Inside Mojaloop: Rethinking How Instant Payment Systems Are Built – Julie Guetta [Season 3 | Episode #08]

Intro & Outro 00:00:00 Hello. Welcome to P.I.T. Exchange, a podcast by Currency Research. Join us as we discuss the latest in payments innovation and technology with the industry’s most innovative thought leaders. Today’s payments are changing and moving around the world faster than ever before, and Pit Exchange gives you the knowledge and insights to keep up. Sit back and relax as we join currency research, exchanging ideas with today’s special guest.

Jens Seidl 00:00:33 Welcome to another episode of The P.I.T. Exchange. I’m really looking forward to this episode. Today we’ve got a very special guest, Julie Guetta from Mojaloop. Hi, Julie.

Julie Guetta 00:00:43 Hello and thank you so much for having me in this podcast. I really appreciate the opportunity to to discuss payments with you.

Jens Seidl 00:00:52 Not at all. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time. As usual, I’d like to start my episodes with three semi random questions about yourself, the person before we jump into the work related stuff. So we talked about that before that, that you travel quite a bit. When you are on a plane, do you prefer aisle or window?

Julie Guetta 00:01:13 Yeah, I do travel quite a bit.

Julie Guetta 00:01:15 And I must say it depends on if it’s a daytime flight or night flight. If it’s a night flight, like, I typically prefer window, but if it’s daytime, I prefer the else that I do is twice. This is usually the reverse that I prefer to be next to the window, isolated during a nighttime flight.

Jens Seidl 00:01:39 Oh, okay. That’s interesting. I never heard that before. That’s okay. Cool. But I understand it. Okay. well, staying with travel then do do you have a favorite destination where you’d like to always go back to?

Julie Guetta 00:01:53 Wow, this one is a very tough one. I guess it depends on the circumstances as well. Right? But, I typically. So first of all, I’ve lived in London for nine years, so, I think like each time I go to, London, it’s always nice. And I see friends and I really, I really like going to London, overall. And then, I don’t know, I guess every person has added. So I do my girls weekend with my girlfriends in Madrid.

Julie Guetta 00:02:27 That’s that’s also a destination. I like to go. I like to go often.

Jens Seidl 00:02:32 All right. Lovely. Yeah. London I can completely relate to. I worked for British company for nearly 30 years and was really, lucky to be able to go there very often. So yeah, completely relate and deviating from travel a little bit. Do you have a favorite band or favorite artist when it comes to music?

Julie Guetta 00:02:50 I do, and as yeah, probably the, listener to this podcast. Have guests. I’m French and so in fact, like, one of my favorite bands, my favorite band is, French as well, and they are like, two deja vu, sort of a mix, very old French song. And I had like a spin of it. And so they’re quite famous. They’re called Brno Thunder. So they are, they are known in France, but not so much beyond France. Yeah. I really like what they do. They get they managed to get any type of generation. So even younger generation dance in clubs on very old French songs.

Julie Guetta 00:03:38 So I really like what they do.

Jens Seidl 00:03:41 Okay, here’s my first bit of homework from this episode already. I’m going to look that up when we when we finish this recording. So great. Thank you for that. All right. Well then let’s let’s talk about moja Lupe and yourself if you want to just introduce yourself a little bit. Talk about what you’ve been doing so far and what you’re doing for Motor Loop. Now, please.

Julie Guetta 00:04:01 Yeah, sure. So I’ve been with model loops since, June 2024. So almost two years now. Like, the funny part is, model loop is actually three things, right? It’s, it’s a foundation that open source and instant payment systems that can be used by anybody for for free. It’s typically used by central bank and national operator who wants to offer domestic and cross-border instant payment systems to their citizens. So it’s also like, you know, the name of the platform is also called Model Loop. And then the community around this open source technology is also the model of community.

Julie Guetta 00:04:49 And so prior to becoming a staff member of the foundation. I was a member of the community for more than four years, contributing, like, you know, my experience, to learn on the product mainly. So I’ve been in and around the foundation for, for quite some time, and I’ve been in financial services industry for quite some time as well. And I had the chance to work in different parts of the world. So I worked. As I mentioned before, I was in London for nine years, so working in London for nine years, and where I had the chance to, learn more about European regulation. And because back in the day the UK was part of Europe, and then all the payment systems operate in this part of the world before going to Asia and then really like understanding how the Asian. The Asian Organization operates and our instant payment system operates in this part of the world. The importance of the bilateral agreement between payment systems and so on, prior to going to model and throughout, like all these years in the financial services space, I move from vendor to consultancy to startup as well.

Julie Guetta 00:06:20 And I work on more like legacy system and also like new type of technology. I work for a Singaporean startup called Passio, which was born out of Project Ubin. looking at which was a project led by Mas and the I seem to be fair, I’m not sure the BIS Innovation Center was existing back in the days, but the next few faces were then led by bass. And the idea was how do you can how you can leverage a single digital ledger operated in a blockchain to do settlement of cross-border payments? So, so yeah, navigated around like having different ads and, working on different technology, but always like focusing on, I would say, product and implementation and trying to make an impact when it comes to the adoption of payments.

Jens Seidl 00:07:24 All right. Interesting. well, let’s let’s drill a bit deeper into, what you just said about what motor Loop does. because I guess when a country let’s let’s not just say central bank, because sometimes it’s a central bank, sometimes it’s a service provider that that rolls out an instant payment service.

Jens Seidl 00:07:43 I think typically you would think either they build their own or they buy something off the shelf from a technology provider. But I guess what you’re saying is Model Loop is providing an alternative to use open source and make that your own and and build your own infrastructure using that technology. Is that right?

Julie Guetta 00:08:00 Yeah, it’s completely right. And basically like, you’re right, it’s a solution, which is, in between the two, traditional option, which is building your own, or like using, using a vendor. In these cases, you can use basically an open source technology so you don’t start from scratch on building a, a system. But as soon as you deploy the code, this code is yours, and you can configure it the way you, you want to. And this is quite important, actually, because as part of our role as a module foundation, we make sure and we operate the open source code. But then once an adopter, deploy it, it’s completely there. So you’re right. It’s a it’s a it’s a solution that is in between.

Julie Guetta 00:08:55 And the challenge that we see today is and I think it’s true actually, for any open source platform that you see and the you have this in payment, but you also have this in identities today, at least in payments, right? When it comes for a country to deploy such a system, it usually goes through an RFP process. and the RFP are often designed in a way where either you go with a vendor or a special type of vendor, or it can happen that some time outside of the RFP, you actually decide, I don’t want to use any vendor. I will do it myself. Right. But the RFP are designed in such a way that often they don’t quite fit with the concept of Using an open source platform, right? because you have you will have questions around support or you will have questions around like, do you? Do you have access to the source code or and of course you do with an, with an open source, technology. So it’s, I think it’s really an option, which is a unique in a sense.

Julie Guetta 00:10:07 And as a foundation, we have a unique status, and often it’s not well known, basically.

Jens Seidl 00:10:14 Okay. But it’s not a software development podcast. So I don’t want to drill too deep into the detail behind that. But I guess one of the questions you mentioned are maintenance. That is really an interesting one, right? Because you’re saying you take the open source base and you make it your own. How? And assuming you’re updating your open source library frequently, how do you then actually tie that back into your own version of what you’ve built there?

Julie Guetta 00:10:42 Yeah, I think then it depends on what’s your strategy. as, as an, as a and as an adopter of, of the technology overall. Right. But I guess like what we see often in terms of how come you could go down this road of like, you know, using, using an open source? And to be fair, when you come to upgrade a version like, yeah, like I said, each adopter will have their own way, but such as they are their own release management, today internally and and process.

Julie Guetta 00:11:15 But I think one of the key points is often like why? Why people look at adopting, open source. Right. As opposed to proprietary solution or building from scratch. It’s typically a notion of cost. And especially in, like, you know, in the current day, right, where you see more and more regulation, being released and making some type of instant payment free and mandatory. The reality is, like often app operator or payment app operator, which could be a central bank or private organization being overseen by a central bank. Right? As difficult for because on one end like second charge by regulation as most people in payments know like processing a payment is nothing. But for you overall, and especially an instant payment system where you have like liquidity requirements and so on. So so that’s why like using an open source can help you in terms of alleviating. I’m not saying solving everything right. Because I think the concept of business model and, and sustainable business and apps is a question that a lot of jurisdictions are facing, Regardless of the technology that they are using.

Julie Guetta 00:12:42 But because you don’t have like license fees, it’s free to, to, to use like it’s alleviated by this challenge. And the second thing that we see more and more of why people use the open source is the concept of digital sovereignty. so, I mean, when you design and it’s often, to be fair, like a reason why we’ve seen lately more and more institutions going back to proprietary rights. It’s almost it’s almost like a wave, right? At some point you outsource and then you realize that backups you so you do internally, and then you realize to back up this, it’s almost fucking cycle. but what we see is, like today, this notion of digital sovereignty is very much a forefront to any Country’s strategy of. Alright. And so because when you adopt opensource, like the the platform is yours, people are very keen to use the open source technology and it’s win payment. But I it’s true in the other pillar of what we call digital public infrastructure. So it’s true in identity as well and in data.

Julie Guetta 00:14:02 To be fair, it’s a, it’s a bit of a newer pillar. So time will tell.

Jens Seidl 00:14:08 Yes. Okay. Well the, the digital sovereignty topic that really resonates. We hear that a lot the moment from many central banks around the world and not just central banks, also other payment operators just wanting to make sure that they have full control and resilience built into their systems where they don’t depend on geopolitical, developments. But obviously the code is just one aspect of a faster payment system or an instant payment system. Right. It’s, there’s also the underlying infrastructure. There’s modal loop. Then we have recommendations on how to structure the underlying infrastructure. Is that say, no, that’s that’s not our expertise. That’s for someone else to figure out.

Julie Guetta 00:14:50 I think like, when it comes to, to this topic. Right. And and basically I completely resonate with, with what you said as well. What we see is like, actually the notion of digital sovereignty is not only on the EPs, right, but it’s, it’s going down the chain, if I may say so, where people are looking at, at the infrastructure, they’re even looking at how electricity is providing and coming, particularly in some, in some geography, where in some geography where historically I’ve been in touch where you are frequent electricity outage or, sorry, power outage and so on.

Julie Guetta 00:15:33 And so what we see is we don’t want to take any decision when it comes to this. So what the platform offers is actually option for optionality to some extent, where the platform can be deployed in, in any type of infrastructure. but when it comes to, doing specific recommendation. No, we, we, we, we leave this, to the country to do that. What we recommend is, yes, I actually not recommend, but what we support is allowing this, allowing optionality.

Jens Seidl 00:16:13 Yes. Okay. Understand. And and then maybe to cast the net even wider technology infrastructure again. That’s that’s yet just one sub part of an overall implementation of an IPS. What about topics like how to structure things commercially, how to write a framework Around implementing such a system. How to update your legal framework and your regulatory framework. Is that where the modal loop community comes in? Would they get together and help with that kind of thing? Does Motor Loop offer advice and consultancy on those parts and how does that work?

Julie Guetta 00:16:51 Yeah yeah.

Julie Guetta 00:16:51 And yeah you you you indeed. This is where the the community will come into play basically. And that’s a nice thing about like, I think a community of adopters and, we have to, in-person event per year. And it’s really amazing to see, like, people who are a bit more advanced in the journey, giving advice to people who are less advanced, on this journey as well. And, as part of the, of the foundation per se. Right. So, for example, we don’t do any implementation. they are like, you know, a system integrator within the community which can do that. They have system in their advisor as well within the community. who can help on what should be the scheme world? What are like, you know, the, some of the regulatory implications. And I think in one of, your previous podcasts like, Joanna and Ashley from Glenbrook, where we are there. Right. So they are part of, basically, the, the model of community and, and typically help all, all the, a lot of institutions and partners that are part of the community are listed on, on our website.

Julie Guetta 00:18:15 Sometimes we also like, you know, provide recommendations on some of the, on, on the, on project, but that will be, on a sporadic basis.

Jens Seidl 00:18:28 Okay. I see. Interesting. All right, well, maybe let’s talk a little bit more about then more generically about instant payment systems. I can’t remember the exact numbers now, but there are still quite a few countries out there. I think more than 100 countries out there that have not implemented an instant payment system yet. from from your perspective, why do you think it’s important for them to think about this and start planning for implementing an instant payment system? And what kind of opportunities does that actually afford them?

Julie Guetta 00:18:57 Yeah, I think like, so for us and perhaps it’s it’s coming back to something I haven’t quite mentioned yet, but the mission of the foundation is to end on financial inclusion. and today we believe that the way to do that is by implementing, instant payment system. And so, in fact, like when we our historical market is, is Africa, we also like, started to expand a bit in Asia, but we mainly focus in Africa and it’s interesting to see that in Africa and on the continent.

Julie Guetta 00:19:38 According to the CIPs report, which was, produced by African and the most of the countries in Africa either already have an IPS or effectively are in the process of implementing implementing one. And why we think it’s very strategic to, to enhance financial inclusion. Right. It’s because actually it’s coming back to the benefits of access to digital payment. And we believe that digital payment over all creates financial health. Right. And so giving opportunity to, for example, a credit and so on. And so we think that today when we look at what are the the option and sort of the payment while we can. Digital payment or instant payment will compete against. We see our main competition as as cash. Right. and so the idea is like when we look at cash today, this is something that everybody has access to. But this is not necessarily something that can create financial health overall. Like for example, if you want a credit people, I’m not going to look at how much cash you have under your bed and so on.

Julie Guetta 00:20:56 Right. They will look at balance and so kind of off wallet and so to. So that’s why like really we see it as a as a as foundational to build your financial health. And where that number one is typically driven by central bank or in a on a framework set by central bank. So effectively like, there is this notion of a Attainment. While that is safe for the customer to use and can be trusted. And then we look at ways of basically, how do you reach people so that they can adopt the means of payment regardless of their location, whether they are in the city or whether they are in a rural area? And today, that is where instant payment can be initiated. We also believe that it’s one of the payment means that that yeah, also a wide adoption.

Jens Seidl 00:21:58 Okay. Now that that makes sense. and I wonder, is there also something about, Well, let me take a step back. When you look at Europe or North America, for instance, the whole payment landscape has grown over decades, right? Started with, well, just account to account transfers then maybe cards, credit cards, debit cards, cheques and so on and so on.

Jens Seidl 00:22:21 So there’s this whole myriad of different payment methods, and we just keep adding more and more and more. All right. Now looking at some of the emerging markets. It it seems like we’re jumping over some of these steps. Right. We’re an instant payment system actually allows you to go straight to a much more modern and easier to roll out kind of payment method than going through all of these different steps that the mature market has gone through. Is that also something you you see as an advantage?

Julie Guetta 00:22:50 Yeah. And I think like, for me, the why why? Yeah, absolutely. Like at the end of the day, I think like, the letter you and you enter like, you know, this pace of implementation and so on, then I think you can leverage insight from other jurisdictions. And that’s true that like, you know, in some of this market, like, you don’t see all the traditional payment means that you will see in a developed country. But I think it’s also because of two different reasons why is why people are not using cabs often in in in developing countries.

Julie Guetta 00:23:31 It’s because of the cost of operating such infrastructure. Right? The cost of having a POS. Although now like I appreciate the cost of app have gone down significantly. But like we are often looking at at basically a target population where every single penny count to the point that basically if the transaction fail and my money has gone out, I don’t have the balance to initiate the transaction, right. So I think the cost of operating payments infrastructure overall have been reduced over time for different, different means of of providing this type of payment. Right. And if you think of what the cost of a car payment versus what the cost of a mobile money payment? Doesn’t compare at all. Right? now, of course, in some market where both options are, are in place, like you may see, the cost of the fees charge going down like a particularly for for merchant. But yeah, the reality is like it was not the case a few years, a few years back. Right. And I think it’s also related to now like the importance of payments overall.

Julie Guetta 00:24:53 And I think the importance of payments are truly being realized very recently right through fall through. What happened. Like, you know, I think, in, in Ukraine overall. And then all of a sudden the, the payment is starting. And I think that’s why like today, we see as well more and more countries trying to implement payment ways which they can really control. Right. And you could say, well, but all of these parties that operate Payment Wales are licensed. and there is a licence regime that basically governs them. But it’s slightly different. Right. And some of these parties are not licensed by the central banks themselves. Like if you take a, a mobile money provider, their primary like who give them the licence to operate is is not fully a central bank. Right. Like the first, first, first licensee will typically come from a different, ministry. So I think that’s why we also see, some of the, well, changing and, and, extra additional ways, being implemented because of who govern them and who on them is, is different.

Jens Seidl 00:26:11 Okay. Now that’s again, all of this makes perfect sense. and I think one One other aspect. We haven’t really talked about that much yet. And maybe also coming back to the Motor Loop Foundation and the the open source solution that you provide. So all of that makes perfect sense. Follow that completely. But let me raise something else that we haven’t really talked about yet. And that is instant payment rails. It’s in the name. They provide the ability for a lot of new players to come to those rails as well, and run their trains on those rails, so it will enable players to have completely new user experiences, new payment experiences, things we haven’t even thought about yet. And I’m assuming that Mojo Loop must have functionality built into your source code. Basically that enables these kind of things. Can you explain a little bit what your thinking is on that place?

Julie Guetta 00:27:05 Yeah. So, basically like, I think we discussed it a bit right earlier. When we say such project is actually an investment tool.

Julie Guetta 00:27:16 So yes, the open source technology is free to use. But but when you implement an IP and an apps to get to announce or like, ensure that you have adoption of the I. PS it’s not only the technology layer, you need to have the legal and regulatory framework in place, which is also an investment. And so one of our key principles has always been because it’s a significant investment, the the platform should be able to support as many use cases as possible. And today, in fact, it can support any account to account use case. And the idea again is beyond the use case as well. Like you mentioned, the offering and allowing like new actors to do business as well. Right. So the idea of the hub is as a core principle is to have interoperability, and by this we mean like creating a single venue where any type of actor can actually like join the app and offer services which are powered by by instant payment. And that could be a cycle, that could be mobile money provider, and that could be effectively a micro microfinance institution as well.

Julie Guetta 00:28:44 And in fact, like I did that before that merger loop the name in Swahili. Swahili. Sorry. it means open loop. And so the idea is create a system that basically is open to, to everybody, to join.

Jens Seidl 00:29:02 Okay, cool. And, well, interoperability, actually, I think that’s a really good segue to the the next topic I wanted to, to talk to you about. And that is an instant payment system obviously brings lots of advantages for a domestic payment system that in its own right is enough justification to do it. But now that there’s more and more countries that have implemented IPS, there are more and more initiatives to interlink those between countries. Right. Asia has been one of the first regions to do their very successfully between countries in Southeast Asia. What’s your thinking on that one? Is that going to be a game changer and maybe G20 targets? I think most of our listeners will know about that. Trying to drive costs down, providing more transparency, all of these goals.

Jens Seidl 00:29:47 Is IPS there the the silver bullet? Do you think this is where things will go? And again, how can a motor loop solution help with that?

Julie Guetta 00:29:56 Yes, I think there are a few elements of answer to to your question. Right. And the the first thing is actually like, the platform has changed significantly since its inception and about like, almost two years ago now, it was selected to be the foundation for, the implementation of a regional instant payment system across the commerce region targeting MSMEs. So ability from MSMEs to do like, instant, cross-border payments. And so when it comes to, the platform per se, now, it has been changed in a way that it can be used not only to provide the domestic instant payment system, but also, cross-border instant payment system. And then I think, coming back to the second part of your question around, like, you know, ten the G20, objective and so on, and, and could that, could that be, achieve with a, Weezer deployment, perhaps.

Julie Guetta 00:31:11 All right. So I think, like when it comes to the notion of like transparency and costs to be fair on our side without going too much into detail. Right. Transparency has been a core principle of the product as well. And so the idea is really that when I as a user. Like, you know, I send payments to anybody. Like before actually accepting really the, the money moving, moving away from my account, I would know what would be the charge and I would know as well, like, the chance of this payment, being executed because very early on, actually, like, the people who design, they thought about implementing the sort of pre validation concept that you get called pre validation and steroids will be way before you wasn’t to this day any other market participant, right? So when it comes to this, like, you know, the I think the target of cost and transparency and whether IPS is aware. Well, we know that when there is a model deployment, this can be achieved when it comes to the cost.

Julie Guetta 00:32:25 I think it’s much more challenging and I think it’s much more challenging not only for a model based network, but for any network in, in, in this world. And I think it’s very the challenge is like the, the target as are probably like, you know, not ambitious enough for certain corridor, but they are extremely ambitious for some of the corridor. And if you look at some of the corridor, like for example, the USD, Euro, SGD, USD, these are extremely efficient corridor to the NEC. And so we change the target of this person. Of course, still require some work. Like, don’t don’t get me wrong. But in reality, it’s a completely different ballpark. When we look at some of the corridors where we are looking at, because people are looking to basically put cross border solutions live on this corridor. And so, for example, on the DRP projects that I mentioned earlier in the design for digital retail payment platform, the first corridor we we looked at where was Malawi and and Zambia.

Julie Guetta 00:33:43 And the challenge is when you look at the cost of processing, this type of payment on this corridor is it’s extremely high because the cost of effects is extremely high and because these are very illiquid currency. Right. And so I think for me like this is where this will be. The corridors where that are extremely like, you know, difficult to, where it will be extremely difficult to meet the G20 target. And I think today, like whether you’re taking the solution of interlinking apps or you’re taking probably like, you know, next gen generation of technology, like if you implement a blockchain, would that really help? And so on. This is a structural problem. And the challenge is it’s a very hard to solve. Right. Like if you have a market, if you don’t have a market, if nobody wants to take position in one currency, it’s not a technology problem whatsoever. Right. It’s a structural, challenge that you need to solve. So. So, yeah, like, I think for these corridors, this is where I believe at the end, we’ll see more fragmentation and we will be much more difficult to effectively meet the target.

Julie Guetta 00:35:04 And if you look at the latest updates published, published by the FSB, they still say that, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa, like in terms of cars, they are still like, you know, major gap.

Jens Seidl 00:35:18 Okay. That’s I think that’s a very accurate analysis of, well, first of all, of of an underlying issue with the G20 targets, because you’re right, it’s one target that’s supposed to fit all. Just doesn’t make sense. The corridors are way too different. And I think you’re right. It’s the volatility of certain currencies. The lack of a market for certain currencies is going to be an ongoing problem. And I guess also what we haven’t talked about is of course the compliance overhead. That’s another cost driver. that also there’s more work to be done to, to put it mildly.

Julie Guetta 00:35:53 Yeah, yeah. And I think like you’re right when you come for example for the, the, the compliance aspect, right? Like when it comes to the cost of cross-border payment. Right.

Julie Guetta 00:36:05 There have been several reports being released, some by IMF, some I think by the world Bank of BIS. Right. Like we trying to see the impact of, currency control on the cost of, like, you know, cross-border transaction in, in, in a certain corridor. And, and they’ve seen, right, like, they’ve, they’ve seen that actually it has an impact. It has a very strong impact. And like with strong currency control, like the costs will go right. Because again, like without free, free movement of capital people are are more generally people are risk adverse. And so they are they are risk averse and investing in, in this type of country. But again like great we know part of the problem. But solving this. Taking a village? If I say so. Right. Because what typically happens is. We’ll look at this type of measure. This is different Department of people operating payment system. Right. And I don’t think that different department for people operating payment system do consider today like the G20 KPIs that have been set as a North Star.

Julie Guetta 00:37:26 We do in the payment space for sure. And everybody is trying to really like, you know, work on this. But but is that is that true everywhere. And I think like, even if you say, look, we are gonna remove currency controls there, maybe like, you know, a other impact that that impacts the country overall. So probably was a higher precedence. So, so yeah, I think, I think this is a very difficult Problem two to solve over Olin and unfortunately, like a pair of technology would help, but I don’t I think like solving what you said. Right. Like the compliance, compliance challenges, will be much more harder.

Jens Seidl 00:38:15 For sure. All right. Julie, I’m conscious of time, and we need to wrap up soon. And before I hand over, maybe to you for some final thoughts that you want to share with us. I’ve got one more question. you mentioned the role of, IPS for financial inclusion. And as one of your missions and making people part of a digital payment environment is the first step to financial inclusion.

Jens Seidl 00:38:40 Or it is then leading to the next rungs on that ladder, whether it’s, loans, microloans, saving products, insurance, etc., etc.. Do you and if you can’t tell me because it’s a secret strategy, don’t don’t say anything, But do you think that my older loop will expand its offering to start enabling at least some of these kind of financial products as well? Or do you think Margin Loop is going to completely focus on payments and that’s it? Other people can take care of the rest.

Julie Guetta 00:39:12 That’s a that’s a great question. At first of all, like the foundation, we have zero secret because we are and we are operating an open source platform. So if you look at all our definition documents are published online, even when we do an in-person meeting, we publish left of the panel online and so on. So the code is free to use it. It should be easily available for anybody to do to you. So we have we have no secret when it comes to actually like, you know, the, the, the strategy of modulo.

Julie Guetta 00:39:47 Well, for the foreseeable future at least, what we see is like we don’t see basically like going into microfinance or extending to to tours of type of. Yeah, providing these type of services. For us the focus is and and to be fair, like we discuss the roadmap, the long term roadmap, even last week and one month ago within the community. Right. So for us, it’s really much at this point in time focusing on payments, focusing on instant, open sourcing, this instant payment system and also focusing on actually how we can support some use cases that we consider either adjacent to the app or how can we facilitate the participation more by, like I said before, all types of participants to the app. And so what we do is we are, for example, like have what we call our adoption works, Wainwright, where the idea is like putting part of the open source, some tool that will help a micro institution to join an instant payment system, or like at the moment, what we are, what we are thinking about is also I’m just going to give you some element of the of the roadmap, right.

Julie Guetta 00:41:15 How some of the AI can be used to AI plugged in in the app to help an operation. Of course that will be a more long term item. Or how can we extract some data from the app and from existing implementation to inform regulations of people that are looking to implement an IPS and so on. And I think like more like short term, the idea would be as well to support what we call Adjacent use cases. So for example, at the moment we add parents, counter-intuitively, we hear a lot of requirements around offline payment. and so for us like you know, that would be an agent adjacent to use case to the app that we look at. How can we, contribute to provide some standard in this case? Because I think you mentioned it before. Right. Like, standard is definitely a key part when you are trying to integrate some system or integrate some people, easy implementation and so on. So yeah, looking at this type of agent center use cases, but staying focused on payment.

Julie Guetta 00:42:35 But who knows like you might change in the future. But for now this is the one that we are looking at.

Jens Seidl 00:42:40 Yeah. No that’s and I think that’s fair. I think there’s enough, work still to be done in the payment space. Offline is a great example. our friends at Crunch Fish. They just published a white paper on offline functionality, making the point that it should be built into the underlying infrastructure of a payment system and not just something you you try to add on, like a Band-Aid sometimes later. So it’s a fascinating topic, and I think we could have another complete episode just on that. And maybe we will one day.

Julie Guetta 00:43:10 But I will say we have we have friends we can finish. And, and in fact, they did a POC of flying payment using model, which which can be seen there with some, some materials about this and on YouTube. So yeah. Familiar with the coin fish.

Jens Seidl 00:43:28 Very cool. I’ll check that out. We we are about, running out of time.

Jens Seidl 00:43:32 But before we wrap up the session, any parting thoughts you want to share with our listeners?

Julie Guetta 00:43:39 do I think, like, we discuss a lot of different, topic with, that. A lot of questions that we often have. I think for me, like one thing is perhaps the concept of open sources is, is is sometimes like not fully well understood overall. And there are still some bias around this. And one of them is like, security, for example, for some reason open source are not are not enough secure, which of course is not the case of the platform because it’s used in critical infrastructure. So it’s quite secure. So I would say that, if you have any question and so on about like open source in general, please, like if I go on website, feel free to reach out to us like, these are completely free resource, right?

Jens Seidl 00:44:33 Great. Now, look, I understand what you’re saying. but I would like to think that in the IT community, people get open source and they see the advantages and.

Jens Seidl 00:44:43 Well, that again, this is subject for a whole other podcast. I won’t go into the detail of that now, but thank you so much for joining us today. This was a very interesting conversation. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Julie Guetta 00:44:57 Thank you so, so much again for for having me and to be fair for this podcast, because that as a as a payment geek, I really enjoy listening to your podcast. So thank you so much.

Jens Seidl 00:45:09 That’s very kind. Thank you. All right. Well that concludes our episode for today. Thank you very much for listening in today. Please do follow like whatever you need to do on your podcast platform to make sure you don’t miss any of our future episodes. Thank you and bye bye.

Intro & Outro 00:51:46 Thank you for listening to The P.I.T. Exchange, a podcast by Currency Research. Check out our upcoming events and publications at Currency Research. And join us for our next episode to hear what’s trending in payments, innovation and technology.