November 22, 2025 • 34 mins
Money Travels Podcast Season 3, Episode 12
For migrant workers sending remittances back home, cross-border payments can be slow, complex and expensive. It was this challenge Ambar Sur set out to solve when he left his telecom background and co-founded Terrapay in 2014. Inspired by telecom’s seamless global connectivity, Ambar set about building a robust network to enable instant, low-cost digital transactions, helping workers move more money more quickly across borders and increasing financial inclusion in the process. In this episode, we talk to Ambar about his Terrapay journey and how digital wallets are reshaping financial ecosystems to meet UN Sustainable Development Goals. We discuss the power of interoperability, explore the real-world impact of digital wallets, and ask about the challenges still to be addressed in the quest for borderless financial connectivity.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I wanted to do to money what roaming did to telecom.
This week, we're joined by Ambassador, the founder and CEO
of Terape. I should be able to take my
wallet and go anywhere in the world, tap it, use it, and I
don't need to worry about currency or who's sending me
money from where. Somebody's working on one of
those big economy sites. He's getting $5, he's sitting in
one country, he's crying becausehe can't go home for Christmas,
(00:22):
and he sent ten of his cousins money for Christmas.
That's real, right? This remittance transfer is the
lifeblood of several countries. They see it going up and down,
and then they come back to us and think, what happened?
We do small value remittances where the money we send makes a
difference. We worked very hard with the
regulators. We sit across the table and he
explained, somebody's a YouTube influencer.
(00:44):
He's got $5 that week. The money needs to reach him.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Money Travels
presented by Visa. Well, we explore the
extraordinary innovation in digital finance, transforming
lives and livelihoods everywhere.
I'm rich. I'm Max Amba, welcome to the
(01:05):
show. Thank you guys.
So, Amba, we'd like to start theshow by asking a simple question
to our guest. Take us back to 2014, where
everything started. What problem were you trying to
solve and why did you create therapy at that time?
My background is telecom. I I grew up where, you know, we
(01:28):
grew up in disparate systems, not talking to each other.
And then we got uniform standards and we got roaming.
And today we can actually travelthe world, not tell anyone where
we are. The same number works, all of
it. And I wanted to do to money what
roaming did to telecom. I should be able to take my
wallet and go anywhere in the world, tap it, use it, and I
(01:49):
don't need to worry about currency or who's sending me
money from where. When you look at mobile wallet
systems across the world, you'llsee that they are individual
islands, right? Each serving it's own local
purpose. But there was a need to
integrate all of this and make one unified money movement
system, which is what we wanted to do.
(02:10):
Can I? Just ask maybe a very simple
question and this comes from spending some time with kind of
friends and family over the summer who have watched the
podcast, but don't come from theworld of financial services.
I think for for those of us who've been in this world for a
while, we understand what a wallet and a ditch to what it
(02:32):
is. But could you give us kind of a,
a wallet one O 1 very quickly just to explain the difference
between what a wallet is, what abank account is, etcetera, just
for the context of the conversation?
Simply put, I mean when you lookat your physical wallet, your
wallet has a few instruments in it.
One is your ID, 1 is a credit card, 1 is cash.
Your digital wallet contains a digital ID.
(02:53):
It contains stored value amountswhich is the cash you have and
it has a pass through token which is your card or debit
card. So that that constitutes a
wallet. You can use your wallet for
anything. And I can then go use my digital
wallet, whether it's a phone or an app and tap it wherever I
want. That's really what I look at it
(03:15):
as being a digital wallet. And banks typically sit behind
the wallet. It's it's the store of value for
where when you're using a card or in some wallets like in
Africa, you the wallet itself isa store of value and that stores
the amount. What's the role of the wallets
in, you know, in the, in the financial world today?
So wallets operate in localized islands, right?
(03:38):
You have a wallet in Tanzania, You have a wallet in in Kenya,
You have a wallet in Colombia. You know, Nekim and Peso, all of
it. I wanted to make the wallet
roam. How do I take my Colombia wallet
and go to the UK and pay for it?How do I use my Kenya wallet to
pay a subscriber and pay a supplier in China?
(03:59):
That's really what I wanted to do.
Whenever you're looking at, you know, Kenyan shilling account,
paying pound account and things like that.
So, so to allow the wallet to roam the allow the wallet to
become global. That's what he really wanted to
do. Otherwise it's an individual
things that keep sitting in a country.
And yes, you can use it to pay for groceries.
(04:21):
You can use it to pay for, you know, top up airtime top up or,
or, or some other services, but it really is worthless outside
the country. And that's what we want to do.
Because if you look at the worldtoday, it's shrinking.
There's trade all across the world.
Your goods come from everywhere.Your friends are everywhere.
You want to send money across. You have family linen in other
parts of the world who you want to send $50.00 for Christmas.
(04:42):
How do I efficiently sell, send that money on the 24th of
December to my niece in Nairobi so that she can celebrate
Christmas? Those are things we wanted to do
with the wallet ecosystem. The previous ways was to send
cash. Cash was very expensive, right?
Cash is, is physically difficultto carry.
(05:03):
You have to move it physically. Whereas digitally it is, is
cheaper, but it requires higher speed.
And at that same speed, you needto cover compliance issues as
well. So if you're going, you know, if
you're transmitting that money in 10 seconds, that means you
finish your KYC AM L sanctions screening everything within 10
seconds and send the money across, right?
Our competition is cash and thatneeds to change because that
(05:26):
cash really does not lead to financial inclusion, does not
lead to savings habits. That does does not include bring
women into the financial ecosystem.
And when those changes happen, we see the economies of this
world going up because, you know, lots of countries depend,
a large percentage of their GDP is foreign remittances and they
(05:48):
depend on these things. So that's really, I like it
because, you know, we do small value remittances where the
money we send makes a difference, right?
When you're sending $100, it's paying for shoes, hospital
bills, school fees, all of that versus if you were sending
$5000, which is not paying for that.
It's paying for a painting, the house, a new room or a new car
(06:11):
or something like that. There's a, there's a, there's a
big kind of human element to remittances because as you said,
it's not a 5000 payment for, youknow, doing up your house.
This is the ability for someone to to buy groceries for their
family. Interesting example is we once
got hauled up by the regulator in one country saying look at
this guy, he's sending small value across.
(06:32):
You know, he's done 10 transactions within two minutes,
right? And then we went back to him and
said, look at the date, it's 24th of December.
Look at the people receiving themoney.
They have the same last name. He's sending Christmas gifts.
He's sitting in one country. He's he's crying because he
can't go home for Christmas. And he sent twenty of his or ten
(06:54):
of his cousins money for Christmas.
That's, that's real, right? We have other examples of, of
people sending small value and we call them and they say that,
hey, this is all I earned this week and I wanted to send it
home because my family can eat this week, right?
So those are things we see and, and really when you look at the,
the, the, our average ticket size on a, on a wallet is about
(07:16):
$125.00. Average ticket size in a bank is
about $450, right? And we see money going for
different reasons. People send money twice to, to a
wallet and once to a bank. So he's kind of sending twice
when he sends the money, he's sending it for groceries, food,
daily expenses. Once when he sends it to the
bank, he's sending it as a savings.
So he's kind of working to save for a good day for his house or
(07:41):
everything when it goes home while he's still supporting his
family. So those are things we see these
patterns and it's very heart warming to see how this money
has been used. And also, but what's interesting
is, is talking about there like you having discussions with the
kind of the network partners around explaining the the high
volume of low value transactions.
When we talk about compliance, it's not just about the the
(08:02):
initial KYC and on boarding. It's about kind of explaining
that flow of money to the network partners.
Like how much of what you guys do is spend, you know, over the
boardroom table talking to network partners around?
This is how we understand, this is how we monitor kind of all
the transactions that go through.
Yeah, we work with, we work veryhard with the regulators.
(08:24):
We sit across the table and explain these volume values
going through. We explain work with our network
partners who allow us to terminate a $5 transfer, you
know, transfer some. Somebody's a YouTube influencer.
He's got $5 a week. Money needs to reach him, right?
Somebody's working on one of those gig economy sites.
He's designed a website, he's designed, you know, changed APDF
(08:45):
form for you and he's getting $5.
So we worked with our, we've worked with the regulator to
explain this. We've worked with the partner,
the wallet partner to, to reducetheir fees so that they can
accept a $5 transaction. And, and it's, it's working
well. We see it.
And, and in the emerging marketsis where a lot of the geek
(09:06):
economy sits, right to the guys across the world who are
designing, doing, you know, retyping your letters or doing
PDF formats, doing PPT, all of that.
So we work with all of them. And luckily they have wallets.
So wallets allow for lower valuetransactions and they're working
on that. So yes, we're doing that.
And I think the relationship that you hold with those people
(09:30):
is very important because this isn't a kind of vendor client
relationship and or you know, a teacher telling you off.
This is ultimately the the regulatory ecosystem seeing
someone like Terra pay as a kindof sage advisor in this space
because you have got such a broad reach of wallets.
So you're, you know, on the on the ground seeing what's
happening and your systems are actually monitoring that flow.
(09:53):
I just think that that relationship is so important.
Yeah, yes, it is because they keep coming back to us.
I mean, like we said this, this remittance transfer is the
lifeblood of several countries. And sometimes it goes up for,
for whatever reason, you know, there could be Forex rate
issues, all of that. They see it going up and down
and then they come back to us and saying what happened.
(10:14):
And then we can sometimes have to explain to them, OK, you
know, there is some offshoring happening or, you know, you
raise the rate so high that nobody wants to send it to the
official channel. So they talk to us.
We've had recently we had a regulator who had a conference
with 30 odd people from my industry saying, OK, how can I,
what, what do I do to increase the flows into my country?
So regulators are, you know, seeing these issues.
(10:40):
We now have stable coins coming in.
Regulators are seeing these issues and we're working with
them to see how to bring more flows in legally into their
country and not going out the crypto way.
So regulators are now very active in the space, especially
in emerging markets, looking at all of this to do again to
enable money to flow officially into their countries.
(11:01):
In our latest reports that, you know, we just launched over
years a few months ago, more than 1 billion people globally
rely on remittances. It's really deeply rooted in,
in, in our lives today and, and in many people's lives to to
actually live and sometimes to survive.
So how do you make sure that, you know, you always, you
(11:23):
guarantee that the money is going to come across and, and
that's, you know, the, the people requesting the money or
just receiving the money will actually get it on time.
That's also a big portion of what you do right?
Yeah, 97% of our transactions are delivered in less than 10
seconds, right. And most of it which is not
delivered at that time has to dowith local business rules where
(11:46):
local banking rules where you know, you're not allowed to
deliver money overnight and things like that.
But yes, it, that is that quality of service is something
we hold very dear because primarily if, if you know, when
someone's sending $100 across, that's his life saving, right?
He's going to inquire 3 times a day if that money went through
(12:06):
because he's already called his mother and said money's there
and mother, mother, wife, sister, brother is waiting for
it. As opposed to $5000 landing in
your bank account, which you canafford to get the next day.
So that's really the responsibility we carry.
And therefore that's how we built a network ground up saying
that almost to the extent I go and drop the money in the cash
(12:30):
at A, at a money transfer operator, before I leave the
door and open the door of that money transfer operator, I
should get a text message or or a message from my mother saying
thank you. That's really how it how it
should be for small value payments.
What's interesting is when you, when you speak to CE OS and
(12:50):
founders who've come from outside of the industry that the
approach they take to a effectively a business problem.
I talked about cash is a real barrier to scale and growth.
Think how you your background intelco and how you kind of looked
at that from a scaling and growth point of view and brought
that to a business problem in remittances is is kind of
(13:11):
fascinating. Yeah.
And and the way I look at telcosis telcos handle low value, high
volume transactions. So they're doing, they're
billing for, you know, one MB ofdata at .3 cents, right?
Whereas banks handle high value,low volume transactions.
(13:33):
We were quite sure that for thisbusiness to succeed, you need to
start doing billions of transactions a month, right?
And and that's, that's the learning from telcos and that's
what helped us grow. Also come from that industry.
So there was one thing at that time that that and it feels very
similar and completely connected, which is equipment,
(13:55):
right. How do you move from, you know,
in the, in the in the phone industry, no phones whatsoever
or landlines to go to the mobilephones, right?
And, and here you're talking about the wallets, but you also
talked about cash. And I have like probably a very
basic question, but how do you move from cash to a digital
(14:16):
wallet? It's easy.
I think you need to ask yourselfyourself the question, how many
times have you been to the ATM in the last month, right?
We've seen ourselves probably since COVID to stop using cash.
We don't, we don't withdraw cash.
We've seen the convenience of moving money around digitally,
(14:37):
starting from e-commerce, starting from, you know, quick
commerce or, or ordering food and all of that.
That's already gone digital. Now you need to see how do I
move money to my friends digitally, which many of us are
already doing, which means moneyis moving digitally.
It's, it's, it's a habit. Of course, you know, my mother
(14:58):
still handles cash, right? It's a generational thing.
But my, my kids have probably never touched cash for a while.
We kind of use it once in a while, but it's coming up.
You, you're seeing everybody around us who's who's using it
for e-commerce and other products.
It will happen. Just so convenient.
(15:20):
It has to happen. It happens, you know, probably
in the, you know, the, the countries we live in, you know,
the three of us. But what about where or even
even even if I take, you know, myself in France, some people
are still paid in cash. How do we encourage that shift?
How do we encourage people to actually move from physical cash
(15:44):
to digital wallet? So let me give you a slightly
different paradigm on that. When you look at the emerging
markets in Asia, Africa, Latin parts of Middle East, Central
America, Eastern Europe, the telecom operator is the largest
infrastructure provider in that country.
(16:07):
Places like Uganda, the operatoris the largest taxpayer in that
country, right. More people will will in
experience money Internet moviesthrough their phone then
physically as cash or an Internet cafe or a movie in, in
the cinema halls, right. So the, in the emerging markets
(16:29):
that's already happening. The cost of moving cash around
the way the economy has come up,the, the penetration of
smartphones is much higher in, in, in India, Asia, Africa,
Senegal, Kenya, Colombia, all ofthat.
Yes, it's, it's probably in the developed markets where cash
(16:52):
still works, right? And we are changing those,
right? Of course, credit cards are more
prevalent than debit cards are not being used.
It's a habit. Now cash, I mean, technically
when the company pays you cash, you need to wonder, right?
And and that's not, and as part of the the UNS strategic
(17:13):
development goals, we need to bring everybody into the
financial ecosystem. Getting paid in cash means you
don't have a bank account, whichmeans you don't have credit
history, you don't have all of that to prove that you exist,
which is not good for the economy, which is not good for
you personally. I.
Mean you talked about, yeah, your mother still deals in cash.
My, my dad now and again will give cash to the, you know, the
(17:34):
grandkids. Just I don't know where it comes
from, but you know, some cupboard in his, in his house
that I still haven't found. Did you, when you came in with,
you know, back in 2014, I'm guessing those cultural
differences, regional differences were still there.
Where did you go first? Where did you, did you go into
(17:55):
the regions where actually therewas a, a high unbanked
population or did you go and tryand I guess change the inertia
across UK, Europe, US etcetera? Again, previously I sold mobile
wallet software, right? So it came from that and I knew
(18:16):
these guys who had bought software from me.
All right. So my first thing was let's go
back to them and see what we cando.
Kenya has been the mother of mobile wallets or mother of
mobile money. Would they want to do this?
And my friends in in the operator environment pretty much
told me that, listen, I'm not going to send money to my
competition in Kenya, but I willsend it to the same operator in
(18:39):
Tanzania. I have to.
So while I wanted to do domesticinteroperability, it posed a
challenge because of competitionissues, but they were willing to
send to the same operator in another country or or across the
geography. So domestic interoperability
didn't happen, but you know regional or international
(19:00):
actually happened. At that time, the large money
transfer operators like Western Union, like MoneyGram, etcetera
were looking for the ability to do send money to mobile wallets.
So in a way that was kind of lowhanging fruit for me.
I went to them, they jumped at the opportunity and we were able
to quickly launch and launch what I call international
(19:21):
interoperability for remittances.
So that started off and then interestingly, 10 years later,
we met the same operators and they're like, OK, how do we do
domestic interoperability? How do we do domestic merchant
payments? Because this industry is getting
large and before the regulator comes after you and say you have
to have merchant interoperability, the industry
(19:42):
wanted to regularize itself and,and, and do it themselves.
So that's what we're working on today.
But international interoperability rails have
always existed, right? Money has been flowing from US
to Mexico for a while, from US to India, from UK to Kenya.
It's the regional interoperability rails that
(20:03):
don't exist. The fish and trails don't exist.
So is there an efficient way to send money from South Africa to
Zimbabwe? From South Africa to Mozambique,
from Kenya to Tanzania, from India to Bangladesh, from Mexico
to El Salvador, that that business, those markets still
need regional interoperability and that's what we're working
(20:24):
on. Why is it taken, I guess, until
2025 for us to focus on those those regional routes?
Regional routes are not profitable.
South Africa to Zimbabwe has been happening for a while, but
it's been cash transfer. Somebody moving across the
border carries that cash for you, used to carry that cash for
you. Can we do it in a, in a more
transparent, efficient way? That's when we use digital.
(20:46):
The it's the power of technology.
When, when initially it was all bilaterals, you signed up South
African operator, signed up witha Zimbabwean operator and did a
one to one relationship and got things going.
Now what happens is they can tieup with a hub like me and do one
connection. South Africa connects to me,
(21:06):
Zimbabwe connects to me, Mozambique connects to me,
Bangladesh connects to me, and all of a sudden you're using the
power of the network to send money to each other.
And that's really what's changing.
Let's take a real example to them.
But I'm in, I'm in France now and Rich is in the Uki want to
send money, and let's say we usetwo different apps.
How do I know I can send money to Rich the way I'm doing it
(21:28):
today? And I'm going to ask Rich which
app you're on. I'm probably going to download
that app and on my phone and then use that, you know, to send
the money. Almost want to know if therapy
is connecting this to these two apps and if I can just like send
the money through instead of having.
I don't know if I have like 15 friends in 15 different
countries, 15 different apps to use.
That's exactly what we're doing.We we launched Zen, which is a
(21:50):
global wallet network. We have 193 partners on it where
we are enabling these partners to send money within the wallet
network. So you could be on any network
in France, you could be on any network in the UK and and it
goes through regardless and and to provide an overlay on top of
it. I could also IBAN enable all
(22:10):
your wallets so that it doesn't matter which even if your
network is not connected, it will still you would still reach
them. And Max said that was a real
example, but I'm not sure he's ever ever sent me money.
Maybe he was trying. He tried and tried and then.
So what regions do you see that kind of really leading that that
(22:32):
charge from kind of wallet use wallet adoption and what regions
are kind of playing catch up so?Traditionally, you know, Africa
has been the the mother of mobile money.
We all talk about M Pesa being the first network in the world
to launch and therefore they've had a head start.
We've, we've mobile wallets havetaken off in Africa, but we're
(22:53):
seeing other regions catch up, right.
We, we are seeing Latin America catching up very fast.
We work with a partner, Nikki, who's growing 300% over the last
year. Peru, Guatemala, all those
regions are are growing and I'm pretty happy to see that wallets
are getting adopted in those regions and helping those
(23:14):
economies grow. And do you see the regional
behaviours the same in terms of the actual use went, be it
remittance, be it e-commerce, beit kind of government?
They're similar with with a little bit of this like you
said, in some cases government payouts go are paid into these
phones. In some cases geography pays a
limit where because of distancesmoney can't reach.
(23:36):
But other than that, small valuetransactions are used for the
same things, food fees, shoes, school fees or or you know,
recharges all of that. Yeah, they they're used
similarly. In the early days, and
especially with your background,you know wallets were pretty
(23:57):
prevalent in societies where there was a high number of
unbanked. Why was it easier for someone to
get a wallet than a bank accountit?
Started off because initially banking was expensive, right?
You had to have a minimum balance to have an account or
they'll charge you for it. Banks didn't want to on board
(24:19):
people with negligible balances as wallets was looking looked at
as the secondary payment instrument and therefore they
were willing to take them on board.
And for the telcos, actually initially what happened is the
person probably had a relationship with the telco
operator in any case, provided him his KYC document to come on
(24:42):
board and, and get a SIM card. And therefore it was easy for
them to come on board and just get a wallet for, for small
value transactions. That's really how wallets grew.
Wallets typically have limits. You know, in some countries
it's, it's less than $1000. Some countries you cannot send
more than X number of transactions into a wallet per
(25:04):
day. So wallets have those limits
and, and those are small value wallets which have have grown
and, and provided this financialinclusion to some sections of
the population which banks did not want to touch.
Now banks are lowering their thresholds and we we come down
and they're willing to handle smaller value account holders
(25:26):
because bank banking, because ofit's legacy systems has a cost
of carrying a customer, which can be huge at sometimes.
So that that's really why they didn't want to handle those.
But as digital grows, I think banks are also realizing the
power of, of aggregating all of this.
You look at India, you look at Brazil, power of UPI, the power
of pics, but they've actually banked all these guys so that
(25:49):
they're moving small value across in billions of
transactions per day. I DS have gone digital, right?
In a lot of these countries, it's easier to prove your
identity because it's, it's digital, It's newer systems
which have a digital digital footprint compared to older
systems which was on paper, right?
So it's not just a number on a piece of paper.
I can actually verify that, you know, this is a 17 year old
(26:13):
male. At least I can verify your
fingerprints. So has KYC and IDs become more
usable? We've started taking people on
board. It's easier because the the
risks associated with the with, you know, bringing multiple
customers on board who transact,you know, only once or twice a
month is reduced even further. It's also the money moving from
(26:38):
government to people as well, or, and, and, and NGOs to yeah,
to individuals as well. The government and NGOs plays a
big, big role into into this ecosystem.
Absolutely. And, and the beauty of it is
it's a direct benefit getting deposited directly into your
account, your wallet or your bank, whatever, whichever one it
(26:59):
is. And in many of these cases, you
don't have to go there to pick it up or you don't have to deal
with the middle man when you're not queuing up and then, you
know, paying the guy at 10% to take it home, stuff like that.
And that's what's leading to these benefits in a way, you
know, wallets are associated with with the mobile number in
many of these countries. The mobile number is, is KYC and
(27:19):
therefore the mobile number becomes a pseudo ID for you,
right? It's a kind of a proof of who
you are and and therefore you can be reached on that number,
therefore that financial instrument.
Absolutely. So we're back to the beginning,
the connection between the financial industry and the telco
business, right. The two industries are
intertwined, deeply intertwined now.
(27:41):
So we've talked a lot about I guess why you set the business
up. You're experiencing kind of
telcos and the, the, the, the problems that you saw in the
market and you know, the, the numbers don't lie.
I think there's been tremendous success in this shift to both
number of transactions and the kind of the value of
(28:02):
transactions across digital wallets.
Where are you now? What's kind of on your mind now
in terms of what are the next big challenges that you see?
So of course we have to keep scaling, making money move more
efficiently, but really we're moving going from wallet
interoperability to payment interoperability right now that
wallets can talk to each other. Can wallets talk to the rest of
(28:24):
the ecosystem? Can I take my wallet and go pay
at a regular pass terminal? Can I, can I withdraw cash from
an ATM using my wallet right across payment ecosystems?
Will my wallet interoperate? That's really where I see this
industry going to, to payment interoperability.
And I think that's the future ofpayments for us.
(28:45):
A line of 4.5 billion wallets that we have to work with, the
30 million cost amounts you haveto access the 7.5 billion bank
accounts that you have or send money to the 12 billion cards
that we have. That's how I see the industry
and we're getting there. That's, I'm going to pick on
(29:06):
that last sentence we're gettingthere.
If you looked at this from, you know, back in 20, 2014, you have
this vision of kind of scale andinterruptibility within the, the
wallet network that was, you were probably, you know,
starting at the bottom rung of the ladder.
How far up that ladder do you think we are?
It's getting there, but but the rules keep changing.
We we now have stable coins coming in and that that puts a
(29:29):
different spin to the whole thing, which is good.
You know it will help money movefaster if done right.
What's what's the impact of stable coin for for you and for
the ecosystem you've built? Stable coins for me, I view it
as a as a as another currency which just moves faster, right?
I need to convert the the the dollars to stable coins, stable
(29:50):
coins to pesos. That's fine.
It's just that in some cases thethe current correspondent
banking network takes me 3 days for the money to get there.
Today it gets 1030 minutes. That's really what it is.
We use it for treasury, internaltreasury flows for whichever
countries allow it and more countries are getting into it.
So it will, it will just help money move faster.
(30:14):
It will help us reduce working capital costs and therefore make
the whole remittance industry a lot more competitive, right.
Today if you look at the UNS goals of you know, bringing it
down to 3%, we're at 8% after, you know, in some cases of the
cost of remittance and a lot of these technologies will will
(30:37):
bring down costs for us. I think today we're all for
example, we're already connectedto 195 wallets right across
across 60 odd countries that that have a large wallet
ecosystem. We're connected to banks.
We have a SWIFT connectivity which allows ubiquitous
connectivity between bank accounts and wallets.
Now I want to look at one is to send money in to the wallet,
(31:02):
which we can do with SWIFT, we can do wallet to wallet.
One is to send money out again through SWIFT or Ibands and all
of that. And one is not through
merchants. How do I pay with my wallet
across payment instruments, whether it's a pass, ATM, cash,
whatever. So we're, we're almost there.
I think it's a question of growing the network larger and
(31:24):
larger and bringing more people into, into the fold.
But I, I think the next two or three years would be a huge game
changer from what I believe therapy can offer and I'm
looking forward to that. And.
The way you come across is very calm.
What keeps you up at night? There must be something behind
this calmness. There's like, oh, if I could
(31:46):
just fix this, or if we could just go quicker.
Is the fact that suddenly we've stopped a corridor in one
country, it's down because thereis no money there or something?
And you know that hundreds of people are not receiving their
funds, right? Or over Christmas and typically
over the holiday season, it's, you know, it's banking holidays.
Banks are shut for 4-5 days. If I can't get money across on
(32:11):
Christmas, on, you know, Easter Eve, Ramzan, whatever it is,
it's, it's painful, right? And those, those holidays keep
us up because you know you're spreading a lot of joy by
sending that money across. So what are the next big
challenges in front of you? Next thing should be borderless
commerce for us. Just like when I walk into a
(32:32):
restaurant and I see, you know, a few signs over there which
tell me my my credit card will get accepted.
I should see something over there which telling me my wallet
will get accepted. So borrow this commerce, ability
to pay merchants across the world, universal financial
access through a mobile first solution.
Today, the way I look at it, in a lot of countries, wallets are
(32:53):
is a face first payment instrument that people will get.
How do we make that a savings instrument for them, a banking
instrument? Can the wallet become their
bank, right? Can I encourage savings?
And lastly, the shift from legacy rails to interoperable
networks in which we're working?So that's really how I see
things moving. One last question that we ask
(33:16):
all our hosts. Who would you like to see in
this show for our next episode? Few guys could interview a guy
called Eric Barbier. He runs a company called AAA
focused on. He's very passionate about
stable coins and movement of stable coins.
I think he's been in the money movement industry for a while
and now started AAA. Would be a good guy to hear
(33:37):
from. Amazing.
And Bar, thank you so much for joining us today.
We've really enjoyed talking to you.
That is for Rich and I for this week.
To keep the conversation going, you can follow us on our social
media. Of course, don't forget to
follow the show on Spotify and subscribe on YouTube.
If you've enjoyed what you heardtoday, leave us a review.
(34:00):
Tell your friends or better still, do both.
We'll be back next episode to explore more life changing
innovations in digital finance. So wherever your travels take
you, remember to join us then for the next installment of
Money Travels presented by Visa.
I wanted to do to money what roaming did to telecom.
This week, we're joined by Ambassador, the founder and CEO
of Terape. I should be able to take my
wallet and go anywhere in the world, tap it, use it, and I
don't need to worry about currency or who's sending me
money from where. Somebody's working on one of
those big economy sites. He's getting $5, he's sitting in
one country, he's crying becausehe can't go home for Christmas,
(00:22):
and he sent ten of his cousins money for Christmas.
That's real, right? This remittance transfer is the
lifeblood of several countries. They see it going up and down,
and then they come back to us and think, what happened?
We do small value remittances where the money we send makes a
difference. We worked very hard with the
regulators. We sit across the table and he
explained, somebody's a YouTube influencer.
(00:44):
He's got $5 that week. The money needs to reach him.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Money Travels
presented by Visa. Well, we explore the
extraordinary innovation in digital finance, transforming
lives and livelihoods everywhere.
I'm rich. I'm Max Amba, welcome to the
(01:05):
show. Thank you guys.
So, Amba, we'd like to start theshow by asking a simple question
to our guest. Take us back to 2014, where
everything started. What problem were you trying to
solve and why did you create therapy at that time?
My background is telecom. I I grew up where, you know, we
(01:28):
grew up in disparate systems, not talking to each other.
And then we got uniform standards and we got roaming.
And today we can actually travelthe world, not tell anyone where
we are. The same number works, all of
it. And I wanted to do to money what
roaming did to telecom. I should be able to take my
wallet and go anywhere in the world, tap it, use it, and I
(01:49):
don't need to worry about currency or who's sending me
money from where. When you look at mobile wallet
systems across the world, you'llsee that they are individual
islands, right? Each serving it's own local
purpose. But there was a need to
integrate all of this and make one unified money movement
system, which is what we wanted to do.
(02:10):
Can I? Just ask maybe a very simple
question and this comes from spending some time with kind of
friends and family over the summer who have watched the
podcast, but don't come from theworld of financial services.
I think for for those of us who've been in this world for a
while, we understand what a wallet and a ditch to what it
(02:32):
is. But could you give us kind of a,
a wallet one O 1 very quickly just to explain the difference
between what a wallet is, what abank account is, etcetera, just
for the context of the conversation?
Simply put, I mean when you lookat your physical wallet, your
wallet has a few instruments in it.
One is your ID, 1 is a credit card, 1 is cash.
Your digital wallet contains a digital ID.
(02:53):
It contains stored value amountswhich is the cash you have and
it has a pass through token which is your card or debit
card. So that that constitutes a
wallet. You can use your wallet for
anything. And I can then go use my digital
wallet, whether it's a phone or an app and tap it wherever I
want. That's really what I look at it
(03:15):
as being a digital wallet. And banks typically sit behind
the wallet. It's it's the store of value for
where when you're using a card or in some wallets like in
Africa, you the wallet itself isa store of value and that stores
the amount. What's the role of the wallets
in, you know, in the, in the financial world today?
So wallets operate in localized islands, right?
(03:38):
You have a wallet in Tanzania, You have a wallet in in Kenya,
You have a wallet in Colombia. You know, Nekim and Peso, all of
it. I wanted to make the wallet
roam. How do I take my Colombia wallet
and go to the UK and pay for it?How do I use my Kenya wallet to
pay a subscriber and pay a supplier in China?
(03:59):
That's really what I wanted to do.
Whenever you're looking at, you know, Kenyan shilling account,
paying pound account and things like that.
So, so to allow the wallet to roam the allow the wallet to
become global. That's what he really wanted to
do. Otherwise it's an individual
things that keep sitting in a country.
And yes, you can use it to pay for groceries.
(04:21):
You can use it to pay for, you know, top up airtime top up or,
or, or some other services, but it really is worthless outside
the country. And that's what we want to do.
Because if you look at the worldtoday, it's shrinking.
There's trade all across the world.
Your goods come from everywhere.Your friends are everywhere.
You want to send money across. You have family linen in other
parts of the world who you want to send $50.00 for Christmas.
(04:42):
How do I efficiently sell, send that money on the 24th of
December to my niece in Nairobi so that she can celebrate
Christmas? Those are things we wanted to do
with the wallet ecosystem. The previous ways was to send
cash. Cash was very expensive, right?
Cash is, is physically difficultto carry.
(05:03):
You have to move it physically. Whereas digitally it is, is
cheaper, but it requires higher speed.
And at that same speed, you needto cover compliance issues as
well. So if you're going, you know, if
you're transmitting that money in 10 seconds, that means you
finish your KYC AM L sanctions screening everything within 10
seconds and send the money across, right?
Our competition is cash and thatneeds to change because that
(05:26):
cash really does not lead to financial inclusion, does not
lead to savings habits. That does does not include bring
women into the financial ecosystem.
And when those changes happen, we see the economies of this
world going up because, you know, lots of countries depend,
a large percentage of their GDP is foreign remittances and they
(05:48):
depend on these things. So that's really, I like it
because, you know, we do small value remittances where the
money we send makes a difference, right?
When you're sending $100, it's paying for shoes, hospital
bills, school fees, all of that versus if you were sending
$5000, which is not paying for that.
It's paying for a painting, the house, a new room or a new car
(06:11):
or something like that. There's a, there's a, there's a
big kind of human element to remittances because as you said,
it's not a 5000 payment for, youknow, doing up your house.
This is the ability for someone to to buy groceries for their
family. Interesting example is we once
got hauled up by the regulator in one country saying look at
this guy, he's sending small value across.
(06:32):
You know, he's done 10 transactions within two minutes,
right? And then we went back to him and
said, look at the date, it's 24th of December.
Look at the people receiving themoney.
They have the same last name. He's sending Christmas gifts.
He's sitting in one country. He's he's crying because he
can't go home for Christmas. And he sent twenty of his or ten
(06:54):
of his cousins money for Christmas.
That's, that's real, right? We have other examples of, of
people sending small value and we call them and they say that,
hey, this is all I earned this week and I wanted to send it
home because my family can eat this week, right?
So those are things we see and, and really when you look at the,
the, the, our average ticket size on a, on a wallet is about
(07:16):
$125.00. Average ticket size in a bank is
about $450, right? And we see money going for
different reasons. People send money twice to, to a
wallet and once to a bank. So he's kind of sending twice
when he sends the money, he's sending it for groceries, food,
daily expenses. Once when he sends it to the
bank, he's sending it as a savings.
So he's kind of working to save for a good day for his house or
(07:41):
everything when it goes home while he's still supporting his
family. So those are things we see these
patterns and it's very heart warming to see how this money
has been used. And also, but what's interesting
is, is talking about there like you having discussions with the
kind of the network partners around explaining the the high
volume of low value transactions.
When we talk about compliance, it's not just about the the
(08:02):
initial KYC and on boarding. It's about kind of explaining
that flow of money to the network partners.
Like how much of what you guys do is spend, you know, over the
boardroom table talking to network partners around?
This is how we understand, this is how we monitor kind of all
the transactions that go through.
Yeah, we work with, we work veryhard with the regulators.
(08:24):
We sit across the table and explain these volume values
going through. We explain work with our network
partners who allow us to terminate a $5 transfer, you
know, transfer some. Somebody's a YouTube influencer.
He's got $5 a week. Money needs to reach him, right?
Somebody's working on one of those gig economy sites.
He's designed a website, he's designed, you know, changed APDF
(08:45):
form for you and he's getting $5.
So we worked with our, we've worked with the regulator to
explain this. We've worked with the partner,
the wallet partner to, to reducetheir fees so that they can
accept a $5 transaction. And, and it's, it's working
well. We see it.
And, and in the emerging marketsis where a lot of the geek
(09:06):
economy sits, right to the guys across the world who are
designing, doing, you know, retyping your letters or doing
PDF formats, doing PPT, all of that.
So we work with all of them. And luckily they have wallets.
So wallets allow for lower valuetransactions and they're working
on that. So yes, we're doing that.
And I think the relationship that you hold with those people
(09:30):
is very important because this isn't a kind of vendor client
relationship and or you know, a teacher telling you off.
This is ultimately the the regulatory ecosystem seeing
someone like Terra pay as a kindof sage advisor in this space
because you have got such a broad reach of wallets.
So you're, you know, on the on the ground seeing what's
happening and your systems are actually monitoring that flow.
(09:53):
I just think that that relationship is so important.
Yeah, yes, it is because they keep coming back to us.
I mean, like we said this, this remittance transfer is the
lifeblood of several countries. And sometimes it goes up for,
for whatever reason, you know, there could be Forex rate
issues, all of that. They see it going up and down
and then they come back to us and saying what happened.
(10:14):
And then we can sometimes have to explain to them, OK, you
know, there is some offshoring happening or, you know, you
raise the rate so high that nobody wants to send it to the
official channel. So they talk to us.
We've had recently we had a regulator who had a conference
with 30 odd people from my industry saying, OK, how can I,
what, what do I do to increase the flows into my country?
So regulators are, you know, seeing these issues.
(10:40):
We now have stable coins coming in.
Regulators are seeing these issues and we're working with
them to see how to bring more flows in legally into their
country and not going out the crypto way.
So regulators are now very active in the space, especially
in emerging markets, looking at all of this to do again to
enable money to flow officially into their countries.
(11:01):
In our latest reports that, you know, we just launched over
years a few months ago, more than 1 billion people globally
rely on remittances. It's really deeply rooted in,
in, in our lives today and, and in many people's lives to to
actually live and sometimes to survive.
So how do you make sure that, you know, you always, you
(11:23):
guarantee that the money is going to come across and, and
that's, you know, the, the people requesting the money or
just receiving the money will actually get it on time.
That's also a big portion of what you do right?
Yeah, 97% of our transactions are delivered in less than 10
seconds, right. And most of it which is not
delivered at that time has to dowith local business rules where
(11:46):
local banking rules where you know, you're not allowed to
deliver money overnight and things like that.
But yes, it, that is that quality of service is something
we hold very dear because primarily if, if you know, when
someone's sending $100 across, that's his life saving, right?
He's going to inquire 3 times a day if that money went through
(12:06):
because he's already called his mother and said money's there
and mother, mother, wife, sister, brother is waiting for
it. As opposed to $5000 landing in
your bank account, which you canafford to get the next day.
So that's really the responsibility we carry.
And therefore that's how we built a network ground up saying
that almost to the extent I go and drop the money in the cash
(12:30):
at A, at a money transfer operator, before I leave the
door and open the door of that money transfer operator, I
should get a text message or or a message from my mother saying
thank you. That's really how it how it
should be for small value payments.
What's interesting is when you, when you speak to CE OS and
(12:50):
founders who've come from outside of the industry that the
approach they take to a effectively a business problem.
I talked about cash is a real barrier to scale and growth.
Think how you your background intelco and how you kind of looked
at that from a scaling and growth point of view and brought
that to a business problem in remittances is is kind of
(13:11):
fascinating. Yeah.
And and the way I look at telcosis telcos handle low value, high
volume transactions. So they're doing, they're
billing for, you know, one MB ofdata at .3 cents, right?
Whereas banks handle high value,low volume transactions.
(13:33):
We were quite sure that for thisbusiness to succeed, you need to
start doing billions of transactions a month, right?
And and that's, that's the learning from telcos and that's
what helped us grow. Also come from that industry.
So there was one thing at that time that that and it feels very
similar and completely connected, which is equipment,
(13:55):
right. How do you move from, you know,
in the, in the in the phone industry, no phones whatsoever
or landlines to go to the mobilephones, right?
And, and here you're talking about the wallets, but you also
talked about cash. And I have like probably a very
basic question, but how do you move from cash to a digital
(14:16):
wallet? It's easy.
I think you need to ask yourselfyourself the question, how many
times have you been to the ATM in the last month, right?
We've seen ourselves probably since COVID to stop using cash.
We don't, we don't withdraw cash.
We've seen the convenience of moving money around digitally,
(14:37):
starting from e-commerce, starting from, you know, quick
commerce or, or ordering food and all of that.
That's already gone digital. Now you need to see how do I
move money to my friends digitally, which many of us are
already doing, which means moneyis moving digitally.
It's, it's, it's a habit. Of course, you know, my mother
(14:58):
still handles cash, right? It's a generational thing.
But my, my kids have probably never touched cash for a while.
We kind of use it once in a while, but it's coming up.
You, you're seeing everybody around us who's who's using it
for e-commerce and other products.
It will happen. Just so convenient.
(15:20):
It has to happen. It happens, you know, probably
in the, you know, the, the countries we live in, you know,
the three of us. But what about where or even
even even if I take, you know, myself in France, some people
are still paid in cash. How do we encourage that shift?
How do we encourage people to actually move from physical cash
(15:44):
to digital wallet? So let me give you a slightly
different paradigm on that. When you look at the emerging
markets in Asia, Africa, Latin parts of Middle East, Central
America, Eastern Europe, the telecom operator is the largest
infrastructure provider in that country.
(16:07):
Places like Uganda, the operatoris the largest taxpayer in that
country, right. More people will will in
experience money Internet moviesthrough their phone then
physically as cash or an Internet cafe or a movie in, in
the cinema halls, right. So the, in the emerging markets
(16:29):
that's already happening. The cost of moving cash around
the way the economy has come up,the, the penetration of
smartphones is much higher in, in, in India, Asia, Africa,
Senegal, Kenya, Colombia, all ofthat.
Yes, it's, it's probably in the developed markets where cash
(16:52):
still works, right? And we are changing those,
right? Of course, credit cards are more
prevalent than debit cards are not being used.
It's a habit. Now cash, I mean, technically
when the company pays you cash, you need to wonder, right?
And and that's not, and as part of the the UNS strategic
(17:13):
development goals, we need to bring everybody into the
financial ecosystem. Getting paid in cash means you
don't have a bank account, whichmeans you don't have credit
history, you don't have all of that to prove that you exist,
which is not good for the economy, which is not good for
you personally. I.
Mean you talked about, yeah, your mother still deals in cash.
My, my dad now and again will give cash to the, you know, the
(17:34):
grandkids. Just I don't know where it comes
from, but you know, some cupboard in his, in his house
that I still haven't found. Did you, when you came in with,
you know, back in 2014, I'm guessing those cultural
differences, regional differences were still there.
Where did you go first? Where did you, did you go into
(17:55):
the regions where actually therewas a, a high unbanked
population or did you go and tryand I guess change the inertia
across UK, Europe, US etcetera? Again, previously I sold mobile
wallet software, right? So it came from that and I knew
(18:16):
these guys who had bought software from me.
All right. So my first thing was let's go
back to them and see what we cando.
Kenya has been the mother of mobile wallets or mother of
mobile money. Would they want to do this?
And my friends in in the operator environment pretty much
told me that, listen, I'm not going to send money to my
competition in Kenya, but I willsend it to the same operator in
(18:39):
Tanzania. I have to.
So while I wanted to do domesticinteroperability, it posed a
challenge because of competitionissues, but they were willing to
send to the same operator in another country or or across the
geography. So domestic interoperability
didn't happen, but you know regional or international
(19:00):
actually happened. At that time, the large money
transfer operators like Western Union, like MoneyGram, etcetera
were looking for the ability to do send money to mobile wallets.
So in a way that was kind of lowhanging fruit for me.
I went to them, they jumped at the opportunity and we were able
to quickly launch and launch what I call international
(19:21):
interoperability for remittances.
So that started off and then interestingly, 10 years later,
we met the same operators and they're like, OK, how do we do
domestic interoperability? How do we do domestic merchant
payments? Because this industry is getting
large and before the regulator comes after you and say you have
to have merchant interoperability, the industry
(19:42):
wanted to regularize itself and,and, and do it themselves.
So that's what we're working on today.
But international interoperability rails have
always existed, right? Money has been flowing from US
to Mexico for a while, from US to India, from UK to Kenya.
It's the regional interoperability rails that
(20:03):
don't exist. The fish and trails don't exist.
So is there an efficient way to send money from South Africa to
Zimbabwe? From South Africa to Mozambique,
from Kenya to Tanzania, from India to Bangladesh, from Mexico
to El Salvador, that that business, those markets still
need regional interoperability and that's what we're working
(20:24):
on. Why is it taken, I guess, until
2025 for us to focus on those those regional routes?
Regional routes are not profitable.
South Africa to Zimbabwe has been happening for a while, but
it's been cash transfer. Somebody moving across the
border carries that cash for you, used to carry that cash for
you. Can we do it in a, in a more
transparent, efficient way? That's when we use digital.
(20:46):
The it's the power of technology.
When, when initially it was all bilaterals, you signed up South
African operator, signed up witha Zimbabwean operator and did a
one to one relationship and got things going.
Now what happens is they can tieup with a hub like me and do one
connection. South Africa connects to me,
(21:06):
Zimbabwe connects to me, Mozambique connects to me,
Bangladesh connects to me, and all of a sudden you're using the
power of the network to send money to each other.
And that's really what's changing.
Let's take a real example to them.
But I'm in, I'm in France now and Rich is in the Uki want to
send money, and let's say we usetwo different apps.
How do I know I can send money to Rich the way I'm doing it
(21:28):
today? And I'm going to ask Rich which
app you're on. I'm probably going to download
that app and on my phone and then use that, you know, to send
the money. Almost want to know if therapy
is connecting this to these two apps and if I can just like send
the money through instead of having.
I don't know if I have like 15 friends in 15 different
countries, 15 different apps to use.
That's exactly what we're doing.We we launched Zen, which is a
(21:50):
global wallet network. We have 193 partners on it where
we are enabling these partners to send money within the wallet
network. So you could be on any network
in France, you could be on any network in the UK and and it
goes through regardless and and to provide an overlay on top of
it. I could also IBAN enable all
(22:10):
your wallets so that it doesn't matter which even if your
network is not connected, it will still you would still reach
them. And Max said that was a real
example, but I'm not sure he's ever ever sent me money.
Maybe he was trying. He tried and tried and then.
So what regions do you see that kind of really leading that that
(22:32):
charge from kind of wallet use wallet adoption and what regions
are kind of playing catch up so?Traditionally, you know, Africa
has been the the mother of mobile money.
We all talk about M Pesa being the first network in the world
to launch and therefore they've had a head start.
We've, we've mobile wallets havetaken off in Africa, but we're
(22:53):
seeing other regions catch up, right.
We, we are seeing Latin America catching up very fast.
We work with a partner, Nikki, who's growing 300% over the last
year. Peru, Guatemala, all those
regions are are growing and I'm pretty happy to see that wallets
are getting adopted in those regions and helping those
(23:14):
economies grow. And do you see the regional
behaviours the same in terms of the actual use went, be it
remittance, be it e-commerce, beit kind of government?
They're similar with with a little bit of this like you
said, in some cases government payouts go are paid into these
phones. In some cases geography pays a
limit where because of distancesmoney can't reach.
(23:36):
But other than that, small valuetransactions are used for the
same things, food fees, shoes, school fees or or you know,
recharges all of that. Yeah, they they're used
similarly. In the early days, and
especially with your background,you know wallets were pretty
(23:57):
prevalent in societies where there was a high number of
unbanked. Why was it easier for someone to
get a wallet than a bank accountit?
Started off because initially banking was expensive, right?
You had to have a minimum balance to have an account or
they'll charge you for it. Banks didn't want to on board
(24:19):
people with negligible balances as wallets was looking looked at
as the secondary payment instrument and therefore they
were willing to take them on board.
And for the telcos, actually initially what happened is the
person probably had a relationship with the telco
operator in any case, provided him his KYC document to come on
(24:42):
board and, and get a SIM card. And therefore it was easy for
them to come on board and just get a wallet for, for small
value transactions. That's really how wallets grew.
Wallets typically have limits. You know, in some countries
it's, it's less than $1000. Some countries you cannot send
more than X number of transactions into a wallet per
(25:04):
day. So wallets have those limits
and, and those are small value wallets which have have grown
and, and provided this financialinclusion to some sections of
the population which banks did not want to touch.
Now banks are lowering their thresholds and we we come down
and they're willing to handle smaller value account holders
(25:26):
because bank banking, because ofit's legacy systems has a cost
of carrying a customer, which can be huge at sometimes.
So that that's really why they didn't want to handle those.
But as digital grows, I think banks are also realizing the
power of, of aggregating all of this.
You look at India, you look at Brazil, power of UPI, the power
of pics, but they've actually banked all these guys so that
(25:49):
they're moving small value across in billions of
transactions per day. I DS have gone digital, right?
In a lot of these countries, it's easier to prove your
identity because it's, it's digital, It's newer systems
which have a digital digital footprint compared to older
systems which was on paper, right?
So it's not just a number on a piece of paper.
I can actually verify that, you know, this is a 17 year old
(26:13):
male. At least I can verify your
fingerprints. So has KYC and IDs become more
usable? We've started taking people on
board. It's easier because the the
risks associated with the with, you know, bringing multiple
customers on board who transact,you know, only once or twice a
month is reduced even further. It's also the money moving from
(26:38):
government to people as well, or, and, and, and NGOs to yeah,
to individuals as well. The government and NGOs plays a
big, big role into into this ecosystem.
Absolutely. And, and the beauty of it is
it's a direct benefit getting deposited directly into your
account, your wallet or your bank, whatever, whichever one it
(26:59):
is. And in many of these cases, you
don't have to go there to pick it up or you don't have to deal
with the middle man when you're not queuing up and then, you
know, paying the guy at 10% to take it home, stuff like that.
And that's what's leading to these benefits in a way, you
know, wallets are associated with with the mobile number in
many of these countries. The mobile number is, is KYC and
(27:19):
therefore the mobile number becomes a pseudo ID for you,
right? It's a kind of a proof of who
you are and and therefore you can be reached on that number,
therefore that financial instrument.
Absolutely. So we're back to the beginning,
the connection between the financial industry and the telco
business, right. The two industries are
intertwined, deeply intertwined now.
(27:41):
So we've talked a lot about I guess why you set the business
up. You're experiencing kind of
telcos and the, the, the, the problems that you saw in the
market and you know, the, the numbers don't lie.
I think there's been tremendous success in this shift to both
number of transactions and the kind of the value of
(28:02):
transactions across digital wallets.
Where are you now? What's kind of on your mind now
in terms of what are the next big challenges that you see?
So of course we have to keep scaling, making money move more
efficiently, but really we're moving going from wallet
interoperability to payment interoperability right now that
wallets can talk to each other. Can wallets talk to the rest of
(28:24):
the ecosystem? Can I take my wallet and go pay
at a regular pass terminal? Can I, can I withdraw cash from
an ATM using my wallet right across payment ecosystems?
Will my wallet interoperate? That's really where I see this
industry going to, to payment interoperability.
And I think that's the future ofpayments for us.
(28:45):
A line of 4.5 billion wallets that we have to work with, the
30 million cost amounts you haveto access the 7.5 billion bank
accounts that you have or send money to the 12 billion cards
that we have. That's how I see the industry
and we're getting there. That's, I'm going to pick on
(29:06):
that last sentence we're gettingthere.
If you looked at this from, you know, back in 20, 2014, you have
this vision of kind of scale andinterruptibility within the, the
wallet network that was, you were probably, you know,
starting at the bottom rung of the ladder.
How far up that ladder do you think we are?
It's getting there, but but the rules keep changing.
We we now have stable coins coming in and that that puts a
(29:29):
different spin to the whole thing, which is good.
You know it will help money movefaster if done right.
What's what's the impact of stable coin for for you and for
the ecosystem you've built? Stable coins for me, I view it
as a as a as another currency which just moves faster, right?
I need to convert the the the dollars to stable coins, stable
(29:50):
coins to pesos. That's fine.
It's just that in some cases thethe current correspondent
banking network takes me 3 days for the money to get there.
Today it gets 1030 minutes. That's really what it is.
We use it for treasury, internaltreasury flows for whichever
countries allow it and more countries are getting into it.
So it will, it will just help money move faster.
(30:14):
It will help us reduce working capital costs and therefore make
the whole remittance industry a lot more competitive, right.
Today if you look at the UNS goals of you know, bringing it
down to 3%, we're at 8% after, you know, in some cases of the
cost of remittance and a lot of these technologies will will
(30:37):
bring down costs for us. I think today we're all for
example, we're already connectedto 195 wallets right across
across 60 odd countries that that have a large wallet
ecosystem. We're connected to banks.
We have a SWIFT connectivity which allows ubiquitous
connectivity between bank accounts and wallets.
Now I want to look at one is to send money in to the wallet,
(31:02):
which we can do with SWIFT, we can do wallet to wallet.
One is to send money out again through SWIFT or Ibands and all
of that. And one is not through
merchants. How do I pay with my wallet
across payment instruments, whether it's a pass, ATM, cash,
whatever. So we're, we're almost there.
I think it's a question of growing the network larger and
(31:24):
larger and bringing more people into, into the fold.
But I, I think the next two or three years would be a huge game
changer from what I believe therapy can offer and I'm
looking forward to that. And.
The way you come across is very calm.
What keeps you up at night? There must be something behind
this calmness. There's like, oh, if I could
(31:46):
just fix this, or if we could just go quicker.
Is the fact that suddenly we've stopped a corridor in one
country, it's down because thereis no money there or something?
And you know that hundreds of people are not receiving their
funds, right? Or over Christmas and typically
over the holiday season, it's, you know, it's banking holidays.
Banks are shut for 4-5 days. If I can't get money across on
(32:11):
Christmas, on, you know, Easter Eve, Ramzan, whatever it is,
it's, it's painful, right? And those, those holidays keep
us up because you know you're spreading a lot of joy by
sending that money across. So what are the next big
challenges in front of you? Next thing should be borderless
commerce for us. Just like when I walk into a
(32:32):
restaurant and I see, you know, a few signs over there which
tell me my my credit card will get accepted.
I should see something over there which telling me my wallet
will get accepted. So borrow this commerce, ability
to pay merchants across the world, universal financial
access through a mobile first solution.
Today, the way I look at it, in a lot of countries, wallets are
(32:53):
is a face first payment instrument that people will get.
How do we make that a savings instrument for them, a banking
instrument? Can the wallet become their
bank, right? Can I encourage savings?
And lastly, the shift from legacy rails to interoperable
networks in which we're working?So that's really how I see
things moving. One last question that we ask
(33:16):
all our hosts. Who would you like to see in
this show for our next episode? Few guys could interview a guy
called Eric Barbier. He runs a company called AAA
focused on. He's very passionate about
stable coins and movement of stable coins.
I think he's been in the money movement industry for a while
and now started AAA. Would be a good guy to hear
(33:37):
from. Amazing.
And Bar, thank you so much for joining us today.
We've really enjoyed talking to you.
That is for Rich and I for this week.
To keep the conversation going, you can follow us on our social
media. Of course, don't forget to
follow the show on Spotify and subscribe on YouTube.
If you've enjoyed what you heardtoday, leave us a review.
(34:00):
Tell your friends or better still, do both.
We'll be back next episode to explore more life changing
innovations in digital finance. So wherever your travels take
you, remember to join us then for the next installment of
Money Travels presented by Visa.
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