Emerging Payments in Asia – Camilla Bullock [Season 3 | Episode #14]

Jens Seidl 00:00:33 Welcome to another episode of The P.I.T. Exchange. My name is Jens Seidl, and I’m your host for today. And I’ve got a very special guest with me here today, Camilla Bullock from the EPAA. Welcome.

Camilla Bullock 00:00:44 Hello. And thank you for having me, Jens.

Jens Seidl 00:00:46 That’s great to have you. By the way, if you hear a little bit of background noise, we are here in KL in beautiful Malaysia today in a hotel lobby. So we’re recording live from, Malaysia. Great to have you here. Good. All right. Well, as usual on my episodes, I’d like to start with, three random personal questions to get to know the person a little bit better before we talk about payments.

Jens Seidl 00:01:12 So, first one on a flight. Do you prefer aisle or window?

Camilla Bullock 00:01:17 Depends on what time of day. And I hope I could have both. That would be excellent. but nine times I prefer a window so I can sleep through.

Jens Seidl 00:01:26 Okay. Fair enough. then, because we’re in Asia, some Asia focus questions. What’s your favorite Asian cuisine?

Camilla Bullock 00:01:35 Oh, I Vietnamese.

Jens Seidl 00:01:37 Oh. Very good. Do you have a favorite dish in Vietnamese cuisine as well?

Camilla Bullock 00:01:40 Oh, I love everything that is not in the Deep Five bucket, but all of those. The fresh salads, the flows and.

Jens Seidl 00:01:46 Yeah. Lovely. Great. Okay. And, favorite travel destination in Asia?

Camilla Bullock 00:01:52 I probably would be in Vietnam again. I haven’t been for a while, so I hope that work will take me there during 2027.

Jens Seidl 00:02:00 Okay. Have you been across Vietnam? From north to south?

Camilla Bullock 00:02:02 I have been in the south, but I just love the entrepreneurial spirit of the country, the friendliness of the people. And I just had fantastic visits when I’ve been there.

Jens Seidl 00:02:13 Absolutely. Well, from a touristy point of view, I can really recommend Hoi An and Huai in the middle part of the country. Absolutely beautiful. If you get a chance, check it out.

Camilla Bullock 00:02:23 Yeah, we’ll do so next time.

Jens Seidl 00:02:24 All right. Cool. Well, let’s talk about EPA and what you do in this space. Over to you. Introduce yourself please.

Camilla Bullock 00:02:32 Of course. Thank you. So, so I have the pleasure of running the Emerging Payments Association HR, and has done so since the inception in 2018. And we’re really focusing on on enhancing payments and policy and advocacy. I mean, so many things are changing in this space now. So there’s no lack of of discussions to be had and actions to take. But we convene the industry from small players to the biggest of banks, as well as the real Swifties and active members. So is Mastercard, and find that 80% that matters for all of them and drive that discussion into regulators, policy makers to capacity bill and shape the future of payments.

Jens Seidl 00:03:17 Okay. Super interesting. And, how long have you been doing this?

Camilla Bullock 00:03:21 Since 2018. So it was like, I just make seven. Eight. Yes. Okay. Eight. Seven. Eight years.

Jens Seidl 00:03:27 All right. Well, we we got a lot in common then I started 2018 with currency research as well. And I was in the financial services industry before that. Well, how about you?

Camilla Bullock 00:03:36 So I was in data and first when I get financial data. And it’s quite funny actually, because I had the biggest of imposter syndrome when I came in to to lead EPA in payments. But then every discussion comes down to payments, and payments is the movement of data okay. And the biggest challenge we have today is standardization of data. So I feel like I found my place interesting.

Jens Seidl 00:04:00 All right, well, you already mentioned one of the challenges, but what I wanted to do today, really, on our podcast is because it’s in the title of your organization, Emerging Payments Asia. So let’s let’s talk about what are the emerging trends in Asia and get your perspective being in the region on on what the big headlines are actually in the payment space.

Camilla Bullock 00:04:21 So, so many things happening in our as it is globally, but I think it has even more impact in the APAC region because we are still an emerging region as emerging payments, I guess. But I think we all feel now that it is a point in time when it really matters to get it right. And interoperability is really one of those words that I’m mentioning in each sentence. And even if we look from a couple of years back and those geopolitical forces has really meant that we’re looking more at the region and shifting trade channels and so on and so forth. So that’s, I think, where I’m coming from and getting it right now. And if, if we look at technology trends that I think we’re going to unpack more through this, conversation also is like AI as and as an emerging technology or fourth technology. It could really uplift our region so much. So it’s almost more to be won on it as well. If we’re looking at tokenized money. What could that mean for our region? And then very emerging but still coming.

Camilla Bullock 00:05:26 And we should look at it as quantum and getting all of those like leveling the playing field. So it’s not just a few that will benefit of it that those powers are comes to the benefits of many.

Jens Seidl 00:05:39 Okay. All right. So AI and quantum. completely agree that I mean, AI is not just on the horizon. It’s happening right now. Right. Quantum, I think, is still more of a a looming threat or opportunity. It depends on how you look at it. Probably a bit of both. Yeah. but let’s let’s stay with AI then for a bit. And what what big trends do you see already happening in the payment space when it comes to AI, what’s already being applied in this industry?

Camilla Bullock 00:06:07 Yeah. So I think the two sides almost to look at it. It’s front and back. So the power and the opportunity of using AI in reconciliation, cleaning data, and even just doing some of those repetitive tasks will really have the opportunity of lowering costs. I think that’s increasing efficiency.

Camilla Bullock 00:06:28 And that is everything is is two sided to it, because we have many markets here that still uses a lot of more manpower. So it is a little bit of threat of some of those jobs. But hopefully as we all see that those skill sets are just moving higher up in the value chain and is doing different things. But in general, I do think it has the power of, operationalizing some of those monitoring tasks is driving up costs and also the efficiency, for example, in fraud and scams and combating around that. Yeah, we’re sitting now. It could be a bigger threat because AI is being used in those scam and fraud attacks, but it also could be what could unite and help us to combat it.

Jens Seidl 00:07:14 Okay, but what what what I would be reading into that is that it’s not only about large language models, really is about traditional AI, which has been around for decades.

Camilla Bullock 00:07:25 Absolutely, absolutely. I think it’s just having put those interfaces on it. So it’s like AI over the last.

Camilla Bullock 00:07:36 What is it? It’s just two years. Even got the beautiful interface in UX so everybody could start to play with it. And when you start to play with it, you unpack. Oh maybe we could use it here also. Or it’s in this capability. And the discussions are just exploding everywhere on it. And that’s the beauty in our industry. Everybody is dependent on each other, so it’s so much best practice that I borrowed from organizations, the organizations. So that’s why I think that we see this AI lift in efficiency, that we’re going through its UX, and then more experimenting and sharing on best practice. So we see more implementation.

Jens Seidl 00:08:13 Okay, cool. Argentina is obviously the next big buzzword and therefore authentic payments. Do you see that organizations in the region are already getting ready for that, that they’re wrapping their head around how they need to prepare for that?

Camilla Bullock 00:08:27 Absolutely. but wrapping their head around it, it’s probably she needs to live there. And actually as as we have, EPA connect yesterday in the Payments Leaders Forum, we just launched a working group just on this very topic together with the HSBC.

Camilla Bullock 00:08:44 And this is because the demand of of knowledge and understanding and understanding also what you’re allowed to do and not allowed to do. is enormous. And with that, and why it is like that, I would say, is because the frameworks aren’t set. It’s almost coming back to what you asked about the opportunities. The frameworks aren’t set. So there is an is an opportunity for our region to lead here and lean in to to getting it right. Could this be one that is playing out in a fair manner? Of course, I hosted a round table in Japan during DFT, and that was in March, and we unpacked the A use case on how it would look if a Japanese family was using a genetic AI, and what would happen when when we had breakdown in different scenarios to unpack if they were using it, for example, for a subscription and this description were renewed to a price tag with 30% hike and they would have said no. Normally, how could we reverse that? Or who is liable for this lock into a new subscription? And where does it break first and and so not the use case.

Camilla Bullock 00:09:54 That was interesting by itself. But what was. What I took away from it is that the understanding across the value chain of payments was so different. It was not at all mature. And this was in March. Some of the participants in the room talked about just one agent. They didn’t look at it as being different layers in the agent of the discovery layer, the decision layer, the execution layer, and so on, while others were at that maturity. But we wrote an article on the back of that. But that article is already redundant. And and those the level of the discussion has gone so much further. And yes, what is that for months? But still this is still infancy of the frameworks, aren’t there. And I think even to take a step back, this is a recent discussion from yesterday. And look at the frameworks going to govern how we use a genetic AI and a genetic payments is taking form. But if you look in Europe, it’s leading from regulating the technology. AI on the horizontal level.

Camilla Bullock 00:10:57 Well, here in the APAC region, we’re more looking at different payments, regulation and AI within it. So it is very different approaches. And how are we going to get this to marry up at the end of the day? Because payments is global in nature.

Jens Seidl 00:11:12 Yeah. It also reminds me a little bit of what happened with fintech when that started as a word and as a movement where, at least from my perspective, the tech element was really the leading part of fintech, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had to go through a learning curve as well to actually understand how the financial systems work and how payments work, etc., etc. it feels a bit like that with AI as well, that of course there are AI experts and they’re building fantastic solutions without a full understanding of what is happening on the payments side and what impact that could have when building authentic AI.

Camilla Bullock 00:11:45 If for many, so many layers to it. Yes, they said like even the fundamentals, what sits underneath. We’re all using different apps and different AI tools, but what is the infrastructure and the need and who owns that? So that’s that’s a slice of the pie war that’s going to play out.

Camilla Bullock 00:12:05 But then it’s that layer enterprise grade. And what’s the service level agreements is on that layer. And then you go all the way up to actually what the end consumer is seeing. So say you have an agent buying something from one of the platforms like a pedia for example. Is that an agent? Did you build and if so, what grade is a bill to that enterprise grade? I think that discussion isn’t really hard and that, as you say, is very similar to when fintech first came out. Fintech was something that was going to make something cheaper and more efficient. But will it hold? Will it hold up to liabilities and reputation and things like that?

Jens Seidl 00:12:46 Well, your personal assessment, the genetic payments, It’s going to happen.

Camilla Bullock 00:12:52 I definitely think so, but maybe not the shoe example as everybody is using. I think my personal opinion is that we will see much more in the B2B space, in procurement space, and those things that are easier to set rules around, and it’s so context driven.

Camilla Bullock 00:13:11 Okay.

Jens Seidl 00:13:13 Personally, I’m a bit more optimistic, probably because I make my own travel arrangements. I just want an agent to do it for me.

Camilla Bullock 00:13:19 So that’s coming back. Even to the question you asked me, that it depends. What seat I want is depending on what time of day, what I’ve done before and how long layover is, I’m happy to have. Depends on which of my friends that will be in that city at that point in time. So that would be quite hard for me to program an agent.

Jens Seidl 00:13:39 Actually have to have a very well-trained agent. That’s very true. Yes. All right. Well, we’ll see how it plays out.

Camilla Bullock 00:13:45 Complexity is the complexity of the task, but I agree, I hate doing that travel arrangements.

Jens Seidl 00:13:51 But I think that’s the exciting thing about this as well. We’re not talking about in 20, 30 years. This is the kind of future we’re going to see. This is it’s happening, right? It’s in the next two years where at least the experimentation will happen, and either it will succeed or fail.

Camilla Bullock 00:14:05 Yeah. And I think what is really interesting and we, I had, I had the pleasure of having Darren Archambault, the Nobel Prize winner in economy, on a panel at Sybase in Frankfurt, and I prepared like, no tomorrow ahead of that panel. So I was well versed on the ethics behind AI. And what scares me is, is like, will it be a divide in society more than before? And we see this already now with the token economy coming in in the way it’s getting more expensive and people have to be efficient how to use it. So will this lock out some organizations and some individuals? Absolutely. But also in what is coming out of large language models. You need to have a critical mind to be able to use it to. Education is coming in in a different way. I think it’s dividing how people think, how much use you will get out of the technology. That’s more philosophical questions, but nevertheless something I think about.

Jens Seidl 00:15:07 That’s an important one. And I think it’s actually a very good segue now to quantum, because it’s quantum.

Jens Seidl 00:15:13 Like I said, it’s even more so the case because it’s at least for the foreseeable future, a very high cost, high investment kind of technology. Some organizations, some state bodies will be able to invest in that kind of technology. Other organizations will not. How much is that going to divide things? So only time will tell, right?

Camilla Bullock 00:15:34 Yeah. If you would have kept me word ask the question. You know that. What keeps you up at night? The list is very long, but quantum is actually one of those that that I feel. Of course, we haven’t had the quantum safe cryptography working group four for more than two years now, so very rested into the risk of quantum and the migration that needs to happen. And I still don’t think, do we see enough movement of keeping up and actually keeping the data safe, or when quantum computers are made available because it’s not that far away. And some of the organizations I’m working with, say, migration is about seven years and quantum computers are not seven years away.

Camilla Bullock 00:16:14 But as you say, who will have access to it? But if you look at some of the organizations that have the quantum computers today, they make it available per hour. So you can actually rent your quantum computer and test things. And and there’s a lot to win here. So I don’t think it’s you or me renting is slots in something or other. But I mean you can strip the liquidity of a country if people haven’t protected it.

Jens Seidl 00:16:40 It’s a good.

Camilla Bullock 00:16:41 Point. And it’s also, I think, not to make any of your listeners scared. It’s the terror attacks that have come with this. Yeah. Like I was in a panel and we talked about what does it mean, what are the threats? And in this gentleman brought up the example and this was just a normal cyber example, but somebody had hacked into London’s luggage carousel on the airport. And that stopped the airport for a day because they couldn’t take the luggage out and that stopped all the traffic. So that is like a mini terror attack for itself.

Camilla Bullock 00:17:11 That’s a normal sized one. So you can strip out how a country is moving, even if it’s not a money thing. They’re the money thing. Of course, somebody gets more to benefit from it.

Jens Seidl 00:17:22 Yeah. When you mention frauds and scams, which has turned into a whole industry, right. They said office buildings full of scammers. How is that going to change if quantity becomes available? How is that going to enable completely new approaches. And they’ve got the funds to invest in this kind of technology. Yeah. But that’s a negative side. Do you also see some real opportunities that can come out of quantum for the payments industry?

Camilla Bullock 00:17:45 I know I absolutely do. I absolutely do. But for time being, I’m more scared about the downside. But then on the other hand, I’m starting to see this psychological how I can use it because people ask us to come and talk about our upsides. So now we say no, no, no. Let’s just do the risk because that’s what we have to handle now.

Camilla Bullock 00:18:02 But is it always easier to get a project through in an organization if it has a return on investment? And the upsides will actually help organizations to learn what needs to be done on the risk. But it is optimization is to work for it. Like optimization of what corridors to use, optimizations of cash flow. It’s like all those different things that need that high computational power. Because one thing that that the quantum physics knows this like for me to get used to and think around, it’s not the same problem it solves as classical computing at all. It’s all around that optimization and find the right solution on numbers and payments. Lots about numbers,

Jens Seidl 00:18:49 Okay, so does that mean AI in quantum is now the thing we need to talk about? And tokenization and real time payment rates are already old news. No question.

Camilla Bullock 00:19:02 Of course.

Camilla Bullock 00:19:03 No no no no no.

Camilla Bullock 00:19:04 I definitely don’t think so. I think we have to find some balance where they all exist in one thing. When we go to to those interesting conversations and conferences that we have the pleasure to attend, is that we often step into talking about the technology.

Camilla Bullock 00:19:22 I think we have to start to look at those different use cases in the individuals. And and I often say as an industry, we don’t slice and dice enough in looking at actually talking about, trade for big labels or trade for MSMEs or trade for individual gig economy or those corridors. So actually be more intentional about what we’re talking about, and then flip to what technology best serves this. it won’t be one ring to rule them all. It will be many rings in half.

Jens Seidl 00:19:54 Yes. Well, side note, then, are you a Lord of the rings fans, or is that just a random reference?

Camilla Bullock 00:20:02 I am, I am, all right. Cool. I think is a good analogy.

Jens Seidl 00:20:06 I love it. but. Well, let’s stay with tokenization then. For a minute. what’s what’s happening in Asia in that space?

Camilla Bullock 00:20:16 so, I mean, we see Singapore in Hong Kong who has their frameworks in place now, and Hong Kong gave out two licenses. Yes. Recently. Oh, yes.

Camilla Bullock 00:20:25 Beginning of this year. so it’s moving. And I see specifically in Treasury management that we have a lot of, of use cases and that’s been, tested with some of the big Chinese organizations, but also other organizations for that efficiency and also the programmability that can go into treasure management in that way. So I think it’s definitely will just accelerate. But the challenge is that those frameworks in place aren’t interoperable. And the same, they are not interoperable with the Genesis Act or with MCA. So that is slowing down the progress considerable, because that is still the costly element of payments is when it goes cross-border. But then I think we all, I’m sure, including you, very excited to see what’s going to come of the Swift Ledger.

Camilla Bullock 00:21:18 Yes.

Camilla Bullock 00:21:20 is how will those tokenize the orchestration the Swift is offering now? Improved correspondent banking. And then also, how will that second layer be like, I don’t know how many organizations that need to start on this 2025 or something like that. What does it mean for the next, next circle of banks? And then the PS piece is working with those banks, so I’m excited about coming.

Camilla Bullock 00:21:47 I’m cautious about the direct uptake because of the interoperability. We have a working group that is just focusing on getting the industry ready for tokenized money by 2030 and the gap. There are a few like regulation, coordination, demand, but the biggest one, I think, is that interoperability and defining what in the steps of the payment needs to be interoperable and why. I do think they’re using capital market is accelerating in one way faster than payments and more focused on it. But there is no capital market without the leg out.

Camilla Bullock 00:22:27 Yes. Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:22:28 Okay. But we’re both here in Malaysia because you had the EPA connect session here yesterday and one of the speakers was saying and that really resonated with me, that when he comes back to Europe three months later. Nothing’s changed when it comes to Asia. A week later, it’s a completely different world. So everything moves super fast here. Is that maybe also then? Well, I guess my question is, is it more of a blessing or more of a curse that things are moving so quickly? Because I guess it leads to that fragmentation, because everybody just rushes, often does their own thing, and not taking the time to agree on standards before they do it.

Jens Seidl 00:23:06 Do you think that’s a good thing, or is that a bad thing or a bit of both?

Camilla Bullock 00:23:09 I think I think we always have to we have to rush a bit quickly to, to, to make the move. Otherwise we’re stuck in contemplating what is the next step. So I do think it’s good, but then it is the big risk for fragmentation. And even if we’re looking at we have been leading in connectivity between domestic infrastructure in that Asian payments connectivity group, and it has actually had a lot of impact on remittance costs, for example. But it is still it’s like a we have a regional network of it, but it’s still bilateral agreements. So we’re fast in making those bilateral agreements. But that still causes fragmentation and has a lot of complexity underneath. So I actually it’s they they they to they answer if I think is moving too fast or not. But I rather see movement than stagnation. And as soon as we’re movement we can get those use cases or like those examples, which I think and again we heard yesterday is that that is what the regulators need was moving so far.

Camilla Bullock 00:24:17 So no one can stay on top of everything.

Camilla Bullock 00:24:20 Yeah.

Camilla Bullock 00:24:20 So when we can bring use cases, say this is how it works between country A and B for this category of trade or whatever it is. Then they can assess that and see like, oh, this was the benefits that was brought to both the participants in the value chain, but also the the end consumer organization. And then you can build the framework. So I think we’re going through an era where it’s extremely important to be agile, but coordination is going to be the competitive edge.

Camilla Bullock 00:24:52 Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:24:52 Well I’m firmly in camp blessing. I think it’s a great thing that the speed at which things are developing in Asia is invigorating, in my point of view. And when you look at.

Camilla Bullock 00:25:03 Nations.

Jens Seidl 00:25:04 Yeah, I mean, look, what’s what’s coming out of QR code payments now that they’re everywhere and the standardization is happening more and more and more as well, the sport of QR code payments now. So I think it’s going to work out.

Jens Seidl 00:25:17 And I think the benefit from driving this innovation is going to outweigh the the effort that’s required and to bring in standardization later.

Camilla Bullock 00:25:27 Yeah, I think I often say when when there is a will, there is a way. And I think that’s what we have to believe in doing the jobs we’re doing and have that Motivation to continue. But important in any discussion is to to go into discussion and have definitions of what we’re talking about and that we are not always excelling on because we’re such a fragmented region. And then also see who are the losers and winners here. Yes, because unfortunately often it is losers and winners. But still what we can achieve together, even if you lose something, the pie might be growing. So if you go from ten, 20 to 10 with the pie road, it doesn’t really matter. So it is to have that end game in mind that it is enough for everyone.

Jens Seidl 00:26:15 Yeah, yeah. before we talk about faster payments then just on tokenization, do you see much appetite in retail applications of tokenized money in Asia?

Camilla Bullock 00:26:28 It depends on who you talk to.

Jens Seidl 00:26:32 Who do I need?

Camilla Bullock 00:26:32 You talk to me. You know, I was going to say I.

Camilla Bullock 00:26:37 I just don’t see that the benefits are as big as when we’re looking at the trade examples or the Treasury management or or even if we’re looking. Oh, okay. So this would probably be the one. If if a genetic AI would have a holistic moment go up, I do think that will drive the demand for tokenized money because of that programmability atomic settlement. But there is a lot of liability frameworks that have to be in place with that. But I do see that a genetic AI and tokenized money actually are very good matched for each other. So it might change. But if we ask, looking in my day to day life, I do not go around and think that it would be more efficient if I had stablecoins on a card. But it’s different.

Camilla Bullock 00:27:28 But yeah, okay.

Jens Seidl 00:27:30 Yeah, it’s my perspective and I’m based in Europe and maybe that’s that’s skewing my view a little bit. But my impression is that a lot of countries are now waiting to see what the digital euro is going to achieve or not, how that’s going to land, how the public is going to adapt that before taking big investment decisions or strategic direction, decisions on where to take, tokenized money next, and specifically retail CBDCs as well.

Camilla Bullock 00:27:56 Yeah, yeah. The digital euro is one we’re all watching too. That’s what I love with this. When some markets are actually taking the punt on something and then we’re all watching to see how is it going, how can we take that? Did somebody has to lead the way. Somebody has to go first.

Jens Seidl 00:28:11 Yeah. And I guess from a stablecoin point of view, again, my personal view is it’s just it’s still a bit too difficult to actually use stablecoins in a private environment if you’re not really a little bit tech savvy and you’re in this space to start adopting stablecoins and make payments with them and transfers, etc., it’s not that trivial, is it?

Camilla Bullock 00:28:30 No. And I think.

Camilla Bullock 00:28:32 Though, that it’s that like a player all the time, if we get a UX right.

Camilla Bullock 00:28:36 Exactly.

Camilla Bullock 00:28:37 People are not going to mind what’s happening. And maybe you and I are not the common person to take it up. It might be more gig economy in Vietnam. That’s anyway paid with stables. So it is all depend on the context.

Camilla Bullock 00:28:51 So that’s probably the next thing I would say on the the definition and understanding who are the players. The context always matters in place.

Camilla Bullock 00:28:58 Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:28:59 And I think UX is exactly the point that if if I could have a simple wallet and I’d just add circle or whoever now is a stablecoin issue, and then I’ll link that to my WhatsApp and I could send you some stablecoins for WhatsApp. I mean that’s game changing. Right. Yeah. At the moment it’s still a bit too clunky.

Camilla Bullock 00:29:16 So maybe we just.

Camilla Bullock 00:29:17 Interface something like AI in that it makes the choices for you.

Camilla Bullock 00:29:21 To know.

Camilla Bullock 00:29:21 What’s going to be the most efficient.

Camilla Bullock 00:29:23 Way. Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:29:25 All right. Cool. Well, then let’s talk about faster payments a little bit as well. next is obviously is, something that I think everyone in the region must be watching. And what’s going to happen there next? We had an episode here, actually, on the exchange with Andrew McCormick as well. and he was quite, I think, realistic in his ambitions as well and saying, look, we need to get this right and we need to take this step by step.

Jens Seidl 00:29:47 So this is not about how Nexus is going to be a global network tomorrow, but how to grow this step by step. What what vibes are you picking up in the region when it comes to cross-border, particularly when it comes to interconnecting faster payment systems?

Camilla Bullock 00:30:04 I think Nexus has been great for all of us because it actually showed. It’s like the beacon of light what could be done. And I really hope to see it’s coming alive and we’ll see more volume coming through it. And that a participant in the payments industry start to see the benefits from it. Then again, I don’t think it will be one ring.

Camilla Bullock 00:30:26 To.

Camilla Bullock 00:30:26 Rule. It’s not one network, but just to have shown the blueprint of Nexus and how it’s done actually gives inspiration. Even if you look in tokenized money in sharing that framework. I definitely think it’s here to stay, and I think it’s the way we work going forwards. What we still need is, is discussions that often come into like how how many people can we let connect, how do we govern, who’s connecting.

Camilla Bullock 00:30:55 And then coming back to that, there’s always there like the liability framework when something goes wrong, who has the liability in it.

Jens Seidl 00:31:03 Yeah. And I guess that’s that’s what we see across the board really. It’s it’s not so much about the technology issues because they’re easier to resolve. It is the regulation, the the legal issues, the liability issues. That’s really where between countries there’s just no standardization. Everybody’s got different approaches.

Camilla Bullock 00:31:22 It’s a little bit of a tipping point moments for things like this. Also, they probably have some of those whales if they come on board and they start to talk about the benefits they have, the rest will follow.

Camilla Bullock 00:31:33 Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:31:34 Yeah. And again, from a European perspective. Now, I’d love to say that. Well, if European Union resolves all of that kind of thing, but even with the European Union and its history, it’s not resolving everything, right? They set the guidelines, but it still comes down to individual nations to implement those guidelines. And they do that at different pace, different interpretations.

Jens Seidl 00:31:53 So even with a strong framework like that, it’s still not resolving itself overnight.

Camilla Bullock 00:31:59 No, no it’s not easy.

Camilla Bullock 00:32:01 But but.

Camilla Bullock 00:32:02 As we said, as long as we’re moving we’re progressing.

Camilla Bullock 00:32:05 Very much.

Jens Seidl 00:32:06 any other big emerging payment trends that we haven’t talked about yet?

Camilla Bullock 00:32:13 Is it something we can place?

Camilla Bullock 00:32:17 I think we covered quite a lot of things in very little time.

Camilla Bullock 00:32:21 Yeah, true.

Camilla Bullock 00:32:23 I think interesting actually, just through the years that I’ve done this role, the discussion has moved from front end to back end. I think that is quite interesting. We’re much more in deep tech now and looking at who supplies this, what can you do? The capabilities. So I would actually welcome the shift forefront as I’ve been mentioning several times now. Make it come alive. Show the benefits of fueling the innovation and the spirits going forward. And I think so many things are still still to be solved. We just scratched the surface of what payments can enable.

Jens Seidl 00:32:59 Yeah. Fair enough. Great. All right, well, then maybe just one more question, if I may, and then we’ll wrap this up.

Jens Seidl 00:33:08 I mean, when we look at other innovations in the past, whether it was MVP and streaming and all of these kind of things, that has also put businesses, completely well, made them extinct. Think about the blockbusters and so on and so on. Do you see certain? and I’m not asking you to call out individual companies, but segments of this industry that also need to start thinking about. We need to change our business model. We need to adapt to this new world. other parts, I mean, and I’m asking that again, because what we’ve seen historically is in the payments world, we add more and more things, but nothing disappears. Let’s do X flying around, for crying out.

Jens Seidl 00:33:50 So do you think there are certain technologies now or certain user experiences to use that word in the payment space that are at risk of extinction? Is it too early to tell?

Camilla Bullock 00:34:02 I think we’ll see consolidation because it’s a lot of organizations doing a lot of different layers of payments. What I hope that we’ll see go away is some of those organizations that are there because things are too hard, like the translators of data or like sort of those middlemen that is created as solutions because it’s too hard to do it by yourself.

Camilla Bullock 00:34:28 so I think that could could take down the cost of payments. Otherwise, one one thing that often comes to mind. I’ll leave that here with the audience also, is that I still think about when I came to Australia, first from Sweden, and when I was calling my parents and I lived really high up in the house, and I also didn’t have the lift key, so I had to run all those stairs, 30 levels, and I ran down to make a phone call because I couldn’t call from my mobile phones because that was expensive. And I had this phone calling card that I would scratch a code, I dial in the code, and then I will dial the number to Sweden. It would say how many minutes I had, and then one of every third times. It would be such a much echo on the line that I would have to hang up the dial the pin code, dial the number. And now it’s so easy to make a phone call. And I think that is the vision that I keep in mind all the time.

Camilla Bullock 00:35:22 Cross-border payments should be as easy as making a phone call, and if we get there, that would be challenging for a lot of organizations.

Jens Seidl 00:35:30 Absolutely. Well, I think those are great. a great theme to end on. thank you so much for joining me for this podcast episode today. And do it in person as well. I love the in-person recordings a lot more than, being on a team’s call, so thank you for accommodating that. Thanks for being with us here today.

Camilla Bullock 00:35:49 Thank you. This was fun. Wait. Could I continue it?

Jens Seidl 00:35:52 Great, actually. Well, we can continue if we’d like to. Well, it’s been great. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. This was another episode of The Exchange. Thank you for listening in. Please do follow. Like, whatever you need to do on your platform to make sure you don’t miss the next episode. Bye bye.