Nacha’s CEO on the Latest Trends – Jane Larimer [Episode #30]

Podcast Intro 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 P.I.T. 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, everybody, to another episode of the P.I.T. Exchange. P.I.T. standing for payments, innovation and technology. My name is Jens Seidl, and I’m your host for today. And I’m very glad to introduce a very interesting guests that we have on our podcast today, which is Jane Larimer, the CEO of Nacha. Jane, welcome.

Jane Larimer 00:00:55 Thank you so much, Jens. I am delighted to be here.

Jens Seidl 00:00:58 Excellent. Before we do the professional introduction and ask you about what your role is and what exactly you do at Nacha, as usual, I’d like to start our episode with a little icebreaker, to learn a little bit about you as a person. So let’s start with, on a flight. Do you prefer aisle or window?

Jane Larimer 00:01:20 Oh, Aisle. Always aisle. I wanna be able to move.

Jens Seidl 00:01:26 Yeah, I can relate to that. Absolutely. Then when it comes to music, do you prefer modern music? Like pop, rock, stuff like that, or classic music?

Jane Larimer 00:01:36 Well, I guess these days the music I listen to might be called classic, even though it wasn’t. It isn’t classical. so, really all kinds of music, I, I love music, so I like going out to see it, live in concerts. But I also like listening in, and for running or for working out. It’s definitely what we call classic these days. So the, you know, 90s, 2000 music.

Jens Seidl 00:02:01 All right. Well, when you’re saying you like going out and, watch live music, did you also get to see Taylor Swift?

Jane Larimer 00:02:09 I, I have not seen Taylor Swift, but I have to say it’s on my list. I was a late, converter to to Taylor Swift, but, now it’s on my list.

Jens Seidl 00:02:17 All right. And the last question, what book have you. Well, either recently or ever read that you would recommend to everybody that they should pick up and read as well?

Jane Larimer 00:02:29 Well, one of the latest book. So I love reading. I, I always have probably two books going fiction and nonfiction. So in nonfiction, I just read a book called Never Too Late by Gwendolyn Bounds, and she was a Wall Street Journal reporter, but came to feel like in her late 40s, she needed a challenge. And so she took up obstacle course racing. So it talks about her journey from being a non athlete to, you know, being finalists in the Spartan races. But also it’s about thinking about how to stay growing your whole life. So both not just athletically but intellectually, how to have kind of that growth mindset and always be pushing your boundaries or thinking that it’s never too late to pick something up and do something, to stay fresh. So to challenge yourself. So that was great. Inspirational.

Jens Seidl 00:03:19 Yeah, it sounds very inspirational indeed. All right. Great. Well, see, the things you get out of this podcast, even, reading recommendations. Excellent. All right. Well, let’s let’s jump in. Maybe, Jane, if you want to start talking a little bit about yourself, your role at Nacha and also what nature actually is, because I think some people have a misconception of what exactly Nacha does.

Jane Larimer 00:03:43 Okay. So I am the president CEO of Nacha. I have been with Nacha for over 25 years. started out there, as an attorney and became general counsel and then started running the network side of our business, the ACH network side of our business. And and now I’m the CEO. So Nacha is the governor of the ACH network in the United States. So that means we write the rules, the standards we have risk functionality and also run the enforcement of the rules as well. So that’s our primary. Our mission is, as governor of the ACH network, there are two ACH operators in the United States, the Federal Reserve and the clearinghouse VPN.

Jane Larimer 00:04:24 They’re the physical network. And then we are the the rule setter or the governor of the network. we also have other functions that we do. So we have accreditation education. We have a big annual conference at the Industry Comes to Payments conference every year. also have advisory services. So we we do a lot. But our main kind of mission, I would say is the ACH network.

Jens Seidl 00:04:49 And how do we need to imagine how that work with the fed and with the clearinghouse is actually working? Are there frequent meetings or how do you guys actually work together?

Jane Larimer 00:05:01 We’re we work closely with the operators where we keep, we’ve both monthly meetings on the operational side to make sure everything’s happening. We have strategic meetings as we look at where is the network going and how do we work together. We also have, you know, tabletop exercises and other kinds of things to make sure that we are ready, for challenges when they come up as well. So we from the time I’ve worked at Nacha, we, we really work closely with them.

Jane Larimer 00:05:27 And I think it’s a great success story about how you can have, you know, two operators who are running, running the, the physical infrastructure. But having that partnership between the three of us really bringing the network together. So at Nacha, we, the membership of Nacha passes our the rules. So we have both our direct financial institution members and payments associations that also vote on our rules. So when we go when we look to change a rule, we go out to comment to the whole industry, not just the membership, but everybody. It’s posted online. So we get comments and from everybody. And so that when we do pass a new rule, it’s really the industry that has come up to pass that rule. And then the operators, through their rule, their contracts with their participants, incorporate our rules by reference. That’s maybe a little bit more technical than you’re hoping for, but that’s how it works.

Jens Seidl 00:06:19 Okay.

Jane Larimer 00:06:20 All right. Write that down on a chart.

Jens Seidl 00:06:24 It might help. No that’s helpful. Thank you for that. Because I think a lot of people and I was one of them actually, to be honest, had the misconception that Nacha was also operating the system. But that’s not the case, right? You’re governing the system.

Jane Larimer 00:06:36 Governing the system. And we do have some we’ll talk about it a little bit later when we talk about risk. But we do have some tools that the whole industry uses but not actually the infrastructure, the payment infrastructure. Okay.

Jens Seidl 00:06:51 Good. Well one of the I guess more recent changes, in the payment space has been the introduction of real time payment systems. I mean, when I say more recent depends really on the, the geography. but I think in the US it’s been there for a while now, but it’s, it’s been picking up more and more. How is that actually changing what’s what’s happening under your remit.

Jane Larimer 00:07:14 So why don’t I start off just giving a little bit of foundation about, kind of where we are in the payments environment. So we have the ACH network. I think it’s important for, you know, maybe listeners to, to understand the ACH network has both debit and credit functionality. So the pull and the push and the ACH network is pretty unique in that capability where you have both a push and a pull. So in the United States, the ACH network last year, in 2023, processed over 30 billion transactions. So 31.5 billion transactions and valued at over $80 trillion. So when we talk about the ACH network kind of being the backbone of electronic commerce, we’re moving a lot of payments and a lot of dollars to that. 93% of Americans use direct deposit. So that’s the push capability, 99% use, use the ACH for their Social Security payments, their pension payments from the government. so really the ACH networks are embedded in American life. So that’s the what I’d call the classic that is our overnight, processing cycle. So, you know, sometimes people say, oh, it’s two or 3 or 5 days, really the ACH network is overnight. Unless somebody wants to send a two day payment.

Jane Larimer 00:08:32 That’s the choice. They can do that. Okay. So that’s the first part. The second part, when we start talking about faster on the ACH is same day ACH. So we’ve added three windows in addition to that overnight cycle. So three windows throughout the day. And we that became functional in 2016 with credit payments. So last year, again in 2023, we had over 850 million payments through same day ACH, you know, $2.5 trillion about. And this year, in 2024, we’re looking at hitting that billion, that billion transaction mark through through August. We’ve had 700 over 700 million payments through same day ACH. So so we have as we look at instant and faster, let’s say faster the family, faster we’d have same day ACH which is three times a day. And then you have your instant payments. So the instant payment rails that have come up, probably 2016, 17 was, the clearinghouses real time payments, rail came up. And then last year the feds fed now rail came up.

Jane Larimer 00:09:40 And I like to think of, you know, kind of that that myriad or the spectrum of faster as they’re distinct. Clearly, a three windows, a day is not the same as instant 24 by seven by 365, which are what the two instant payment rails are. But I think that while they’re distinct, they’re very complementary to each other. you know, one of the things we like to think about is different types of payments and why people use or entities, you know, corporates use different types of payments. So for my recurring car payment every month, I might want an ACH debit pull every month. Set it, forget it. For same day ACH, I may want to pay my credit card bill today and that would be another debit pull. For my home down payment probably would use a wire or be required to use a wire payment, you know, irrevocable. not I mean, seemingly real time, but not really. I mean, it takes a while to process and go through, but you want a wire payment? Say, I want a distribution from my wallet, my digital wallet, and I want it now.

Jane Larimer 00:10:46 An instant payment payout by instant payment, big use and then online shopping using a card payment. So both, you know, consumers and corporates look at different things and want to use different payments for different reasons. And I think they all really complement each other in that space.

Jens Seidl 00:11:03 Okay. No, that makes perfect sense. And it’s actually something we’ve been discussing recently at our conferences as well. That question of, well, now that there are real time payment rails, is everything going to move to real time? And I think the question is for a consumer perspective, well, why would we do that? Right. Both the consumer and the the corporate perspective, there’s not really every use case where an instant payment makes sense, right?

Jane Larimer 00:11:29 That’s I mean, it’s exactly right for consumers, definitely. I do think consumers, you know, they do want things now. Cards give them the feeling of now. Right. So you know when you make a card payment, even though that settles over a few days, you know, it gives me that that feeling of right now instant payments, you know, you know, cash out or paying somebody.

Jane Larimer 00:11:51 and getting that notification back, that’s a great thing. I think the most convenient payment for consumers, setting something and letting it go, like not having to worry about it, whether it’s a direct deposit coming in on ACH or, you know, a recurring mortgage payment or bill payment, something like that. So I do think that that choice is important. And when you think about corporates, what we hear time and time again from corporates is the ability to put a huge amount of payments in a file where they know either they have a known trading partner, so it’s credits going out, or they have say a direct deposit to their employees. But it’s huge. It’s really highly efficient. The ACH is so you can get together these, you know, big groups of payments and then move them out. So it’s efficient. On the credit side, there are some reversal capabilities on the ACH network. So for instance, a company puts a direct deposit file in and they realize that there’s a problem with that file, they can reverse that file out and put in a new file of payments.

Jane Larimer 00:12:52 That is a huge benefit if something goes wrong on the ACH. And that’s something that interestingly is it is valued very highly. Is that that ability to to reverse out in limited circumstances. So I do think that, you know, there are great use cases for instant payments, but there’s still a lot of, wonderful use cases and actually desire and demand for the ACH.

Jens Seidl 00:13:18 Absolutely. And we’re going to talk about some of the disadvantages of real time as well. In a minute when we’re going to talk about fraud. but before we do that, can you already see certain use cases for real time payments where you’re saying, okay, this is going to be the future, these kind of use cases, they’re all going to move forward, but mostly anyway towards real time payments as it become clear already, as it’s still a work in progress.

Jane Larimer 00:13:44 I think it’s emerging. I think a few things. so that the consumer I want consumer to consumer payments. I want to pay you I you know literally my that’s my that’s how I pay my dog walker.

Jane Larimer 00:13:59 You know, that there are those kind of payments. And I think those are great is when we talk about the fact that cheques are still heavily used in the United States, there are some great real time use cases. That is, you know, it is that paying my contractor, paying my dog walker, paying another consumer, paying literally for the Girl Scout cookies, that would be great to be able to make an instant payment for that, because those are check payments today, over here often. So I do think that that’s happening that the payouts from digital wallets, the 24 by seven by 365 nature. So a gig worker on a Saturday who wants to get paid out every time they make the drive, you know, so that would be, you know, a that’s definitely a use case that has come up for real time. You know that. And the fact that it’s at 1130 at night or it’s on a holiday at 330 in the morning, whatever it is, that’s not when the AHC is running.

Jane Larimer 00:14:59 And I don’t think, you know, in as we look into the future, there’s we’re not looking at running, you know, eight batches a day, 365 days a year that, you know, that the AHC is. And that’s not really what we’re looking at. So I always think there’s going to be the use cases of keeping things going. And we’ll see how that grows. I think right now I’d say emerging.

Jens Seidl 00:15:23 Okay. And while you were mentioning cheques, that’s really something for someone. I’m from Germany and I think that signed my last cheques, in the 90s before the EC check system was retired, in, in Germany. And since then, everything really moved straight from cheques to debit cards. what’s what’s the latest now in in the US? Are we seeing a decline in tech usage or is it still going strong? What’s what’s happening there?

Jane Larimer 00:15:51 Well, we’re seeing a decline, but it’s still going strong. So, you know, the last look at it, which is a few years ago, it was over 11 billion checks were still being written.

Jane Larimer 00:16:02 So I think there’s been a decline for sure since then. But let’s say 10 billion, 9 or 10 billion cheques left. You know, I just wrote, a cheque two weeks ago to pay property taxes in a small town. They don’t they don’t have elections. They’re not set up for electronic payments. So, you know, property taxes again, a lot of a lot of small businesses here are still cheque users, heavy cheque users. so I think we have a long way to go to, to get, you know, through checks to but I do think a lot of the real time use cases are perfect or perfect for that. I, you know, ACH we, we’ve been picking up like last, the last several years, eight, nine years were growing in B2B transactions, 10% a year. But some of that’s the payments pie is getting bigger. So it’s not you know, 10% of that means it’s 10% less cheques. It doesn’t go that way. So I do think that as we look at different solutions, whether it’s real time payments or, additional kind of, weather payments processors who are taking friction out of, you know, all kinds of payments, making it easier for small businesses to get away from cheques.

Jane Larimer 00:17:12 I’m hoping that that will become a priority. it’s definitely the number one. Even though cheques are declining, I know we’re going to be talking about fraud a little bit. It it just interests me that even though cheques are declining, fraud rates on cheques are increasing. So it’s the number one that cheque is you’re sending account information through the mail, I mean, or your remote deposit capture. And then it shows up again. Whatever it is. Cheques are definitely something that the fraud fraudsters are using, and so getting rid of them would be a step in the right direction.

Jens Seidl 00:17:43 All right. Well, that’s that’s interesting because, let’s let’s talk about fraud a little bit because I think there’s well, I know that there’s a lot of discussion around fraud in relation to real time payments because of the immediacy of real time payments. Right, for the bad guys. Now, it’s really easy if they manage to embezzle money from someone to then move that very quickly from the receiving account to another account to another one, etc., and the money just disappears very quickly in the system and it’s really hard to trace that back.

Jens Seidl 00:18:15 what what trends have you seen in that regard? is it more technology where the fraudsters are coming up with new ideas, or is it really more on the social engineering side, that they are getting smarter, in how they attack people? Or is it a bit of both?

Jane Larimer 00:18:35 A bit of both, I think, I mean, so it it’s interesting. I think social engineering is people are the vulnerability. Right. And so there has been a lot that the social engineering is much more sophisticated now. and the technology allows them to use bots and other things to really disseminate it very quickly. And somebody’s going to be clicking the your UPS package didn’t get there. Click here. I mean, it’s human nature and I think that’s really difficult to defend against. You know, continuing education and everything, you know, as we think about credit push fraud. So for a long time on the ACH we were very focused on debit kind of frauds. You put a lot of risk rules in place. And then over the last, you know, probably, you know, 8 or 9 years the credit push frauds.

Jane Larimer 00:19:27 And to your, your point, it’s, you know, anytime a credit push is being sent, you have that that we didn’t really used to think of those as risky payments. And now with credit push fraud on such an increase, we think of those as riskier payments and the faster you can move the money out, you know, the less likely you are to be able to get that back, remediate or in any way make yourself whole for that. So we put in rules around the ACH. we just passed kind of a whole set of rules around every, you know, looking at different participants in the payments chain. So the sending bank, the receiving bank, the origination side, the senders, you know, everybody needs to work together in, in these kind of credit push frauds. You don’t have that kind of choke point of the sending bank, all the payments coming out of the sending bank that the bad payments, what you have are all of the receiving banks who are in a better position to see the incoming payments and to see vectors of fraud.

Jane Larimer 00:20:28 Although, you know, I’m not saying it’s easy, so it isn’t easy, but with the ACH, one of the things we like to say is it’s kind of optimal speed because there is a little bit of time and we do have that either reversal capability or freeze capability before the for a little bit of time before the funds are released to try to remediate, fraud. But everybody has to be acting together and communicating well, to do that. So the challenges for, for all payments, whether it’s wire, we see it on wire instant payments, ACH that credit push frauds. It’s kind of across all of them. And FIS need to be looking at all those incoming payments to see, you know, what those what those trends are. And then everybody has to work together to, to communicate. When when we were talking a few minutes ago, I talked about the fact that Nacha has some technology. We have a risk portal and a ACH contact registry. And what that does is allow financial institutions to communicate quickly so you can find the right person at another financial institution to make that phone call or to send a secure email to to say, you know, Something’s happened.

Jane Larimer 00:21:41 Please, you know, help me. And I think that it’s really getting people to talk to each other, being able to get them in touch with each other very quickly. Because as time is of the essence with the credit push fraud. So how do we freeze those funds or how do we, you know, see what’s happening and try to try to help?

Jens Seidl 00:21:59 Yes, that’s really interesting. And, forgive my my very short tangent there. I my very first job, in the financial services industry was with traveler’s checks, and there was a specialized investigation department, and they knew their counterparts in the other traveler’s check issuing companies. Right. Because, again, the communication there was key to react to, especially to organized crime, as they are getting smarter and smarter about how to attack the market. You need that communication to flow, which sometimes isn’t easy when it’s between competitors. So it sounds like you’re playing quite a critical role there.

Jane Larimer 00:22:36 Yes, that’s a great I love your story because that’s a great example.

Jane Larimer 00:22:40 It knowing who to call or getting the right contact is it’s critical because the time you don’t have a ton of time, and especially now, is we’re moving faster and faster. And it’s really like we’ve had stories where people have said, you know, boy, you know, I made a phone call, I found the right contact and made a phone call. And they held, you know, the $28,000 payment or whatever it was because there was a problem. So to your point, it’s funny, sometimes things that don’t seem that exciting, like, hey, I can get you the right contact to make, you know, to communicate with or was like, oh, that doesn’t sound all that exciting until they actually have a problem, and then they can make that phone call and they can, you know, freeze those funds or remediate the problem. And then it’s like, wow, that’s great.

Jens Seidl 00:23:23 Yeah. Absolutely great. and maybe staying on, on for for a couple more minutes. I guess there’s, there’s two more aspects to that. One is technology is advancing to counter, fraud as well. So there’s new AI tools, for instance, that help with identifying fraud. As you just said, it’s more looking at the receiving side when you start seeing those bundling effects where more and more suspicious payments end up in the same account. And so if you and your members already started looking into more advanced AI tools and how those could be used to help with this.

Jane Larimer 00:23:57 I know the financial institutions are definitely looking into advanced AI tools, and so are a lot of fintechs. So we had, an ACH network advisory panel of folks come from the fintechs to talk about what they’re doing in this space, to try to really provide the tools to the financial institutions to to help with that. So definitely, you know, what we know is on the bad guy side that they’re using a lot of tools there to try to target and to to try to create communications that resonate with me, right, or with any consumer. And I think on the far side and the financial institution side and the operator side.

Jane Larimer 00:24:38 They’re looking at what tools that we can like, create or use to try to combat that. So there’s always that, you know, as it gets better for one side, it’s getting better for the other side. So it’s always, you know, that that push and pull as we all try to do better better on that side. So what we know is though, it’s everybody has to be participating. Everybody needs to be using the tools. It’s not just on the send side or on the receive side, all of us. And it’s how do we educate our end users, you know, how do we say, hey, do not click that link. Your banks will never, ever send you a text message with a link to click, even if it looks or an apple won’t either, you know? So don’t you know, don’t do it so that I think you know, Nacha has a lot of risk resources on our website. I’m I’m sure you know, out there there’s a ton out there to help people, both with their own education and educate the end users, but you really can’t do it enough. I mean, always over and over.

Jens Seidl 00:25:41 Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s I think it’s especially hard on the elderly generations because they haven’t grown up with that kind of technology. And it’s, I think that’s where the bad guys are also very smart in playing to those emotional factors. Right? These, these scams where they’re pretending that the son or the grandson or granddaughter is in a peculiar situation and they need money and all of that kind of stuff. It’s really hard to educate on that when they hit on the emotions. That’s a big task.

Jane Larimer 00:26:11 It absolutely is. It’s and, you know, I think the elderly are targeted. I think they pick up their phones. So a lot of that happens over the, you know, over the phone where people do something very quickly. They feel the urgency. And, you know, it’s funny. That’s one of the one of the big parts of the training is if somebody creates a sense of urgency, don’t trust it. Yeah, that’s kind of one of the first things they’re making you feel like you got to do it right this minute.

Jane Larimer 00:26:37 Do not trust that at all. Because that that’s the first indication that this could be a problem, because they’re trying to make you act really quickly. And we see that also with, you know, text messages. You know, your boss said that you need to go out and buy a, you know, a gift card or whatever it is we see that in. You need it now. We see that with corporates, you know, one of the big vulnerabilities we see is when a corporation or corporate has to change payment instructions. Yes. So you know, their vendor says I need you to change payment instructions. And right there that’s the vulnerability. And so whenever you’re changing anything like that it’s you know, how do you do your out-of-band, you know, a validation, you know, not right there, but go out of bend, go on to a website and see you know, who the right person supposed to like, do all the things. Who do you have on file? What are your secret words? All those things.

Jane Larimer 00:27:32 and I think, you know, one of the things that we always say when we’re doing training or education is saying this point of vulnerability, this change of payment instructions, that’s where you you really have to take your time. And just because it’s never happened to you before doesn’t mean that this isn’t the time. It’s going to happen to you where you get you send your payment out to to a bad guy and not to, you know, your whatever it is, the landscaping company that you thought you were paying.

Jens Seidl 00:28:00 Yes, absolutely. Jane, in the interest of time, there’s one more thing I wanted to to talk to you about before. We need to wrap this episode up today. And that’s what’s the what’s the future of payments going to look like? What are the next trends that you expect? And how do you see the payment landscape developing and changing, say, over the next 5 to 10 years? I think it’s impossible to see beyond that anyway.

Jane Larimer 00:28:27 I agree, I agree, I think that, we, we never where we think we were going to be.

Jane Larimer 00:28:32 I think we thought back in by 2000 we’d be without checks in the United States. So there you have it. But, you know, that brings me my first when I think about the future of payments and maybe it’s ten years out, is fully electronic. So for the United States, that’s check and cash. Like, will we be cash free? I don’t know, but I know there’s a there are a lot of businesses who are trying to move to cash because it’s very expensive. And also checks are very expensive. So at least for the United States, I hope that part of our future in ten years is being fully electronic. to what we were just discussing, it’s better tools to combat fraud. So you know that we will have better tools that we will, maybe, maybe get ahead in the race. You know, I don’t know, but, you know, understanding that it takes every entity, every participant in the payment chain to work together towards something, so that that maybe that’s a hope and not the future of payments.

Jane Larimer 00:29:29 Right? It’s my hope for the future payments and then lastly, it’s the choice of payment, making sure that we have a choice of payments. You know, as we were talking earlier. And one of the things you’re saying is, you know, will real time payments replace, you know, all ACH payments or cheque payments or, you know, whatever. And I think as we think about an all electronic world having a choice of why you’re making that payment. So to the point it’s is it speed. How fast, how fast do you need it. What’s your timing? Is it off the usual cycles? do you need do you want an irrevocable payment, or do you need to be able to have some reversal capabilities? How much data do you want to move with the payment? Well, how you know, cost and efficiency. Do you want to move bulk payments or or not? Would you rather have a one off payment. And then what’s the cost of those payments? I think all of those things are part of the choice that people have.

Jane Larimer 00:30:30 You know, corporates, consumers and one of the things that makes the payment system strong is allowing for that choice, so people can make those decisions and make payments based on what is important to them, and having kind of that myriad or that spectrum of payments.

Jens Seidl 00:30:46 Yeah, no, I completely agree with that statement. I think I disagree a little bit with your first point, and that is for everything to go digital. I wouldn’t mind seeing cheques disappear because I do believe they are quite an inefficient and not very convenient payment method either but cash, I think, is, at least at the moment, I think is really difficult to, make that disappear because it’s still your last resort, right? When whenever there’s failure of electronic payments, cash still works. And I don’t see a solution for that yet. And with that not being there, I think it’s really hard to imagine.

Jane Larimer 00:31:23 Yeah. You don’t want your hard drive to to fail and lose everything that you have now. I mean, as as we say, it’s the future of payments, perhaps, and maybe it’s more than ten years out.

Jane Larimer 00:31:32 But, you know, I was the last time I went to the UK, so, you know, before pre-COVID went to the, you know, UK. And I’ve been there several times since Covid and I left with the same money I came in with, like I, I landed in London and took out, you know, cash from the ATM and then, you know, a week later got back on my plane and had all of it because nobody was taking cash. Yeah, yeah. So it was interesting. It was really interesting to me. And I thought, well, I’m not going to do that. You know that again. And I’ve taken several trips now and I still kind of have I’ve used a little bit of it for tipping, but that’s that’s about it. So it’s, it’s just interesting how far they’ve moved away from cash.

Jens Seidl 00:32:12 It is. Yeah. That’s a very good point and that’s similar I think especially in big cities. You do have that kind of experience. London. Yeah. I cant remember the last time I used cash going.

Jane Larimer 00:32:23 You’re right.

Jens Seidl 00:32:24 Rural difference. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Actually, I’m. I’m planning a road trip soon through some of the Midwestern countries, and a friend of mine was saying, definitely do take cash. That’s still an area where you need cash.

Jane Larimer 00:32:39 Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. The big cities.

Jens Seidl 00:32:44 Great. Well that was really really interesting. Thank you so much for your time.

Jane Larimer 00:32:49 My pleasure.

Jens Seidl 00:32:50 Great. Thank you for being with us. Really appreciate that. And with that we’ll wrap up today’s episode. Jane, again, thank you very much for being with us.

Jane Larimer 00:32:59 My pleasure, Jens. Thank you.

Jens Seidl 00:33:02 And to all of our listeners, please follow like whatever you need to do on your platform to make sure you don’t miss the next episode. Thank you all. Bye bye.

Podcast Outro 00:33:12 Thank you for listening to The P.I.T. Exchange, a podcast by Currency Research. Check out our upcoming events and publications at currencyresearch.com, and join us for our next episode to hear what’s trending in payments, innovation and technology.