FinTech Simplified with Product Director at Visa, Piers Marais #44

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. Today we're joined by product director at Visa and all-round fintech whiz, Piers Murray. Piers agreed to undertake the tricky task of simplifying the often complicated world of fintech, acronyms and all. From how it can benefit businesses and consumers, to what the future landscape looks like. Don't forget to visit thecompanydoctor.com for added extras including video clips and key takeaways. In the meantime, Gary, Piers, over to you.

Hey Piers, thanks so much for joining the Company Doctor.

Welcome.

How are you?

Thanks for having me. I'm doing very well, thanks.

How are you? I'm really good. We're really looking forward to having you on because today the topic is fintech simplified. And what I've heard about you is you're a bit of an expert on fintech, apart from being in one. So we're really, really keen to kind of dig into the topic. A lot of people have been asking us. How it all works. So I guess the best place to start is to ask you to tell us who you are. A quick intro to yourself and obviously an intro into CurrencyCloud.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

So I'm Piers. I'm a product director at a company that many or most people will have heard of called Visa, obviously one of the largest brands in the world. And before that, I was or have been at a company called CurrencyCloud. So Visa acquired CurrencyCloud at the end of 2021. And CurrencyCloud is effectively the cross-border payments and FX engine that powers a lot of the UK and European fintech scene, and obviously sort of fintech and banks beyond that as well in other parts of the world. But we provide some of that core infrastructure, that core fintech infrastructure, that cross-border layer effectively that plugs into the likes of Revolut and Starling Bank, for example. So I've been at CurrencyCloud for about 5 years, Visa for the past year of that, and before that was working in the global maritime tech world. So I had a complete industry shift from global maritime to global finance, but I've been in product management for the last just under 10 years or so.

Sailing your way into fintech, I guess. Exactly. So this leads— thanks for the intro. Really good. It leads me to a question that I must ask. And I think the people that are listening will be thinking the same thing, hopefully. The topic of this episode is fintech simplified. What is fintech? Does it matter? And if so, why?

Cool. Great. 3 great questions. So fintech stands for financial technology. And really what we, I guess, in fintech are trying to do is to use software, use technology, use innovation to improve and automate to some extent the traditional financial services that many people and businesses have become used to using over the past decades and beyond. And I suppose a key premise of the fintech sector, what we're trying to do is to provide accessible, user-friendly services in contrast to what many think was provided before that by incumbents, by traditional financial institutions in the past, where there is this contrast between sort of product-centric approaches where, where large FIIs, particularly large financial institutions in particular, really concentrate on producing, generating products, creating products versus the fintech wave, let's call it, since roughly 2008, which really focuses on the customer centricity, trying to understand in depth who you are as a customer of a particular platform or application. And understand what your problems, your challenges are, what you're trying to do, what you'd like to do more of, and then look to software, to technology, to innovation to bring those to life, usually through an application, a mobile application, but also through web applications.

So should I be worried? Because you said you're going to look into me, not me personally, hopefully, but should we be worried about that or should we be excited by that?

No, I think on the converse, it's the excitement that data privacy is absolutely integral to everything that we are doing within fintech and in many other industries. But I think once you start looking at using technology, things like artificial intelligence, for example, to start analyzing huge datasets and to start providing personalized experiences to you as a consumer of that particular application, or even you as a business user of a particular application, you start to get far, far better experiences. The traditional sort of analogy here, I guess, is in the advertising part of this, right? When you are logging on to a website, you are always going to be more interested in the advert that is relevant to you as a persona, to your demographic, or the types of things that you might have searched on or be interested in. And it is applying that same analogy, I guess, which is using the data in an anonymous and aggregated way to bring you as an individual a much better experience in the application or website that you're in.

By the way, I did learn something immediately at the beginning of the podcast because I didn't know, and I feel embarrassed to say this, that fintech meant financial technology. So it really makes sense now. But one of the reasons we did the podcast is people keep asking us, what about fintech? What about— what the hell is it? And the world seems to be kind of overloaded with fintech as a kind of cool thing. What are the genuine, from your experience, appears the genuine opportunities for growth, or is it a bit of a gold rush?

So I think the, the true sort of concept of, of fintech that people talk about mostly today really started, uh, from, from 2008, sort of post-financial crisis. There were some earlier players who arguably were, were key, uh, leaders in the fintech space. So PayPal, for example, I think was formed in the early 2000s. But fintech really, as we know it today, kind of formed out of that, that 2008 crisis. And the first stage of that was really for fintechs to use technology to unbundle pieces of the wider pie, pieces of the wider application set that you might have been using, let's say, on a desktop browser with your previous bank, and to unbuddle, to take apart very small parts of that stack and really, really optimize that and bring that to you as a customer in a far, far, far better experience than you'd ever had before.

Good. I like— it's always good to have a good experience.

That's the aim of it. And it doesn't always happen, but that's the absolute aim of it. And really over the past sort of 10, 14, 15 years, we've seen that emerge. And the kind of the key technological components that underpin a lot of what's happening in the infrastructure in the ecosystem have then been extended out and you see far bigger propositions starting to emerge. So if you think about Wise, which used to be called TransferWise, they really started as a, that kind of travel proposition. So you as an individual, you're going on holiday to Spain or to another part of the world for your family holiday, for example. If you think about sort of 10, 15 years ago, or even in some cases today, there is sometimes a really, really bad experience when you are spending abroad. You have no visibility as to actually what you're going to be charged when you get back home. Sometimes those rates can be much, much higher than they perhaps should be. And there were certain players like TransferWise who are now Wise, who really tapped into that travel part of the market and provided that fundamentally better experience. Revolut would also be in the same category to some extent, but over the past sort of 5, 6 years or so, they've used all of the other components that exist within the fintech sector to enhance those propositions to become digital banks in their own right. And to move into some of the financial service offerings that you would've expected usually from a traditional or an incumbent bank. So you as an individual are getting this far broader range of services that you now see within one application than you were able to before.

I think it's great. And I had an example of that in travel because I was in America and they asked me what tip I wanted to give. And when I got my credit card back, I got added 20%, but I only knew that because it was on my card. When I only gave 10%. So it's kind of an interesting thing. One of the things that we get asked quite a bit, because there's a lot of confusion about things, and one of them is cryptocurrency. Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you about Bitcoin or anything, but I did read the blog that you wrote. I think it was a blog, and you said something like, "Cryptocurrency is dead. Long live central bank digital currency." What did you mean? And should people worry about crypto? Is that a completely separate thing? Or is it something we should kind of worry about or be happy about, or whatever you think is the thing we should think about?

Yeah, so there are, I think there are, to set the scene here, if we're talking about fintech simplified, to set the scene, there are effectively two types of money that we're talking about here. We're talking about fiat money. So the British pound, the US dollar that we all know today. And then you can talk about digital or cryptocurrency on the other end of things, the Bitcoins, the Ethereums. That have come to emerge over the past sort of decade or so. And cryptocurrency, or Bitcoin in particular, was really launched as this way to counter sort of maybe government control or national control that to try and ease the way in which people transact. But I think that we've seen over the past few years that the technology that these cryptocurrencies are built on sometimes called blockchain or DLT, distributed ledger technology, have proven to be in certain aspects of really innovative technology, but are really struggling in certain cases to solve the actual customer problems that we are seeing. So for example, you can send, I can, I can open a Bitcoin account or have store Bitcoin in an account here in the UK. You might be based in Singapore and I can send you BTC through that sort of crypto wallet type functionality. But that Bitcoin becomes useless to you if you can't then go and spend it in shops and in e-commerce.

Can't go to McDonald's with my Bitcoin.

I've tried it. Exactly. Doesn't work. And they probably turn you down. There's no hamburger for you at the end of that. So I think there is this, we call it the on and the off ramps. It's how do you get your fiat money, your British pounds or your US or your Singaporean dollars into that crypto world and then out of that. And that's not being solved yet. The Central Bank Digital Currencies, another acronym, CBDCs, is really taking the British pound and the, the, the UK government, the Bank of England, the, all of the other players within the financial ecosystem, fully, fully digitizing that and bringing that fairly sort of incumbent legacy stack into the 21st century. Using technology to provide a government-backed British pound. Sometimes it's called the Britcoin here in the UK.

The Britcoin.

Yes. But that fundamentally differs from the Bitcoin example or the cryptocurrency example where there is no sovereign backing to that currency, that cryptocurrency. It is a privately created asset, let's say, that then is built on top of that blockchain network.

Thank you for that simplification. And so therefore, is cryptocurrency dead or not?

I would say that—

You said in your blog.

It's dead in my blog.

It's dead in your blog apparently.

I still see a use case for crypto, but I think it's about crypto assets. It's about a store of value rather than the medium of exchange. You might want to invest in Bitcoin, like I maybe naively did, on the basis that you think that will increase in the same way that you might do the same with a Tesla stock.. But I don't see a world in which Bitcoin will become, or any other cryptocurrency for that matter, will become the de facto currency of the world, the global currency.

Currency. Okay. I get you. That makes sense. Thanks for that. That's really good. Thank you. Just kind of shifting gears a little bit because there are a lot of fintechs evolving outside of your own business, obviously. Who is good at it? Who are your kind of heroes? And if someone was developing the best of breed fintech, What does it look like? I know it's a big question, but just think at a practical level, who are the heroes and what's the practical things that we should focus on?

So I think when we, when we look at some of the largest fintechs, not just in the UK, but around the world, the likes of Revolut, maybe Nubank in Latin America, they really come back to the customer being put at the very, very forefront of everything you're trying to do. They develop from the customer. From the outset. And the result in the application is an experience that you walk away with and actually feel quite satisfied with. When we think about money and financial services, it's often quite an emotive topic. You know, people think about having to pay off mortgages and utility bills and things like that, or not having enough in their savings accounts, for example. And it becomes a really emotive topic that taps into the human psyche. But I always point to Revolut. I think they've done an absolutely fantastic job at taking away some of that, the frustration, the pain, the anger that you traditionally have got within many other incumbent banking services. And by extension, have changed the way that you as an individual, or even you as a business, can start to think about money and financial services. And I think that becomes a really, really important thing when we think about accessibility and inclusion, financial inclusion. So that people of various different generations and backgrounds and demographics feel like they are able to access some kind of financial service that might be relevant to them.

Yeah, that's great. And, you know, a question for you as a kind of product director and someone who's obviously creative in the product space. If you build on what you just said, and I get this customer-centricity thing, if you projected into the future, what would the world of fintech look like?

So we, at the moment, we are sitting on top of huge amounts of data, data lakes, absolutely astronomical amounts of data. And thus far, or up to recent years, it's been very, very difficult actually, from a, from a technological perspective for businesses, or the fintech community, maybe to tap into that and really leverage that data for the benefits of the end customer again. With the arrival of things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, using really, really, really powerful software to start to analyze huge datasets in an aggregate way, start to find some of those patterns that are really difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to go and find, and to start to provide predictive types of experiences, i.e., using things that have happened in the past, using the data that is attached to events that physically have happened in the past, How do we combine that into a model that predicts what might happen going forward? So in a, in a simple case, it's looking at things like your, your recurring utility bills, for example. That's a fairly basic example, but it allows a really sort of progressive fintech provider allows or can enable that fundamentally different experience that shows you what funds you need to have in your account by particular points of of the day or the week. But it's taking that example much, much further and really trying to predict to you as an end customer of an application what you should be doing going forward with your financial services. Everything from having enough money to pay a utility bill all the way through to investments and savings, where what should you be doing with your hard-earned money.

That's good. I was going to just hide my credit card, but I quite like that idea. And there's been a kind of a media storm around AI and ChatGPT and those sorts of things. Is there a place for AI in your future world?

I've been trolling the ChatGPT, and I think it's Bard, is it? The new Google version that actually, I think, got the answer wrong in their ad recently. I saw that.

Not great.

To one of the questions, which was quite funny. But the ChatGPT, that sort of AI chatbot systems have various different use cases in the wider kind of tech industry. I think bringing it back to fintech, there is a huge opportunity for AI and the capability of software to help continue to transform what is happening again within this space. There are certain key fundamentals about a transaction or a payment, for example, that you can only optimize up to a certain point. So if you think about when I send you money from my, my app, my Starling Bank app, for example, generally speaking, that is free and instant. You can't get cheaper than free, and you can't get faster than instant. So what does Starling Bank and all the rest of them do next? And for me, it is really about leveraging that dataset, using tools like AI to help bring that experience to wherever we're going to go to next and to help solve some of my evolving financial service problems.

Yeah, no, I did wonder that some of the ideas you came up with, I guess AI might help. I must admit I'm using something called Plum, which is kind of making me save money and I just like the— it is less tech, but I like the idea of it and it's really working well for me. I normally do the savings I want to do. So we've looked to the future a little bit, but if we look back, are there any learning points from what you've seen, like pitfalls that people should avoid and kind of look out for? From your experience?

As from an end customer's perspective or from a business maybe thinking about the fintech space?

Maybe business in the fintech space and then maybe an end customer point of view.

Okay. So within the fintech space, one of the key, the biggest challenges I think actually is regulation. Now it can sometimes sound like a fairly boring topic, but regulation is fundamental actually to keeping all of our money, or helping to keep our money safe, our hard-earned British pounds that we've, that we have earned through whatever means, with whatever we're doing. That level of regulation is there really to protect, or, or some of that regulation is there to protect consumers. And within the UK, we've got a very kind of progressive regulatory framework and regulator within the financial ecosystem. But there is a high bar that is also set. It is not easy for for a business to sort of just emerge and instantly become regulated at the various different scales of regulation that there are. There are a lot of pitfalls and policies, frameworks, tools that you need to have within your infrastructure in order to be able to meet that high bar. And I think that's a really important concept for businesses to always be aware of. Something that at CurrencyCloud, we've always prioritized very, very high up our strategic list of priorities in order to be able to do this globally, to be able to tap into multiple jurisdictions and offer these kinds of services globally.

And if you use that knowledge and insight that you had then and you sort of had the chance to do it again, would you do anything differently if you had the chance to kind of help build kind of fintech?

Well, loads of stuff. Loads of stuff.

Things that you can talk about anyway.

Exactly. I think one of the— for me, one of the key learnings has been to get your product, your solution, your feature to market and into the hands of the end customers, whoever they might be, as quickly as you can, even if it is a version that you maybe not— are not even happy with, so that you can then go and validate it and find out whether you are actually solving those specific challenges or not. And that same principle applies to various other aspects of kind of building software, but it's really about getting something into the hands of end users as quickly as you can, bringing that feedback loop into play as quickly as you can, and learning from any feedback, validating those ideas that you have, and learning from that feedback, and amending what you're doing, updating what you're doing as quickly as you can. Now, We do try to do this a lot at CurrencyCloud, but in a highly regulated industry, that can sometimes also become a little bit more challenging. But I think that is, for me, would be a key focus really to continue doing in any business going forward.

That's good. I mean, I was reading again another article of yours when you were talking about the example of Spotify tribes or, you know, there's a well-trodden path, isn't there, for building agile things for people that listen. We've covered things like MVP in the past for people. The old-fashioned roadmap of I can't do anything for 18 months versus I have to keep adapting is kind of what you're saying, I guess.

Exactly. Especially when the world is changing so quickly underneath your feet. You can't be planning 18-month initiatives or roadmaps and expecting the customer to be wanting exactly the same solution at the end of it because everything has changed in the interim.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay, good. Listen, I've got a random question for you. It's got nothing to do with this. But I just need to ask you, I noticed that you were an English teacher in Chile. I think you have some Spanish connection, I'm not sure what, but have you ever used your teaching skills and transferred that into the product world?

Great question.

It's a completely random question, but I just thought I'd ask it.

So I loved languages at school, and I ended up doing a language degree. Very, very different to the world that I'm in now today in some senses, and between school and university, I ended up teaching in the southern tip of Chile in a tiny little town and teaching English over there for about 7 months. Unlike my wife, who ended up in teaching, I didn't. But day to day, I think of myself as a coach and mentor to my team of product managers. I think the business world has changed or is changing away from the more traditional sort of line management, command and control type structure, and more towards the, the coaching mentoring type model where it is about the personal professional development of individuals and of your team and about finding the right kinds of opportunities for them within your business and beyond. Ultimately, most people today are not going to retire in the company that they're currently working for. And so everyone, managers and reports included, have to think of their current position as a stepping stone on a much longer journey. I think I certainly, as a kind of coach and mentor, take that approach, very honest with my team, that it is one step in a longer journey. And then I suppose I'm trying badly, probably, to try and apply some of those teaching skills, applying some of those learnings that, that I've been able to acquire in my career so far. And share them, share those things with them to help them in their development.

It's really insightful because I think you've got a Master of Arts, you got a first. I did Spanish and the classics. You've been a teacher and so you've got the creativity and the kind of coaching, mentoring bit. That's why I was interested to know. So that's really helpful. Thanks, Piers, for that. I've got 2 more questions for you and then we're going to get to your musical tastes.

Excellent.

I'm really looking forward to because I've noticed you've got a guitar in the background. So I can't wait for that. And these questions build on each other. I think the first one of the two is what are the top tips for people thinking about either understanding or utilizing better a fintech? So what would be the top tips for a successful fintech?

So top tips for someone who's maybe looking to use a new application is you need to be clear on what you're— you as a consumer need to be, or even as a business, need to be clear on what you're trying to achieve. There are, there are lots and lots of fintech options out there, many of which are focusing on different parts of financial services, which is a very, very broad industry. I think it's, you know, be clear as an individual what you're trying, what you're, what you are specifically looking for, what problems that you're having, and then, you know, use review sites, for example, to, to really go and understand who is providing that best level of experience in terms of the service that you are trying to optimize. Was that from a consumer perspective, from a fintech perspective?

Yeah, give us another one more angle. So, you know, if I wanted from a consumer perspective, maybe.

I think probably a key tip actually is don't be scared. Don't be scared of the unknown. I certainly speak to maybe people of, when I speak to my mom, let's say, she doesn't want to move lots of savings through to a fintech that she's maybe never heard of. But these fintechs are not always, but in many cases, bound by much of the same regulation that the traditional incumbent players are bound to. And I think there is this fear of the unknown that is a natural human phenomenon. But by moving into a fintech world, there are so many additional benefits that you as an end user can start to get. So don't be afraid.

I think it's a really good one, actually. I just, for an experiment, because with that in mind, I went and bought a bit of Bitcoin or something to that effect on an app, and I put £50 in and it's now worth £21. And then I bought some, I bought £50 worth of Tesla stocks and they're now worth £100. So I don't know what that means, but certainly I think I need to be more informed, probably a bigger risk taker.

And yet for both of those examples, you probably used a fintech to buy both of those things. So actually, regardless of the outcome, you probably were using a fintech in order to get access.

I think I was. I think I was. And I'm a Starling customer and I've got a Monzo card, so I guess there's fintech somewhere in the back of those.

Brilliant. Brilliant.

Exactly. Okay, last question, and then we're going to get to musical taste. As this episode is about fintech simplified, if you could summarize fintech in just 3 takeaways, what would they be? Elevator pitch for fintech in 3 headings.

Fintech is about financial inclusion. It's about accessibility. And it is about customer centricity. Putting the customer first at everything you do.

You nailed it, Piers. Thank you so much. By the way, this has been so helpful. As I say, you helped me right at the beginning because I didn't even know that fintech meant financial technology. So that was even amazing just from the start. Thanks for coming on. I'm going to pass you to George for your musical choices, but thanks so much for joining us. It's been really interesting and I think it will help a lot of people demystify that fintech world.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Gary.

Over to you, George.

Yeah, that was— it was fascinating and it was one of those ones where we sort of need a part 2. I feel there's a lot more that Piers has to say on the topic. I actually have a question of my own, breaking from tradition before we get into the music. I had a question, a fintech-based question, which I wanted to ask. And it's based on a news story going around at the moment, or a few days ago, of all these high street banks are closing up their physical shops. Are these, are these big banks, are they sort of quaking in their boots at the, at the, with the rise of fintech companies and digital banks? Should they be? And which of, because I know a lot of them are sort of updating their product offer as well. So which of the big banks are keeping up best with this quick moving evolution of fintech and digital banks?

So the banks are absolutely aware of what is happening from the fintech angle. And previously where I think banks would talk about fintechs as being the enemy, they're now talking about them as being the cooperative collaborative partners within the ecosystem. But banks are very aware that they are losing customers to certain types of fintechs, again, certain demographics of customers to new fintechs. And the result of that is that those fintechs develop those services and then start to offer those same customers more and more products that the bank traditionally would've serviced them with. So things like current accounts are loss-making for a bank, but things like mortgages are not. So there is this risk that by the bank losing their customers to a fintech, they actually lose the profitable part of the business in future. So there is a lot of work happening with many banks to transform themselves, but also to collaborate with other fintechs across the sector to provide a better set of experiences that really start to rival some of the progressive fintechs. So all of this ultimately benefits us as consumers. The experiences that we're getting from our traditional banking app or from our challenger or neo-banking app is being elevated in both cases.

Yeah.

So it's all getting better, which is good news for us.

It's all getting better.

As a consumer, excellent news. Well, listen, I'm going to sort of lift the veil slightly here and reveal that as well as being a fintech industry bigwig and obviously massive authority on the subject, Piers is also a very dear friend of mine. We've known each other since we were about 7 years old. That's right. So I know that he plays a mean bass and he plays a wonderful Grade 8 violin and that he sings like an angel. So I'm very excited to hear his choices for our company doctor playlist. Piers, what have you got for us?

So I've got two. The first is a track that actually we talked about quite recently, and I've been, I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop on repeat, because I hadn't listened to it in years. And it's The Highwayman by The Highwaymen. And it's just an absolutely brilliantly cool, like, track by, you know, performed and recorded and created by some amazingly cool American outlaw musicians, right? It's, it's, yeah, it's just got this like feeling of, of cool that runs through it. And, um, for some reason it's, it's also been a really nice backdrop to, to lots of Focus work recently. Like that intro, that guitar intro, it just plays around in the background.

It's great.

And then the second one is, is slightly closer to, I guess, to mine and George's home. So George and I used to play in a band I used to play bass. I don't play very much bass anymore, unfortunately, despite it hanging on my wall behind me. But we had a band member called Danny Wilder, who was a key part of that, that band, and actually then went on to form another band with George and some various other guys called Kings of the City. And one of my favorite, favorite tracks of all time is called Colors. And it's the last track on the first and only album that Kings of the City were able to release. Because unfortunately, Danny sadly passed away in 2013 from cancer at the age of 27. He was a really, really close friend to me, to George, and to our friendship group from North London. It's 10 years actually since he died this year. And that track, every time I listen to it, it takes me back to a certain point in time around when he died. I think sort of it's one of those things I put on when I need to find that inner strength to do something else. He went through an incredibly tough time just before he died, and he recorded that track actually when he was very, very ill. And I think it always— it gives me that inner strength that however difficult I am finding something on a day or in a particular week, I put that on, and it takes me back to that point in time, but also to, to understand that this is all relative and—

Good dedication.

Exactly.

Excellent. Wonderful choices, Piers. Thank you so much. How weird Danny would have found it that you and I were talking to each other on a podcast. I think that he would have found it very strange, but I think he would have been delighted to have been featured in our playlist. So thank you so much. Thank you for today and all the knowledge that you've imparted to us on simplifying fintech.

Thanks for having me.

And see you all next time. A massive thanks to the highly knowledgeable Piers Murray for joining us on today's podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, do visit thecompanydoctor.com to subscribe and peruse our back catalog of equally fascinating episodes. Until next time, from me and Gary, many thanks as always for tuning in.