Transcript of a 2009 Sibos conference pitch for "eMe", a proposed digital "safety deposit box" where users store personal information once and grant selective access to retailers and service providers. The pitch outlines consumer, bank, and corporate benefits (simplified updates, regained trust, reduced costs), a transaction-based micropayment revenue model (corporates pay to access data, potentially sharing revenue with consumers), required partners (banks, trusted neutral operator such as SWIFT, open standards), marketing channels (email campaigns, social networks, mobile widgets), possible future features (authentication, acting as an electronic proxy/advisor), and rough cost estimates (USD 100k concept, 1M proof-of-concept, 10M next stage, claims of a billion-dollar market opportunity).
Chapters
Financial services, the biggest thing to hit us since PayPal. So please pay pension. What we want to do is basically pitch an idea that's based on a very simple context. If you look at the situation 10 years ago in 1999 when we started to go online, we might have had one account on Amazon, one weekend, one email account, one bank, and that was basically it. Situation today in 2009 is you might have tens of retailers that, that you have to deal with. You might have hundreds of places where you store your personal information online. And it's getting chaotic and who knows what it's going to be in 2019 where you might have thousands of places online where you have to store your information, put your personal details and how complex and confusing is that? So if I look at the context, there's an E commerce explosion out there and what we have is confidential information, our information which is out there and which is actually unsafe. So what's the idea? Very simple. And we label the idea E Me. So it's me out there, it's E Me. And what is the idea? It's a digital safety deposit box where I can put my personal information. And you might have a deposit box at home where you store your jewelry or your confidential stuff. This is the digital sign safety deposit box where I store my personal details, my personal information. This could be your address, this could be your bank accounts, this could be your credit cards. But it's a place where you have drawers in your personal safety deposit box to put other stuff that are valuable, literally like a contract or a will if we're going to have to kill ourselves, as we heard. So it's a digital safety deposit box called ime. But it's out there and the beauty is you only have to put your information there once. And all the retailers you work with, like an Amazon or utility company will be able to access your personal details in EMEE in your digital safety deposit box. And you will allow the Amazon or the telephone company to have access to which information to which drawer that you actually want. So the concept is digital safety deposit models. Now what are the big pain points that we're trying to solve here? For the consumer, it's quite simple. They have a huge hassle nowadays days to actually update all their information with all the people that they deal with online. The after situation is the customer says one simple way to store information and the corporate users can access the information. You only have to update this once. What is the pain with the banks? Well, the banks have had a difficult year. They've kind of lost the trust of their consumers a little bit and this might be a way to regain. And more and more the banks are getting disintermediated and PayPal is a good example. And for the corporates, what is the big pain thing with the corporates is they have this complexity as well. And more and more there is huge risks of cost and risk of non money. So what we have as gains for the consumer is quite simple. They have one way, one mechanism to update and we have a very simple use case here, just a simple way. You change your address. If you change your address today and you have to update with all these corporates out there your personal detail bank account payment mechanism. If you have too many, you have one change and all the corporates will always use the most updated digital information. So what are the gains for the consumer? They have peace of mind. What are the gains for the banks? The banks can actually offer this as a service to their customers and give them a new sense of loyalty with their customers. The banks can regain trust to actually offer those to their consumers. What does he mean for the corporates? They can reduce their cost. I would like to introduce David who is our head of community relations with the banks and give his pitch on why this is great for the banks.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is lots of lists for banks including the provision of a trustee directory for payments. Using the unique email payme proxy we are providing you with the ability to make payments B to C, C to C in a repair free environment. So that's no repairs but you access the EME directory.
Great, thank you. How can this make money? It's a transaction based model. Every time a corporate wants to access your personal information there's a micropayment from the corporate to EME and via the banks this could eventually go to the consumer. So you instead of having to update all your information, you as a consumer could actually get paid if a corporate uses your personal information. Now who wouldn't like that? I want to see a show of hands. Who thinks this would be a cool thing if you could actually get paid if the corporates use your information? Who thinks that's a good idea? Great, we got the customer base. So transaction based model, what would it need to really take off? First of all we need a community of banks who would be willing to actually jump start this and start offering to their customers. We would need a trusted neutral third party to run and operate that. Now can I think of a trusted neutral third party? Oh, SWIFT could actually do that and we would need open source standards. Can we get a community of banks together? I would like you to introduce Victor who left his high paying job at Swift to work for our startup. He's been living in the garage with us for the last week. And say, how would I use the banks to do this? Banks need to provide a trust in the system and banks have the trusted relationship with their customers. Banks have the trusted relationship with their customers. They will be the distribution model for these. They would market it to to their customers. Okay, how complex would it be to build and operate? It would be relatively simple from a technology point of view. Our CTO is Mr. Ndig Davis who left his high pay job at Lombard. How complex is this?
Easy.
Good. What do we need to do? How are you operators? Failure is not an option. How will we market this? Zara? Yes.
We have three main points. First one, critical mass marketing strategy of emails to reach critical mass of users all around the world. Second point, social. We can help banks leverage the potential of social network by using Facebook, Twitter and so on. And third point, communication about security and availability. On the one hand, bring Eve on bank's portals so that you can assure and guarantee security for customers. And on the other hand, make EEVEE available at any time anywhere by putting it and developing special widgets application for mobiles.
Thank you. So in conclusion, it's a very simple first step would be information setup, just personal information out there in the vault. Second is we could use this for security. Jonathan, very quickly, if we add authentication to this, what would it mean for the ecosystem for E commerce? It would mean the next step for the single snack. Excellent. And in terms of value added services, which is the third thing we want to do. And I would like to introduce Yuri, who's our head of research. Turn around Yuri. Look at the ponytail. Look at this. What will be the ultimate future of value added services?
Future service for EME will be able to act as electronic proxy of customer and will be able to give, give advices and answer questions on behalf of customers.
Excellent. Thank you. So finally this is very simple. This is 100k to develop a concept. 1 million for a proof of concept, a 10 million dollar investment and a billion dollar opportunity even in emerging markets.
Yeah, emerging markets could also mean going in areas where infrastructure is undeveloped like Africa. Possibility to jump start and leap forward.
Thank you very much. In conclusion, this is a wonderful opportunity for Swift. If Swift doesn't take it, we have to work with these greedy venture capitalist.
