the government and all of that sort of stuff.

26:05Ross Gallagher:And so you need all of that to make these things work as well. But I mean, it's hard to your point, I think, at the top of the story and your excitement around this. It's also easy to underestimate the work and the effort and the time and the importance of getting to this point right now. Exactly that. Because I think a lot of people are asking me, oh, what is going to be the consumer brand and how we bring this consumer? Anybody who started a company who works at a fintech knows it's one problem at a time. The incentives are aligned. Everybody wants to go there. The first use cases are going to go live.

26:39Let's start from there. And I think to the point some people say, oh, you want to take over direct debits with open banking or you want to replace cards completely. That's absolutely not the case. I give you a very great example of where open banking and variable recurring payments are a great use case. It is where there is prime, near prime lender. I've seen it. They're using direct debits. They're cheap. But if consumers are already not great at paying back, maybe having an offline payment method that has to be submitted two working days before you actually take the payment, like just put the charge down.

27:16And then another two working days before you actually know if the direct debit failed or not, that's not a good outcome for a consumer that is very likely not paid back. Because that means you already have to, if we try again with a direct debit, you have to report them to the consumer credit bureaus. It is not a good outcome. So I think that's where we need to understand where variable recurring payments can still be a cheaper, let's say, alternative. Also a more dynamic alternative to direct debits. and sometimes for cards because, you know, cards are expensive. And sometimes you don't need all the features and functionalities and they actually are very low fraud cases, but still the percentage being paid is still quite high.

27:55So I think that's the part that needs to play and then also the consumer obviously needs to follow as a result of that and want to pay with it. I think that's a really important point because it's effectively saying that like the success of the future doesn't have to mean replacing cards, but the future needs to be multi-rail. Exact consumer's optionality because cards are strong for acceptance, consumer protection, familiarity, global reach. Those things are good, but account-to-account payments can be very compelling for recurring payments, subscriptions, bill payments, use cases where failed cards or expired credentials, unnecessary intermediaries can add cost or friction.

28:29That's a brilliant use case where it can really be successful. So I would frame UKPI less as kill cards and more as give the market choice. Exactly. And I think that's the point as well where I see ourselves differentiating. How can we have consumers with multi-payment methods on file for recurring payments? That's where the strength comes in, right? Because once you have multiple payment methods, you can use the method according to the use case. Is it a first attempt? Did they fail the payment? Is it a recovery process? Can we try a second card? Did the consumer gave us that access to it? Or should we try a second payment method, which is a VRP?

29:04I think that's the value. And that brings us to authentic commerce because layer that in there. That's when I think you get to the real gold. And that's the exciting part.

29:13Ross Gallagher:I think it's so easy as it is with sort of everything that plays in this space to sort of just the narrative just to go a little bit crazy. And it's like, yeah, this is the death of whatever kind of already exists. That's very rarely the case. And I think, you know, there are specific use cases where this is going to be incredibly valuable, where you need the dynamism that you've just described. And I love the missed payment example and then the potential impact on someone's credit score, because that's not just friction or inconvenience. that's real material downside and unnecessarily because if you have something as you say that's a little bit more dynamic then you can easily get around that without impacting the consumer in the way that you described.

29:53I can add to that there's like a real life case where somebody submitted that direct debit and they call up their lender and they say you know what actually I have a problem I'm getting a divorce I cannot pay you back oh I'm sorry I can't I submitted it already two days ago like that's not good they could give them a payment holiday and they would be a better payer and it would be a better outcome for both the lender and for the consumer but the payment method is static but at the same time direct debit can work as a charm because it can be dead cheap and you know especially in prime lending approval is quite high like so this is this is i think where we need to differentiate and position the right payment method in the right use case with the right merchant.

30:34It's like the right rail for the right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like that.

30:38Ross Gallagher:Nicholas, what about consumer adoption? I mean, it feels like the upside, the use cases are there. Absolutely. And I think like technology will never be the hardest part of this, right? I think it's changing behavior, it's changing consumer adoption. How do we get that adoption? And I think consumers don't wake up and just want a new payment rail. They want something cheaper, faster, more suited for the use case they have. and good examples you had um and i think like if alternatives can reduce failed payments lower merchant costs to improve customer experience adoption will follow so solve those problems for consumers and adoption will follow and again i'm not you know we are card issuer but i'm not afraid of this i think adoption we can integrate the payment rails support those i think that's just optionality again yeah and and optionality breeds resilience and everything that we were previous story.

31:32I think what's nice about this is there's two lenses on competition.

31:36Ross Gallagher:Competition can be bad because you're already established and so you interpret it as a direct threat. But there's also competition as the lens that like, it makes the industry and everything that's available better. Absolutely. This is probably where I should mention that actually I'm a lawyer, I'm a master and law and it's competition law. There we go. All right. It's deep. Just one like kind of final thought though on that is I think one thing that the UK does really well, which I think you commented on also, is that the regulators, I think, really good at driving change. Yeah. So one setting the kind of incentive for the industry to be more competitive, to innovate faster, to level playing field between incumbents and startups.

32:17But then like with open banking as an example, they, I think they're really good at looking at like where are they adding friction, where it's not useful. Like, let's have OAuth 2 flows mandated, design mandated. So with UKPI and the way that the government's, like, mandating it and driving it. I think that's really what sets it apart to make it successful. And I must applaud, like, I'm Belgian, but I must applaud the patience that the UK government has. That maybe, you know, especially, like, people working in FinTech, I'm sorry, it's like, I literally have, like, no patience. That's why I want to roll it out.

32:46But I think you have to sometimes have that patience in order to make sure, especially in the UK, like, yeah, And it's just a different country, isn't it? Like some of the other examples that we gave. That's what you need in order to be successful. So I must applaud them. They did a really good job.

33:01Ross Gallagher:The UK government is getting very, very little applause at the moment. So I think they'll take that. I really do. I really do. All right, look, on that note, we're just going to take a very quick pause here and we'll be back with you very shortly.

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34:18Ross Gallagher:Now, before we get back to the news, I wanted to tell you about our latest insight show, which we also recorded on site at Money 2020 Europe. There was one huge topic here at the conference that's been quite hard to avoid, and that's stablecoins. They're everywhere. And this week, in partnership with our friends at Formant, we're diving into the question of what will it actually take for stablecoins to break out of the fintech bubble. That should be available in your feed today, so be sure to give it a listen after you finish this show. Now we're going to get back to the news, and it's actually about stablecoins.

34:49Ross Gallagher:Coincidence of coincidence. Were you surprised? I was not. Alright, this one comes from Payments with a headline, Transformate partners with BVNK to bring real-time stablecoin settlements to Global Payments Network. So Transformate has selected BVNK as its stablecoin infrastructure partner, marking the first time the global b2b payments provider has introduced digital asset capabilities across its network the partnership will allow transfermate customers to access stablecoin payment rails through bvnk's infrastructure including embedded wallets as well as stablecoin on and off ramps transfermate operates one of the world's largest regulated fintech payments networks with more than 100 licenses globally and customers across europe the americas and apat The rollout will initially focus on sectors including global payroll, e-commerce marketplaces, procurement and education, where cross-border payments often remain slow, expensive and operationally complex.

35:48Ross Gallagher:One particularly notable use case is international education payments. Through the partnership, overseas students will be able to pay tuition fees using stablecoins, potentially reducing costs and settlement times compared to traditional cross-border payment methods. Before we start to discuss this, Gary Conroy, President and Chief Commercial Officer of TransferMate, sent us a soundbite and shared his thoughts about this partnership. So let's listen in. Hi, I'm Gary Conroy. I'm the President and Chief Commercial Officer for Transformate Global Payments. I'm here at Money 2020 in Amsterdam this week.

36:28I'm super excited to announce our partnership with BVNK. So what are we doing? We are allowing Transformate tens of thousands of customers and partners to not only move fiat money like they do today, but they can now also move stablecoin. So if you want to receive Stablecoin for a third level higher education tuition payment, whether you want to make a global payroll payment to pay your employees across the globe via Stablecoin, or indeed, if you want to pay suppliers across the globe, cross-border with a better cost and speed than you'd otherwise have through correspondent banking, you can now do that through Transformate's partnership with BVNK.

37:11We're super excited about this partnership and we think the big differentiator in this is the regulatory money movement infrastructure. BVNK has over 40 licenses globally. Transmate just passed our 100th license in Bahrain and together this partnership is an absolute powerhouse to enable customers to move stablecoin and fiat money across the globe seamlessly.

37:39Ross Gallagher:Nicholas, I'll come to you first on this one. I mean, this is a regulated global payment business that's now integrating stablecoins into its infrastructure stack. Is this a big news story? Definitely. I think that's what strikes me the most. This is not crypto companies talking about integrating. This is regulated enterprise businesses. And I think that's a significant shift. And three things have changed. First, I think regulation has become clear around stablecoins. I think we understand it more. Secondly, stablecoin infrastructure has matured tremendously over the last few years. And third, I think you mentioned it also in that recording that businesses are focused on specific use case for stablecoins.

38:21It's not going to replace everything, but cross-border is an example, right? Low-cost, cross-border, perfect example for stablecoins. And I think also it ties into my tech. Like if you look at the internet, like TCPIP protocol runs the whole internet, sends email, nobody cares about that. That's the underlying info, that's the rails of the internet. It will be the same with stablecoins, I think. In the future, consumers won't care about what the rails are, which is stablecoins or if it's fiat or whatever it might be. And I think it still needs that, you know, enterprise grade security needs to be there.

38:54Security resilience, regular compliance, auditability, risk management, operational support. All of these things needs to be also at stablecoins to drive adoption, because again, it's about trust. It's about how the consumer can trust these new payment rails. And we need to provide them with the same enterprise-grade security as with fiat. Yeah. I would build on that. I think that really ties to the points earlier as well, because I highly doubt any consumer will ever say, I want to use a stable coin. But what they want is something that's faster and lower cost and, you know, high trust. And I think cross-border payments mixed with payroll and education are really interesting use cases.

39:31Because cross-border is inherently, you know, sells a lot of friction. It has speed, cost. You know, there's issues with transparency and settlement, all of those things that kind of drive friction into the process. Whereas stable coins tend to have faster settlement. They're more programmable, more available outside of traditional working hours. And so if you pair that with payroll and tuition, they're real world or cross-border high friction payment journeys where the user might not care about stable coins necessarily, but they want something that's low cost, fast and works. And so that's really a news case for it.

40:03I think what's quite interesting or what struck me is that this is exactly how Flywire started. It was 100 % about people like Chinese students wanting to pay for their Harvard education. It was exactly that problem. And then they moved actually from there into hospitals and healthcare because they saw similar high amount sums that needed to be paid, which is often the case also fortunately for learning. So they saw a similar use case and they built further on that into similar complexities. As a consumer myself, who has made cross-border payments for travel, like just a month ago I was trying to pay my travel agent in Japan.

40:43Money got lost, took three months. Made it from Revolut though, I wasn't expecting that. Got lost, we got it back in the end, but I think it's just so surprising how it still not works. and 100 % agree. I think on the business model side, what I've always struggled with a little bit on stablecoins is that there's two models. One is around how do you make treasury movements? And treasury movements, great, but that's bulk payments. How do you make a business model as a stablecoin company out of that? Whereas if it's consumer payments, many payments, great. You can charge a fee. The business model makes sense to me.

41:18So as I see two sets of stablecoin companies evolve, treasury versus like consumer payouts cross-border 100 % makes sense like it's easier sorry it's cheaper it's faster and it is less error prone makes 100 % sense and there's many of them so it makes sense also on the business model side or the specific stablecoin provider treasury on the other hand I just wonder how they're going to make their money yeah

41:46Ross Gallagher:I mean, I find this story really, really interesting because I think, you know, for so long we've talked about, you know, stable coins and are they going to go mainstream? And I think like, what is, what is mainstream for stable coins, right? I think, you know, we've had that classic hype cycle as seems to happen with pretty much every new emerging technology, which is like, is mainstream it, you know, killing for you. And it just is the financial system. Of course it's not. And this feels like the market really maturing because we're going, these are the very specific use cases where there was very real upside to using stable coins over any other rail.

42:26Ross Gallagher:And I think for me, that is that progress and that sign that stable coins are going mainstream. Well, and also, I mean, there is the element of stable coin and crypto that's like still a bit of a dirty word. I think it's a legit use case as well. Like it's one that everybody can stand behind. This is a good use case. But I think we'll probably actually move out of use cases eventually. I think right now in this question of like, you know, mainstream like fiat versus stablecoin, it's still definitely fiat. But I think right now, while it's very use case specific, like where it can be, you know, cross-border education, tuition, absolutely.

42:58But I think in the future, whenever we shift to agentic commerce, when we shift to agentic payments and agents are predominantly driving the market and agents are using stablecoin, that's where I think it has a real chance to be more disruptive than right now. I think as long as consumers are using it, they don't care if it's stablecoin, they just want the outcome. And so they'll use it where the use cases make sense. I think in the future when the use case is kind of everything, then that's where it becomes really disruptive.

43:19Ross Gallagher:Is that something that we sometimes miss as industry commentators? And especially when we're doing maybe deep dive on a specific technology or market movement, is that we tend to talk about them in a vacuum or in isolation. but actually when you think about things like stablecoins, when you think about things like agentic AI, these are massive shifts that are happening at the same time. Yeah, because like yesterday, I heard this phenomenal talk here at Money 2020 by Amazon on agentic commerce. And we were talking about that infrastructure layer that's needed to make it successful. And one of which is around like merchant to merchant and portable delegated authority and like how these payments are going to work across the ecosystem.

44:01And I think whenever you pair that, like the agentic layer, but then ecosystem challenges and then stablecoin and how it neatly ties them all together and how the main user of SablePoint will probably be agents because of how the programmable element of money and the real-time settlement and the low cost just fits so well with that transformation. I think you're right. It's like the perfect storm. If you look at isolation, it might look a little bit disruptive. That might look a little bit disruptive, but all of them coming together is like a perfect storm for significant transformation. And actually payment method optionality also, because there was this famous article that was kind of saying that we all be out of a job basically in 2000, like a prediction of the future about agentic AI.

44:41And it was saying that if the agent is actually searching for the cheapest or best payment method, like they don't care about friction. This is where UI doesn't matter anymore because it's an agent. They have loads of time. So it can change the payment method that they choose. So maybe they will take a very friction payment method, which still is going to be cheaper for some reason for the consumer or gives another benefit for the consumer that matters now, which is going to the benefit of the consumer is going to be different because the agent does the job yeah that's where i think there'll be the whole field of like agent to agent marketing because the consumer is now the agent and how are they making decisions and i don't think it'll just be price because that'll be a race to the bottom i think agents will develop an understanding of the emotional side of like the human that they're transacting on behalf of like the emotional elements the brand loyalty but also the quality the abilities to return like dispute resolution interactions with this merchant versus that merchant i think there will become still a nuanced perspective of which merchants agents choose like there will still be like consumer loyalty even among agents but i think there will be a whole field of like how do you market to an agent and appeal to them based off of the data they use to drive in humans little prediction there

45:43Ross Gallagher:and um again i suppose um nicholas not to uh not to put too fine a point on the sort of reality check but i think obviously the potential for the technology is there there's no doubt about that but of course that's just one lens there's the operational infrastructure that you need to support that compliance etc etc yeah the whole regulatory track is massive right i think stable coin has a long journey to go there also on the agentic ai because we can't just let loose agentic ai and do all kinds of payments and we need to handle that somehow and i think it will come definitely but i do agree with you it's a perfect perfect storm like agentic ai stablecoin good match i think also to be very honest like why not fiat and agentic ai i do think there's use cases for that as well.

46:27So it's not only stable coins, but I think that will, the agentic area will drive stable coin adoption because it's a good fit. Rote rail for the road. Yeah, exactly.

46:35Ross Gallagher:And look, that's been a consistent theme throughout all of our stories is this idea of optionality of coexistence. And it feels very much like that's the direction we're headed. This is the second podcast that I've recorded this week that we've all just got to a really nice, neat conclusion as we sort of work down through the story. So this This is great. I'm loving it. We're all sort of aligned on the direction that we're headed. All right. Excellent. On that note, on that very harmonious note, we're just going to take a quick pause here and we'll be back with you very, very shortly.

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47:41Ross Gallagher:All right, welcome back to the show. And finally, this week, We're obviously recording this episode live from Money 2020 Europe here in Amsterdam. For anyone unfamiliar, Money 2020 is one of the biggest gatherings in fintech and payments, bringing together banks, fintechs, payment networks, regulators, investors, and technology providers from across the industry. We've spent the last couple of days walking the floor, catching up with people and hearing what's top of mind across the ecosystem. So of course, with this wonderful panel of guests, before we wrap up, I wanted to get everyone's takeaways ways from the event, what stood out?

48:16Ross Gallagher:Nicholas, I'm going to start with you if you don't mind. What's been the biggest theme or trend that you've heard people talking about this week? You guys have been so well placed on the conference floor. Yeah, we're right in the middle of everything. I think, you know, if I compare it to last year, I was here as well, right? We were talking all AI, I think. Not so much this year, because I think it's just out there, everyone is using it, so it's not as interesting anymore. I think this year more about infrastructure and what I mean with that is that people are asking fundamental questions about how does money move?

48:48What type of infrastructure? We have talked about this as well, right? Payment rails and who controls them and what are they doing with it? And these all topics felt separated, but they are now coming together. Open banking, stable coins, account to account payments, perfect storm as we talked about, right? How can we make the new payment rail work better for the consumers? So that's my take. Amazing.

49:12Ross Gallagher:Has anything surprised you? Has anything felt different to last year? Not really. I think our stand has more flowers this year. They are. Yeah. For anyone that isn't here, you've really missed a treat. Megan, I'll come to you. What's been your takeaway? What are you leaving with sort of front of mind? Yeah, I think Nicholas's point is excellent that last year it was all AI, but it was like the 10 ,000 foot view of AI. Like AI will magically transform everything. And now it's like, this is how it's transforming everything. This is like structurally in terms of ecosystem infrastructure. Here's trust.

49:46Trust is a product. Here is how APIs and open banking and all of that actually fit in because effectively agents will work digitally across these APIs. And so it's really getting into the execution of it, which I found really interesting. And also panels that are really teasing out some of the challenges that exist and what we need to build next, not in isolation, but in partnership to make it all work together. because agency is action. Action needs rails. It needs the ability to execute not only inside of an organization, but externally. But I will say the other part that I think has been really interesting and useful is there's two parts of the agentic AI conversation.

50:24One is internally. How do you have agents inside the organization operating in roles in new ways within bounded mandates to get work done that's changing the way that banks are built and run? And I think that is really fascinating. And then you have conversation number two of like, how does that look for the consumer? And it's usually in terms of agentic commerce, like how are they making decisions differently? And how is that working for us as an institution in terms of making, you know, payments work differently and like discerning a malicious bot versus genuine autonomous behavior and what identity and trust we need to build next.

50:54And so, yeah, I just think it's really interesting because it's really talking about what we're doing, how we're doing it, how we need to do it together and that kind of infrastructure and execution of it.

51:01Ross Gallagher:I'm seeing that as well. I think we're moving away from the hype, Not in the sense that the hype isn't there anymore, but that we're getting really serious now we're seeing progress around. Exactly. Isn't that scary in a year's time? Like I remember. It's so fast. Money Trans 20 2018 was open banking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look where we are now. Not that far. No. You know, UK better. Yeah. But I think the point is AI was less. Now we're talking in lead about implementing. Implementing. Yeah. It's fast. It's fast. Absolutely. And agents, like, can I give it like a really interesting example I heard is there was this conversation on like cross-functional teams inside of building like an AI bank.

51:35And we were talking about interintelligence teams. And there was an example of BNY Mellon and their team giving performance reviews to the agents because the agents benefit from feedback as well. And so like, how do you have stewardship and management inside this new interintelligence team structure? And so yeah, I just find it fascinating. Like, what is the implementation really looking like on both sides of the coin? Oh, no more performance reviews. I was just going to say. Are you innovating? Just on the agenda, I have to give an example as well. A really cool thing that we're doing in Enfuse, a complete Greenfield project.

52:05I started it in January with a team. We were planning to have scaled it up to eight, ten engineers. We are two engineers now. They have written single line of code. It's a proof of concept. It's running pure spectrum and agents are doing everything. Human in the loop to review it just to test how far we can get this. And that's just engineering agent, but still relevant and really cool. That's actually a really good element of it. like human in the loop, but like how do you enable agents to do like a very bounded specific task that have like the human just where, like not to where they're like doing the whole job like they used to, but they have the right touch points to like support the agent effectively.

52:39Ross Gallagher:No, that is spot on. Yeah, exactly. I think it would be a shame to end any other way, given where we are, given what we talked about, the speed of what we're seeing from year to year. I'm going to finish with a prediction. Nicholas, I'll come to you first on this, but based on everything you've heard this week, What are the things we're going to be talking about when we're sat around this table next year? Oh, I hope I get invited though. Let's see. I think right now we're debating which alternative payment rails will exist, right? I think in a year from now, we won't see one network replacing another.

53:13We will see many more networks being implemented, being handed to the cardholders and the consumers. And it's not, again, it's not replacement. It's optionality, resilience. And we will see that in practice in one year from now. Beautiful. I love that. Megan, what about you? Yeah, I'll give a prediction for banking in particular or more of like a visionary opportunity I see that could be taken advantage of by the right banks. You have teed that up. Thank you. Thank you. But effectively, if we rewind 10 years ago, we were looking at how do we take the best of the internet and mobile and bring it to banking to make everything easy and beautiful, right?

53:49That was the opportunity and lower cost and faster and all the rest. And a lot of the banks were criticized by like putting lipstick on a pig, right? That was how it was put. They weren't really transforming their technology. They were just trying to put a shiny front end, and it wasn't really working. Now I think my prediction is agentic AI and the transformation we're seeing right now sort of resets the playing field. Because agency, by definition, is the agent acting on behalf of the consumer. So the user experience no longer matters for the user. You're not competing on how beautiful the app and interface is.

54:15It's about effective delegated action and the trust that can be built around that for consumers to use it, the ecosystem trust that we were talking about. So I think banks are like, oh, no, I never got to the beautiful app and the microservices architecture. It's like, don't worry. Game is reset. User experience is no longer the winning criteria. You need to build intelligent, like effective delegated action. You need to empower users to interact with an agent. Yeah, exactly. And so I think the banks who get that and act on it, they still do have consumers. They still do have trust. They still do have a lot of data.

54:44If they don't, they don't even necessarily need some sort of beautiful new core. If they have legacy architecture with COBOL, but they have the right data, governance, APIs, orchestration, And they can still do something really interesting and meaningful here. So I think there's a chance for someone come and kind of reclaim and be like, take that.

54:59Ross Gallagher:So I'm with you. I think the opportunity is there, but I think as ever, it's a window and it's not a runway. So it's like, yes, okay, the game is reset and now you have the opportunity, but it's like now. Yeah, it is time bound. That is absolutely the case. So I don't know that they will. I actually think the odds are a little bit low. They don't typically act that fast, but they could. Yeah. They could. My prediction is if they see it and they act on it, it's a huge opportunity. I love it. My thought. Beautiful. All right, Aline, final word to you. What do you think? I love your banking example.

55:25I think it's very, very relevant, very actionable. But from my perspective or like from my lens where I look at it, I'm all about data. I feel we've forgotten a little bit about data. But if you look at Agentec AI and obviously the identity piece and the trust piece is going to be extremely important. It's still about how as a company can you differentiate and build your mode of the back of that in order to get the right data pieces and build off the back of the data pieces. Because if you store the right data elements to take certain actions in a smarter and better way later on, less fraud, anything you can think of, make the consumer or the agentic layer easier for the agent to make the payment and so on, to understand because at the end of the day, every merchant wants to increase their revenue, be it by the fact that they get more consumers or by the fact that they want those consumers to buy more and they want to reduce cost.

56:17So how do you get to that data element as a fintech now, store that data and start mode building off the back of that? I think that's the question. I was on a panel this morning and they're like, what's your top three tips to, thanks for working on this. But my first tip was agent-ready data, not just more data, but like clean, govern, contextual. And your own data. Real-time, your own data. Because that element of it, like banks don't just need AI-ready data, but they need agent-ready data. And it's not just, I think it's because we're moving, It's not just about generating insight, but it's about taking action.

56:48So if you generate insight off of poor data, that's a problem. But if you take action off of poor data, that's dangerous. And so that's where I think you're totally right, that data and trust infrastructure go hand in hand.

56:58Ross Gallagher:I think we're going to have to have this group back together this time next year, because we're going to have to reflect on these predictions and see how much progress we've made, right? All right, we'll look for now. And until then, that does wrap up today's show. I would like to just say thank you so much to today's guests. Maybe we can just do a quick whip around the table. You can tell us where people can find out a little bit more about you guys and your companies. Aline, let's start with you. Great. So if people want to find out more, they can find out more on our website, which was actually rebranded and relaunched on Tuesday.

57:28And I'm very proud of it. They can also reach out directly on direct message on LinkedIn. So yeah. Excellent.

57:36Ross Gallagher:I'll definitely check that out. Megan, how about you? Yes. Megan Kaywood on LinkedIn. we also do have a website kwood.ai but it actually needs a refresh because we should be so very consumer focused but we do like B2B consulting so it's like you don't look at the website it's beautiful it's not going to help you understand what we do but it's really good for stealth mode so it's the ultimate I can make Refresh income Yeah, and pre-refresh income Excellent and Nicholas, how about you? Yeah, Nicholas Uplund so LinkedIn of course the booth here mountain20 and anxious.com pretty rebranded site So you should be able to understand what we're doing.

58:12Otherwise, reach out.

58:14Ross Gallagher:Excellent. Thank you, Nicholas. And as for me, as ever, you can find me on LinkedIn. If you want to find out a little bit more about 11FS, it's 11FS.com. And that does wrap up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform of choice. And if you really like what you heard, why not share the podcast with a colleague or friend? As always, if you want to join the conversation, find us on social media. just search for 11FS or Fintech Insider or email podcast at 11FS.com. Thanks again. Goodbye.