1102. News: Amazon blocks Meta’s AI agent, Ryft raises £20m, and Sprive bags $10m

23:59And what are the pieces of technology that should exist to enable other people to drive towards that new world? And it's why investing in pieces of infrastructure can often be very valuable. The only hard part is that infrastructure grows differently. You know, it doesn't look the same. We're an infrastructure business. Half the time when you're speaking to investors is educating them that it doesn't necessarily look like a SaaS business where you're like this straight little line up. It can be chunkier, move slower. But I mean, I'm obviously hugely bearish selling my own book here too as an infrastructure business.

24:28But yeah, I think it's a great time to be investing in infrastructure. Laura, just on that as well, adding to what Owen said there, one of the reasons that we're seeing seeing so much interest in that infrastructure play, on our side anyways, is because of the sovereignty issue. We've got, UK doesn't really have its own kind of sovereign payments system. You've got the likes of Stripe, which was Irish, moved to the US. You've got IDM based in the Netherlands. We have what we've seen from some of our merchants, and the reason they're moving to us is, I'm on Stripe. What happens if suddenly Trump doesn't like the UK anymore?

25:10Can he go and shut off our payments? So there is a worry there. And that's why you're also seeing some of the European countries starting to set up their own payments rails, payments infrastructure, because of that exact reason. Where these are critical infrastructure, like banking. We're not outsourcing our banking. Why should we outsource our payment side? Visa, MasterCard are massive in the UK. Each country is now trying to set up their own just for that potential eventuality. Hopefully knock on wood, never happens if they get shot off or they get sanctioned or they get tariffed or whatever it's going to look like.

25:51So that's part of the reason that we've kind of seen so much interest and so much kind of flow of capital in some of the businesses similar to Rift and kind of getting into that and kind of make sure that we've got a home-built solution ready to go.

26:08Laura Watkins:Fantastic. And Zach, I want to bring you in. Firstly, kind of what's your take on all of this around the sort of like limitations in existing payments infrastructure that Rift is trying to overcome? First of all, if you want to share your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think the fragmentation and I guess like the geopolitical risks of having sort of winners out from the region. I think it makes a lot of sense to play into that. And yeah, congrats on sort of doing the raise and building that out. I think obviously Europe needs more winners like that. So I think that's, yeah, that's super, super timely.

26:47Laura Watkins:And then perhaps we've talked about the, you know, wider geo politics, but also bringing it closer to home. There's a bit more of a sort of geolocation story within the UK here, like Rift, as you mentioned, founded in Manchester. This round includes backing from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. Shaq, obviously you and I, we discussed this earlier, we are sat in London right now, so maybe this is a difficult question to throw to you, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. How important is it that we're sort of seeing fintech companies scale beyond London? Yeah, I think it's really important.

27:18And actually, our company just moved in, grew up from Bournemouth. So again, and has had sort of regional investment support as well from the British Business Bank. So I think it's great to kind of spread the love around the country. Obviously, London as a hub for great talent and all the infrastructure being located locally, you get a lot of that. So I think it's really important to kind of spread that around. So I think that's definitely great.

27:44Laura Watkins:And maybe final word to you on that, Sajjah, around sort of what still needs to improve for businesses outside of London as they move through their scale-up journey. So this is very timely for us. This morning, we had a roundtable with Lucy Rigby the treasury secretary around this exact issue. The government has done a lot of work already to try and expand outside of London. And to the point of what we're discussing this morning, it's not to the detriment of London. We don't want to reduce what's going on there. It's kind of rising everyone up. This is my third business. I've set up all three businesses in Manchester.

28:26There is talent here. there's incredibly bright people here. One thing that is difficult is the funding side. And there are obviously, like you said, the Northern Powerhouse, one of our investors, PXN, they've invested through the Northern Powerhouse, kind of joined us in this round. So having more of that support and pushing that further north is great. It's super helpful. And then more tax-efficient investments. we're big advocates of SEIS, EIS. We came up through there. There was a lot of support at SFC Startup Funding Club. They gave us a lot of support backed by the British Business Bank.

29:07Now we have investors, Gresham House and Pembroke, their VCTs. So the government supporting these schemes are incredibly helpful for businesses like Rift, who are rapidly growing. But that influx of capital also helps us kind of go faster.

29:24Laura Watkins:Wonderful. Well, congratulations again. I hope it all goes fantastically for you. And as it does, please do come back on the show and tell us more about it. But on that note, we're going to take another quick pause back shortly.

29:41Laura Watkins:before we get back to the news we wanted to tell you about our next after dark event which is only eight weeks away now it's taking place at the village underground in london on thursday the 12th of november and tickets are still available now at 11fs.com forward slash after dark and there's also a link in the show notes below if you want to be part of this event don't miss out But back to the news, and our final main story this week is another raise. AI-driven cashback-to-mortgage app Sprive raises$10 million. That's harder to say than you'd imagine. Story in Finnextra, Sprive lets customers earn cashback on everyday spending and automatically uses those rewards to overpay their mortgage.

30:24Laura Watkins:The app also monitors the mortgage market and helps users switch to cheaper deals. Sprive says it now has 567 ,000 registered users and supports around£42 billion of mortgages. Since January 2025, revenue has grown more than 25-fold, while annualized spending through the app has reached£328 million. The company recently became cash flow positive and says the funding will be used to increase marketing, customer acquisition and revenue growth. All right. Jack, maybe coming to you first. Most people probably think about their mortgage when they buy a home or they remortgage or they say their sort of monthly payment leaving their account and then for the most part don't really think about it.

31:05Laura Watkins:Is there kind of an opportunity here to make mortgages a much more actively managed part of people's financial lives? What's your take on what's Briva doing here? Yeah, absolutely. I think because of the friction of sort of doing that, consumers didn't actively manage that and probably left sort of money and savings on the table. We know that consumers, once their initial fix finishes, there's a gap where they're maybe just rolling onto a variable and a large percentage are just rolling onto a similar product with the same provider because of that friction. So I think fintech that sort of makes it easier to monitor, find the deal, make it easier to do that switch.

31:49And obviously they've developed a pretty clever strategy that they have an ongoing hook with the consumer and engagement on the mortgage on a more regular basis, apart from the sort of very specific moments of the first one or the fix running out because they're sort of doing paybacks throughout and sort of earning rewards for it. So I think it's a very clever thing to do. I think that the more friction you take out, the more then people will become active in managing because they won't have the cognitive load to doing it. And they'll be able to rely on good recommendations from a product like Sprite.

32:20Yeah, so it makes a lot of sense.

32:22Laura Watkins:And there's sort of an interesting combination of products here. Cashback, mortgage overpayments, mortgage switching, all kind of in the same app. For your take, Shaq, are we sort of seeing fintechs building around a financial goal maybe rather than sort of dividing everything up into products? and sort of is that help me pay off my home sooner rather than actually making them care about a mortgage in particular? I think so. I think this sort of focusing on these life moments and goals is actually quite close to home to our strategy as well to be in the major home life moments from moving to settling in to becoming going from renter to owner.

33:05So it's interesting that Sprive have that very similar strategy as well and makes a lot of sense and that's a way to compete with say existing incumbent institutions that are sort of maybe verticalized and focused on a feature rather than life moments. It's also a very similar strategy to see if you see what like Octopus are doing with energy, they have sort of a wills and payments investments as well and so there's a lot of companies who are thinking like this, like can we own moments rather than features?

33:35Laura Watkins:Yeah, I think that kind of like kind of tapping into sort of moments and customer behavior rather than just giving them a product and expecting them to get on with it is definitely a shift in how people are kind of creating products for customers now. Yeah, and just a comment on that, because also I guess in the first part of the call, I was talking a lot about agents and disintermediation. How do you actually, how are you going to get your product in front of the customer at that right moment? So if you're actually embedded into those life moments in a really meaningful way and helping them through those transitions, then the commerce opportunity also presents itself sort of embedded into the flow.

34:15So I think that's sort of, yeah, a strategy that a lot more players are probably going to take.

34:19Laura Watkins:And probably comes back to Sajda's point around trust as well. If you're interacting with a brand, an app, you know, it just becomes a familiar part of your life. You're building that trust rather than, oh my God, my mortgage renewal's coming up. Who am I going to go with? And then you go with, you know, the most well-known provider, maybe because this isn't something you think about until you have to. Sarah, I don't want to put words in your mouth. What's your take on that? So I think what's really important is delight. So getting something before you even expect it. That data kind of being in that flow, being there at the right time and then getting a better offer or getting something else out of it, which is like the rewards that the guys share.

35:05I think that's what really impresses people and that makes a product sticky. So I think Sprive is actually a great client of ours. We've been working together for about 18 months. I know Janesh, again, came up through kind of SEIS, EIS, same investors. And the guys have done an absolutely brilliant job, execution, focused down on their market, on their customer. And going back to what I said before, making sure that they're kind of bringing delight to their users. That's why you're seeing this insane rapid growth that they've gone through. And we're one of their biggest cheerleaders, kind of supporting them obviously on the payment side, but any other way that we can as a business and kind of friendly way as well.

35:52Laura Watkins:Fantastic. And Open, Sprive, also part of their offering, they scan the market to help customers find cheaper mortgage deals. Obviously, AI is going to play into that over time, becomes better at analyzing someone's finances, comparing products. How much more proactive could mortgage management become over time? I think the dream that we all want to work towards is a financial system that's actually working for us, financial institutions and other companies who proactively get us the products we need at the right time at a fair price. And I think that so much of that is about how can you leverage technology today?

36:24Much of what we do with our customers, we hire billions of dollars of rewards for people every single month to make sure that if you're giving someone a reward, it happens at the right business. So if you're like, hey, 5 % cash back at Tesco, you want to make sure that it actually happens because these promises are expensive when they're broken. But I do think that so much of this is about saying, okay, how can we meet these customers where they're at, delight them with these experiences? I think the challenge with so many of these businesses, and I think consumer fintech is a challenging industry to build in is because how do you compete with large financial institutions?

36:59How do you actually shift consumer behavior? And how do you go from being like a really amazing feature to an actual product or a platform, right? Like we've seen a lot of these things. I think Stash is one of the most famous. They were the people that rolled up transactions and said, hey, we'll give you shares at this company. Very similar model, right? You spend this, spend your product, get shares back of a company that you spent at. So if you buy at Apple, you're getting shares of Apple, etc, etc. or like interesting idea and the question is like you know they got quite large and i think one of the things whenever i look at consumer fintech is like what is that next act and how can they do it because i think the mission of what these guys are doing is super fascinating and i think if they can be a gateway to helping people engage with their finances more that's a really noble question i think the question is like how do you monetize this and become like a really large business um if that's the goal if you're raising venture dollars that often is so i mean

37:49Laura Watkins:And, Zach, do you want to tackle that one in terms of, yeah, where Spive can go from here and really supercharge themselves? Yeah, I think like as a student of finance, I think consumers in general are myopic about anything where the benefits are deferred. So like if you can chip away at like paying your mortgage early, those benefits sort of really compound. similar to that I think you know their product then has that opportunity if they're building effectively financial literacy through these sort of little rewards that builds up and sees value that can extend to other use cases into investing etc so you can see how they're once they nail their product which is obviously already a massive market there are other expansion opportunities into finance financial literacy and then investing which is effectively kind of what they're doing with the home market.

38:43So yeah, I see a good, good runway for them. If they keep executing like Sadra, you're closer to them and how they execute, but if they keep on their track, yeah, they can be really successful. I don't know if it's, I'm not going to put it in Janisha's mouth. I don't know if it's on their roadmap. If they actually get into helping you set up a mortgage, I don't know if any of you guys have got a mortgage. It aged me by about five years. It was like a five-month process. It was meant to be easy. It was horrendous. But then they have to deal with the government on all the bits that you have to go through.

39:18But yeah, I really hope they tackle that next. That'd be super exciting because it's a very kind of friction fallout.

39:27Laura Watkins:Yeah, for sure. And then, Sack, maybe from your kind of perspective in this sort of space, how do we feel about sort of things becoming more automated. I know usually reducing friction is a good thing. Something super scary and life-changing like buying a house, getting on the mortgage ladder. How much friction do we want to remove and how much do we want to automate before we take away people's knowledge and responsibility of what they're doing? Yeah, I think there's some things you don't want to take away, like where are you going to go live? Do you want to go see it? I think you don't want to take away those sort of real personal touch moments.

40:05but things that could be commodified so a lot of the stuff around sort of moving and home for example in particular like your energy bill your broadband setup some of the micro insurance products like those things if you can take the cognitive load off of people then they can actually spend more time you know in real life and around those bigger moment purchases they can actually have the time back to do that i think with mortgages uh because they can be quite complicated as well if you want to kind of really structure it for your like personal finances um i think there is a lot more room for automation uh and coordination to shrink the timeline to approvals and uh and actually have more personalized products so i think i'm all for it in uh in that sort of more good space to actually leave more time for people to think about this huge delight moment that's coming up they're going to go own a new house and to spend more time decorating and doing those things versus trying to go into the nitty-gritty of you know getting their mortgage sorted yeah for sure what you guys do what you guys do is a beautiful thing as well by the way like taking all that set up utility bills moving all that that's a that's a lifesaver so well done

41:18Laura Watkins:on that thank you um but yeah but i guess it goes back to what you were saying around um you know getting a financial system that works for you uh rather than rather than against you sort of automating the bits that are going to help obviously mortgages uh i don't know so much about them in the us over here sometimes take a very long time along with the entire home buying process anything that kind of speeds that thing up but doesn't remove you know the responsibility and the knowledge of what you're getting yourself into is is probably the happy medium we're looking for would you say absolutely yeah i think it's about mortgages are complicated everywhere and they're pretty miserable everywhere i think and it's a huge financial commitment i often when we talk to bankers, a big part of what we tell them is that, you know, I think we're at a time when understanding your customer and putting the right product in front of them is actually possible.

42:03The technology and the software and the models exist. It's about being able to deploy it at a bank, which is a whole different type of challenge. A big part of what we do is saying, okay, this is, this is open, this is who they are, and this is the product you should put in front of them at this right moment, being able to predict you want to mortgage. And I often say like, I think we want to move towards an era where the bank you already bank with should be able to give you the best price because you're already a customer, which means they're not marketing you. So at least there's some savings there.

42:28They already have KYC'd you. They should have almost all of your paperwork. Why is it that we still play this game where you go and talk to all of these mortgage providers, you send out the dossiers to every single one of them. It's just absolutely ridiculous. And I think there's sometimes an assumption, and obviously we work with a lot of banks, so we like a lot of banks, but I would say that there's often an assumption that banks like it this way. This isn't efficient for anybody. I think if your bank could say, hey, Obin, you've been with us for 20 years. Here's the best possible mortgage offer.

42:59I would love that. I might even pay extra money for it. If it just dropped on your desk and said, here, this is, it's done. No more work. How amazing would that be? But to do that, you need to actually know I need a mortgage, which is usually step one in the problem in these scenarios.

43:11Laura Watkins:Well, you know, that sounds great. We can dream, right? On that note, we're just going to take a quick pause, but shortly.

43:24Laura Watkins:Okay, now for a quick look at the story we didn't have time to cover in full. This is that Zopa launches Ask Zopa, a conversational AI assistant. Story on FF News. Zopa Bank has launched Ask Zopa, a conversational AI assistant for customers using its Biscuit current account. Customers can use voice or text to carry out banking tasks, including checking balances, managing saving pots, requesting payments, and updating personal details. The assistant can also process photos of bills or invoices to split costs or make payments, and users can set personalized budgeting and spending alerts. Zopa says the technology moves beyond traditional customer service chatbots by allowing AI to take actions on a customer's behalf.

44:06Laura Watkins:The launch follows Zopa's wider investment in AI, with the bank saying its existing tools already resolve 65 % of customer service queries. Claire Gambadella, Chief Customer Officer of Zopa Bank, sent us in a soundbite about this product. Let's listen to her now. Hi, I'm Claire Gambadella, the Chief Customer Officer at Zopa Bank. I'm delighted to join today's episode to talk about Zopa's use of AI, our new Ask Zopa product, and fundamentally where we think banking is heading. We've just launched Ask Zopa, which we believe to be one of the most advanced uses of AI in everyday banking in the UK.

44:43At its heart, it's a very simple idea. What if you could just have a conversation with your bank and get stuff done? We've put a personal banker into our Biscuit Current Account customers' hands so that rather than navigating menus and screens in our app, you can simply tell Zopa what you want to do, in your own words. And crucially, it doesn't just tell you where to go. It can take actions for you. You can send money, split a payment from a receipt, pay a bill from an invoice, manage cards, check statements, set a budget or open a new savings pot. But we think the opportunity goes beyond doing things more easily.

45:19It's about changing the relationship people have with their money. You can say, I want to save£500 for a holiday or I've got this payment coming up, how can I afford it? And Zopa can help you work out what you need to do next. So we're moving from a banking app that you operate and a set of different products that you need to figure out to a bank that can help you to find solutions to your money challenges or aspirations. And this is part of a much bigger AI transformation at Zopa. AI now resolves around 65 % of customer service queries and those who interact with our AI report around 10 % higher satisfaction.

45:56We're also using it internally to help people train, onboard and develop new skills. Ultimately we think AI gives banking the opportunity to become more personal, proactive and useful. Our ambition isn't simply to build a smarter banking app. It's to build a bank that makes achieving your money goals easier through simple conversations and great value products.

46:21Laura Watkins:Great to hear from Claire there. We wish them the best of luck and we will keep an eye on this one as it evolves. But now I'm going to move us on to our and finally story for today. Okay, and finally, story for today is that Travis Kelsey has been named among the victims of a$35 million Ponzi scheme. Story in The Guardian. Siddharth Jawaha, founder of investment firm Swift Ark Capital, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors say he concealed investment losses and used money from new investors to repay earlier investors while also spending funds on private debts, luxury living, and private clubs.

47:00Laura Watkins:He received more than$35 million from investors, but invested only around$10 million between 2016 and 2023. Travis Kelsey was named as a victim of the scheme in court, although details of how much he invested or lost have not been disclosed. Other professional athletes had previously been publicly linked to investments with SwiftArc, highlighting wider concerns about athletes becoming targets for financial scams. I mean, there's some irony in it being called Swift arc, knowing what was going to come for him, but that wasn't necessarily happening in his personal life around the time of this Ponzi scheme.

47:38Laura Watkins:However, Travis Kelsey has earned well over$100 million during his NFL career. Do we, as an industry, perhaps sometimes assume that having lots of money automatically makes someone good at managing or investing it? And actually, perhaps, does having more money maybe make you a bigger target for a scam such as this. Zach, maybe what was your thoughts when you read this story? Yeah, you'd have thought by now, I guess, you know, at that level that he's operating at, you would have had an army of really good sort of advisors and a lot of protection. Unless they were taken in too. Yeah, so it is extremely surprising.

48:22I think obviously athletes are a big target for these things because often maybe they've had to skip early education, go straight into sports, and they've made a lot of money, and they maybe haven't had the opportunity to build that sort of financial literacy. So not surprising that they're a target, but maybe surprising that given at the level that he's operating at that his advisors didn't intervene. You are seeing now, though, there are sports people sort of becoming successful investors and sort of making some really good sort of bets and sort of negotiating some of the sponsorship deals as equity.

49:01So Roger Federer and on, I think is going to make an absolute killing with sort of the deal that he'd struck. So it's not that sports people can't also be really judicious investors. Actually, my namesake Shaq has done a brilliant job, actually, has a huge diversified portfolio of investments, owns like I think hundreds of chains of restaurants and stuff as well. So sports people can also be great investors. Yeah, unfortunately, what's probably happened here is somehow it must have slipped to the cracks. I would have imagined he would have had private wealth investor people looking after his money.

49:32So it's pretty surprising.

49:34Laura Watkins:Yeah, yeah, for sure. On your point, like, yeah, Serena Williams, also another fantastic investor. I think I read somewhere that like Roger Federer is due to make more money with his deal with On than he ever made in his entire playing career. And he was the best player of the year, player in the world for God knows how many years. So yeah, you can absolutely make savvy investments as a professional sports person, but that is perhaps not what happened here. Sadra, what's your take on this? Sort of as Shaq was alluding to you, professional athletes have a particularly unusual financial life. You know, they make a lot of money very quickly, usually at quite a young age.

50:09Laura Watkins:And then depending on, you know, their circumstances, maybe their earning potential drops off over time. Does that sort of, you know, make them uniquely positioned, but also uniquely vulnerable in terms of how they manage their money and with who? Yeah, so I think not to crap on an entire industry, but I think advisors, personal experience, it's they're looking for their fees. As long as they get in fees, they're happy. It's all good on their end. Those who've done a really good job, I think that some the some of the athletes that you mentioned that like Shaq, they kind of really get in to what what they're about to invest in, they understand it, they kind of live and breathe it.

50:56I think I was listening to him talk about his nest investment before kind of Google came in. And he was just wowed by the product itself. It wasn't five layers of advisors saying, oh, this is a potentially good investment. So really, really understanding what they're investing in i think that's that's probably where the good ones have done a good job again not not to go after advisors there are good advisors out there they still they have a kind of place for for what they do but you can't expect too much um uh for them to kind of really care that much about your money it's still your money you kind of need to focus on that yourself so that's kind of where I would see on my end.

51:42Laura Watkins:Oma, what's your take on this? I guess the flip side of a celebrity being taken in on a scam is the other way around. Like as someone famous investing in something suddenly makes it potentially more, you know, appetizing for the man on the street as well who may also be taking a risk. We've sort of seen, you know, had many chats about sort of like fin fluences and that sort of thing. What's your take on this one? I don't know if anyone, I think the unfortunate reality is like no matter how you've made your money, you could be the victim of something like this. Like, it's not just, like, I think athletes are particularly, they are interesting targets, so to speak.

52:15They've made, they often have exponentially more money than the average people, even very successful career, like white collar workers, at the$100 million, most people never touch that. And their expertise lies in different areas. I do think there is like a following on effect. I mean, you see it in VC funding, investing in very sophisticated companies, and these are supposed to be the most sophisticated investors, and very often they're investing because someone else invested in you, which is, you know, neither here nor there. So I do think there's absolutely any effect of that. I think, I wish there was a silver bullet in these things, but often the reality is like, some of these scams are exceptionally sophisticated.

52:49Like I think maybe part of me wonders if because he's like a NFL player, there's like an assumption that maybe he was hoodwinked easily, but I'm like, I don't know. We don't know how sophisticated this person is. If you're raising$35 million, it's not just one. It's a collection of people who you managed to convince her. And unfortunately, I think the best thing we can do is just make the punishments of these crimes severe because humans are always going to be doing some shady stuff, unfortunately.

53:15Laura Watkins:Yeah, I think you're right. Anyone can be a victim of a scam. This person just happened to be famous. So, yeah, celebrities, they're just like us. And on that note, I might end the show there. Thank you so much to my wonderful panel today. Where can people find out a little bit more about you and your companies, starting with you, Sadra? Yep. Best place is our website, riftpay.com. R-Y-F-T-P-A-Y.com. And then obviously we have a kind of very active LinkedIn where you can message the team. We'll always love to sit down and chat. So that's probably the best place. Fantastic. Thank you. Open? Spade.com.

53:56S-P-A-D-E.com. LinkedIn as well. And then we're going to be at Money 2020 in the US if folks are going to be there. So come say hi at our booth. Oh, brilliant.

54:05Laura Watkins:And Shaq? Yeah, you can find us on justmovein.com. And yeah, definitely connect with us on LinkedIn. Brilliant. Thank you. As for me, you can find me, Laura Watkins on LinkedIn, 11FS.com or this podcast. And don't forget to get your tickets for After Dark on the 12th of November. That wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you've heard, please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform of choice. And if you really like what you've heard, share the podcast with a colleague or friend. And if you want to join the conversation, find us on social media, just search for 11FS or Fintech Insider, and we are on most platforms, or email podcasts at 11FS.com.

54:45Laura Watkins:Thanks again, and goodbye.