Episode 15: Global Payments from Africa to LATAM - Elizabeth McQuerry of Glenbrook Partners and Michael Olajide of Georgia State

We go deep on global payments with the remarkable Elizabeth McQuerry of Glenbrook Partners and Michael Olajide of the Georgia State Robinson School of Business. This discussion provides an overview of several payment systems and then considers payment system advancements in Africa and Brazil. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Wow.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Welcome to the Georgia FinTech Academy podcast. The Georgia FinTech Academy is a collaboration between Georgia's Vintech industry and the university system of Georgia. This talent development initiative addresses a massive demand for FinTech professionals and give learners the specialized education experiences needed to enter the tech sector.

Speaker 3: 0:25

Hey, this is Tommy Marshall. Welcome to episode 15 of the Georgia FinTech Academy podcast. Today. I am excited to have Elizabeth Mcquarie with us from Glenbrook partners and Michael[inaudible], a student of Georgia state's Robinson college of business. Welcome to you both

Speaker 1: 0:48

Tommy. Great to be here. Hi, Michael.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Doing great on, uh, this, uh, Jan, uh, June 25th. I can't, it's been, uh, I think we're like 110 days into this public health crisis. I'm going crazy, stir crazy being at home for so much, uh, so much time, um, but uh, wanted to get things started off, um, and letting our listeners get to know you. Elizabeth, tell us about you. Tell us about your history in financial services and FinTech. Tell us about Glenbrook. Uh, we just, uh, the more, the better,

Speaker 1: 1:31

Well, thanks for having me Tommy, and it's great to be here and have this opportunity to, to reach out and, you know, in some ways I'm just realizing that, uh, my sort of intersection with the world of payments, even though I focus on global payments is actually started right here in Atlanta. And I was at the federal reserve bank of Atlanta in the research department started the year after the Olympics. So 97 and did the financial analyst activities, their economic analyst, I think it was called and focused on Latin America and sort of public policy and economic policy because there's so many intersections between the Latin American economies in the Southeast. And of course the Atlanta fed is the, uh, takes, uh, you know, oversight of the six States here in the Southeast. And there was, uh, an opportunity to work with somebody in payments, retail payments, ACH, who was trying to build out connections to other countries with the ACH. So there was a need to connect to Mexico. And I think they reached out to me because I spoke Spanish. So I was in the right place, at least having some language skills. And I got to know the person that was doing the project, and then they, uh, actually advertise for a job. And I applied, I don't know if I was truly the most qualified, but I was the most available perhaps. And so that was my journey started about, um, 2002 in payments and kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool, but did it in a place that was really great to learn, you know, so many great people at the federal reserve here in Atlanta, and it connected to the payments, uh, team nationally here. Uh, so, you know, payments is not a local function in the sixth district. It is a national function that the folks carry out and retail payments is checks and ACH that they lead here in Atlanta. And so I very much started learning about ACH and cross border payments. And, uh, I stayed with that for about 10 years and we built the cross border ACL H out from, I think it was four or five countries when I started to over 30 when we finished. Um, and that program still still in place today, and a lot of government payments go over that, you know, social security and, uh, other government payments to countries around the world. Then, uh, I thought

Speaker 3: 4:28

The, you know, the Atlanta fed has been a great partner to the Georgia FinTech Academy. Uh, in fact, Claire green and I were just corresponding the other day, um, about her, you know, that big payments, um, forum study panel, uh, that she, um, handles that retail panel that, uh, has just been, um, you know, critical in terms of information across the, uh, financial system. And then what re then another thing I just wanted to mention was, um, the Raphael Bostic, the current president of the Atlanta fed, uh, wrote a remarkable, um, essay on systematic racism and its impact on our economy. Um, that, uh, just, um, I learned a lot from, and I've been sharing that broadly and I hope all our listeners will take a moment to search that up on the Atlanta fed, um, website. And, uh, he's also done some interviews, uh, in the past week on national media. The one that I listened to was on marketplace with Kyra's doll, um, where he was, um, just, um, emphasizing the points, uh, that he was making in the essay. Uh, but just a great example of just amazing leadership that the Atlanta federal reserve, the federal reserve Atlanta here has provided, uh, across the system. Um, but yeah, but, but go on, I, I cut you off. Tell, tell me about, tell us about wonder.

Speaker 1: 6:04

No, absolutely. You couldn't have better partners than the Atlanta fed all all across the board and it is, uh, inspirational and gives us hope that we may be able to make some of the changes that are needed in our economy to, um, go forward. And of course the fed is in a good position to do that with its private sector partners. But yeah, so, you know, th the fed is a great place to work, but I, I kind of said to myself, if, if I don't leave soon, I'll probably get very comfortable here and, you know, be too old to venture out, uh, push myself out the door and went to a money transmitter for a little bit. And it didn't work out for different reasons as these things go. But I was lucky enough to during that period to have met some folks at Glenbrook partners where I've now been for eight or nine years, and I'm still live here in Atlanta, but Glen Brooks headquartered in San Francisco, it's a payments consulting firm, a payment strategy and consulting really, um, very, uh, deep in the payment space because that's all Glenbrook focuses on is, uh, different aspects of the payment system. And I've been lucky enough to have some great partners there. And we have really built out, uh, opportunities. And I think great partnerships in doing things on some global payment basis. And that's taken us to do some work in Africa, some work in Latin America, a little bit in Asia. Of course the firm has some specializations in with Europe as well. So, and couldn't be at a better time because there's so much innovation going on globally that if we're not paying attention to what's happening in other parts of the world, then we're missing out. So, um, if you can be in payments,

Speaker 3: 8:13

I was showing, um, the payment systems in the us, but, uh, as we were prepping, which, um, Michael, I, I, I assume you haven't read yet, but I know you will read, Oh yeah. It's in its third edition. And I, you know, Elizabeth, I don't know if I told you, but when I was, um, creating the payments practice at Capco earlier in my career, um, I would recommend that all my consultants read this book, uh, before they went on an engagement so that they, you know, at least be able, uh, I have a better, better chance of giving some great advice to our clients, but, um, it's a, it's a great, um, it's a, been a great contribution, I think, to the industry, this book has been really helpful. And then, uh, you know, recently I know one of the authors here is Russ Jones, and I've had a chance to get to know him a little bit better recently, which, uh, which I've appreciated. Thank you again for that, for that introduction. Um, but my goal, um, tell us about you.

Speaker 4: 9:25

Absolutely. I'd love to, all right. So my name is Michael Day. I am currently a senior at the J Mack Robinson college of business at Georgia state university, graduating this December with a bachelor of business administration and computer information systems. Right now, I currently serve as a intern for Amazon as a business intelligence engineer and the Alexa AI team, when I'm not doing that, I'm mostly president of the Georgia state chapter of the association for information systems. For me, FinTech was always interesting because I thought I just always saw opportunities for providing economic value to overlook countries. Yeah. I always love to be of service. So I thought that was one of the best ways I could do it.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Um, what is,

Speaker 3: 10:13

What do you ask Alexa most often?

Speaker 4: 10:19

Ooh. Okay. So I have that shower place that was used. So I just ask this to always play that I, I always just play seven songs, so I'm just like, alright, let's just make a big guys. We'll play this well yet. That's cool.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Well, Tommy, I'm sorry. We'd have to know what you most often ask Alexa

Speaker 3: 10:42

More often. I've been using Alexa, the announcement feature. Are you familiar with this? You can say, Alexa, now dinner's ready. And so like, I got three kids, um, all 16 and under, and they each have one of those. Um, what are the, the, the echo, the small little disc? Um, yeah, the dots. Exactly. Thanks. So they each have one in the room, so I can, and it drives me crazy when my kids are not promptly showing up for dinner time. And so I'll announce, I think I'll say Alexa, I'll first. I'll be nice. I'll be like, Alexa announced the dinner is ready. And then Alexa announces in all their rooms. And then if they don't show up within like two minutes, I start to like escalate the tone of the announcement. So that's been my favorite. I just discovered this feature whenever few, few weeks ago. So it's been very helpful recently.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Yeah, that's a good one. Um, I was just reading that Amazon is expanding its presence in South Africa and they're hiring like a thousand people largely to work on the, what I thought I read was the Alexa rollout into Europe, as well as, um, you know, Africa. Cool.

Speaker 4: 12:03

Yeah. Oh yeah. Someone's doing a crazy amount of expansion, the Patsy bumps.

Speaker 5: 12:08

Um, but that's neat, Mike, I'm glad you're doing that internship. And, um, it's been exciting to get you involved with the, um, Georgia FinTech Academy and thanks for volunteering to be part of the student advisory council. And, um, I'm looking forward to seeing where things go here, uh, as you start to move towards graduation in December. So if you're listening to this show and you're looking for a real rock star, uh, to join your company, reach out to me and I'll get you connected. Um,

Speaker 1: 12:45

You know, Michael, uh, Amazon has a, of course a global caliber payments team. Yeah. We'll have to get that, uh, payments book. And then you can start talking to those guys too.

Speaker 4: 13:00

I definitely need to get that. So it would be a high level overview for payment systems in the U S what do you mean what would be done if you want me to just like, yeah. Hi. Cause we have a high level overview.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Well, uh, let's, let's look at it from an Amazon perspective, right. Uh, they, you know, they're basically a e-commerce retailer, right. But they need to take money from their customers. Of course they have, uh, many other things that they do, but from a payments perspective, I suspect that's the, the biggest one. So they have to figure out, uh, all the ways to accept, uh, you know, payments from their customers is largely credit and debit cards, but they're one of the early acceptors of ACH payments. So online. So that's a pretty unusual, yeah. So ACH, you might know it is direct deposit. Um yep. How does Amazon pay you? Let's put, let's ask that question. Direct deposit. Yeah. Yeah. So that's ACH, which is automated clearinghouse. And that coincidentally is a, one of the payments functions that is coordinated for the federal reserve. One of the nation's largest providers of financial services to banks and credit unions. That's coordinated, uh, right there on 10th and Peachtree. Really? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 14:38

Right here in Atlanta every day.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Absolutely. So you, if you are, when you get the book, because I'll certainly send you one, you'll learn about those, you'll learn about those core payments systems. And you'll also learn how, and, you know, theoretically how companies like Amazon innovate off of these existing payment system.

Speaker 5: 15:03

Well, I'm looking at my cheat sheet, Elizabeth from the digital payments, uh, bootcamp. And so, um, Michael there's kind of six core payment systems cards, the cards. So that's like credit cards, debit cards, ACH, which Elizabeth's a super duper expert on. And ACA stands for automated clearing house, uh, checks. Have you ever written a check Michael? Oh yeah. Oh, as soon as I got, as soon as I was able to do, I just started write checks, fax cash wires, which are, uh, you know, in end-to-end payments that are instant and usually larger, large value, uh, and then faster payments that we might, it's a, that's a newer system relatively, also very exciting, um, in its development. So, um, and then, you know, you can spend pretty much years on every single one of those. There was a lot of depths under every single one of those systems. Um, what would cost you have the faster payment?

Speaker 1: 16:19

That's an excellent question. And there's some definitional, uh, differences around that. But in general, I would say that is, uh, an, uh, a digital payment that is as effective as cash. So it's instant, it's real time. Now the card is, you know, you make it, you swipe or insert your debit card and that's pretty instant, uh, as far as you're concerned, right? Because you've got to make that purchase the merchant, let you walk away with the goods. And so that sounds pretty instant. The merchant doesn't, uh, get their money instantly, uh, but it's instant availability. So systems are evolving and now there are, uh, payment systems called real time or instant or immediate funds transfer where both the, um, sender is debited instantly and the receiver gets their funds instantly. But these are very new systems at least here in the United States. And I know Michael, you told me that you have family from Nigeria, you lived there a little bit. Then Nigeria has actually had an instant payment system for at least a decade. So in that regard, there were, you know, a decade ahead of the United States. We just got one about two years ago.

Speaker 5: 17:45

And is that Nigerian system? Elizabeth, is that inner switch?

Speaker 1: 17:50

Well, that's, uh, uh, an interesting story too. The there's actually at least three, uh, instant payment systems, uh, in Nigeria, the one that most people refer to, uh, called, um, uh, in IIP, Nigeria instant payment is run by a bank clearing house, uh, which is called nibs. So they run the ACH that, you know, the instant payments, the checks, but a inner switch also has one as well. That more or less runs in parallel to the one where you were just talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 18:33

I mean, I'm only aware I'm aware of inner switch mainly because of, you know, Dr. Charles and FIDI, who's here in Atlanta who was, I know, instrumental in creating inner switch and Nigeria and more so, and now, you know, he's part of our community here in Atlanta and he's just a tremendous person, you know, obviously got great depth, uh, and was a major contributor to the creation of that. Um, so it's really like, you know, I'm always thinking of him, but he's done.

Speaker 1: 19:07

So I had the opportunity to have, uh, you know, participate in several meetings with Charles in Nigeria earlier this year. And, um, I still joke with him that, uh, you walk into a meeting with him and people start sitting up in their chairs. I Charles, wow. He's like our payments, rockstar commands the room,

Speaker 5: 19:34

Very unassuming, very modest person, which is what really, which is why I love hearing that story.

Speaker 1: 19:40

That's really cool. Um, yeah. So, um, you know, we've just gotten instant payments here in the United States, and it was, uh, at least as far as our retail bank system and that was launched in late 2019, and it's now rolling out to more and more financial institutions. Um, but, but chances are, you know, you haven't experienced it yet. Michael, I haven't in my financial institution, which is a smaller one than you. That's one of the challenges. And it's a challenge as well as an opportunity of these big network systems, because it takes a long time for banks and credit unions to update their systems and then to commercialize a product out to their customer. But when that happens, that usually has a lot of stickiness that doesn't go away for decades and tracked. So those open-loop payments system, meaning that, you know, all the financial institutions come into this, and there's also closed loop payment systems. Like maybe PayPal will be one that you would know. And that means that PayPal is basically has the relationship with both the sender and the receiver, rather than, you know, a financial institution bidding in between that relationship. And they have advantages. They can more easily make product changes and roll them out much more quickly than say these open-loop, uh, network systems. Can we all go through your system? Cause they basically control all aspects of it, but they're smaller. Makes sense. So there are trade-offs

Speaker 5: 21:44

Um, uh, I wanted to talk a little bit more about Africa and payments and then maybe we could touch on Latin America as well. The, um, you know, one thing, I guess a couple ideas, one is a question that I've wondered is, is the, is the evolution of payments or payment systems in Africa? Is there anything similar to like what what's happened in, um, in developing parts of the world with regards to telecom where, you know, I'll be in these co we'll hear these conversations about, um, there was this big leapfrog relative to what happened to the United States where the, um, where the con, where the, the economies just in like telecom went straight to mobile and went to like remarkable kind of mobile, uh, delivery of telecom. And I've wondered, is there a similar, uh, uh, type of, um, uh, evolution that's occurred with payments, um, in that regard, uh, or not. And, um, and then I've noticed, and then I saw too that Jack Dorsey, the founder of square, the founder of Twitter, um, has, was spending a lot of time in Africa back in the first quarter of this year. He was even suggesting that he might move to Africa for a period of time, um, because he sees such a tremendous opportunity there, um, related to payments. And I was just wanting to hear your thoughts around, um, around, uh, that continent in particular with payments evolution.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Yeah. I mean, the transformation going on in Africa right now, uh, payments wise is, is truly fundamental. And I think that there's exciting developments there, but of course it still hasn't reached everybody. So there's plenty of opportunity to improve. And that's some of the things that a blender partners gets to work on in our consulting business. But if you look at telco based, um, payments, uh, you know, most of these telecommunications companies, they have to become different companies in order to offer payments. So they become mobile money operators. At that point. They're not telcos per se, and they get licensed and they're able to offer low cost payments to people. And most of the time they already have sort of a ready-made potential customer base from their telco business. So they're close to the people and that makes them, um, very, uh, effective is being able to offer, you know, digital payment to lots of people. They don't have to go out and recruit all their customers from the beginning. And that has been tremendously successful in East Africa. It's had some decent success in other parts of Africa, but nowhere as much as in Kenya and the phenomenal success of Safari comm. Right.

Speaker 5: 24:57

And that's, um, I think of Kenya and, uh, in paisa. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Tom is the company that offers and paste that link, right? Yeah, yeah. Yes. And they've done phenomenally well, they've tried their model elsewhere. It hasn't always stuck, but, uh, I think there's enough promise there that they're certainly keeping at it and, you know, Nigeria, I think that it starts with a, an advanced payment system, but in a different character, if you will, it's much more bank based in Nigeria, mobile money. Like M-Pesa has not, there's not really caught on in the same way that it has in East Africa, but I think a lot of companies, uh, you know, I'm sure the, uh, square as well as many VCs are interested in Nigeria because of the vast, uh, you know, the very large population. And even though the country has an advanced payment system today, it really doesn't serve the whole population. And that's a big problem and a big challenge to be solved. Right. So basically only about, uh, 60, 65% even of the population have a formal bank account in Nigeria today. Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 26:31

Um, we have a, um, FinTech startup company at Georgia tech in the advanced technology development center. ATDC called yellow card, um, founded by Chris. Maurice is the CEO founder. And, um, although he started the company here at Georgia tech and ADC, the, the value prop is focused on Nigeria and he's, uh, he has signed up over 15,000 merchants in Lego's and it's, uh, it's, it's a payments play, but it's really about, um, getting in to a Bitcoin cryptocurrency. So you, you go in and you're able to convert as a Nigerian convert, an IRA into Bitcoin at the merchant location. And then folks want to do that if I'm hearing her Chris, right. They want to do that because they're looking for, um, a lower cost way to, to move value, cross border, which they can do on, uh, with the, with the Bitcoin currency. Um, but then it is at times also suggested that folks would, would do this conversion into Bitcoin, even with the volatility the Bitcoin has, because that volatility is actually less and the volatility, your Niara, which is a little hard for me to believe looking at, you know, how volatile Bitcoin is. Um, but in a way it's, um, it's kinda, you know, I, I think it's cool cause we've got this kind of startup that's coming here out of Atlanta and they've chosen to focus their entire efforts on, um, Nigeria. And that part of Africa is expanding into, um, I think Uganda and a few of the other countries that are

Speaker 4: 28:20

They're close by. It's really cool. So in your opinion, what are the big players that we should look out for?

Speaker 1: 28:27

I'm sorry, Michael, I interrupted you. What did you say?

Speaker 4: 28:31

I'm sorry. I interrupted you. All right. So my question was in European, this is the both of you guys who are some of the big players that we have to look out for, that we kind of don't know about yet.

Speaker 5: 28:45

Claire's from a payment stand. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 28:48

Okay. From a payment standpoint,

Speaker 1: 28:53

I don't know if there's any big players that you might not have heard about if you're, you know, following the payments press, uh, but there are a number of if you will, up and coming, uh, I think, uh, spaces and one of them is, you know, how do we use existing, um, you know, internet, like, um, you know, you probably use WhatsApp. I bet. I mean, I'm a big user of it and, you know, yeah. So everybody already has WhatsApp on their phone, around the world. So one of the concepts is to use it to also transfer funds, right. You know, transfer between friends also make payments at merchants, that sort of thing. And that's something that Facebook, since it bought WhatsApp has been working on for several years and they, uh, everyone thought that they were going to first launch in India, but surprise, surprise earlier this week, they launched in Brazil, which is also, uh, another very interesting payments market. Yeah. Brazil. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 30:10

That's a good call out. And, um, Brazil, I mean, Latin America, we're all of course Brazil's Dan, um, has got some meaningful ties here to Georgia. Um, there's merchant needs solutions, which is out of Brazil, but keeps their us headquarters here in Atlanta. And then, uh, fleet FleetCor, uh, Atlanta company, uh, has, uh, I think over, uh, over 10%, it's 10, 10 to 15% of their top line revenue comes out of, um, uh, Brazil. Uh, there, there, I think they handle moat. I think all of the toll, um, the toll payment for'em around transportation are handled by fleet Corps. Uh, and then there's a variety of other, um, capabilities they have there as well. But that, um, so then, and then it, it's been a pretty dramatic week, right. With this WhatsApp, um, launch in Brazil. Um, talk a bit about what's happened, Elizabeth.

Speaker 1: 31:16

Yeah. It resolves an interesting case on that number of levels. And, um, you know, we've all been, had our worlds rocked by, uh, some effect of, you know, COVID, even if we haven't been, uh, gotten sick, right. Uh, but it's changed all of our lives and COVID is certainly having an effect in Brazil too. So there's a very competitive marketplace in Brazil already. They're bigger users of cards than most other developing countries. They've also had a pretty, you know, an electronic payment system. So digital for 20, 30 years now, and sort of giving you some background here, the system gets to be about 30 years old. It needs to be renovated. And the reason it did so much so early in Brazil is because of hyperinflation. And when you have a hyperinflation environment, you want to be able to move your money quickly because the time value of money in a inflationary environment is more precious than at any other time. So you want to spend it before, uh, it loses value. So they've been digital for a long time, but now it's time to renovate that system. And the central bank there is working towards launching a new replacement instant payment system in November. So that's in the background, maybe that was one of the motivations to get into the market early for Facebook. And that was possibly why they wanted to launch a WhatsApp. There is a pay function. So, you know, more quickly, of course, uh, not privy to their, uh, corporate strategies, but, uh, it's a big market period. And then we also have just everyone, you know, needing to make more digital payments. And I was just talking with Tommy earlier that, uh, it's amazing what Brazil has been able to do with social disbursements. They needed to send yeah. Around COVID right. So a lot of families were not able to work and they needed some emergency assistance just like we did here with the cares act, right. People needed some funds to, um, tide them over until they could get back to work. And the Brazilian government has opened up about 41 million accounts since February 41 million accounts to disperse these funds. And of course, most of those folks did not have any account before, or they would have been able to receive it, um, digitally, uh, otherwise. So this is a very, uh, if you will hot market and for payments in general, a lot of companies pay big there. Um, I think income is also in Brazil and other, um, big Atlanta company. So, you know, face up, excuse me, it's almost Friday. It's okay. I'm going to stop talking. What's up. Hey, comes into the market. And, um, all of this going on and they're in the market for about 24, 36 hours and the central bank tells them that they need to stop. And that, uh, the companies that are making this available need to, if you will, um, you know, cease the payment function until they go through a regulatory licensing process. And this is one of the, I think, you know, uh, I'll call it interesting or fascinating aspects of what's going on that, you know, WhatsApp is not actually processing the payment, um, on the app, it's going over there accepting, uh, you know, debit from certain financial institutions, right? So the MasterCard Brazil has its own, uh, card network called Ello, um, which is, uh, you know, related to merchants, the solution here. And they, uh, they told those companies to stop processing those payments. So the Brazilian government is basically asking a question, which a lot of regulators around the world are, is who's the payment provider here. Who's my, who do I regulate? And so that, you know, it appears that they're asking, um, Facebook or WhatsApp to now get a license that as what we're reading in the news story said, they so interesting regulatory intersect.

Speaker 5: 36:29

Yeah. Um, well, as we begin to wrap up, I wanted to just hear from each of you in a big FinTech news, that's caught your attention in the past, uh, week. Um, how about you, Michael? What's what's hit your radar. So I think the biggest one that hit my radar by far was the wired card story. I thought that was it's saying, yeah, that one, uh, it's been hard to read or hear about, or even follow as someone who's kind of been part of this FinTech as an industry for years and years and years. Uh, cause it's a, it's a little, it's a bit of a black eye. Um, cause this was a huge, um, uh, FinTech payments provider out of Germany. At one point their market cap was larger than Deutsche bank. Um, and, um, yeah, audit was done$2 billion missing and uh, just in the past week, uh, the CEO is resigned. He's been arrested and I think last night they, um, bank or a plane. So it's, um, it's a pretty, it's been tough to read. Um, what about you Elizabeth? Any big news?

Speaker 1: 37:47

Well, the, um, the, the WhatsApp story out of Brazil I think is the biggest one. And, uh, yeah, the, the opportunity to get that right is, uh, is so pressing, you know, I, I hope that they figure that out, uh, and can move forward and get back in the market. Cause there's already other players in the Brazilian market that are offering some digital payment services over WhatsApp, but they've also taken out their own license. So is Facebook the channel or the payment system? I think that's the question for them to figure out.

Speaker 5: 38:23

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's going to be interesting to see how that transpires, um, the only other bits that are a few other items that caught my eye, one was, um, PayPal, PayPal, and Venmo. Um, same company, um, meant put out a press release that they were going to allow for cryptocurrency buying and selling, which, um, I think is remarkable. And it's just another data point that cryptocurrency is starting to move into a, maybe more, more acceptable, mature state in, uh, in the, in the system. Uh, so I was excited to see that. And then lastly, for those, that of you that have paid attention to Encino and the banking cloud-based banking platform built on, um, Salesforce, they, uh, file an[inaudible] meaning they're going to be doing an IPO at sometime in the near future, uh, which is, uh, of course a big, a big step in the evolution of, in that, uh, in that content company. Well, uh, thank you both for being part of this podcast. It is great to have you both as friends to the Georgia FinTech Academy,

Speaker 1: 39:45

Michael,

Speaker 5: 39:46

Um, look forward to spending more time with you working with you over the coming months. And Elizabeth, I hope you will come back. We, we have several, uh, events we want to pull you into in the fall. So, uh, when you about those,

Speaker 1: 40:03

Well, great to meet you, Michael. And, uh, I be awesome if you took some of those, uh, you know, engineering skills and apply them to the payment space. There's an opportunity here for you. I think I need to repave the systems of the U S first, but I definitely will.

Speaker 2: 40:21

The Georgia FinTech Academy podcasts are available on iTunes and Spotify to obtain additional information about the Georgia FinTech Academy. Please visit our website@georgiafintechacademy.org.