The Payment Engine of the Future – Thomas Ramadan – [Season 2 | Episode #12]

Jens Seidl 00:00:33 Welcome to another episode of The P.I.T. Exchange, Payments, Innovation and Technology. My name is Jens Seidl, and I’m your host for today. And I’ve got a very special guest with us, Thomas Ramadan from Oracle. Welcome to Thomas.

Thomas Ramadan 00:00:45 Thank you. A pleasure to be here.

Jens Seidl 00:00:47 All right. Well, as usual, I’d like to start with three random semi personal questions just to get to know the person Thomas Ramadan, a little bit before we then talk about payments and what’s going on in your world. So Thomas, do you prefer on an airplane aisle or window?

Thomas Ramadan 00:01:02 I used to prefer the window seat.

Thomas Ramadan 00:01:05 Those simply have a bit more quietness there. But since nowadays the booking and the seating is is usually chargeable and complicated, and before I have stopped preferring a side. So I just sit where the airplane planning puts me.

Jens Seidl 00:01:20 Even in the middle seat.

Thomas Ramadan 00:01:22 No. Preferably not. There is the boundary that has that need to be crossed instead. Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:01:28 I think we all have that in common. Yeah, absolutely. Then I believe you, you live in in Zurich, in Switzerland. I still ask the question. Do you prefer beach or mountains?

Thomas Ramadan 00:01:38 Oh, that’s a good one. I mean, it’s like you have the mountains right in front of you. So here it’s easy for a weekend or just even a day trip to go to the mountains, which I do often, especially winters there is snow. But I prefer the beach.

Jens Seidl 00:01:52 All right. And last question. What’s your favorite cuisine or dish or food? What’s, what’s your favorite there?

Thomas Ramadan 00:02:06 I like cooking. I really like spending time in the kitchen cooking our food. And it usually goes a bit in the Mediterranean area with cuisine that is also a bit a family story. My wife is Italian, so we’d like to try out many of those recipes a lot at home.

Jens Seidl 00:02:24 Lovely. Excellent. Yeah, Italian is my favorite cuisine, at least in in Europe it always competes between Asian and and Italian for me. But yeah, I can relate. Anyway, let’s jump in. Maybe we’ll start with letting you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you do for Oracle and how you got there.

Thomas Ramadan 00:02:41 Yeah, that’s a good one. So I got there basically I was always in payments all my career and it started with a servicer. And then I worked for a bank in the payments product management. And after that I went to Swift. I spent a long time there, and now about three years I work at Oracle so I can truly say payments was all around. I don’t I’m not afraid to say I’m a payment nerd, a self-confessed payment nerd, because I think payment is exciting and the times are always exciting in a way that we have so many news coming to the way payment works, and at the same time, it’s a subject that plays a little bit in the in the background.

Thomas Ramadan 00:03:19 So the usual consumer doesn’t really know about all this complicated wiring and plumbing behind the scenes that make money move from A to B. So in my role at Oracle. So the role is called the payment strategy lead for Oracle Financial Services. And what that basically means is that I’m watching the trends in the industry and trends. You have to take in a wider context. So there could be industry initiatives, there could be regulation to a large extent, and it could as well be technology advancements. So all the things that actually shape the payment ecosystem, when you think to the table, and that is what we watch very carefully and we try to anticipate what that means for a bank’s payment operation. So how would an energy need to be structured or built? I have the bank excel in this environment, and that’s a very exciting environment. And I’m sure we’re going to touch upon some of those interesting developments.

Jens Seidl 00:04:15 Absolutely. I think you’ve already given me two good keywords here. One is payment strategy and the other is the payment engine.

Jens Seidl 00:04:22 Because we are going to talk today about the ideal payments engine could actually look like if we tried to think five years ahead, which still seems like a manageable timeframe, it’s super hard to predict what’s going to happen in 10 or 20 years, but thinking five years, what is that actually going to look like? So maybe starting with the question, how do you actually think the payment landscape will change and develop over the next five years? What kind of main initiatives do you see take place in that period?

Thomas Ramadan 00:04:48 Yeah, and then we have to take out the crystal ball even five years ahead. But I think it’s safe to take a few assumptions. So what we’re already seeing is, of course, that there is some very positive alignments in terms of standards that’s going to continue. But there’s also a lot of pressure as well on the payments market. That is from the consumer. But there’s a lot of the oversight. And I think one of the most notable is certainly what the G20 have decided, because they have some couple of years ago, already started engaging with the ambition to improve cross-border payments.

Thomas Ramadan 00:05:25 And, you know, it’s the three dimensions. It’s the cost. It’s the speed, it’s the transparency. And last but not least, also the access to banking that they want to improve. And meanwhile we’re at a stage where they have already set objectives by 2027. So that’s even before the five years. And those objectives give clear guidelines to all the clearing networks out there, how they should be operating. For example, you know, two third of the three, third out of the three, fortune of the payments actually have to be delivered within the hour. These have to be in a certain range, depending on whether you’re a commercial or a retail client. So all these objectives are out there. And what we’re seeing is that there is more choices coming, especially in the cross-border market, because it used to be correspondent banking, a model that is as old as banks. You know, you have an institution in the other country with whom you share accounts, and that’s how you move money. And that’s no longer, should I say, the only way of doing business cross-border.

Thomas Ramadan 00:06:28 We have new entrants. Some of them are basically closed loop systems companies that offer alternatives. Some of them use new technologies like cryptocurrencies. But also the G20 has become not just setting objectives but also getting active. So they have delegated to the Stability Board. The banks are international settlement and they’re also building models. How the future of cross-border could look like. All of those areas. I’ll call them the interconnected networks. So instead of using correspondent banks, why don’t you connect, let’s say the rest of Europe with Asia or the instant payment systems? And what that means is that we will see at least five, six, seven alternatives, depending on which region you are, how you send cross-border payments. Going a little bit also to the domestic side because there as well you see change and it’s not it’s not a news anymore. But real time payments are getting more and more traction. Rails are mostly being built out. Now we have to see how those real time payments also make their way to the to the point of sale, where you as a user can use it easily.

Thomas Ramadan 00:07:41 And that follows a bit more the user demand for having real time payments, real time business, real time reactions, because the user obviously in in the today’s world, it’s not understandable why payment news needs two days to arrive in its destination. So this is kind of preparing the perfect storm for banks to adjust to these new realities, to adjust to the governance, but also the user expectation.

Jens Seidl 00:08:09 Let’s stay with that theme a little bit as well then, because what you described and I agree with, with the broad picture that you’re painting, probably means a lot more challenges for financial institutions as well. How are they actually going to adapt to their changing landscape? There’s so much change, which is hard to keep up with. But also, as you already touched on, there’s so many different options going to be available. How do you make sure that you either pick the right one or that they’re all interoperable, or something in between?

Thomas Ramadan 00:08:39 Yeah, that’s a that’s in fact a challenge for a bank, I think, to go one step back on on the bank’s picture.

Thomas Ramadan 00:08:45 I think what we’re also observing right now is a couple of new Institutions on the market. Neobanks that do business slightly different and they often start from a blank sheet. And that is an advantage because they don’t have that legacy and they often don’t even attempt to build their own payment engine. They source payments from another institution. So there is concentration going on. At the same time, the banks that actually are committed to run payments business, they they need to do a lot. So they’re sitting on their infrastructure and they know they have to add on to that infrastructure, additional networks. Now every network depending on what it is, it’s a closed loop system. One of those interconnected come with different features and come with different schemes. For example, the way how the settlement is facilitated in the backend, how transparent they are, what fees they offer and the costs and what have you. So in all of those need to be built in, that is, first of all, a lot of integration. All of those need to comply with the regulation that is out there, and banks are not in shortage of regulation.

Thomas Ramadan 00:09:54 You know, if we have the travel rule, we have the payment regulation, and all of that is on top of of their usual business. So they need to improve the engine while they’re actually continuing to deliver and reliable payment services to the user. Yes. And then the biggest question is, so you have a lot of effort, a lot of investment. How do you monetize upon this. And that’s that’s almost a chapter on its own.

Jens Seidl 00:10:18 Yeah. Well, maybe let me go off on a tangent briefly. You mentioned that some of the Neobanks don’t even build their own payment solutions. I just saw some. And banking as a service has been a new buzzword that’s been around for at least. I started noticing it about a couple of years ago. Again, trying to look five years ahead. Do you think that’s going to be a bigger thing? Is that mostly driven by the banks that offer this as a service? Are they keen to secure their turf in a way that way, or do you think there’s going to be a lot of demand from new market entrants or both.

Jens Seidl 00:10:49 Is it really matching a market? What’s what’s your view on that?

Thomas Ramadan 00:10:52 Well, right now I think it still balances out. I mean, the effort to keep your payment engine up to date, compliant and adjusted to the latest technology is enormous. And therefore I think lots of small banks simply cannot keep up anymore. So I think there’s probably a bit more demand for sourcing payments. And that is fueled on top of that. With new banks being founded as neobanks and basically hollowed out. They also source other types of businesses, but in particular payment. Yeah.

Jens Seidl 00:11:21 That makes sense. And I guess the other thing I truly believe in is that there are very complementary skills meeting. So especially when you talk about fintechs and technology driven companies who are really good, often at providing great customer experiences or consumer experiences, while you then have banks who are not as agile and not as flexible necessarily at doing that. So I see it as a winning matching between the two. Rather than a problem that’s necessarily coming the bank’s way if they play their cards right.

Thomas Ramadan 00:11:56 And you mentioned a good point there because in fact, also the way you bank engage with customers is changing because today you basically you need to connect to your bank. If you wanted to do a payment, maybe in five years time, more than half the payments will not be initiated through the bank. They will be basically integrated in your business case, in your in your service delivery, and they may appear to be invisible to you. At least it doesn’t need necessarily a banking interaction with you. And that’s an interesting thought because, I mean, we have the right things to do this, like take open banking and, you know, integrated business. So all of that is happening, but it also changes the way the bank actually deals with its client. So they have to progress other parts, maybe partner with fintechs maybe cooperate closely with the merchants. It is not a classical type of banking anymore that we know from the classical banks.

Jens Seidl 00:12:53 Very true. So let’s let’s go back maybe to, to classical banking and and swerve back from my tangent here, we were talking about how financial institutions are going to be impacted.

Jens Seidl 00:13:03 And I think that’s very much true for the banking back office as well. Right. Because with all of these different options coming their way, how do you see the back office adapting to that again in in the next five years or so? What house. How is that going to change. Yeah.

Thomas Ramadan 00:13:19 So we talk quickly about the back office and the need to adapt. And I want to extend it as well to what they need to expose to Romney’s efficient back office. So I’ll make a quick example maybe to visualize. So so if today you have a clear separation between domestic and cross-border, sometimes even different departments that don’t go to the same Christmas party in the future is going to be a mix, Because all of a sudden, over your domestic network, there’s a payment arrives in your premises that were actually originated abroad. So the way you process it, the way you create it, the way you price it, the way you affix it is different. So you need to have a very flexible way of dealing with those things.

Thomas Ramadan 00:14:00 And you can assume that every couple of years or month there’s going to be another network coming in. And the worst thing is we haven’t seen any networks being decommissioned. So it’s not like you’re shifting to new rails. You’re only increasing the amount of rails and choices. And here comes the challenge. So all these rails comes with fantastic new features. Think about pre validation. Makes payments more secure. Think about transparency on fees upfront information about the delivery time. All of that is actually valuable features. The banks channels in the back offices to recognize those features and make them available at the front end. And that’s easy, said. But I mean, you have to imagine the banks bank’s operation is not just one engine, it’s different layers of systems. So making this immediately available front end because, you know, that’s the demand from the user. Real time interaction, real time information about where is this payment or what’s it going. That is going to be a challenge okay.

Jens Seidl 00:15:00 And how do you think the banks will react to that challenge? What what are winning strategies. Again talking about payment strategy to to cope with that demand.

Thomas Ramadan 00:15:10 Yeah. So it’s probably there is one buzzword we haven’t yet used in this in this podcast. But it had to come. It’s artificial intelligence. And in the particular context of payment I think it’s a well used or can become a well used instrument to keep the user. Might it be retail or even corporate, up to date and informed and contextualized, informed about that payment that he is about to make? And for example, if in the engine in the back office, you recognize there are three choices for this payment to end up in the destination, you maybe you want to present those choices to the user in that very moment and say, listen, I can send it either directly and and immediately it’s going to cost you that much. And the ethics is going to be about this. But if you have a one time, one day lag time, you can accept this delay better choice in terms of price and foreign exchange. And all of this communication has to be tailored to the channel the client prefers.

Thomas Ramadan 00:16:16 It can be his mobile. It can be his voice assistant at all. It can be even a vendor’s or a merchant’s app in which he actually buys some goods and expects the payment to be covered as well.

Jens Seidl 00:16:28 Okay, so I understand that AI, and especially large language models can have a great impact on how the user interacts with those payment rates, right? I think that’s what you describe there, is that the user will be given different options. They have it, they have a request, they will be given different options. But then there’s still, I think, the demand for the banks in the background to still decide for their own purposes how they’re going to fulfill the payment. Right. So the user might be presented with 2 or 3 options, but the bank still has even more options than to manage that payment. And also different impacts then on on how their payment operation performs. Liquidity management, all of these kind of knock on effects. Is that also going to be driven by do you think.

Thomas Ramadan 00:17:15 Yeah you’re right. That’s that’s the point. So nowadays it’s not unusual that you as a user knows the type of payments. They exist, you know, RJs or it’s an ACH. Or maybe they will, but with increased choices you may not know, or you may not even want to know the type of choice you have. Still, you want to choose the right features for your payment. It has to be executed as a single payment. Can it? Can it wait? So your choice is not about all the different veils that are available to blanket your choices about what you want. And then at the bank, you have the freedom to decide what is the best execution. Well, and you don’t need to communicate this. And you might even have additional reasons for particular rails because of reciprocity, because of cutoff times, because of your liquidity that is behind. So there is an additional layer of complexity that the bank has to manage to find the right way to execute. But there is a subset of that that has to be presented to the client in a contextualized way and with the right level of information.

Jens Seidl 00:18:26 Yeah. And do you? Well, there’s more and more talk now for how the large language models was the first step in this AI revolution that we’ve seen over the last 2 or 3 years. And the next big step will be agents AI based agent services. Do you think that’s also how this is going to play out, that there will be very specialized agents in the payment landscape, both on the user side and again, on the the fulfillment side? That will help with the detailed tasks within that, because it’s not just deciding which rail to take. Right. And there’s also things like KYC compliance checks getting the best exchange rate. There’s so many details when we’re talking about cross border that that fit in with that. Yeah.

Thomas Ramadan 00:19:09 Yeah. You have to imagine the interaction of the eye not just presenting a choice. That is right. I mean, what it basically does it it accompanies you through the payment process. And it starts with, you know, picking up the data that you need to fill in the payment.

Thomas Ramadan 00:19:24 And then eventually it asks you if that really is the receiver that you wanted to do, thanks to the the verification of payee in the back office. And all of that comes along as a normal conversation, and then it eventually tells you, oh, your payment has arrived and then eventually it didn’t arrive. Agent will also be able to start an exception investigation process. But it’s not just a payment agent, it’s actually a banking agent that talks to you that understands that had a certain history of your interaction with the bank before and guides you through that process. And as it goes along, it may even hint you to other products like, oh, I noticed that this payment will put your account at zero. Would you like to have a short term credit and and things like, oh, we would like to have a pay later scheme apply to it. So it will be a natural way of interacting with your bank and natural conversation thanks to large language models. And it will solve all that interactions that is needed to collect data for payment for the credit and the received and the accepted investigation, all included.

Jens Seidl 00:20:26 Yeah. And look, I listened into the webinar you gave just this week for the Frankfurt payment Network, where you made a very strong point in how I saw 20 or 22. If it’s used in the right way, if the data is actually being populated consistently in the right way, it can also be game changing to that because. Well, I’ll let you explain why with game changing.

Thomas Ramadan 00:20:50 I think I mean, a lot has been said about ISO 2082 and it’s, it’s a subject that has been around for a long, but I think it cannot be overestimated how important it is because it harmonizes the language impairments worldwide. We didn’t have that any time before. So and it doesn’t stop at borders because it actually it will influence domestic standards as well as cross-border. That’s good. So that’s the first thing. And of course as a new standard, it comes with nowadays capabilities of technology. It’s not just a format, it’s a whole concept. And the richness it prepares, which is not failed today, will significantly enhance the knowledge a bank can build up about its clients.

Thomas Ramadan 00:21:33 And we all know, I mean, payment is probably the most interaction that you have with your bank. And the better the bank understands your situation, your business, your needs, your demands, the better can actually serve you. We’re not yet there and discussed as well yesterday, for example, complete address remittance information. All of that is only to be filled while we still have the standard yet, but it will open a new field of analytics for banks thanks to AI and other tools to allow a view on payments, as it was not possible before.

Jens Seidl 00:22:08 Yeah, but will it also because my perception is that it will also help with, again, removing some of the friction that we’re currently seeing and especially staying with cross-border payments, if we’d get a lot better and structured data through ISO 20 or 22, the compliance procedures should not deliver as many false positives. It should also help you with repairs. If there was a mistake being made that it’s easier to identify where that mistake wasn’t and easier to fix it.

Jens Seidl 00:22:34 Do you have an expectation that again, in five years time, that will remove a lot of the friction in the process?

Thomas Ramadan 00:22:40 Yeah, certainly. Most certainly. I think already the fact that for addresses, a country can be labeled as a country or a street or a postcode is already a big advancement. The data is available today. I will also help turning the today’s address database into structured addresses. So I believe this is one probably one of the first real, recognizable advancements in this new standard that you can more safely identify a payer and the payee. And that is not just a risk. That is also regulation, because we have globally various rules that impose identification of payer and pay very thoroughly, and that will turn to become the benefit even before the end of our horizon of the five years. But on top of that, I think we will see more modification, because, you know, ISO also allow us to map the complete payment chain, who is the ultimate beneficiary and the ultimate payer. That gives more clarity on money flows.

Thomas Ramadan 00:23:40 It will help banks also to identify their breaches and sanctions and even fraud, a field that, with the increased knowledge about the full flow of a payment, will enable banks to recognize, you know, for example, new schemes much better than it was before they did a combination of the rich data and structured data and the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Jens Seidl 00:24:05 Yeah. Well, since since you mentioned the mule accounts and I mean the very worrying speed of scams hitting people more and more and more, thanks to what, partly thanks to real time payments, because I just find it a lot easier now to not only embezzle money from people, but then move it very quickly through the system and extract it from the system. Do you think that in five years time we will have cracked that nut and that we will have won that technology arms race with the bad guys and scams will be a thing of the past.

Thomas Ramadan 00:24:35 Yeah, I wish I wish to believe this, but this is really the case.

Thomas Ramadan 00:24:40 I mean, those tools are available there, they’re out there, they cannot be reinvented and the fraudsters use them too.

Thomas Ramadan 00:24:46 Especially when it comes to fake identities. We all know those those those pictures going around of fake IDs and what have you. I think the way the banks use this technology to fight crime, in the same way the fraudsters will continue to use this technology to still penetrate the system. There is no silver bullet. I think it’s a race that continues to be a race with additional features, especially with real time payments. Also, the challenges are becoming more fierce and real time bank runs, real time fraud. That is that is really a challenge. And it continues to be 1 in 5 years as well.

Jens Seidl 00:25:22 Yeah, I’m afraid you’re right about that. And the reality is, even if we we fix one problem, the bad guys are quite Innovative and come up with new ideas. What to try next. So I truly believe it will be a kind of an arms race. We’ll always be in a race between trying to identify the next methodology that’s being used, the next Mo, fixing that, and then again, the bad guys coming up with new ideas.

Jens Seidl 00:25:45 Just the reality of the world, I guess. Not even just specifically payments.

Thomas Ramadan 00:25:49 And the bad guys getting better organized as well. I mean, you also see and there in the size of there must be multi multiple disciplinary teams working together to put that scam. I mean it’s not like the single guy anymore in the office. It’s well organized fraudsters and it’s it’s well prepared.

Jens Seidl 00:26:09 Yeah. Well absolutely. And I don’t know whether you’ve seen that article. There was an article recently I think in the New York Times describing where whole office blocks, I think it was in Myanmar, particularly in Cambodia as well, are being filled with scammers who do nothing else but running online scams. So it’s it’s very much organized crime. Yeah, that’s happening there. But let’s go back to the vision of the new payments engine in five years time. You are saying consumers will demand more real time. Probably corporates will also demand more real time because they have their cash management. They can really optimize their cash flow. So what does that mean for a banking operation where at the moment, managing their own liquidity is a lot easier because there is a delay in payments if everything becomes real time.

Jens Seidl 00:26:56 That’s quite a big challenge on liquidity management, isn’t it? What are we going to keep up with that in five years time?

Thomas Ramadan 00:27:02 Very true. So maybe to describe again with the difference between the expectation of retail and corporates, I think the retail segment wants real time banking. And in, in in many cases that is already a real time authorization is already good. So he wants to know that whatever business he has, it’s on the way. Whether the money is on the receiver’s account or his account is eventually not that critical. Whereas for a corporate where really liquidity management plays an important role. It’s a different ballgame. So they want to make use of that new features. They want to pay only when payments are due. They want to close their invoice loops immediately. And the money comes in so it can be set free again as working capital. And that requires a couple of things. It is not enough that only the payment rails become real time. You have to look at the whole trade cycle, but also there’s a lot of movement happening out there.

Thomas Ramadan 00:27:55 Luckily, on the same set of standards, we’re going back to ISO 2002 two again and to those tags. So I think we see already a couple of initiatives that actually allow the electronic exchange of purchase orders, the electronic exchange of invoices, and then to close the loop the same data in the electronic payment. Now imagine that then you can really from the beginning of your trade cycle until the end, it can only be automatically reconciled and it could actually complete within within seconds. In the case of instant delivery. Maybe it can complete with the delivery of the product. The payment can complete equally fast. Let’s put it this way. That actually requires more than just an e-banking portal and corporates. They don’t do the business separately in different engines. And that goes a bit to the embedded finance thought, because all those capabilities of paying humility, reconciling immediately, putting capital to new work is something that happens in their ERP system or in the treasury system under the banking system to get there. You have also schemes like open banking.

Thomas Ramadan 00:29:05 I think there’s a lot of ways to be done still to make embedded finance reality, but the direction is clear and the demand is clear as well.

Jens Seidl 00:29:13 Okay, so I’m just conscious of time. And maybe before we wrap up, let me be very concrete now and let’s try and think about five years ahead. 2 or 3 use cases. How do you think this this could play out? So say I’m with friend in a restaurant. One’s paying, picking up the bill, the other ones to let them have some money. But how’s it going to work? Am I going to use my phone? Talk to it. Send the money. How? How do you think this AI enabled world will will help me in doing this?

Thomas Ramadan 00:29:44 That’s a good example because it’s also a special.

Thomas Ramadan 00:29:47 Use case in a in a retail environment where, you know, the the movement of money is not as important as the authorization and the commitment of, of the communication. So I like to think by that time you will have more choices than a credit card payment.

Thomas Ramadan 00:30:03 So it can be a real time payment that you initiate from your phone by eventually scanning the invoice with a QR code, or by eventually tapping your phone or your watch or whatever smart smart device you have to, the checkout device is presented to you and the restaurant have it immediately in their cash and can continue in the back to to order their food and then you share with your friend. Maybe. With a peer to peer system, because something that we haven’t discussed yet, we will have more and more peer to peer system. Well, that even circumvent the bank account. It could be either well phone it could be actually a cryptocurrency. It could be one of those retail CBDCs that allow you to do a token exchange. So my wish is that your scenario works with the combination of a real time payment and a retail CBDC exchange to settle between your friend.

Jens Seidl 00:31:02 All right. Very interesting. And then let’s maybe let’s stay with the crypto aspect of things and tokenization because as you said, we haven’t really talked much about that in trade finance.

Jens Seidl 00:31:12 How much of a role do you think tokenization is going to play there? So let’s take another scenario. An import export business. They’ve just imported a container full of something heavily laced with tariffs. If things keep going the way they’re going at the moment. What’s the process? Is it going to be a DVP on a crypto enabled tokenized transaction? What do you think is going to happen there in five years?

Thomas Ramadan 00:31:35 Tokenized assets will play a role in almost all segments. I think we’re going to see this in retail. We’re going to see this in wholesale and we’re going to see it in trade finance. The big strength there of tokenized asset is, of course, a smart contract that you can associate with it, because that means there is conditions to a payment now and it can even work in a distributed environment if all the parties were on the same ledger. Right. Maybe that’s a it’s only a wish. It could be executed as well as a centralized contract. But the tokenized assets have this benefit of many parties in the chain relying on the same infrastructure and relying on the same technology, making sure that payments are conditionally paid when shipping papers are due, when conditions are met, that that actually the goods have started moving.

Jens Seidl 00:32:22 Okay, good. And maybe the last use case, because that’s one of the ones, I think, where we still need to do a lot of work. Cash to cash remittances. Still one of the most expensive things in the world at the moment, especially in some corridors where it can really get expensive. And I think that’s where we’re probably the farthest behind the G20 roadmap in five years time. How do you think that might have changed?

Thomas Ramadan 00:32:44 Yeah, indeed. I was thinking we’re closing the loop here. We’re back to the G20 roadmap, which we talked about in the beginning of this conversation. And I said that access is the fourth dimension of objective, and it’s not estimated. And that’s exactly why, because, you know, the main corridors will always be easy to send remittances. But if you have an exotic corridor journalist, carry the currency. That’s exactly the challenge. I do believe that the recommendation and the objectives of the G20 will work there as well, and that there is choices for users, and I think I want to see those money remittance operators.

Thomas Ramadan 00:33:23 We’re going to also see mobile phone money schemes playing a role there that eventually have to be linked and with the account system of the sending country. I also believe that banks have to play a role because the money remittance orders, they’re usually it’s a bit of a disconnected industry, but more and more you see the banks in that region also engage with those and link remittance exchanges with with an account. Not sure we’re going to see a lot more players there, but I think the choice will be available in all regions.

Jens Seidl 00:33:53 Okay. And hopefully there’s going to be more interoperability as well, because I think that’s always been part of the problem with remittances, that you’ve got players that are completely competing with each other and not offering any interoperability. And I think the risk is that might still be the case as these island solutions are being built and there’s no real authority to to mandate interoperability on a global scale. Right.

Thomas Ramadan 00:34:17 Maybe one addition to that. And I truly believe this is what we’re going to see. I mean, with a better usage of crypto based currencies and it doesn’t need to be a Bitcoin, it can be much other, more, more liquid with the ability to use them in the destination country or or easily exchange them into fiat currency.

Thomas Ramadan 00:34:37 I believe they will play a role as well in the remittance business.

Jens Seidl 00:34:41 Yeah, I agree absolutely. All right. Well again, I’m conscious of time. Maybe let’s wrap up at this point. Was there any aspect that you’re passionate about that we haven’t touched on yet in this five year vision?

Thomas Ramadan 00:34:52 We did a tour.

Thomas Ramadan 00:34:53 Across almost everything. Not all. Have we discussed in much depth? I think what I always find very interesting is, is that the account to account payment is starting to become again the center of of money exchange. I mean, we know there’s different models there. You have a model, you have a wallet based payment card based energy account to account. I believe that account account comes with a lot of benefits, not just for the financial institution, but also for the user when it comes to costs and safety and security and speed. So banks are catching up. They’re building out the rails that are needed to do this. So I and that’s where the payment net comes out. Again, I do believe that the two companies have a great future.

Jens Seidl 00:35:36 Excellent. I think that’s a really good statement to wrap up with. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today. I think it was a really interesting conversation. I certainly enjoyed it.

Thomas Ramadan 00:35:44 I enjoyed it very much too.

Jens Seidl 00:35:45 Lovely. Thank you. And with that, thank you all for listening in today. Please do follow like whatever you need to do on your podcast platform to make sure you won’t miss the next episode. Signing off for today. This is Jens Seidl. Thank you very much.