Episode 19: The Digital Evolution of Merchant Onboarding for Payments. William Tong and Rich Hill of FIS Global, Ayesha Munnaza, Georgia State

William Tong, Global Head of Product Engineering for Payment Solutions and Rich Hill, Strategy and Architecture of FIS Global join Georgia State student Ayesha Munnaza to discuss advancements in merchant onboarding for payment solutions. The team also re-caps big fintech news from the week.

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Speaker 1 0:06

Welcome to the Georgia FinTech Academy podcast. The Georgia FinTech Academy is a collaboration between Georgia's FinTech 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 FinTech sector.

Speaker 2 0:26

Hi everybody. This is Tommy Marshall executive director of the Georgia FinTech Academy. And this is episode 19 of our weekly podcast. Today's August the sixth 2020, and I'm excited to have three guests today. Uh , William Tong from FIS global rich Hill from FIS global and Iyisha Manasseh from Georgia state Georgia FinTech Academy is our student guest today. Welcome to all of you. Thanks Tommy. William. Let me , um, start with you. We want to hear about your career journey and in FinTech. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 1:10

All right . So currently , um , I am responsible for the product engineering , um, of the merchant solutions of FIS and by the way, I'm based in Cincinnati. Um, so you might capacity , uh , my team and I are responsible for product development , uh, for North America , uh, UK, and , uh, and also support the international markets ranging from everything you can think of , uh, that our , uh , salespeople will sell to the merchants as well as supporting all the internal , uh, applications , uh, that our customer care , uh, agent for example , uh, to use , uh, so cover a very broad range of areas , um, you know, from payment and all the add on value added product when a payment, including , uh , fraud and chargeback is spills, like kind of products. I started my career , uh, really , uh, uh, as , uh , as a student , um, in college, or I graduated from my Wayne state university in Detroit, Michigan. Um , my family migrated to the United States , um, you know, several decades ago. Um, so I was born in and raised in Hong Kong. Uh, prior to that, I, I somehow bumped me into , uh , computer science , uh, totally by accident because of my own mistake. Um, I missed the enrollment of , uh, engineering and , uh , so the school was falling and as I say, we want them to bad. Uh, we don't have any , it's a place for you in this engineering , uh , will you consider computer science? And at that time, I didn't know anything about computer science. And so I, I went on and , uh , got my degree in computer science, my bachelor and master , and , uh , being in Detroit , uh , Michigan. Um , you can probably guess at that time , uh , what are the job prospects? So , uh , most of our , my family, my friends in Detroit, they all work for the big three. So my first job actually was in general motors. I started off as a mainframe , uh , programmer and learned a lot about how do you , uh , do , uh , coding correctly. That means they do it in a way that is peace in a friendly , uh , modern , they show off kind of thing about my beat , my programming skill . Um, so, so my carrier , uh , went on , um, I was grateful to have mentor , uh, in my career, so I followed .

Speaker 4 3:36

So William, what co what were you coding in? Well ,

Speaker 3 3:43

It was fantastic. I was coding in COBOL and , uh ,

Speaker 4 3:50

Rock

Speaker 3 3:51

Do with the pandemic. If you're not a stay , if you heard about the U S government IRS , um, they were having difficulty in issuing some of those , uh, checks okay. For , uh , depends demic relief and autos program for working in cobalt . I actually, before that, I could probably help the U S government, but my scale . Um, so , um, so, but , um, my, my carrier , uh, progress a lot due to my , um, the re the relationship that I have with my mentor. He guided me along. And so pretty much I moved from Michigan down to Texas , uh , Dallas, Texas. I stayed there for 20 years and I ended up , uh, after that to spend 20 years with Citibank , uh, globally , uh, North America, as well as , uh, outside North America. And interestingly in both it and also outside it. So like , um , when I took on an oversee assignment in Asia, I actually ended up to run the copies and you in Hong Kong , uh, just a small portfolio in the U S standard, only a billion dollar portfolio , uh , about a million card members , uh , small portfolio, but high profit, 10% margin. So when I returned back to the United States , um, about , uh, more than 10 years ago , uh , my carrier taught me back to it. And , uh, so Citibank is around to transfer me , um, you know, from Dallas to Baltimore and then to Cincinnati. Um, so , um , I ended up joining FIS , uh, three years ago, and I was a bit worried about leaving a great company like Citibank global company , uh , into a company that is , uh , at that time was mostly based in Cincinnati, but I did not regret the decision. Actually, the only regret I have is I didn't join it earlier because , um, I'm moving into a very , uh, uh, emerging type of payment field and also joining a team of people , uh , that are fantastic in terms of their ability to deliver , uh , did the , do you know the team we have is, are we committed to safe, agile , um, and totally deliver everything in agile? So really , uh, so summarize my caricature and you have been , uh , preparation , uh , for my career , uh, a lot of the computer science type of education, but it's the learning or the business allow me whether I was in general motors or later on in city bank, really understanding how the business runs and my exposure having run a business helped me to bring on a lot of financial discipline that I need to have , uh , to deliver products. Um, and definitely , uh, 20 years in , I find also services like Citibank helped me prepare myself to be in a FinTech today, driving a lot of payments solution forward. Yeah,

Speaker 2 6:46

Thanks for all that way. And, and I wanted to thank you too, for coming to the Georgia FinTech Academy back in early March, when we hosted the FIS D three event development demo day, and you were just great and were generous with your time and spend a lot of time with our students that were part of that event. And , uh, it was great , uh , to, to be able to capture a bit of your wisdom as , as part of that. And hopefully we can do that again soon, looking forward to rich. Um, tell us about your story.

Speaker 5 7:22

Uh, sure. Thanks, Tommy . Um, so I'm rich Hill. I'm also based here in Cincinnati, along with William I'm a Cincinnati lifelong . I haven't moved around the globe when he has , um , currently lead a , a team of enterprise architects inside of FIS global for our , um, for our merchant solutions group. Um, what that means is we take a look at the most risky and complex initiatives that we'd like to tackle as a company. Um, and those items can come together and coalesce in my team where we can provide a conceptual solution for the other groups to work on. So that's really bringing together our larger business strategy and the technology components and bringing those two together. Uh, I also lead our innovation hub at the university of Cincinnati and manage our larger university of Cincinnati relationship, kind of my , my background to get here. I started off , uh, my , my college career at , uh, at OSU and the , uh , uh, computer engineering program there , uh, knew very early on in high school that I really wanted to be involved in software development and computer field. So I felt very lucky to, to know what I wanted to do as I was leaving high school, going into college. Um, but then found that the, the program I was in at OSU was a little bit too theoretical for me . I'm a , I'm a hands-on learner, I'm a hands-on kind of individual. Um, and I'm , I'm really outcome and performance focused . So I transferred from there down to the university of Cincinnati , um, where I learned kind of a really valuable lesson in the , uh , in the co-op program. So , uh, the university of Cincinnati was the kind of initiator and founder , uh , of co-op in the United States. Um, so I did five different co-op working rotations while I was there. And for all the students listening, I can't stress strongly enough how much value there is in getting the real world experience. Um, we love having interns and co-ops work with us at FIS. Um, and I know the value that that brings is just fantastic. Uh, after I finished my career or my college career at UC , I worked at , uh , Cintas. Who's a , uh , more of a service delivery company here in the Cincinnati area as a software developer with them. I worked there for 12 years. Uh, so I was pretty heavily invested in that company. Um, and then I came over to what was at the time veins , which became FIS today. Uh , and I'll say much like William, even though I was at my prior company for over a decade. My only regret is that I didn't come across sooner because it has been so fun. And I've had so many great challenges and met so many great people during this time. Um, really, I think what convinced me to come over was just the scale of the problems that we're trying to solve in the FinTech space. You look at the billions of transactions that we're processing on an annual basis, the trillions of dollars in money movement that needed to occur , um , from the, you know, kind of mundane acts of maybe , uh , watching a video online to the , uh, the hyper-critical of making sure that people can actually pay for their prescriptions at a pharmacy, right. There is a lot that needs to be done in the payment space, and it's really just innovating and moving so quickly , uh, that there's always new challenges and new problems to solve. I came over as a software developer and spent about two and a half years in that role. Um, from now I went on to a , kind of a system architecture role before moving into enterprise architecture , uh, where I kind of solve problems now, less at the particular system level and more at a, at a holistic business level. And then now I'm leading a team of enterprise RX X , which is a whole new challenge to, to get to work with such a fantastic group of individuals throughout our company.

Speaker 2 11:03

Thanks a bunch for that rich. And , um, as we get into our topic discussion, let's , um, let's definitely dive in on some of those kinds of complexities and challenges and how things have been evolving in the payments industry over the last few years. Uh, Iyisha tell us about you.

Speaker 6 11:24

Hey, so , um, my name is Ayesha and I am a master's student at Georgia state university. I did not do anything in software development or engineering. So my background comes from insurance and risk management, but I realized that , um, this is something that I really wanted to do learn coding. So I took a class from Stanford during COVID time and , um , started learning Python, but , um , I'm still gonna continue that in my master program and learn different languages, but, and then this, my second podcast, I've done that before with you , Tommy . So I'm really excited to be with you guys here today and like really learn a lot about this.

Speaker 2 12:01

It is very nice to have you back, and I will go ahead and say hello to all the listeners you bring to the podcast from India and the middle East. Welcome back. The , uh , also Asia , I love this. Like, what you just mentioned to me is really important. The fact that you've kind of JoVE in and to the business side of , uh, financial services. I know mainly kind of from a risk management standpoint, but the fact that you , uh , saw value in learning , um, about software development. And I think I'm sure as we're talking with , uh, with rich and with William here, there'll be some good examples of how that is critical to how great financial services technology, product, and service is done today, where you've got people that really understand the business and understand software development and the tighter we can bring those, those two ideas or concepts together, the greater, the quality and the results and the power of the solutions that get created. Um, so let's talk about merchant acquiring merchant onboarding that part of the payments value chain. Um, you want to kick us off William?

Speaker 3 13:28

Oh yeah. I mean, I tell you what, this is a very interesting and fun topic and , uh , because it's the, it , this is, this is amazing to me and because it's really the whole , uh, process about , uh, getting customer , uh, onto your business, right, is a really important part of anything, any businesses. And it's not just unique to , uh , the payment , uh, FinTech. Uh, it is a process that is evolving over time. So if you don't mind, let me take it back to , uh, the history of the immersions solution. You FIS a, you started off years ago with some of the well established merchants that you may have heard of their names in the U S um, it , uh, I would name like Kroger , uh, independent dynamic property to grocery store, like Kroger. It had done a lot of good things , uh, for the people and , um, and , um, and, and, and they always, you , one of the early adopters of our payment solutions. Right. So, so , um, but, but to get on customers like Kroger or other big merchant , it could be like Macy's and Nordstrom and all that. You can imagine their sales processes take months and could be years. Okay. Uh , talking to Costco to ask them, Hey, why can't we process payment for you? It's not something that you can be done in a minute or two or, or a day or two, right? So the process, a lot of the payment company evolve from traditional sale process , uh , human touch, right. Uh, build a relationship and , um, and take time. And he actually , uh , once upon a time , uh, a lot of company , uh, payments FinTech will take pride in servicing the customer, what they call more like a white glove approach. Okay. It's very hands on high touch and all that, but think about it, right? If you are a small merchant, you're a small business people, you really can't afford to hire a lot of people to entertain all the or your payments service provider. Okay. You, you want, you know, you want your employee to spend time with your own customer in sort of talking to the vendor or your partner who providing you payment services. So a lot of things have changed over time, especially when we are attending more to the SMB , uh, type of , uh, you know, as a small business. And then we realized that is we have to change the way that we interact. Now, the all important process actually is quite complicated. Right? You started off with either the merchant will contact us. For example, if you , uh , uh, opening a restaurant , um , you are wondering who actually can help you manage the payment of customers who come into your restaurant pay using debit card or credit card, right out of cash. And , uh , so you may reach out to a company like FIS, like , can you help us? Or what the other way around is we have salespeople who has to go to look out for business, right? So you really start with a sale process. And then once there's interest on both sides, then you need to talk about is , um, you know, what kind of , uh , pricing arrangement , uh, do you talk about contract talk about document that you have to sign agreement? Okay. So in the old days, a lot is going through what paper bays , uh, fax machines are running off the off fitness , and then, you know , it can come up where, you know, on a, on a good day, you said , could not come up with the number of pages that are running off from the fax machine. Right?

Speaker 7 17:23

No, I haven't seen it in that. I know, like my dad talked about it.

Speaker 3 17:30

Yeah. So , um, so, so, so the process involve a lot of , uh , still interaction back and forth , uh, you know, between FIS and the merchants agreement, paperwork that you have to sign. And then once you agree , uh, recurrence and all that, right. Then that the process doesn't end there. And then , um, then of course we have to begin the registrar, the merchant onto our database. Uh , but then we have to talk about what kind of equipment does immersion need to use, right? So if they are brick and mortar type of a merchant, they would need to have POS right, the , upon a sales kind of a device or terminal, then you have to ship those equipment. Okay. The POS terminal and any kind of equipment that had come with that, then we have a range for provisioning those , uh , type of , uh , equipment and termino to make sure they arrive on time and all that. So , so you can see if the process is pretty good , could be pretty lengthy and it could be take days and weeks a month. Right. But guess what, a few years ago , um, in FIS, we determined that is, that is not the way to go. Okay. We can do a lot of better, be more responsive , uh , especially to the small I'm at the , to the SMP , uh , to the small merchants and all that. And

Speaker 2 18:55

A lot of that, wasn't, it just, it's been driven by these merchants themselves, who, you know, of course are like people like all of us and we interacting with the Amazons and the , uh, you know, PayPals and et cetera. And in terms of our e-commerce experience , and this has been my gains that like commerce experience goes back now to its beginnings in what the late nineties, and that has really continued to mature and more and more and more, and more of us have engaged in it to where there's this expectation that if I'm opening up a brick and mortar store, I should be able to kind of quickly figure out how I'm gonna accept credit cards. And it should be as easy as a couple of clips . And I'd imagine that's been just driving all this change , uh, that we need that's needed to occur in the , uh, in terms of the brick and mortar merchant , part of the merchant , uh, experience onboarding [inaudible]

Speaker 3 20:05

Absolutely. It's the whole expectations and the experience, right? So he's really changing the way, how we look at the overall customer experience has changed dramatically from , uh , pampering them. Uh, Y you know, you have the white Groff approach become more hands-off self-service you need to stand , right. And so, so that is what really driving us to a new generation of onboarding experience. And we set the goal , uh, about like , uh, more than two years ago, about two years ago that we need to be able to onboard a merchant under two minutes. And then I'm clear to tell you that is, yes, we can do it. Now. We have achieved that. Okay. But that require tremendous change. And , um, in the overall process, and also with automation along the way, that means it's now all our agreement document, everything can go through electronically, okay. The Omar fax , but along the way, the whole boarding process is rather complicated because it's , we have to be able to qualify a merchant to make sure that the merchant is safe and sound from a credit prospective , have good reputation. It's a strong, it's a good business. And so we will have to verify the risk of doing business with the merchant, the credit profile, or the merchant. So we use technology like FICO , for example , uh, you know, to rely on us, to verify the credit worthiness of the merchant. I will tell you that is , uh, before we , uh, launched on this , uh, new boarding experience , uh, that credit check process was one of our bottleneck. So as much as we tried to automate, we found out what that is. We could only have what we call about, about 60 something percent strict through that means is only about 50 something percent of the merge of the new version . We go through the check, the credit , the credit check process that we can actually begin to tell them , Hey, you are good. And you have put to go are the 30% of that we dependent . And we further investigation that is not a good experience, a lot of merchant, right? Cause it may delay the delay in hours a day. So I guess one ,

Speaker 2 22:37

The investigation means there's a human that's having to get asked a lot of questions and make phone calls. And

Speaker 3 22:46

Exactly. So we then launched an internal investigation to see what is really going on. Uh, what value does that additional time and give us occasion really pious. So make a long story short, we're able to dramatically improve that today is more than 90, you know, a very high percentage of the credit check process for the merchant. I able to go through that allow us to have that two minute type of window to finish the entire boardings .

Speaker 2 23:23

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So rich, I'm really curious to hear, like, as you're with, when you're working with your enterprise architecture team , um, like how , how , you know, what I know her kind of looking out now, I guess a year, multiple years ahead, trying to think about where this pump's gonna move next, or really how to continue to make these , uh, meaningful , um, these meaningful advancements , uh, continue to occur from a technological standpoint. So help us understand how you're looking, you know, what what's that crystal ball telling you,

Speaker 5 24:00

Right. Sure. Yeah. I think , uh, right. I'm , I'm no Kreskin and , uh , and anybody who's putting a lookout , uh, you know, multiple years in the future, you're always going to have to put a risk lens on that as well. So we'll come up with , uh , with kind of a hypothesis on where we need to go over the next couple of years. Uh, we've got great, great partners inside of our enterprise architecture organization, or really thinking, you know, looking at the assets that we have today, looking at the capabilities and technology that we need going forward and projecting out maybe two to three years at most, because beyond that, frankly, in a technology environment and especially in a FinTech environment, thinking out more than two or three years is a , is just fantasy. Um, so, so we'll set those markers , uh, on where we want to be achieving over the next two to three years. And we, as we go through and we create solutions working in teams, teams like Williams , uh, we're going to try to nudge the solutions are doing towards that two to three-year target, but we're also cognizant of the fact that the landscape is always shifting and changing. This is a really fast moving space. So we, we're also constantly refreshing what that two to three year target looks like. I think the, the analogy I like to use is like a GPS system. You know, we want to get from Cincinnati to Atlanta , uh, and on this trip, we kind of understand where our destination might be. But as we start going down the road, traffic jams might be occurring from new construction or a pile up just occurred somewhere. So we're going to adjust the path as we're going along. And we might even determine that , uh, instead of , uh, instead of having just one spot BR and destination, maybe even parts of that destination are gonna change a little bit. So as we go over time, it's, we're never setting out just to achieve a target we're setting out to achieve a constantly changing target team .

Speaker 6 26:00

You mentioned that you work with Valium . So you're from the architect, you know , enterprise team and William is from the product engineering team. So how does an FIS all these small department like armaments work together to make a big picture?

Speaker 5 26:15

Great. Yeah, so we really focus on creating architecture with a specific lens towards business value. So as, as we look at new initiatives that are coming into the company, our first thought is how, what value is this going to drive the company? And that's our touchstone. So then my team is going to look at who are the upstream and downstream stakeholders that we really need to engage to make sure that we've got the right solution for the company. So our we're working with our product organization to make sure we understand what the user experience needs to be like working with the line of business, to make sure that we can actually sell whatever it is we're talking about, working with legal and compliance teams to make sure that what we're talking about doing is appropriate in the context of whichever market we're looking at developing it in with , uh, with our stakeholders like Williams' teams and the system architects and the, the release train engineers and the developers on that team to make sure if we're providing a recommendation, their group is also aligned that it's within the model of development for their platforms, the capabilities that they have, or we're looking to add, and they have the technical skills already in place, or they're ready to get them in order to achieve on that. So it's really a very strong, collaborative effort of making sure that all the, all the interested parties and we've got a solution that works across the board. Um, you know, it's , uh, I like to describe it as a, as a cross section of marriage counseling and detective work. So we're, we're finding , we're finding where , uh , we're all the overlaps are through this great detective work, and then we're aligning everybody to the right solutions for this kind of marriage counseling , uh, activity.

Speaker 3 28:00

Yeah. And I would say rich , um , rich and his team play a pivotal role in ensuring that is all the applications and , uh, product solutions that we , uh, building , uh, we have built , uh, coming together cohesively in the eyes of the customer. Right. And I , I think that that type of , uh, overarching focus , uh, ensuring that it is , uh, the compatibility of various solution , uh, that , uh, evolving over time , uh , and coming together, right? So they are driving, not just today, they're looking out for tomorrow. So a lot of things we are doing at FIS is constantly modernizing , uh, what we do. Uh, it is a ongoing journey. I will tell you some other , um, application, for example , uh, when we interact with the customer , uh, we, we interact with them through a lot of portal, for example, right? And so for large merchant, they use a portal , uh, to , uh, do , uh, to receive a lot of data , uh, do a lot of data analytics and reporting and all that , uh, and, and launch merger and have large it department, right? So you can imagine that is it, people have a different need for getting data and report , um, or they have , uh , people who are specialized in skill in analyzing, but then when you do a small merchant , uh, most small mentioned can afford to her it organization. So we got the ability to deliver a report that is easier to anybody to use and understand and all that. So that is a different sort of requirement. And so the performance delivery will be very different. So we worked through rich team, the EA team, the enterprise architecture team to make sure that we select the right kind of technology when we're moving from an enterprise auto into a mobile application, delivering that, what makes you that is we carry that forward in a seamless kind of way. And then that is a type of collaboration that is so precious and so important to have in any company. And we're so fearful we have that , uh, you're never, I asked , um , you know, to maintain the consistent customer experience across all our product lines. Yeah , yeah,

Speaker 2 30:21

No , that's great context. Um, let's move towards , um, talking a bit of what caught our attention in the news, the FinTech news in the last week. Um, I will , uh, I'll kick things off by two things I wanted to highlight are really , um, kind of some big , uh, regulatory related milestones. Um, first off , uh, Vero money is a Neo bank, a digital bank, digital only bank in the United States. That is the first bank of that nature to get a national bank charter, which is a huge deal. Uh, and so they've got a national bank charter from the OCC , uh, with , um, with approvals from the FDA and the federal reserve. Uh, so that was , uh , you know, it's something that's been talked about in the industry for as long as I can remember. Uh, when would we see the first kind of digital bank get a national bank charter? So a major milestone occurred last week, and then additionally, and this one relates more to , uh, the cryptocurrency , uh, ongoing conversation is that the, again, the OCC came out with a very kind of the clearest letter yet saying that banks could custody , uh , cryptocurrency assets, which are, you know, Bitcoin theory for most of you listeners. Excellent. What , uh, they represent. Uh, so kind of the big kind of big moments , uh, in, just in this last week from a kind of regulatory advancement , uh, standpoint. Um, how about you , uh, William what's caught your attention?

Speaker 3 32:08

Well, I'll tell you what this pandemic is a game changer in many way, right ? It , um, it, it, it , the how the consumer has adapted , uh, to the whole , uh, new , uh, the new world order , uh, is amazing, but also more importantly is how the merchants are also adapting . So I will tell you , um, in the us , uh, there was, most of these States have locked down right in about March and April merchants are struggling that they couldn't open the store, and yet they still have the ability to sell the inventory for example, and how could they do that? So I will tell you that in FIS, what we did is we actually have something called a virtual terminal , uh , that we have the technology in place already. And , uh, in the normal days, most machines do not have to use it. Uh, so during the March and April timeframe, we quickly open it up to all merchants who want to have it , um, make it available. And actually we actually waived the fee , uh, for them. Uh, and that was a game changer , allow a lot of merchants to continue conducting transaction without the physical POS. Uh, so, so, so , uh, they acted like become like a Yukon merchant, right. Suddenly. And , uh, so, so we have to receive definitely our e-com , uh, transaction , uh, you know, have increase , um, and all that. And we, and thankfully we have , while we've been a li a leader in a Yukon business globally. Uh, so that was a , um , a, a very interesting change that how we adapt that okay. Both the consumer and immersion together , uh, so that they can continue to transact , uh , without a store being open. Yeah.

Speaker 2 33:57

I also noticed , uh , just yesterday William, that visa had released a , what they're calling their back to business , um, study survey results study. And , uh, it was remarkable. It said that 67% of small medium business SMB category , um, had had a behavioral major kind of behavioral change in flops to the pandemic. And then 78% of consumers have , have adopted a new payment behavior , uh, which was, you know, contactless checkout in and break it up. So either, you know, using their mobile device for the, to , um , initiate the payment transaction or the RFID on a piece from a , from a process, you know , uh , different modalities, which , um, you know, really, I mean, I just assumed there had been meaningful change cause we've seen a lot of time, but just level it's just like, you know, it's , it's like almost everybody which blows my mind used to be , you think about it , you just look at something like Apple pay, which is now what I think almost five years old. Uh , and you know, it was, it , it been very, very slow in terms of adoption. And then you just know it's probably just gone, boom, you know, and really got

Speaker 3 35:21

Absolutely. And, and that is something that that's why FIS is always ready to be paired to support that kind of payment. Um, and , um, and , and, and we have to continue to attend to the customer choices. But one thing I know that some of you may be interested in like the fraud and the risk area. Right. Cause there's a lot of the , um , e-commerce type of transaction that you probably know is very prong to , uh , fraud , right. The lack of identity , um , and, and in-person kind of purchase. So, so , uh, we, we all have seen that either demand for our fraud technology and product. I also have gone up by the way. And , um, so, so luckily we have a wide variety. Um, I , uh , a like a manual choices , uh, for different kinds of , uh , uh, fraud products for different kinds of merchant needs. And we definitely are seeing , uh, you know, the demand of that. And , um, and , and we are glad we are able to help the merchant that way as well. Yeah .

Speaker 5 36:28

What's caught your attention this week. Got it . I love that you brought up the, the Vero money piece, getting the national bank charter, right. The regulatory environment in the U S we know, on a state by state basis is , is just really challenging. Um, you know, and , and we've seen, especially in acceleration since the financial crisis of, of the regulatory environment in the UK, especially allowing these neobanks to get off the ground very quickly. Um, so it's exciting to see a digital only neobank , uh, really get that step in the, in the U S side as well. Um, I think for my perspective on the, on the news this week is , was also earnings week , uh, on a lot of spaces in the FinTech arena , uh , for FIS included. Um, you know, I think one of the things to me that that was a real standout was, was really around the , uh, the synergies between bringing together the Worldpay organization that William and I came from and the FIS portion, the organization, right. That was a $43 billion acquisition that completed last year. So, so pretty darn huge. Um, and , and it's really always very tough to bring together these acquisitions. And I think as a sign of just , uh , how strong the , the culture overlap was, is really when you look at the synergies that you get between it. So just in the last quarter, we had 115 million of run rate synergies , uh, that we were able to achieve. And we also had cost synergies of $700 million. So that was, that was a pretty big announcement on this Tuesday , the earnings earnings call. Um, you know, if you think back to just where we were a year ago, when this, when a large announcement like this was made , uh, the original target was $400 million in annual operating cost synergies. We're already we're right now on track to hit that about two years early. Um, so I think if you, if you look at the different players in the FinTech space, especially the very large players between the, the FIS, the Fiserv and the, and the global right, re kind of biggest ones in the U S space , um, it's really a Testament to how we're able to adapt and achieve in the U S market , uh, and globally , uh, in order to make these things , uh, occur, you know , the , the Apple pain , uh, part I think was, was really critical to Tommy , right ? The , the transition to these new forms of payments are always very slow until they're not right. So, so being prepared to accept whether it's , uh , Apple pay Samsung pay, right? We , uh, we support Amazon as well. All of these, all these payment modalities and new ways of actually doing business, they might come on very slow Apple pay. Might've had a very slow ramp up over five years, but you gotta be ready to, for that switch to be flipped when consumer behavior changes.

Speaker 3 39:23

Yeah. So Tom, Tommy, and another thing, I don't know, you caught your eyes or not, which is also interesting. I think it probably is more relevant to the consumers who the customer , uh, but , uh , but keep the merchant another way to , um, uh , to, to support it. I don't know . You , you saw the announcement about Citibank and Amazon , um, basically that is a Citibank will support the installment payment, right. Because there's, as you know, as, you know, a lot of the credit card payment that either you pay for, or you basically will , uh , you incur interest. I usually, usually, which is high. Okay. If you don't pay off the balance. So some parents like Citibank now say is Amazon and say, Hey, whoever buys things on Amazon, right. They actually can pay back in installment . Right . Okay. I mean, so in this kind of economic conditions and all that, they become another , uh , convenience for the customer to choose the consumer to choose. So I think you're going to see more and more those kinds of a collaboration, not just at the point of sales, but what happened after that? Okay. So what the whole financing part of that aligned with the payment and , um, and that kind of , uh , uh, I would say combined capability will really make a differentiation, what we have seen, like in square, right. The cash app and all those, we are probably see a lot more of those coming.

Speaker 5 40:49

Yeah. Yeah. That's fair and signing. Um, I Aisha, how about you?

Speaker 6 40:56

So in the news this week was cabbage like our local and tech company that was the provided of funding for small businesses. Um, they were also like odd performed by many large vendors because of their , um, pay a paycheck protection program during COVID now are up for sale. So probably looking around 750 million to around 1 billion, I would say from cabbage. So that was very interesting.

Speaker 5 41:21

She asked your day news from cabbage that there , um , PPP that payment protection loan volume has now exceeded that of JP Morgan chase their wild number one provider

Speaker 2 41:34

Of PPP loans in those days, which is pretty significant Testament to their platform. Um, well, I want to thank you all for, for your time today. I want to remind everyone that FIS is a founding investor in the Georgia FinTech Academy. We're grateful for that. And , uh , William for your time, William, you and rich your time today. And thanks for all your engagement with FinTech Academy. And , um, can't can't thank you enough.

Speaker 1 42:03

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