November 9, 2025 • 25 mins
Could open banking finally create real competition for money services—beyond the banks? We’re talking to Ben Lynch, who left Xero to found Akahu, the open finance intermediary pushing to change the balance of power between banks, their customers, and their competitors.
This episode explores how open banking aims to democratize your financial data, letting fintech businesses innovate and become a “bank without being a bank”.
Hear about Ben’s battle to bring the new Consumer Data Right into law, giving individuals more meaningful ownership of their personal information—the foundation of open banking. We discuss how this legislation forces banks to use APIs (application programming interfaces) to share data, and creates more space for disruptors like Sharesies to offer consumers choice.
Plus, hear the story of how Ben used a tweet to get his foot in the door at Xero.
For more or to watch on YouTube—check out http://linktr.ee/sharedlunch
Shared Lunch is brought to you by Sharesies Australia Limited (ABN 94 648 811 830; AFSL 529893) in Australia and Sharesies Limited (NZ) in New Zealand. It is not financial advice. Information provided is general only and current at the time it’s provided, and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation and needs. We do not provide recommendations and you should always read the disclosure documents available from the product issuer before making a financial decision. Our disclosure documents and terms and conditions—including a Target Market Determination and IDPS Guide for Sharesies Australian customers—can be found on our relevant Australian or NZ website.
Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. If you require financial advice, you should consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
Appearance on Shared Lunch is not an endorsement by Sharesies of the views of the presenters, guests, or the entities they represent. Their views are their own.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Get a Koto. Welcome to Shared Lunch, brought to you
by Chase's. I'm Garth Bray. We led the world in
this country with FPOs, the ability to pay for stuff
electronically by waiving a card. But that was forty years
ago and since then, maybe have we been coasting? Have
we let the major banks step back and not innovate
as much as they could. Today we're talking to a challenger.
(00:25):
Ben Lynch is a fintech founder keen to deliver on
the promise of cheaper, smarter, less painful ways to help
you handle your money. But before we get into that conversation,
some important information you should always consider when thinking about investing.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Ben Lynch from Akahu, Thanks for joining us here on
Shared Lunch.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Look, we started out in this country pretty cutting edge
with technology like f POSS. You know, the idea that
you could walk in and pay for your groceries or
your petrol by waving a piece of plastic at a
machine was probably pretty baller back in the eighties. Have
we just completely gone off the boil?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You know, eighty four was f poss and we certainly
haven't done a lot since then. In many respects, I
mean that that was ahead of its time. You know,
it is great to have a local payments network and
payment switch. Increasingly it looks like that won't happen in
this country. Cards are being dominated by visa mastercut.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Because that's if poss is like the State high before
they put the toll weight through, right.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It was, Yeah, it was a payment switch.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Arguably they just didn't innovate on you know, how does
that payment switch operate? So you know, it could have
moved quicker to contact lists and still sort of a
swipe style pin number, which you know, to this day
and age, particularly post COVID, seems archaic.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
It was you know, owned by the banks through through
the paymark quite model, and that was so you know,
it's hard to get agreement on should they prioritize spending
in that in that sort of network. So you know, look,
I think that ship sailed to be honest, but I
think there's there's other avenues that we can kind of
innovate on.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
But we are a small country.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
But does the way that that's happened, does that tell
us a lot about what we're going to talk about today,
which is open banking, Which is that whole idea of
I guess, democratizing your data, making what the banks know
about you, what you've told them, all your transactions do more.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right, I mean, I think open banking does nothing else
than best products should win. So no longer, you know,
are you is this apathy around just staying with the
bank you've always been with because you know that was
what you got given when you were a young kid
and you got your first bank account. But now you
know that that you can kind of freely move between banks.
You can you know, pick and choose sort of like
(02:50):
a you know, a telco. You know, you can take
your number with your sort of number portability. So the
promise of open banking does hopefully allow us to you know,
banks themselves to innovate, but also other non banks to
innovate and sort of become you know, maybe a bank
without being a bank in the regulatory sense.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Is that why I should care about this? Because I mean,
most people just want they just want to use their money,
they want to know where it is, they want to
make the most of it, they want to make the
most of their futures. Do they really need to know
about the plumbing in the background to all of us?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Honestly, no, it's you know, this is not a sexy startup.
This is you know, this should be boring, stable infrastructure,
and it is secure that just kind of runs invisibly.
If open banking is in the headlines post, you know,
the kind of honeymoon phase, then something's probably failed. To
be honest, it's one of those things that should just
run in the background, like the electricity grid or the
fiber network from Chorus. You know, it's just a piece
(03:40):
of infrastructure, a digital piece of infrastructure that certainly, in
my opinion and our opinion, should be owned and operated
for the benefit of New Zealanders as well.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
But it's not right now.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, it's it's always been.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
It hasn't been regulated up until the first of December
of this year, and we'll we'll get into that a
little bit later. So it's always been a sort of
a backdoor, kind of reverse engineered approach to creating these
open banking type services so that other products can use them.
And you know, in this country, the most kind of
obvious use case for sharing bank data is pioneered via Zero.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I was going to say, Zero seems to me like
the logical one.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I think, if you're a business and you can the
value prop of connecting your bank statements and your transactions
overnight so you can reconsulve the next morning, it's pretty clear, right,
So it kind of just democratizes that and takes it
ten steps further.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I grew up in a house where we had small businesses,
and you know, Sunday night, Dad would be sitting there
doing the books. And I now spend like ten minutes
on a phone going and it's all done. And that
seems like a massive set forward. Is that the kind
of thing that we're bringing to everybody's lives with this
kind of technology?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
It is, And it's almost you know, I used to
work at Zero when I was in the bank Feeds team,
so I sort of know it intimately well and essentially
where I sort of kecked off this whole journey. So
it's almost the way I think about it is if
Zero bank Feeds was a product and a company in
its own right and served more customers than just zero.
So it's that connectivity layer, shared infrastructure layer that you
know personal finance, accounting, tax investment tools, you know, mortgage brokers,
(05:02):
any anyone that needs access to your financial information can
get access securely and then share it for those purposes.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well, I mean, let's take the cheesys at for example.
I can look at that. I can go, oh, how
much have I got invest in the portfolio? What's in
my key Wei saver. I can make sort of one
off very quick payments, you know, instant payments basically, and transfers.
What other kinds of things are going to turn up
on the dashboard as this evolves?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, I'm I'm a big chezys fan.
I think you know you can like you, like you said,
reference the key we saver product. Now there's a there's
a master card, debit card now you can get with Cheersy's.
So you know, it is becoming more and more of
your kind of primary financial relationship. But you can also
choose through open banking to say, actually I want to
keep my ASB savings account. I actually want to keep
(05:48):
my whatever bank Kei Wei saver or non Chezy's key
we saver, but I want to see it inside of Chasy's.
And so I can log into one place and I
can see all my accounts, and I might bring my
mortgage across with me. Now it's still held with the
underlying bank, and I still go to them to change
rates or do whatever, but I can see it all
in one place. And that's kind of the promise of
open banking, is to bring all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Together, just that dashboard. You can't actually do anything.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Now you can do things.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, so you can make payments sort of initiations, So
you can make payments essentially from your ASB account inside
of Shares's to pay a bill.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So at some point you probably stop having a relationship,
maybe with your bank. They're just a commodity, right, and
your main relationship might be with whoever that who whoever
controls that.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
At I mean, I think that is the race too,
who owns that kind of top of the wallet type thing, And.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So I can't imagine why the banks don't want that
to happen. Then, like a bank's we've got this exciting
new product that takes your customers away or put somebody
between you and them, like most businesses are going to
fight that tooth nail, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, look they have resisted it for a long time.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
But it was always obvious to me that, you know,
eventually there would be regulation that would force for a
competition's aspect to do it. So it was just a
matter of time. I didn't think it would take quite
this long. But you know, first of December it is
you know, it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Is the law.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So what happens on the first So from the.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
First of December, essentially we have consumer data right in
New Zealand. So essentially that's a piece of legislation that
says you, as a customer consumer own your data and
if you want to share that data with a third
party then that's your right.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But I mean the Privacy X says that's the case already,
and I guess so does. Like my understanding as a
journalist using Official Information Act, I get it, but it's
how you get it right. And if you write to
some minister or some government department say I want a
list of X, Y and Z, they will send you
a PDF that's impossible to search. Right, this is about
is this about getting it in a way that you
can actually do something with it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
So there's the legislation which is the consumer data, right,
and then under the legislation there is it's pretty high level,
which is good because it's going to sit across a
lot of sectors eventually. Now the open banking is the
first sector to be designated, essentially, So that's where you
mentioned the regulations CAECK, and there's some standardized ways that
the banks are making that data available to you and
(07:56):
essentially via APIs, so the application programming interface, so.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
The ability for plumbing jargon, plumbing jargon.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So you know, ironically, actually, when I first started talking
about this back in twenty sixteen to some bankers, you know,
it was a very new term, not on a tech community,
but certainly in the banking community. And you know, half
the time I wondered whether they knew the difference between
an IPA and API, to be honest, But things have
moved along, you.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Know, many IPAs.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Later, many IPAs later, we have APIs, and so that's
essentially from the first of December, these APIs are made
available via the bank securely and then for third parties
to essentially act on top of those and with your consent.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Because up until now, what basically apps have been kind
of screen scraping.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Screen scraping, reverse engineering, sort of gated access. There's all
sorts of things you could call, right Polly's been around
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Obviously, one reason I never used it because the first
thing that says is can you please just type in
your bank pass? I'm not telling you my pin number.
This is the one thing they tell you not to do.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
It is, but it's it's one of those things that
you know, a substantial portion of the country of you
use did, and even more so overseas, and when the
value proposition is clear, then people tend to, I guess,
forego a little bit of privacy for that convenience factor,
which is not necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
But it has always been done.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But they shouldn't have to.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
They shouldn't have to, and they won't have to, you know,
from the start of next year going forward. But you know,
one of the other big use cases if you go
to a mortgage broker and they say, hey, can we
get access to your bank statements so we can figure
out whether we can you know, someone will end you
a million bucks and so generally that that's another service
that will jump into your online banking portals, grab ale
your bank statements, and then they'll run them through some
sort of enrichment process to figure out your kind of
(09:34):
expenses and income.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And this will just basically do that without you having
to say password is whatever long.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Exactly, So the consents that's with you and your bank
sort of thing, so you know, much the same way
you might want to connect your accounts, and then you'll
say you know clearly what you're doing. And then to
initiate that final consent level, you'll normally open up your
banking app and you're in there, there'll be the consent
that says, yes, I agree to this company having access
to my data under these terms, and then I can
click okay. And then in that banking app you can
(10:03):
always review those consents at any time. It's auditible, and
then you can revoke them whenever you want, so you'll
kind of fully in control.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
People say that, well, yeah, but no, it's a huge upgrade,
and I think are we ready for it? It sounds like,
you know, like RBNZ just stress tested the banks and said, hey,
by the way, you need to look at your IT
systems and whether they could handle a variety of different
pain points like a third party who can't handle it,
or you've forgot to upgrade something, or you did it badly.
(10:31):
Isn't that kind of low key the Reserve Bank telling
banks you guys need to lift your game big time?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I mean banks have had a lot of compliance sign
at them in the last you know, pre pre post
COVID sort of thing. So this is what this is
one of those big areas that they've had to meet
and spend a lot of resourcing and sort of particularly
with their I teams and security teams around making sure
they're ready and so, you know, it is I think
the easiest way to think about it for banks perspective
is just another channel. So you know, originally we had,
(10:58):
you know, the branch channel came along with some ATMs,
and then there was kind of the online channel, and
then there was a mobile channel, and now there's kind
of open banking channel, which essentially just you know, is
another way to think about how they serve their customers.
And you know, for a lot of banks, the question
will we do we want to Are we best positioned
to be the front and center company that delivers that
product or are we more of an infrastructure compliance AML,
(11:21):
you know, secure deposits type company, very valuable.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
R checking out you are who you are, which is
another big pain point, right every time you want to
borrow something, invest in something. Yeah, you know, on boarding
to shares he's on boarding anywhere you need to go through.
A whole lot of this is.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
As a piece of shared Yeah, there's there's all those things,
and that's kind of the layer that we sit at.
And when I talk about shared infrastructure, you know, open
banking is one, but there's a lot of other areas
that will most likely we'll go into as well.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So for thinking I never have to use real me again,
very real me.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Look.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Digital Identity Trust Framework is another piece of legislation that's coming,
another piece of tech that's coming to this country, and
that is essentially as real MeV too, kind of maybe
not built only by the government and more by the
private sector, so you know, a bit more of you know,
solving actual problems, but essentially it is the same thing.
And so there's a lot of foundational building blocks, if
(12:12):
you like, before even chearesys could launch an app and
one of those is AML, and then you know all
those other things. So that's kind of at our lay
we handle all those common shared things.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So it's anti money laundering by the way, yes, right.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And all those things that generally, you know, you verify
who you are, all those kind of things that we
handle kind of at an infrastructure layer, so that companies
like Shares's and others can get on top of building
those products for their customers instead of all that kind
of shared stuff that just really gets them to the start. Lit.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, just doing it all over and over again. I
suppose any number of times. Look, I am hearing a
lot about search charges and you know, the amount you
have to pay it is that kind of a distraction?
Is that like the fight that if you're cynical, perhaps
the banking major banks would rather we're arguing about whether
or not you're doing payWave and whether or not the
merchants should be charging for it rather than all of
(12:59):
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah. Look, I think surch charging is a bit of
a distraction.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
And to be honest, you know, I think I fully
approve of the banning of surcharging, and I think it's
May next year. I mean, I think it's a cost
of doing business. You know, if you look at I
think there was a study a couple of years ago
on the cost of accepting cash and somewhere around four
point seven to five percent. You know, you'd be laughed
out at the store if you hand it over twenty
bucks for your ice cream and they tried to surcharge
(13:24):
you in the cash. You know, surcharging really only came
about came about sort of in this country at a
mass scale level around COVID, if you remember, with the
kind of the QR codes and the whole we don't
want to touch money type thing, and it was kind
of just kind of left on and they just never disappeared.
And so it's like tipping right, you know, yeah exactly,
(13:46):
And so look, you know, people do conflate surcharging with
open banking, but they are very different things. And then
search charging is very much related to your merchant you know,
services fees, and that's generally tied to your acquiring model
with you know, vs are a master card and whole
different things. So open banking is kind of the opposite
of that, where it's just unlocking and unleashing enabling the
(14:06):
existing payment rails that we already have. So a payment
and open banking land already moves between. You know already
have an ASB account, you might have an A and
Z account. We already have bank account numbers. We just
remove a fraction of having to remember them or share
them or any of those other things.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Right, I'm just sort of wondering. I mean, one of
the criticisms I've seen about these rules coming in that
you talked about in December are that it's been set
up in a way that there's no charging for it, right,
that the consumers don't get charged for this, But some
people seem worried at the same time you're saying, you know,
get rid of search charges. There is no kind of
search charge on this, and that's going to make it
(14:42):
more difficult to bring it in. Yeah, like I wrought
me through that.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't get that.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
I don't prescribe to the fact that you know no
other country that has legislated open banking charges for your
raw data. So this is just your raw data, so
your raw account balance and your transaction level details.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So that statement you think that's good, It.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Absolutely should be free.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
There's an argument to say that we could have a
small couple of cents one cent on a payment because
you know, as we referenced earlier in the conversation about FPOs.
If you underinvest in a payments network, then generally it
disappears sort of thing. And so that is also the
banks can't charge for that.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
But I've got to give the you've got to give
the banks and everybody else sort of a reason to
play the game.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Absolutely and keep investing in this.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And you know, we're certainly working with the banks, multiple
banks around you know, a premium model. Are there some
non sort of legislated API so they can deliver them
with more than happy to work out a revenue sharing
model with them because we think you know that certain
use cases could afford to pay a small fee and
certain other use cases couldn't.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
What are we talking about if you're getting a big
product with.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Yes, So if you are like a big consumer product
and have a huge customer base, you know, just connecting
your bank account data to see your balance and your transactions,
say in Chazy's, you know there's little value. Customer is
likely not going to pay for that in Chasy's as
an extra if that was a cost on Cheesys. But
if you're a business and you're offering an accounting solution
or a tax solution, and there's much more kind of
(16:08):
impetus to pay for that service then you know, a
small fee can be passed on sort of thing. So
we kind of think moving the charging or the fee
model to their kind of infrastructure or the intermediary layer
better suits working with banks on a partnership type model
is probably where it should will land and kind of
where we're working towards.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Does this whole technology what sort of a foot in
the door does it give to to FinTechs to actually
try new things?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, I think it's a huge shot in the arm.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
I think you know, I've always said, you know, how
can you be a bank without being a bank? Because
you know, becoming a bank in New Zealand is you know,
when was the last bank.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It's hard, it's like calling yourself a doctor. It's actually
I mean, it's regulated right limits.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And it takes years and years and years and a
whole bunch of cash that is just not available in
this country. And so you know, and a lot of respects.
If you can be your customer's primary financial relationship and
they think about banking with you even though you're not
a registered bank, then I think that's a really valuable
position to get into it and probably really enviable from
a bank's perspective too, because there's some really cool things
(17:11):
that you can add value and charge for and you
know you can still do you know, Sharesies does investments
and they do kisaver, and there's you know, plenty of
non bank lending, you know, in the in the mortgage
market as well now with key Saver funds growing and
you know, so there's there's a lot of people tackling
those kind of banks called propositions. And someone that can
deliver really cool user experience and you know, a really
(17:32):
strong customer proposition, is you really going to do well
in that space? Open banking enables that.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I guess at some point people might even want to
be lending Peter peer and sort of you know, leveraging
their portfolio and doing all kinds of crazy.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, lucky you kind of you know, to some respects,
open banking is great because you kind of it's been
legislated the banks. Here's the rules, everyone knows what the
rules are. And then just get out of the way
and let the market do it. Let the market, you know,
good products come to market.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
But are the banks going to only do the bare
minimum to qualify.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
The bare minimum achieves a lot, and so I think
it will be you know, banks by definition kind of
all compete against each other, right, particularly the big four banks,
and then you throw on key we Bank, and so
I think you'll see banks some banks say, well, we
think this is a really valuable channel for the future,
So we're going to innovate in the space, and we're
going to offer more business APIs or some other APIs
that only our customers can access to, you know, do
(18:21):
whatever they want to do. So I think you will
see a lot of competition and kind of innovation from
the banks eventually, but certainly at the moment and kind
of certainly into the new year, banks have just been
head down meeting the regulation.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So I'm just thinking, like, it feels like, you know,
an app like zero came here, it's just cleaned up
really well. It's got quite a lock on the market.
We tend to sort of have one of everything here.
It feels like, yeah, is someone going to come in
and just gut the solution and everybody else is going
to just be forget about it.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Certainly at the infrastructure layer in terms of what we
do like it is kind of a winner takes all.
Like there's only like you said, there's one zero for
a reason, there's one trade me for a reason.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Like the market's just not.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
That big here, so you know, there's only one chorus
for a reason. There's only one transpower for a reason.
You know, all of these things that operate kind of
a grid or a sort of a network where other
people plug into the market is just not big enough
to you know, to sustain more than one And so.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So do you wind up having to look around and go,
how do we do the same thing in Australia? How
do we do another kind of markets? Too complicated?
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, it's too complicated. We've decided to focus solely on
New Zealand. We think we can do New Zealand really well.
And look, ultimately, we don't think we are probably the
long term owners of this business either, like we do
think it is naturally probably you know, a group a
consortium of industry players that own and operate this this
piece of infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
We have some big key we save the fund or
something exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Like there's a lot of you know, it could be
telcos and there's lots of people in this space. Now
that that would have, you know, an advantage to co
owning this piece of infrastructure instead of renting it. Because
remember their customers as well, So you know, banks will
be the first to say, you know, which bank's going
to show other bank accounts inside of their bank interfaces?
You know, So as much as they produce the APIs,
(20:03):
they will be certainly very eager to consume APIs from
other banks so that their customers get the best experience.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Right, But who's going to show the cards first? Kind
of thing?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah, And look, I think we'll see an interesting space
evolved next year.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I guess at some point is this, like you know,
agentic AI that kind of stuff is serially going to
take all this sort of stuff with an API for
me or as you know, do your hand that agency over
to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Like I still think money and your finances are still
you know, a pretty important part of your life obviously,
and there's a lot of trust that goes with that,
that's built up over a long period of time. And look,
banks still have a credible and a well earned amount
of trust in society. Now you might you might sort
(20:49):
of you know, have an opinion on whether banks should
be owned by offshore entities and all those sorts of things.
But that's beside the point. They do look after your
money well, and they know how to secure your data,
and they do a really good job at that. And
so you know, I think there's a lot of interesting
spaces that will evolve outside of that. But ultimately, you
know where do your dollars sit, and you know who
holds onto them, and who you too, do you trust to. Ultimately,
(21:13):
you know, give one hundred dollars and know that you're
going to get the hundred dollars back when you need it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
It's always going to be a bank.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Sounds amazing. You've never worked in a bank though yourself.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I haven't worked in a bank. I worked for zero.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
You blagged your way in there, didn't you. I did,
be honest. Can we hear that story please? I heard
it once.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I was working.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
I grew up down south and Nar a town down
in the South Island, and I was working on a
golf course at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And family business.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I understand it was a family business. And I.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Got a wife and kids and a mortgage, as you
tend to do, and I thought, well, this actually my
wife made me, let's be honest, She told me that
I need to go and get a real job. So
I thought, I was always interested in technology and I
didn't have any qualifications. I would sort of build websites
on the side. This is back in twenty twelve thirteen,
and so I thought I need to I always i'd
sort of started building what now became a carho back
(22:04):
way back then. Even i'd sort of reverse engineer access
into my own bank account so I could move money
around automatically to avoid ASP's overdraft fees at the time,
and I thought, well, actually, if I want to do
something with us, I need to go and learn from someone.
And at the time Zero was obviously just taking off,
and so I sort of stumbled across a tweet that
Rod Drury had said, the founder and CEO of Zero,
(22:25):
and I mocked something up and I sent it to him,
and thirty minutes later he kind of offered me a
job sort of thing. And so I moved to Wellington
and worked for Zero. And look, Rod's someone that appreciates
innovation more than anyone, right and doing things differently and
sort of sticking your neck.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Out for you went into it, and I don't actually
want to work there. I want to learn how you
guys do.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
My dad and I remember telling him, you know, like,
I'll be here for maybe twelve months, eighty months, and
I'll learn as much as I can. He probably laughed
whatever make But yeah, that was always my goal to
go and learn from, you know, at the time, the
New Zealand's best and sort of understand how sas works
and how you build a product and how you get
customers and your market and all those things. And so
after that that point of around about eighty months as well,
I was able to sort of I went and did
(23:06):
a little bit of time at E Road, which is
a company up here in Auckland, and then I got
to a point where I could raise money for essentially
what I'm doing now and where you.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Go, do you feel like your patients is being real?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It's been an overnight, you know, ten year overnight success,
as a lot of people would say, and you know,
it's one of those things. If I'd known how long
the regulation would tach, which we always knew we would
need that regulation to get the tail and to get
these sort of past the early adopters, I didn't think
it would take ten years. I mean, I think I
was counting up the other day. It's eight Consumer and
(23:36):
Commerce Affairs ministers later. We've ended up with some really
good regulations that should enable the network and consumer data
right to grow. But it's like it, I mean, most
people would say, if you knew what you were getting
into when you started, would just do it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And most people probably said, nah, I'll get a job
at a bank.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Maybe forty years from now, what's it going to look like?
Any ideas I touched?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And that's far too long to push out in too.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
With everything going on technology at the moment, there will
be a lot more competition, there'll be a lot more
compelling reasons to switch providers. But I still think we're
a small country, and you know, with a cap of
five million odd people, there's only so much innovation and
so many financial products that can come to a market
the size, just because of the limit of that ceiling.
(24:23):
And so you know, it's unlikely that some of the
big overseas kind of fintech banks really have a market
share here because there's just there's just not enough people here.
And so I think, you know, one of the things
that will be interesting over the next forty years. Is
that you know where in New Zealand decides to play
in terms of do we want to remain a small
island in the South Pacific with five million people? Or
(24:46):
you know, do we have the capacity to get to
thirty or forty million people which enable everything else on
top of it. But you know who knows where that
ends up. You know that's well above my pay grade.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
A lot of traffic in the arrow Town.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
There would be a lot of traff there already is
a lot of traffic.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Eric been It's been fascinating hearing your passion for something
that most people probably don't even want to think about,
but will actually potentially change how they look at their money,
how they handle their finances, and how they transact It's
pretty fascinating. I hope you enjoyed the chance to share
some of that, and I hope you all enjoyed the
chance to listen and watch, whether you're watching on YouTube
(25:22):
or listening on any of the apps straight off the
Shares's app, iHeart wherever you get it from. That was
shared lunch Quama to
Get a Koto. Welcome to Shared Lunch, brought to you
by Chase's. I'm Garth Bray. We led the world in
this country with FPOs, the ability to pay for stuff
electronically by waiving a card. But that was forty years
ago and since then, maybe have we been coasting? Have
we let the major banks step back and not innovate
as much as they could. Today we're talking to a challenger.
(00:25):
Ben Lynch is a fintech founder keen to deliver on
the promise of cheaper, smarter, less painful ways to help
you handle your money. But before we get into that conversation,
some important information you should always consider when thinking about investing.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Ben Lynch from Akahu, Thanks for joining us here on
Shared Lunch.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Look, we started out in this country pretty cutting edge
with technology like f POSS. You know, the idea that
you could walk in and pay for your groceries or
your petrol by waving a piece of plastic at a
machine was probably pretty baller back in the eighties. Have
we just completely gone off the boil?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You know, eighty four was f poss and we certainly
haven't done a lot since then. In many respects, I
mean that that was ahead of its time. You know,
it is great to have a local payments network and
payment switch. Increasingly it looks like that won't happen in
this country. Cards are being dominated by visa mastercut.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Because that's if poss is like the State high before
they put the toll weight through, right.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It was, Yeah, it was a payment switch.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Arguably they just didn't innovate on you know, how does
that payment switch operate? So you know, it could have
moved quicker to contact lists and still sort of a
swipe style pin number, which you know, to this day
and age, particularly post COVID, seems archaic.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
It was you know, owned by the banks through through
the paymark quite model, and that was so you know,
it's hard to get agreement on should they prioritize spending
in that in that sort of network. So you know, look,
I think that ship sailed to be honest, but I
think there's there's other avenues that we can kind of
innovate on.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
But we are a small country.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
But does the way that that's happened, does that tell
us a lot about what we're going to talk about today,
which is open banking, Which is that whole idea of
I guess, democratizing your data, making what the banks know
about you, what you've told them, all your transactions do more.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right, I mean, I think open banking does nothing else
than best products should win. So no longer, you know,
are you is this apathy around just staying with the
bank you've always been with because you know that was
what you got given when you were a young kid
and you got your first bank account. But now you
know that that you can kind of freely move between banks.
You can you know, pick and choose sort of like
(02:50):
a you know, a telco. You know, you can take
your number with your sort of number portability. So the
promise of open banking does hopefully allow us to you know,
banks themselves to innovate, but also other non banks to
innovate and sort of become you know, maybe a bank
without being a bank in the regulatory sense.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Is that why I should care about this? Because I mean,
most people just want they just want to use their money,
they want to know where it is, they want to
make the most of it, they want to make the
most of their futures. Do they really need to know
about the plumbing in the background to all of us?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Honestly, no, it's you know, this is not a sexy startup.
This is you know, this should be boring, stable infrastructure,
and it is secure that just kind of runs invisibly.
If open banking is in the headlines post, you know,
the kind of honeymoon phase, then something's probably failed. To
be honest, it's one of those things that should just
run in the background, like the electricity grid or the
fiber network from Chorus. You know, it's just a piece
(03:40):
of infrastructure, a digital piece of infrastructure that certainly, in
my opinion and our opinion, should be owned and operated
for the benefit of New Zealanders as well.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
But it's not right now.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, it's it's always been.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
It hasn't been regulated up until the first of December
of this year, and we'll we'll get into that a
little bit later. So it's always been a sort of
a backdoor, kind of reverse engineered approach to creating these
open banking type services so that other products can use them.
And you know, in this country, the most kind of
obvious use case for sharing bank data is pioneered via Zero.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I was going to say, Zero seems to me like
the logical one.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I think, if you're a business and you can the
value prop of connecting your bank statements and your transactions
overnight so you can reconsulve the next morning, it's pretty clear, right,
So it kind of just democratizes that and takes it
ten steps further.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I grew up in a house where we had small businesses,
and you know, Sunday night, Dad would be sitting there
doing the books. And I now spend like ten minutes
on a phone going and it's all done. And that
seems like a massive set forward. Is that the kind
of thing that we're bringing to everybody's lives with this
kind of technology?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
It is, And it's almost you know, I used to
work at Zero when I was in the bank Feeds team,
so I sort of know it intimately well and essentially
where I sort of kecked off this whole journey. So
it's almost the way I think about it is if
Zero bank Feeds was a product and a company in
its own right and served more customers than just zero.
So it's that connectivity layer, shared infrastructure layer that you
know personal finance, accounting, tax investment tools, you know, mortgage brokers,
(05:02):
any anyone that needs access to your financial information can
get access securely and then share it for those purposes.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well, I mean, let's take the cheesys at for example.
I can look at that. I can go, oh, how
much have I got invest in the portfolio? What's in
my key Wei saver. I can make sort of one
off very quick payments, you know, instant payments basically, and transfers.
What other kinds of things are going to turn up
on the dashboard as this evolves?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, I'm I'm a big chezys fan.
I think you know you can like you, like you said,
reference the key we saver product. Now there's a there's
a master card, debit card now you can get with Cheersy's.
So you know, it is becoming more and more of
your kind of primary financial relationship. But you can also
choose through open banking to say, actually I want to
keep my ASB savings account. I actually want to keep
(05:48):
my whatever bank Kei Wei saver or non Chezy's key
we saver, but I want to see it inside of Chasy's.
And so I can log into one place and I
can see all my accounts, and I might bring my
mortgage across with me. Now it's still held with the
underlying bank, and I still go to them to change
rates or do whatever, but I can see it all
in one place. And that's kind of the promise of
open banking, is to bring all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Together, just that dashboard. You can't actually do anything.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Now you can do things.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, so you can make payments sort of initiations, So
you can make payments essentially from your ASB account inside
of Shares's to pay a bill.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So at some point you probably stop having a relationship,
maybe with your bank. They're just a commodity, right, and
your main relationship might be with whoever that who whoever
controls that.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
At I mean, I think that is the race too,
who owns that kind of top of the wallet type thing, And.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So I can't imagine why the banks don't want that
to happen. Then, like a bank's we've got this exciting
new product that takes your customers away or put somebody
between you and them, like most businesses are going to
fight that tooth nail, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, look they have resisted it for a long time.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
But it was always obvious to me that, you know,
eventually there would be regulation that would force for a
competition's aspect to do it. So it was just a
matter of time. I didn't think it would take quite
this long. But you know, first of December it is
you know, it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Is the law.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So what happens on the first So from the.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
First of December, essentially we have consumer data right in
New Zealand. So essentially that's a piece of legislation that
says you, as a customer consumer own your data and
if you want to share that data with a third
party then that's your right.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But I mean the Privacy X says that's the case already,
and I guess so does. Like my understanding as a
journalist using Official Information Act, I get it, but it's
how you get it right. And if you write to
some minister or some government department say I want a
list of X, Y and Z, they will send you
a PDF that's impossible to search. Right, this is about
is this about getting it in a way that you
can actually do something with it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
So there's the legislation which is the consumer data, right,
and then under the legislation there is it's pretty high level,
which is good because it's going to sit across a
lot of sectors eventually. Now the open banking is the
first sector to be designated, essentially, So that's where you
mentioned the regulations CAECK, and there's some standardized ways that
the banks are making that data available to you and
(07:56):
essentially via APIs, so the application programming interface, so.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
The ability for plumbing jargon, plumbing jargon.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So you know, ironically, actually, when I first started talking
about this back in twenty sixteen to some bankers, you know,
it was a very new term, not on a tech community,
but certainly in the banking community. And you know, half
the time I wondered whether they knew the difference between
an IPA and API, to be honest, But things have
moved along, you.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Know, many IPAs.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Later, many IPAs later, we have APIs, and so that's
essentially from the first of December, these APIs are made
available via the bank securely and then for third parties
to essentially act on top of those and with your consent.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Because up until now, what basically apps have been kind
of screen scraping.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Screen scraping, reverse engineering, sort of gated access. There's all
sorts of things you could call, right Polly's been around
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Obviously, one reason I never used it because the first
thing that says is can you please just type in
your bank pass? I'm not telling you my pin number.
This is the one thing they tell you not to do.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
It is, but it's it's one of those things that
you know, a substantial portion of the country of you
use did, and even more so overseas, and when the
value proposition is clear, then people tend to, I guess,
forego a little bit of privacy for that convenience factor,
which is not necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
But it has always been done.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But they shouldn't have to.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
They shouldn't have to, and they won't have to, you know,
from the start of next year going forward. But you know,
one of the other big use cases if you go
to a mortgage broker and they say, hey, can we
get access to your bank statements so we can figure
out whether we can you know, someone will end you
a million bucks and so generally that that's another service
that will jump into your online banking portals, grab ale
your bank statements, and then they'll run them through some
sort of enrichment process to figure out your kind of
(09:34):
expenses and income.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And this will just basically do that without you having
to say password is whatever long.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Exactly, So the consents that's with you and your bank
sort of thing, so you know, much the same way
you might want to connect your accounts, and then you'll
say you know clearly what you're doing. And then to
initiate that final consent level, you'll normally open up your
banking app and you're in there, there'll be the consent
that says, yes, I agree to this company having access
to my data under these terms, and then I can
click okay. And then in that banking app you can
(10:03):
always review those consents at any time. It's auditible, and
then you can revoke them whenever you want, so you'll
kind of fully in control.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
People say that, well, yeah, but no, it's a huge upgrade,
and I think are we ready for it? It sounds like,
you know, like RBNZ just stress tested the banks and said, hey,
by the way, you need to look at your IT
systems and whether they could handle a variety of different
pain points like a third party who can't handle it,
or you've forgot to upgrade something, or you did it badly.
(10:31):
Isn't that kind of low key the Reserve Bank telling
banks you guys need to lift your game big time?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I mean banks have had a lot of compliance sign
at them in the last you know, pre pre post
COVID sort of thing. So this is what this is
one of those big areas that they've had to meet
and spend a lot of resourcing and sort of particularly
with their I teams and security teams around making sure
they're ready and so, you know, it is I think
the easiest way to think about it for banks perspective
is just another channel. So you know, originally we had,
(10:58):
you know, the branch channel came along with some ATMs,
and then there was kind of the online channel, and
then there was a mobile channel, and now there's kind
of open banking channel, which essentially just you know, is
another way to think about how they serve their customers.
And you know, for a lot of banks, the question
will we do we want to Are we best positioned
to be the front and center company that delivers that
product or are we more of an infrastructure compliance AML,
(11:21):
you know, secure deposits type company, very valuable.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
R checking out you are who you are, which is
another big pain point, right every time you want to
borrow something, invest in something. Yeah, you know, on boarding
to shares he's on boarding anywhere you need to go through.
A whole lot of this is.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
As a piece of shared Yeah, there's there's all those things,
and that's kind of the layer that we sit at.
And when I talk about shared infrastructure, you know, open
banking is one, but there's a lot of other areas
that will most likely we'll go into as well.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So for thinking I never have to use real me again,
very real me.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Look.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Digital Identity Trust Framework is another piece of legislation that's coming,
another piece of tech that's coming to this country, and
that is essentially as real MeV too, kind of maybe
not built only by the government and more by the
private sector, so you know, a bit more of you know,
solving actual problems, but essentially it is the same thing.
And so there's a lot of foundational building blocks, if
(12:12):
you like, before even chearesys could launch an app and
one of those is AML, and then you know all
those other things. So that's kind of at our lay
we handle all those common shared things.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So it's anti money laundering by the way, yes, right.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And all those things that generally, you know, you verify
who you are, all those kind of things that we
handle kind of at an infrastructure layer, so that companies
like Shares's and others can get on top of building
those products for their customers instead of all that kind
of shared stuff that just really gets them to the start. Lit.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, just doing it all over and over again. I
suppose any number of times. Look, I am hearing a
lot about search charges and you know, the amount you
have to pay it is that kind of a distraction?
Is that like the fight that if you're cynical, perhaps
the banking major banks would rather we're arguing about whether
or not you're doing payWave and whether or not the
merchants should be charging for it rather than all of
(12:59):
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah. Look, I think surch charging is a bit of
a distraction.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
And to be honest, you know, I think I fully
approve of the banning of surcharging, and I think it's
May next year. I mean, I think it's a cost
of doing business. You know, if you look at I
think there was a study a couple of years ago
on the cost of accepting cash and somewhere around four
point seven to five percent. You know, you'd be laughed
out at the store if you hand it over twenty
bucks for your ice cream and they tried to surcharge
(13:24):
you in the cash. You know, surcharging really only came
about came about sort of in this country at a
mass scale level around COVID, if you remember, with the
kind of the QR codes and the whole we don't
want to touch money type thing, and it was kind
of just kind of left on and they just never disappeared.
And so it's like tipping right, you know, yeah exactly,
(13:46):
And so look, you know, people do conflate surcharging with
open banking, but they are very different things. And then
search charging is very much related to your merchant you know,
services fees, and that's generally tied to your acquiring model
with you know, vs are a master card and whole
different things. So open banking is kind of the opposite
of that, where it's just unlocking and unleashing enabling the
(14:06):
existing payment rails that we already have. So a payment
and open banking land already moves between. You know already
have an ASB account, you might have an A and
Z account. We already have bank account numbers. We just
remove a fraction of having to remember them or share
them or any of those other things.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Right, I'm just sort of wondering. I mean, one of
the criticisms I've seen about these rules coming in that
you talked about in December are that it's been set
up in a way that there's no charging for it, right,
that the consumers don't get charged for this, But some
people seem worried at the same time you're saying, you know,
get rid of search charges. There is no kind of
search charge on this, and that's going to make it
(14:42):
more difficult to bring it in. Yeah, like I wrought
me through that.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't get that.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
I don't prescribe to the fact that you know no
other country that has legislated open banking charges for your
raw data. So this is just your raw data, so
your raw account balance and your transaction level details.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So that statement you think that's good, It.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Absolutely should be free.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
There's an argument to say that we could have a
small couple of cents one cent on a payment because
you know, as we referenced earlier in the conversation about FPOs.
If you underinvest in a payments network, then generally it
disappears sort of thing. And so that is also the
banks can't charge for that.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
But I've got to give the you've got to give
the banks and everybody else sort of a reason to
play the game.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Absolutely and keep investing in this.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And you know, we're certainly working with the banks, multiple
banks around you know, a premium model. Are there some
non sort of legislated API so they can deliver them
with more than happy to work out a revenue sharing
model with them because we think you know that certain
use cases could afford to pay a small fee and
certain other use cases couldn't.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
What are we talking about if you're getting a big
product with.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Yes, So if you are like a big consumer product
and have a huge customer base, you know, just connecting
your bank account data to see your balance and your transactions,
say in Chazy's, you know there's little value. Customer is
likely not going to pay for that in Chasy's as
an extra if that was a cost on Cheesys. But
if you're a business and you're offering an accounting solution
or a tax solution, and there's much more kind of
(16:08):
impetus to pay for that service then you know, a
small fee can be passed on sort of thing. So
we kind of think moving the charging or the fee
model to their kind of infrastructure or the intermediary layer
better suits working with banks on a partnership type model
is probably where it should will land and kind of
where we're working towards.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Does this whole technology what sort of a foot in
the door does it give to to FinTechs to actually
try new things?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, I think it's a huge shot in the arm.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
I think you know, I've always said, you know, how
can you be a bank without being a bank? Because
you know, becoming a bank in New Zealand is you know,
when was the last bank.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It's hard, it's like calling yourself a doctor. It's actually
I mean, it's regulated right limits.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And it takes years and years and years and a
whole bunch of cash that is just not available in
this country. And so you know, and a lot of respects.
If you can be your customer's primary financial relationship and
they think about banking with you even though you're not
a registered bank, then I think that's a really valuable
position to get into it and probably really enviable from
a bank's perspective too, because there's some really cool things
(17:11):
that you can add value and charge for and you
know you can still do you know, Sharesies does investments
and they do kisaver, and there's you know, plenty of
non bank lending, you know, in the in the mortgage
market as well now with key Saver funds growing and
you know, so there's there's a lot of people tackling
those kind of banks called propositions. And someone that can
deliver really cool user experience and you know, a really
(17:32):
strong customer proposition, is you really going to do well
in that space? Open banking enables that.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I guess at some point people might even want to
be lending Peter peer and sort of you know, leveraging
their portfolio and doing all kinds of crazy.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, lucky you kind of you know, to some respects,
open banking is great because you kind of it's been
legislated the banks. Here's the rules, everyone knows what the
rules are. And then just get out of the way
and let the market do it. Let the market, you know,
good products come to market.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
But are the banks going to only do the bare
minimum to qualify.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
The bare minimum achieves a lot, and so I think
it will be you know, banks by definition kind of
all compete against each other, right, particularly the big four banks,
and then you throw on key we Bank, and so
I think you'll see banks some banks say, well, we
think this is a really valuable channel for the future,
So we're going to innovate in the space, and we're
going to offer more business APIs or some other APIs
that only our customers can access to, you know, do
(18:21):
whatever they want to do. So I think you will
see a lot of competition and kind of innovation from
the banks eventually, but certainly at the moment and kind
of certainly into the new year, banks have just been
head down meeting the regulation.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So I'm just thinking, like, it feels like, you know,
an app like zero came here, it's just cleaned up
really well. It's got quite a lock on the market.
We tend to sort of have one of everything here.
It feels like, yeah, is someone going to come in
and just gut the solution and everybody else is going
to just be forget about it.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Certainly at the infrastructure layer in terms of what we
do like it is kind of a winner takes all.
Like there's only like you said, there's one zero for
a reason, there's one trade me for a reason.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Like the market's just not.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
That big here, so you know, there's only one chorus
for a reason. There's only one transpower for a reason.
You know, all of these things that operate kind of
a grid or a sort of a network where other
people plug into the market is just not big enough
to you know, to sustain more than one And so.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So do you wind up having to look around and go,
how do we do the same thing in Australia? How
do we do another kind of markets? Too complicated?
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, it's too complicated. We've decided to focus solely on
New Zealand. We think we can do New Zealand really well.
And look, ultimately, we don't think we are probably the
long term owners of this business either, like we do
think it is naturally probably you know, a group a
consortium of industry players that own and operate this this
piece of infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
We have some big key we save the fund or
something exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Like there's a lot of you know, it could be
telcos and there's lots of people in this space. Now
that that would have, you know, an advantage to co
owning this piece of infrastructure instead of renting it. Because
remember their customers as well, So you know, banks will
be the first to say, you know, which bank's going
to show other bank accounts inside of their bank interfaces?
You know, So as much as they produce the APIs,
(20:03):
they will be certainly very eager to consume APIs from
other banks so that their customers get the best experience.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Right, But who's going to show the cards first? Kind
of thing?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah, And look, I think we'll see an interesting space
evolved next year.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I guess at some point is this, like you know,
agentic AI that kind of stuff is serially going to
take all this sort of stuff with an API for
me or as you know, do your hand that agency over
to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Like I still think money and your finances are still
you know, a pretty important part of your life obviously,
and there's a lot of trust that goes with that,
that's built up over a long period of time. And look,
banks still have a credible and a well earned amount
of trust in society. Now you might you might sort
(20:49):
of you know, have an opinion on whether banks should
be owned by offshore entities and all those sorts of things.
But that's beside the point. They do look after your
money well, and they know how to secure your data,
and they do a really good job at that. And
so you know, I think there's a lot of interesting
spaces that will evolve outside of that. But ultimately, you
know where do your dollars sit, and you know who
holds onto them, and who you too, do you trust to. Ultimately,
(21:13):
you know, give one hundred dollars and know that you're
going to get the hundred dollars back when you need it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
It's always going to be a bank.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Sounds amazing. You've never worked in a bank though yourself.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I haven't worked in a bank. I worked for zero.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
You blagged your way in there, didn't you. I did,
be honest. Can we hear that story please? I heard
it once.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I was working.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
I grew up down south and Nar a town down
in the South Island, and I was working on a
golf course at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And family business.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I understand it was a family business. And I.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Got a wife and kids and a mortgage, as you
tend to do, and I thought, well, this actually my
wife made me, let's be honest, She told me that
I need to go and get a real job. So
I thought, I was always interested in technology and I
didn't have any qualifications. I would sort of build websites
on the side. This is back in twenty twelve thirteen,
and so I thought I need to I always i'd
sort of started building what now became a carho back
(22:04):
way back then. Even i'd sort of reverse engineer access
into my own bank account so I could move money
around automatically to avoid ASP's overdraft fees at the time,
and I thought, well, actually, if I want to do
something with us, I need to go and learn from someone.
And at the time Zero was obviously just taking off,
and so I sort of stumbled across a tweet that
Rod Drury had said, the founder and CEO of Zero,
(22:25):
and I mocked something up and I sent it to him,
and thirty minutes later he kind of offered me a
job sort of thing. And so I moved to Wellington
and worked for Zero. And look, Rod's someone that appreciates
innovation more than anyone, right and doing things differently and
sort of sticking your neck.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Out for you went into it, and I don't actually
want to work there. I want to learn how you
guys do.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
My dad and I remember telling him, you know, like,
I'll be here for maybe twelve months, eighty months, and
I'll learn as much as I can. He probably laughed
whatever make But yeah, that was always my goal to
go and learn from, you know, at the time, the
New Zealand's best and sort of understand how sas works
and how you build a product and how you get
customers and your market and all those things. And so
after that that point of around about eighty months as well,
I was able to sort of I went and did
(23:06):
a little bit of time at E Road, which is
a company up here in Auckland, and then I got
to a point where I could raise money for essentially
what I'm doing now and where you.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Go, do you feel like your patients is being real?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It's been an overnight, you know, ten year overnight success,
as a lot of people would say, and you know,
it's one of those things. If I'd known how long
the regulation would tach, which we always knew we would
need that regulation to get the tail and to get
these sort of past the early adopters, I didn't think
it would take ten years. I mean, I think I
was counting up the other day. It's eight Consumer and
(23:36):
Commerce Affairs ministers later. We've ended up with some really
good regulations that should enable the network and consumer data
right to grow. But it's like it, I mean, most
people would say, if you knew what you were getting
into when you started, would just do it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And most people probably said, nah, I'll get a job
at a bank.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Maybe forty years from now, what's it going to look like?
Any ideas I touched?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And that's far too long to push out in too.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
With everything going on technology at the moment, there will
be a lot more competition, there'll be a lot more
compelling reasons to switch providers. But I still think we're
a small country, and you know, with a cap of
five million odd people, there's only so much innovation and
so many financial products that can come to a market
the size, just because of the limit of that ceiling.
(24:23):
And so you know, it's unlikely that some of the
big overseas kind of fintech banks really have a market
share here because there's just there's just not enough people here.
And so I think, you know, one of the things
that will be interesting over the next forty years. Is
that you know where in New Zealand decides to play
in terms of do we want to remain a small
island in the South Pacific with five million people? Or
(24:46):
you know, do we have the capacity to get to
thirty or forty million people which enable everything else on
top of it. But you know who knows where that
ends up. You know that's well above my pay grade.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
A lot of traffic in the arrow Town.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
There would be a lot of traff there already is
a lot of traffic.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Eric been It's been fascinating hearing your passion for something
that most people probably don't even want to think about,
but will actually potentially change how they look at their money,
how they handle their finances, and how they transact It's
pretty fascinating. I hope you enjoyed the chance to share
some of that, and I hope you all enjoyed the
chance to listen and watch, whether you're watching on YouTube
(25:22):
or listening on any of the apps straight off the
Shares's app, iHeart wherever you get it from. That was
shared lunch Quama to
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.