993. News: Visa’s exit from US open banking, free subway rides from Revolut, and the great UK meal deal debate

22:27So it's a fine art to do it well and it creates a lot of pressure. But ultimately, I think it's a really good thing and I'm excited they've done it. Olabar, have you had a look? Was there anything in it that particularly piqued your interest? I haven't had a look, but I, as a fintech nerd, this is great news. And I remember clicking through the Monzo and Starling roadmaps with such excitement in the mid-2010s. I think the challenge, you know, longer term is whether the internal stakeholders who have helped to get this off the ground continue to support it going forward, because I think these roadmaps sometimes get launched and then sometimes fall by the wayside when, you know, as Megan was saying, priorities take over, regulation comes in.

23:08comes in and suddenly the roadmap is so disconnected from the current state of the product and the future of the product. But I hope Square don't make that mistake. I hope they keep buying in because I really support it both as a former journalist and as a fintech enthusiast. Yeah. I mean, I had a look. It's going to sound so petty, but I was a bit underwhelmed, I suppose, by the design of it. It's just like a big long list. I think I was expecting it to be like I think my my base level expectation has been set by I think there's a fintech that we talk about a lot on the show called Up in Australia and they have a public roadmap that they call the tree of Up and if you go look for that that is like a as everything Up does it's like beautifully designed and it's like a sort of graphical experience to interact with this tree and to kind of see all the different items and you can they've really kind of grouped all the different things they're working on by sort of themes and structures and stuff like that so So maybe it sounds deeply ungrateful, but yeah, I was a bit underwhelmed by the presentation of it.

24:08But it is a very long list, I suppose, and it brought to life for me just how enormous Square is. Just in Q3 alone, they are planning to ship all of these different integrations and all these different things. So, grant you, does that scale of development frighten somebody like WorldPay? Or do you kind of look at it and think, no, we're matching this, we're doing exactly the same? What does the speed of potential product release do to competitors? I think there's a couple of things for me, obviously. I get your point on simplicity, but it also shows that they're very much SMB focused as an organization, right?

24:50The sector sets are quite narrow. I think there's four different sector sets that they hone in. They're kind of keeping it simple in terms of this is where we're strong in market and that's where we're going to stay. And I think also in terms of if you're going to share an external roadmap like this, yes, full fintech nerds and experts are probably going to unpack that in quite a lot of detail. But if I'm just a coffee shop owner and I want to know, this would be nice to have for my payments, is there a reason why they've kept it so simple with it being external or that any SMB can go in, find their sector there and understand, I guess, in a fairly basic sense what those new product releases are going to be and how that might actually impact their business.

25:28So there's probably some method in their madness with the way they've done that. I think UX and UI, anyone can have an opinion on in terms of how something presents. But I think in terms of that SMB focus, they've kept it quite clean. And I don't think from our point of view, it's anything that's kind of intimidating in that sense. I think the market is moving at quite a nice speed collectively. You've had challenges to the likes of ourselves in the market that aren't really challenges anymore in the sense that they've been around for 15 years in their own right. There aren't necessarily newer challenges in payments now.

26:03It's a much more established ecosystem. There's some older players and some newer players, but I think that gap in terms of deliverable products in market has really narrowed quite a lot, which is why we really hone in on things like service support, relationship management as an organization now, which really does tend to stand us apart in the market. You know, our partner success team in platforms, I couldn't live without the people in my partner success team. They're absolutely superstars. So, yeah, I think it's fair play to them for releasing it. We'll see what happens with our roadmap in the future.

26:34I'm sure there'll be some interesting conversations internally about it anyway. Yeah, watch this space. And the other thing I wanted to take your perspective on, particularly Grant, was a lot of the content of this roadmap is Square doubling down on reliability, especially around offline payments. What's your take on why they're really zooming in on that now at this moment in time? I mean, there's been a few outages recently, I guess, in Europe, in ATM world, in other payments environments recently, where people have lost that reliability, I guess, in terms of we get very used to not carrying wallets and everyone uses Apple Pay and Google Pay and some of that's been challenged over the last 12, 18 months.

27:10So maybe they're leaning into offline. You've also got things like aviation, rail. They might be pivoting more towards that kind of travel ecosystem and hospitality because that's a strong market segment for them. But in order to dominate in the airline and broader travel sectors, an airplane thousands of miles in the air and trains going through tunnels, things like that, you need really good offline capability in order to operate in that market. So maybe there's some strategy around scaling up their hospitality proposition into maybe slightly less traditional markets for them historically. I think we've certainly seen the likes of some up and Zettel and people like that kind of go down that road previously as well.

27:50So it would be a natural evolution for Square to be looking at that market also. Yeah, Oliver, I wanted to get your kind of take on the move into hospitality. Do you think there's a real opportunity for Square to major in that space? Yeah, I mean, potentially. Just talking about the offline first aspects as well, my dad runs a flower shop and, you know, I've seen firsthand just how, especially on Valentine's Day, the queue's going out the door and it's really mission critical. And retail is a really difficult environment. There's natural things that happen. There are floods, the Wi-Fi goes down, basic stuff.

28:23And I think payments, as we move to this digital payments being the crux of these businesses, we need systems that we can rely on even when the Wi-Fi goes down, even when the power cuts. How do we keep business going? Yeah, it just, I think about my dad when I read this and how it's so critical to his day-to-day life. He's got to be able to take card payments every day without fail. So, yeah, it's great to hear that there are, you know, squares investing in that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a fraud risk that comes with that, unfortunately, as well, though. You know, your payments stack up and then there is a risk of bad customers, unfortunately.

29:01You know, you'll see it when you get off an airplane an hour later. Maybe that coffee that you bought pings up on your phone when it's actually finally been registered. So if I was your dad, I'm not sure I'd be trusting a load of strangers that aren't regulars with£100 bouquets of flowers on Valentine's Day for offline payments. So how they navigate that is always a business decision as well. But certainly there is a little bit of fraud risk that comes with offline payment capabilities as well. For sure. He has learned that the hard way. So, yeah, definitely. Gosh, well, maybe that'll pop up in the Key 4 section of the Squares roadmap.

29:31We'll have to wait and see. OK, on that note, we're just going to take a quick pause here. We'll be back shortly.

29:41Now at Lowe's, faster quotes start at the Lowe's Pro Desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, we'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in-store or on lowes.com right from the Lowe's Pro Desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving. Just like that. At Lowe's.

30:12All right, folks. So here's the deal. There's something very exciting coming up on the fintech calendar. Money 2020 Riyadh. And no, I won't be there. But while the team is jetting off to Saudi Arabia, I'll be holding down the fort. But that doesn't mean I'm not completely buzzing about what's going down on the ground. From growth markets to the movers and shakes of global fintech, this one's shaping up to be a serious moment for the industry. So here's what to do. If you are heading out there, keep an eye out for our crew. Yes, Mike's will be involved and maybe even snag a chat if you've got something smart to say.

30:44And for the rest of us, make sure you're following FinTech Insider across all the socials so you don't miss a thing. I'll be watching, posting and probably sending some jealous DMs. Catch you online and have a blast in Riyadh. Okay, back to the news. Our next story comes from the American banker and that is Revolut offering free subway rides to new NYC customers. Revolut is offering new customers in New York City up to five free MTA subway or bus rides via 100 % cashback on tap to pay fares using their Revolut card. The Ride with Revolut campaign runs from August 22nd to September 20th. As well, riders receive cashback on up to five single rides, each costing$2.90, with total cashback potential up to$14.50.

31:24This initiative highlights Revolut's US growth strategy, showcasing its broader money measurement tools from seamless international transfers to multi-currency accounts and budgeting features. Megan, is this smart customer acquisition or just a flashy promo? You know, I think what Revolut's always been really good at is customer acquisition. You know what I mean? Like from the early days, they know how to use certain behavioral economics to scale. And right now they're very like liquid, I would say, in terms of their kind of profitability that they've had. And they have a lot of money to reinvest to grow their customer base.

31:58I think when they're looking at the U.S. where they want to expand, doing loss, making introductory offers like, you know, free rides in New York City to new customers, it's sensible because that's what they're really focused on. They have a great product. They're continuing to want to scale it. The U.S. is a key focus market. They have money to spend on advertising. They've always been quite willing to do that. So I think it makes sense for them. I don't think it's right for everyone. I think a lot of new startups come out, and particularly in New York, I think it comes under critique. That often happens.

32:25You get some new app that's, you know, focused on finding restaurants and you get so much off per meal at a restaurant. And it's so loss making that the startup can quite quickly go under from acquiring so many customers, but not making any money from them. But I think it's a completely different framework when you consider it for Revolut, given their position, the amount of profitability they have, the amount of, you know, investment that people want to put into it, should they want to raise more investment. It's really all systems go, I think, on them continuing to scale and, and yeah, increased customer numbers.

32:56So I think it makes sense for that particular market and how they're approaching it. Interesting. Oliver, what do you reckon? Yeah, I think there's gonna be great word of mouth from this. I think, you know, people telling their colleagues, oh, I'm traveling for free this week. I'm not paying for my transit. I think that word will spread very, very fast. The question is when the campaign ends, what happens then? Do those customers stay with Revolut? As Megan said, I think they're so savvy when it comes to these promotions and getting customers through the door. So I have no doubt that this will be a huge success for them.

33:30I think these transit campaigns are maybe less successful than they were years ago when colorful bank cards, you know, we all do Apple Pay now, so you don't see the cards as much. But I think the word of mouth will still help them win this. And yeah, I look forward to seeing their customer numbers in the US in the years ahead. Yeah, I mean, I'm intrigued to see how well it does because I feel like it'll be a good read on like New York consumers, right? Like how important is$15 in the U.S.? I think it'll be useful to kind of get a steer on that. Yeah, I mean, it does, like I was just thinking through that actually, it does indicate the type of customer they're going to pick up is probably kind of younger typically, maybe a new college graduate working in the city, someone who's a bit more financially minded.

34:13For the established professionals working in banking in New York City, maybe a little bit less provocative. But I don't know, everyone loves to save money. I love a good discounted promo code. So Lord knows, like, I would probably still use it if I was there new to Revolut. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it does and which particular customers they pick up with it and if they use it fully. So, yeah, exciting times. Yeah. Grant, bringing you in as well. Do you feel like this is going to be the kind of starting point for Revolut's growth into the US? There's a bit of guerrilla marketing in there, right, isn't there?

34:43I mean, I'm sure they'll be splashed all over the subway from an advertising point of view as well. You've got to think outside the box. I mean, I'm all for creative campaigns. You know, you had Monzo issuing Greg's sausage rolls out of a cash machine in Newcastle in the UK. You know, there was good PR that came from that. And that was, you know, advertising their premium card where you had a monthly paid fee, right? And they probably picked up a load of customers that now get a free sausage roll from Greg's every month. I don't think it's a case now of people not using these cards as their day-to-day spend cards.

35:16I certainly use Monzo as my day-to-day card. they probably still have an element of challenge against the traditional banks. If we looked at the CMA9 in the UK, the comparison in terms of how people are getting their salaries paid in and paying their mortgages. I think that's the gap that these banks now actually need to close. Yes, you're going to have£500 or a few hundred pounds or whatever is your day-to-day spending fund on there, which is great for a subway alignment like this if they want to get more switcher traffic for people using those day-to-day spend cards. But are you going to do your core banking with Revolute?

35:47I think something that they have done that I would call out is, you know, seeing as we talked about open banking at the start of this session as well, is their Revolut pay deployment has been really, really smart in terms of pay by bank for Revolut customers with Revolut merchant processing businesses to get better pay by bank adoption and help save business fees on that, but also getting their users more familiar with pay by bank as a payment method. I think that was a really smart product rollout. I mean, they like to challenge the status quo. Smacking a new headquarters in the middle of Canary Wharf is a bit of a hey-ho, guys, to the ones that said they wouldn't get a banking license, right?

36:21Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's a really interesting point. I completely agree about people being more willing to spit out their everyday spend onto some of these new platforms and new cards. I think from a customer perspective, when I've interviewed customers and asked them to kind of categorize kind of different types of their money, I think transport spend is actually a really interesting category of spend because for some people it sits in that everyday bucket because it's something that fluctuates and changes. And for some people, it sits kind of closer to your utilities and your bills because it's something you just have to do.

36:52And, you know, it's not you having a coffee or going out for lunch with a friend. It's kind of something that feels less fun. so I do think there's an interesting sort of behavioral design component to it is you yes you might have moved your fund spend over to a revolute card or a monzo card or a chime card or something like that but you know if you move your transport spend across maybe you're starting to make that sort of mental leap of like this is a slightly more serious part of my money that I'm putting this space so I'm really intrigued from a customer behavior perspective to see how that plays out Megan yeah yeah I was just thinking like as you said that one thing I bet Nick and the team are doing at Revolut is looking at what worked really well for them as they expanded in the UK and in other markets.

37:33And I remember back in the day when it was early days of Revolut in the UK, they did a lot of advertising on the tube. And I don't know if you remember like Chad West leading some of these, but I remember he had one that was particularly provocative. It was something kind of cheeky around Valentine's Day. And I just remember it went so viral because it was kind of on the edge of like appropriate for like fintech products, but it was hilarious. and it got into like, you know, various headlines. And I remember they really focused on commuters. And to be fair, they don't have a typical high balance per card.

38:02And yet they're like dominating in terms of customer acquisition and overall profitability numbers. So I bet what they're doing is putting two and two together, which is saying we've done these marketing campaigns. We attract these types of consumers. And no, we don't necessarily get huge amounts of deposits, but then that leads them to using all these other things. Like they offer quite a bit in terms of connective partnerships that then give them other discounts. And they're probably seeing this discount and people who want discounts and see this discount, which creates, you know, an ingrained usage in the app.

38:29And then, you know, maybe they find crypto trading and all the other kind of stuff because they're in a digitally savvy young segment or whatever it is that they profit off of. But I'm wondering if that's actually the thing, which is they've seen how it works, the kind of customers they get. Now they want these types in the US. So it's, yeah, it all kind of makes sense that they're really good at this commuter focus. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to get your perspective on Grant is, Is there like a payments data play to this for Revolut? Do you think there will be value for them in trying to hopefully increase the amount of transactional data they receive around how customers are traveling, where they are, when they're in certain destinations?

39:03Would that be a factor, do you think? I think there's a couple of benefits. If you're picking up day-to-day spend, you're obviously growing your interchange revenue as well. So if you pick up small incremental day-to-day spends at massive scale, there's an interchange benefit to revenue for them in that sense. And I think also once you've got a new customer acquired, the way that the challenger banks, they're not even challenger banks anymore, neobanks, whatever you want to define them as these days, again, it's that they're not new anymore, right? But they're still delivering great new product quicker than a lot of legacy players can.

39:33But once you've acquired that customer in the first instance, what they're brilliant at is cross-selling other products and services. I think, again, going back to Monzo, they're starting to get this right with their two different premium card bands now. Now I know most of my friends that use Monzo have gone maybe at least to the first tier, some to the second tier because you're getting, you know, free phone. What do people do often? They drop their phone and smash the screen. They don't want to claim insurance, but it costs 400 quid to replace it. So that was an obvious upsell to get people going to Monzo Premium because you can get your phone screen replaced.

40:00They're really, really savvy around how they think about their age demographic of their customers. And that's the data they're probably really tapping into is like, what is our average age demographic and what products can we then use to upsell to get more of that day-to-day or more core wallet spend, if you want to call it that, but also to upsell other products and services that will increase our bottom line. And I think that's something that they're starting to do in a really, really clever and efficient way now. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'll see how this campaign plays out. And as always, keep an eye on whatever Revolut is doing.

40:32So we'll be coming back to you with more updates on their moves and shakes in the US. Okay, on to our next story. We're taking this one from Fenextra, and that is ComBank reversed its plan to replace call centre staff with AI. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, also known as ComBank, has reversed its plan to cut 45 call centre jobs in favour of an AI-powered voice bot, calling the decision an error. Contrary to the bank's claims that AI would reduce calls by 2 ,000 per week, call volumes actually increased. This led to staff being offered overtime and team leaders stepping in to handle inquiries, a clear indication the AI rollout didn't deliver as planned.

41:07CBA admitted its redundancy assessment didn't fully account for real business needs and called the initial decision a misjudgment. Megan, probably no surprise. Got the word AI in it. So I'll come to you first. What do you reckon? I really appreciate that this story was included because I think it hits on one of the biggest misconceptions around the possibility of AI in finance. I think for years now, everyone wants to use AI as a chatbot. and any of us have used it and they're all terrible because it's not AGI. It's not general intelligence. It's not the LLM. It's not the same as talking with chat GBT.

41:41It's predictive AI. It's, you know, a fancy decision tree and you end up in this really unintelligent experience where you're asking a question. It completely doesn't get the answer and then you just kind of end up stuck and you actually just keep trying to like find a way out of it to get to like talk to a real person. And what you end up doing is creating a poor customer experience and higher call volumes and that's quite predictable. I think the thing that's like the underlying part here that I'm really excited about is once we do shift to understanding the difference in types of AI, the thing that people will realize that's only known, I would say, by the earliest adopters of various Gen AI tools like ChatGPT is how emotionally intelligent it is.

42:20It's something that I think has probably been my biggest epiphany this year, that it's emotional intelligence not only can match a human's emotional intelligence, it exceeds it. it's shocking. Like I went to the State of AI event that was put on by North Zone a couple of months ago and there was like maybe a hundred people it was her host of Ister Stephen Fry, it had like Medi, like the product director of DeepMind, leaders from OpenAI and it had the like ex-chief of MI6, it was this like crazy interesting event and I remember someone pointed it out, it's like not only in the future will it be medical malpractice for a doctor to diagnose a client or someone without the sign off of their AI similarly in finance We think that it's going to be really brilliant at being like a CFO via API, but there's more than that.

43:03The ability to relate to an individual psychologically about their money, to be able to emotionally relate and handle those kind of fears around money and that kind of emotional intelligence is actually far better than a human's capability. And that's the part that I think is not very well known. So few people have like kind of tapped into that and their use of AI. Like right now, like I would say there's buckets of people when they use ChatGPT, a lot of it is like fancy Google. And then there's like the academics who see it for the brilliance in research. And then there's some AI agents and corporates where you see it as taking out a lot of low-level entry jobs, particularly in engineering, where you can see where it can replace skills quite quickly.

43:38But I think the real lift is over the next probably 12 to 24 months when people understand the strategic nature of it and emotionally intelligent nature of it. But what that means in terms of the types of AI you have to integrate to enable that, it's not all AI is made equally. So like predictive AI is a very different thing from what exists in ChatGPT. You know, Delta Airlines chatbot is not even close to the kind of experience you'd have with, you know, ChatGPT or Opus or Claude or one of those. And so that's where I think the real shift will happen. So it makes sense they rolled it back. I think it's predictable error.

44:10I don't think it will persist. I think there's a big opportunity actually for customer service to be replaced by AI, just not that tight. I think predictive AI is just not good enough to solve it, especially with high anxiety financial questions. It just doesn't make sense to do that. So I think until they're ready to integrate it properly, it's better to just lead humans to manage it for now. Yeah, I mean, again, And there's still very much an unfolding, I think, news story kind of as we record this. But there's reports out today about lawsuits against open AI in the States after tragic cases where young people have interacted with chat GPT and have gone on to take their own lives and commit self-harm.

44:51So I think, yeah, it feels like there is a really potentially huge opportunity, but also as this technology evolves, huge risks and potential harms at an individual level that we need to be learning from and observing. So, yeah, I think in the financial services space, that will be huge to watch, right? Well, so, yeah, I think that's actually, it's a really good article to point it out because you see some on both sides, some with a companionship. It's like people will use ChetGPT like a therapist or a friend in like a good way, and that's good. But then I saw that article today that you're talking about, about the 16-year-old Adam Rain who took his life as a result.

45:22And what had happened is effectively, he went in, he was very depressed, he was suicidal. And so, of course, he's asking ChatGPT for help. And ChatGPT has a lot of safety nets built in for this, so it would point him to, you know, suicide hotlines. But then what he did is he devised a character, say, oh, it's not me. I'm doing this character as a hypothetical. How would this character do it? And you can very easily still kind of get around it. Like, hypothetically, how would you do it if you would? And I think the critique there was ChatGPT should have put two and two together, that he's asking for himself and still found a way to block it and to help him up level.

45:53And I think there's some really fair critiques there and it needs to be improved because the reality is people are definitely relating to it as a companion, not just as a tool. And that's what that's hitting at. And so it's still, they're just still, I think, figuring out all these nuances of like, okay, we have these systems and safety nets, but then when people try to get around them, how do we circumvent that? You know, it's quite nuanced because the companionship is quite deep. Yeah, absolutely. Grant, obviously, as we covered in the previous story, you guys don't currently have a public roadmap, so I'm not asking you to divulge all of the kind of deepest, darkest secrets of WellPay, but, you know, how does ComBank's experience of AI influence how you guys at WellPay are thinking about pulling AI into what you're doing?

46:34Yeah, I think you look at ComBank, but you also think about Klarna, you know, not so long ago, did a very public PR piece around all the cost saving that they'd made and how many staff they'd managed to remove from the business. And then just a matter of months later, rolled that back and said, it's all gone horribly wrong and we're missing those people and we're going to be hiring again and backfilling and going back to the way we did it before. So if it's not the right timing or it's not quite the right setup, as Megan said, it's, you know, you really have to think about how you deploy these things.

46:59I think there's a market angle to it as well. You know, in the UK in particular, and there's competitors of ours that we certainly win business from where they've maybe lost that human element and that can be in customer support. Like you've got with ComBank here, partner account management, you know, what can seem like a really small query to a customer can actually be quite complex for them sometimes and they need a better understanding and maybe they're not going to get that from AI or a chatbot and they do need that more, I guess, heavy-handed human interaction to take care of them. So our big thing with AI is more agentic commerce and where that's going to be going because obviously it's great for us in one side because we're going to see more volume potentially in terms of spending in the market with people setting AI on a course to actually do shopping for them and spending for them.

47:46But also the fraud element of that, we spent years working towards biometric and OTP verifications that need human interaction so we know who the actual customer is. And now we've got the capability with AI for us to potentially not easily know who that customer is. So as a payments company, we need to navigate that and think about how we're ultimately knowing who our end customer still is or to make sure that end customers have authorized the agentic AI to actually go and spend on their behalf. So there's a few challenges we're facing with it. We're also really, really excited about the opportunity that comes with agentic commerce as well and the AI benefits that's being delivered by that.

48:24Oliver, I'll give you the final word on this one. Thank you. The thing that I guess comes to mind when I think about financial services and AI is that we are very much still in that sort of experimentation phase. And when I hear stories like Klarna, when I hear about Combank, in some ways I'm happy to hear them because it shows that people are experimenting and trying things. They're getting it wrong. That's okay. It's good to learn. You know, on the Gartner hype cycle, where are we? I think we're, you know, in the heady period, but maybe we are coming towards that sort of lower period where people are starting to realize the limitations.

49:00But I'm optimistic, a bit like Megan, I think optimistic on the potential. and I'm glad to see there's experimentation but sometimes that does go a bit too far and needs to be rolled back a little bit. Absolutely. On that note, we're just going to take a quick pause here. We'll be back shortly.

49:22Now at Lowe's. Faster quotes start at the Lowe's Pro Desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, We'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in-store or on lowes.com, right from the Lowe's Pro Desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving. Just like that at Lowe's.

49:54Okay, now for a quick look at one more newsworthy story this week that we don't have time to cover in full, but we think you will find just as interesting. We're taking this one from Fintech Futures and that is Bunk hit with 2.6 million euro fine by Dutch Central Bank. The Dutch Central Bank fined online bank Bunk 2.6 million euros in May 2025 for serious shortcomings in its anti-money laundering or AML controls. It found that Bunk failed to properly investigate and report suspicious transactions between January 2021 and May 2022 across four customer cases. Bunk strongly disagrees with the fine and has formally lodged an objection.

50:32The bank stated it takes its role as a financial gatekeeper seriously and has since enhanced its systems using advanced technology. The fine marks part of a broader rate-free crackdown in the Netherlands. Other banks like ING, ABN AMRO and Rabobank have faced large penalties or prosecution for similar airmail compliance failures. Well, I think obviously this is difficult for Bunk and the fact that they're protesting against it. shows that they're not necessarily in agreement with the findings. But I think what we've seen broadly across the industry is as all of these fintechs and new banks build their customer bases, for the vast majority of them, there is going to be some sort of growing pains around that.

51:13There is going to be some challenges to kind of get the AML controls up to the level they need to be. I don't think this necessarily shows that Bunk is failing per se. It just feels like it's a sadly very common thing that these platforms are experiencing as they grow. And kudos to the regulator for stepping in, for giving them the same level of scrutiny that they are giving to these other banks. But obviously, if you look at the levels of fines applied, obviously, it sounds like a lot of money. I do not personally have 2.6 million euros lying around. But those sums are dramatically smaller than the fines applied to the likes of ING and ABM and ROE.

51:49So yes, Bunker have made some mistakes, but it sounds like they're fixing them. And now they've hit 17 million customers. And similar to Revolut, they're also looking to the US for growth. So in many ways, maybe this is coming at a good time for them if it helps them to really kind of refine their processes and get those into a good place ahead of their next stage of growth. So fingers crossed for Bunker as they continue their growth journey. And finally, now time for something a little bit lighter to finish this week's news show. taking this story from The Guardian and that is a customer's feeling raw after Tesco adds 25p to price of a meal deal.

52:27Tesco, a UK supermarket, has raised the price of its popular meal deal by 25 pence, bringing the cost to£4.25 for non-club card holders. This marks the third increase since 2022 reflecting ongoing inflation pressures. A 4.9 % annual rise in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices driven by supplies just like droughts and heatwaves in southern Europe has impacted costs. Some shoppers expressed disappointment, questioning whether the offer still qualifies as a deal. We covered this story actually in our 11FS weekly bite-sized newsletter and shared our own outrage at this story. So you can subscribe to that newsletter by clicking the link in our show notes.

53:02So do go give it a read, but keen to get the panellists' take on this as well. Bolivar, are you a Tesco Mildil fan? Are you outraged by this? I am. I am a massive fan. And I'm absolutely gutted. The price has been creeping up for the last few years, though. You know, it's really, I remember when it was in the three pounds and now, you know, the low three pounds and now£4.25. Crazy. You know, I think we all know where this is going. The five pound meal deal is the future. Tesco is heading there. It won't be long. I'm sorry to break the news to everyone. Megan, maybe give us an international perspective on this, right?

53:40Because do we just take the meal deal for granted in the UK? Is it something that's unique in the UK or does it exist in other places as well? No, it's totally, I mean, Subway, you know, has their meal deal in the US. So like, you know, it's a thing, but there's not as many meal deals, I would say. And I would say with Tesco, like my office in London is right near London Bridge and there's a Tesco right outside of it. And I went in recently, I hadn't been in ages and getting a meal deal and I got the meal deal. And I was like, I text my husband, like the Tesco meal deal is such a deal. like how in this economy with this, you know, sharp price increases everywhere, you know, that you can get anything for under five pounds.

54:16I was like, this is insane. I forgot about what a good bargain it was. So now, honestly, that's like increased up. I already thought it costs more than that. So I was just impressed as, you know, prices have increased everywhere so heavily that I can still get such a deal. So I'm not that at Tesco. I'm just, uh, I'm with Oliver though. It'll probably be five pounds before, you know, but you know, it's worth it. It's delicious. It's excellent. You know, you can get your chicken Caesar wrap, you know, I'm going to be a spokesperson for Tesco anytime now. Well, I mean, that was going to be the next question.

54:41What is in the dream meal deal? Grant, what's your dream meal deal? You're allowed, I've been told, I mean, again, for non-UK listeners, a meal deal involves typically like a main sandwich or kind of like, it could be a pasta or a wrap or something like that. So it's a main sandwich, pasta, wrap, drink and snack of choice. So yeah, you're allowed three items. What's in your dream meal deal? I'll just say on the Tesco piece, someone told me a Freddo costs over a pound now. So without breaking the pound barrier, Mark, I'm not surprised about the Tesco meal deal. But yeah, my slightly controversial one would be I am a Marmite lover.

55:17So the cheese and Marmite sandwich, the humble cheese and Marmite, represent the British staple there. I'm going to say a pack of candy kittens as the snack because those things are just epic. You can't go wrong with candy kittens and drink any sort of fruit water. I've got into the fruit water sort of world that's sparkling fruit water's gone mad in the UK, hasn't it? So any of those that catches my eye on the shelf. Fair enough. Oliver, what's your go-to? No, not your go-to, sorry. We're talking dream world here. So dream Mildo. Oh, no. Well, this is my go-to. I'm a traditionalist. So BLT sandwich, all the way, bag of crisps, sweet chili sensations, maybe, and a Pepsi Max to finish it off.

56:01Ooh, okay. The drinks choice, I think, to me, is the most controversial. Um, Megan. Yeah, I am. So a little fact about me is I don't really mix up what I eat. I find something I like and I stick with it for like a decade. So this is my Tesco meal deal. I get the chicken Caesar wrap every time. It used to be a ham and cheese sandwich back in 2016. I shifted. So now chicken Caesar wrap. And then, um, for a period of time I was Quavers because those are British and I hadn't had those before. It was very exciting. But now I've discovered What's It's, which are British Cheetos and I love those. So now I'm over to the What's It's.

56:33And then for the drink, I'll be honest, Oliver, I like Pepsi Max, but I usually go for the Pepsi Max cherry. If I do Pepsi Max, I'm a little bit more lenient. I can do a Diet Coke. I can do a Coke Zero. I can do a Sprite. I'm pretty whimsical. The flavored waters also grant. I feel you on that. I'm a little bit less, you know, kind of, you know, picky about my drink, but any of those options are good. But yeah, definitely chicken Caesar wrap, crisps, some sort of diet beverage. Oh, I'm saying. I think I haven't actually had a meal deal in a while because I've been trapped in a house with a baby.

57:05So my time just to bumble around Tesco's at lunchtime has been minimal. But now that I'm re-emerging into the world, I would definitely have to go get one just to re-establish myself. Yeah, I think I would probably go for a wrap of some sort because I'm a very clumsy eater and wraps are just generally more contained than sandwiches. So I think there's less chance of me kind of spilling something all over my front, which is what inevitably happens. drink I do have a diet coke dependency issue I don't drink coffee so that is my caffeine source of choice but it's reached the stage I think it I do need an intervention because it's reached the point where like my four-year-old now says you know mommy would you like a diet coke and I'm like oh no this is not this is not a good this is not a good precedent to have set and then snack of choice yeah I think it would have to vary vary on mood sometimes it's crisps but sometimes you know it's got to be like a Kit Kat or something.

57:57Sometimes you've just got to sneak some shop in. But again, it depends on the energy levels of the day. But no, I mean, I think it's, I'm intrigued to see. Yeah, we haven't really seen, we talked earlier about Revolut's move into kind of the transport space. But yeah, we've not really seen many. I feel like the meal deal could also be an interesting, you know, everyday area of spend to kind of focus on. What if a new entrant into the UK market gave you three, oh God, this is my worst time of my, three free meal deals. That would be, that'd be a game changer. It's inspiration for KWID now. You get three free Tesco meal deals if you invest in my wealth management.

58:37You heard it. I'm signing up. I'm signing up. I've got my first customer. Awesome. Well, that wraps up today's FinTech Insider News. Thank you so much to today's guests. Where can people find out a bit more about you and your company, Svegan? Yeah, so, For me, you can find me on LinkedIn as Megan K. Wood Cooper. And then for my company, it's kwood.ai. And I don't really use X anymore, but I used to. And that was just at Megan K. Wood. So if you want to find me there, I don't have a lot on there, but there it is. Awesome. Grant, what about you? Yeah, very much on LinkedIn and YouTube more latterly as well.

59:15So G. Evans Payments or the Payment Shed. What do you do on YouTube? Payment Shed stuff, yeah. I've got a newsletter and podcast, I dare to say. Sorry, guys. It's fine. Not quite the level of 11FS, but yeah. We're all friends. It's all good. Oliver, what about you? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn or even drop me an email, oliver.smith at money2020.com. I am on the hunt for headline speakers for Money 2020 Europe next year. So I'd love to hear from you. Awesome. And as for me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Kate Media, or drop me an email, kate at 11FS.com. Thank you so much for listening to today's Fintech Insider.

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