Speaker 1: The race is on, it seems like, what's it like
Speaker 1: from your perspective to see the race and who's running
Speaker 1: in parallel with you.
Speaker 2: You have to leverage what you do as a fundamental business.
Speaker 2: We have over one hundred and something million customers where
Speaker 2: we can now issue cards to that don't have them today.
Speaker 2: It's not about a race to who can do the
Speaker 2: first coin or who can do the first blockchain. It's
Speaker 2: who can furnish the first use cases. If we can
Speaker 2: go to an emerging country and emerging space Saturdays under
Speaker 2: banks on Nerve Bank and give them digital music cards
Speaker 2: that they can get funded to from loved ones you've
Speaker 2: serviced the use case stand that they have a need
Speaker 2: versus we've got a coin in the blockchain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go. I don't think that's the race.
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Speaker 1: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and
Speaker 1: we are recording at Station three in New York's Financial District.
Speaker 1: And joining me is Malcolm Clark, who is the VP
Speaker 1: of Digital Assets at Western Union. Malcolm, great to have you.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me. This is exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Malcolm, I am excited because we were talking before
Speaker 1: the recording. I've been a user of Western Union for
Speaker 1: many years, you know, sending money to my family overseas,
Speaker 1: and to see Western Union launch a stable coin and
Speaker 1: embracing blockchain is so fascinating. So I'm excited to learn
Speaker 1: the details from you. Maybe we can kick it off
Speaker 1: with your background. Tell us a bit about where you
Speaker 1: grew up in what's your professional background?
Speaker 2: Sure, so I grew up in Manchester in the UK,
Speaker 2: so like yourself, not a traditional US kid background wise.
Speaker 2: You know, had a very interesting early career in telecoms,
Speaker 2: so working on the first mobile apps, first Blackberries, which
Speaker 2: was interesting. So that's going to age me right now,
Speaker 2: So now you're talking to an older guy. Then had
Speaker 2: an opportunity to move to North America through Canada, so
Speaker 2: worked for TD Banking Canada, where I built out the
Speaker 2: first digital asset network. So a number of years ago,
Speaker 2: already playing in the blockchain space of how do you
Speaker 2: secure privacy by design your essential identity and share it
Speaker 2: with others on a blockchain through hyper ledger, so partnership
Speaker 2: with the major banks there and then really having what
Speaker 2: you wouldcord with not in party sort of store, and
Speaker 2: then the banks you would log in and provide your
Speaker 2: identity to those stores or to the government in a
Speaker 2: secure manner. So after that, had the opportunity to move
Speaker 2: to San Francisco with Zell early Warning to build out
Speaker 2: a very similar identity platform, working through the Zel ecosystems,
Speaker 2: and then found myself going through a Japanese bank running
Speaker 2: AI services and landed out Western Union about eight months ago,
Speaker 2: where I picked up ecosystems, which is the digital wallets
Speaker 2: and digital assets. So working through that journey and bringing
Speaker 2: Western Unions. You said, a traditional moni transmit company, your
Speaker 2: global footprint, lots of people use us into a crypto
Speaker 2: asset digital asset space. So yeah, very interesting time. And
Speaker 2: stable coins and the genius actor has really been that
Speaker 2: catalyst to start really pushing after this stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. And in your journey in the banking finance,
Speaker 1: payments world, you mentioned you were a TD bank and
Speaker 1: starting to set things up with digital assets and so forth.
Speaker 1: How did you hear about bigcoin or blockchain and was
Speaker 1: it a natural thing for you to recognize it and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this looks like it's the future.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you know, back then, much like stable
Speaker 2: coins now, they've been around for a while so this
Speaker 2: isn't some new thing that suddenly has become you know,
Speaker 2: it's a good buzzword, it's a trend at the moment.
Speaker 2: So that's great, and it's driving adoption back then reusing
Speaker 2: R three quorder and doing things with the bank accounts.
Speaker 2: So how do you use a smart contract to move
Speaker 2: funds between institutions? So almost into that you know, tokenized
Speaker 2: deposit space as you recall it, now, how are you
Speaker 2: using you know, those smart contracts to you know, essentially
Speaker 2: move funding. Then at the time, we're in a space
Speaker 2: where the banks are looking at how do you add
Speaker 2: additional service? So you have a depart that account, you
Speaker 2: have your mortgage, you have these traditional finances. You know,
Speaker 2: what is the trends at the moment and how can
Speaker 2: you add those services to the banks of payments are
Speaker 2: always you know, you've always had two issues with payments.
Speaker 2: One is speed, the second is security and safety. So
Speaker 2: speed is solved with you know, the Interact network did
Speaker 2: same day deposit, you know, email transfers. Safety security was
Speaker 2: really driven around identity and saying, okay, if you can
Speaker 2: add an identity to the payment, create that token as
Speaker 2: a safe, secure token between the banks. Then are you
Speaker 2: in a better place. So the answer is yes, So
Speaker 2: what's the technology that could do that? And that's where
Speaker 2: you get to well, blockchains evolving, it's, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the blue chips of the bank. So what can
Speaker 2: we do in blockchain? How can we leverage are three?
Speaker 2: How can we leverage hyper lecture, how can we leverage bitpoint?
Speaker 2: So it's really a natural evolution of saying the blockchain
Speaker 2: and ails for immutable digital movement of things in a
Speaker 2: secure manner. It means every other bank can't see the identity,
Speaker 2: the government can't see the identity unless they need it,
Speaker 2: and the consumer permissions it. So it's really natural how
Speaker 2: I got into that space and started working with the
Speaker 2: payment network, the un NCY network and the safety security
Speaker 2: and pulling them together. So it wasn't you wake up
Speaker 2: one morning like that seems to be the path, let's
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 3: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It has to be more natural evolution otherwise it just
Speaker 2: becomes a buzz and a trend and it drops off.
Speaker 2: So it's got to have real foundation in utility, use
Speaker 2: case and why you would do this?
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, and that totally makes sense in discovering the
Speaker 1: use cases and the utility and you know you mentioned
Speaker 1: using hyper ledger fabric and that is more of a
Speaker 1: permission private chain, but there are public blockchains. Do you
Speaker 1: see that the future will include both, Like institutions will
Speaker 1: have their own internal chain so to speak, but they're
Speaker 1: maybe bridging to public chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think like institutions, So you're talking Canada's five
Speaker 2: major banks nine years ago created a permissioned private blockchain
Speaker 2: on Hyperlagure. So innovation kind of at the forefront nine
Speaker 2: years ago. So banks have continued to evolve. So permission
Speaker 2: based blockchains, permission based tokenization of assets, that's the thing,
Speaker 2: that's what they do today. Our three quarter has been
Speaker 2: around for a long time. I think that will continue.
Speaker 2: So the banks will continue to store tokenized assets, it
Speaker 2: will continue to store tokenized stock or those types of things.
Speaker 2: They are fundamentally localized. Banks like global banks still have
Speaker 2: localization stable coins and those public blockchains. They're really the
Speaker 2: speed on top. So they're the edge and that's where
Speaker 2: you're going to see the innovation you're seeing now in
Speaker 2: the driving with the permissions of the genius acts and things.
Speaker 2: How do I take that tokenization that's going to work
Speaker 2: on the institutional layer and how do wallets really leverage
Speaker 2: that to move things quickly internationally? So banks still work,
Speaker 2: you know, five days a week, nine to five weekends.
Speaker 2: Another thing, commerce runs twenty four to seven. So that's
Speaker 2: where you see you know, the stable coin and the
Speaker 2: public stuff and the permission stuff, they will layer on
Speaker 2: top of each other because still institutions are going to
Speaker 2: need you need to move large money around. You know,
Speaker 2: large money movements are you know, their permission, they're regulated,
Speaker 2: that governed, they're protected. Fast movement is protected by the
Speaker 2: organizations that move it. And in that manner, So I
Speaker 2: think they both come together and they stay together. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's one or the other. I don't think
Speaker 2: you're going to see quickly, at least large institutions moving
Speaker 2: the treasury between two ginormous institutions on a public work chain.
Speaker 2: It's just you know, there's no need to do that.
Speaker 2: There's the value of doing that. The benefit of doing
Speaker 2: that is just not there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and not to mention privacy, right, there's certain
Speaker 1: things they don't want out there on the public chains.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: I mean, we'll get into why Solana later, I guess,
Speaker 2: So Solana, there's there's some interesting developments in the public space.
Speaker 2: So privacy is one of those interesting conversations like the
Speaker 2: crypto will grew up with, it's got to be open,
Speaker 2: it's got to be public, have to have complete transparency
Speaker 2: and everything happening, because if you don't, then you know
Speaker 2: essentially why are we doing this and you're trying to
Speaker 2: not go down the institution path. You want the openness. However,
Speaker 2: there has to be a balance that says something's in
Speaker 2: a transaction you do want to protect, like you do
Speaker 2: want to protect certain things, like the value of the
Speaker 2: transaction is the volume, because frankly, it doesn't have value
Speaker 2: to the world, has value to the individuals. So Slana
Speaker 2: and their extension is a very interesting way of saying
Speaker 2: you can program parts of your smart contract where you
Speaker 2: do add the privacy layer, and then if somebody needs
Speaker 2: to see that, much like a bank today, you can
Speaker 2: do a legal requirement of legal intercept or legal warrant
Speaker 2: to actually have that transact and a lock to see
Speaker 2: what's happening, because that's the people who need to see it.
Speaker 2: So the privacy by design piece is very interesting when
Speaker 2: you get into that public permissioned, private permissioned, public open
Speaker 2: like there needs to be privacy somewhere. So again, that's
Speaker 2: going to be an interesting evolution in this space.
Speaker 1: The interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if you
Speaker 1: can please support the podcast by hitting the like button subscribing.
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Speaker 1: I'll let you get back to the content. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. So there's a question I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to ask you.
Speaker 1: I know the answer, but I'm thinking of the folks
Speaker 1: who are new to all this. They may have used
Speaker 1: Western Union in the past and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Why is Western Union creating a staple coin?
Speaker 2: So we thought it'd be fine. No, my CEO said, there, no,
Speaker 2: I'm totally joking.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I think there's there's a couple of things that are
Speaker 2: are happening globally right now.
Speaker 3: There are users.
Speaker 2: They're not going to care whether we have a stable
Speaker 2: coin or we send your money with the fine unicorn
Speaker 2: you to them. It's about speed, it's about getting the
Speaker 2: money where they need it in the most simplest way.
Speaker 3: The best utility stable.
Speaker 2: Coins for Western Union, there are actually three programs that
Speaker 2: mean something very different when you apply the lens. So
Speaker 2: for us, we move billions of hours. Globally, we are
Speaker 2: restricted sometimes by the banking network, so you know, the
Speaker 2: five days a week, the nine to five weekends, and
Speaker 2: not a thing. So the treasury use case for our
Speaker 2: coin is actually it's fairly obvious. So it says, if
Speaker 2: I can move liquidity, you know, seven days a week,
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven to the places I need it,
Speaker 2: it actually changes my economics. It creates you know, capital
Speaker 2: value for me because I'm not parking capital, and it
Speaker 2: means whatever I move, I can hold yield versus today,
Speaker 2: I move money here, I move money there, and I
Speaker 2: have pools of funding set all overplace. So if you
Speaker 2: take vantage your economic premise for a Western Union, it says, look,
Speaker 2: we have an economic pool. Now that is a new pool.
Speaker 2: It's operation efficiency. It means we can control our capital better,
Speaker 2: we can do things with that, and it gives me levers.
Speaker 2: So that's one reason why the consumers frankly don't care.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: The opposite side of that is what are the use
Speaker 2: cases and the adoption the consumer side that I can
Speaker 2: libuse that too. So we were speaking before we started
Speaker 2: around you're sending money home and you're gifting. The natural
Speaker 2: flow is you'll send money, you'll walk into a store,
Speaker 2: you'll take that cash and go and spend it. But
Speaker 2: it's cash, so cash is king in a lot of places.
Speaker 2: With stable coin, we're able to do things like issue
Speaker 2: a digital card or a physical card in places that
Speaker 2: naturally we don't exist. So we have a stable card
Speaker 2: program and we're able to say, hey, the money that's
Speaker 2: going to your family member, they can now take a
Speaker 2: card here, so it's early banking if they don't have banking,
Speaker 2: or it's access to tap and spend digital payments. I
Speaker 2: can go around and pay my phone billks. I actually
Speaker 2: have a card number. Now I can do those things.
Speaker 2: So the same coin that's going to drive my treasury
Speaker 2: is going to drive my consumerization. So I have a
Speaker 2: US dollar denominated value on a visa card, so that
Speaker 2: moves instantly. Economics are that and there's some loyalty you
Speaker 2: can put around that in the future and you can
Speaker 2: use that. So it's a consumer use case. So what
Speaker 2: changes for Western Union consumers is they now get global
Speaker 2: access to a card fifty seven countries, pretty global. That's
Speaker 2: one second, really big one is our partner network. So
Speaker 2: Western Union is evolving to say, how do we give
Speaker 2: access to the things we have as critical things like
Speaker 2: our stores to everybody else in the B to B space.
Speaker 2: So crypto wallets, stable coin wallets, they still have a
Speaker 2: last mile problem. So I'm really good at getting digital
Speaker 2: to digital. So I can send your money, you can
Speaker 2: send it to your digital bank, you can send it
Speaker 2: through paypals or whoever. But you want cash, you're really
Speaker 2: restricted to an ATM, which is expensive, or a money
Speaker 2: exchange place which is going to be like change it
Speaker 2: into tether and then I'm going to take you twenty percent,
Speaker 2: which I saw in Columbia this weekend, and it's a
Speaker 2: really concluded, very restrictive flow that gets quite expensive for
Speaker 2: the end user. What we're saying to these wallet partners is, hey,
Speaker 2: you can leverage our network. Putting Western Union is the
Speaker 2: ability to exit on your network and you can go
Speaker 2: directly into my store and take cash. So the user
Speaker 2: flow is you're in your wallet. Let's pick cracking because
Speaker 2: it's we all know who crack and are you have
Speaker 2: your wallet balance and you're able to say, ooka, I
Speaker 2: want to send it to a Western Union, complete the FX,
Speaker 2: and then walk into that store and then just take
Speaker 2: the cash and the FX is you know it's there.
Speaker 2: It's a very clean and clear fee of your pain,
Speaker 2: which is a small fee, and then you walk out
Speaker 2: with the cash at the end, so you're actually really
Speaker 2: turning it to that last mile cash. We have close
Speaker 2: to four hundred thousand stores globally, so you have four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand places on this planet that these wallet providers
Speaker 2: can now say you can get cash. So we have
Speaker 2: four big partners, large partners joining the network. We have
Speaker 2: pipeline of other ones coming through that are going to
Speaker 2: leverage this. So it's interesting how you have the economics
Speaker 2: the two the use case for users and the business
Speaker 2: to business use cases just wrapped in the same USDPT
Speaker 2: stable point.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible And I love to see and hear
Speaker 1: of the technology making people's lives better. And you know,
Speaker 1: here in the United States and someone to develop country,
Speaker 1: it's easy for us to say, oh yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: need that, but in other countries people absolutely need these things.
Speaker 1: In the stable coin is called us DPT and it's
Speaker 1: built on the Salana blockchain. So tell us why Solana
Speaker 1: was selected and are their plans to expand to other blockchains.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so we selected Salona. So we looked out
Speaker 2: a couple of things. You know, when you're selecting technology
Speaker 2: and you're an institution, especially a public one, you go
Speaker 2: through a process of you know, technology fit, partner fit,
Speaker 2: you know, roadmap what they have coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 2: You know, blockchains they're economically they're really not businesses that
Speaker 2: are normal businesses where you're paying for a service. You're
Speaker 2: leveraging their capability. You know, they help you fund other things.
Speaker 2: So Solana they close two gaps for us. So one
Speaker 2: on their roadmap with extensions, they have this ability to
Speaker 2: close the proceed which we spoke before, So that ability
Speaker 2: to say, hey, we have extensions on our marchain. You
Speaker 2: can leverage to certain things in your smart contracts, so
Speaker 2: when you're moving between your agents or your big institutions,
Speaker 2: you can essentially hide certain things because you don't want
Speaker 2: them on a public blockchain. So that was a big one.
Speaker 2: The second one is Solana has gone through teething problems
Speaker 2: in the past, they've really got to a point where
Speaker 2: them you know Stellar other networks, you know, they're really
Speaker 2: running about the same now, they're running the same speed,
Speaker 2: they have the same utility for users, they have those
Speaker 2: fast use cases, so they kind of all fit in
Speaker 2: the same So we like Solanica's they've got that capability.
Speaker 2: The last thing is something that Solana do really well
Speaker 2: and actually really enjoy working with them on. They have
Speaker 2: these pods I think they call them pods that they
Speaker 2: have globally that look at use cases for DeFi cryptoneatif
Speaker 2: use cases really unlocking the market to say, if you
Speaker 2: use the Slana blockchain and the stable coins are running
Speaker 2: on the blockchain, one of them being ours, then they
Speaker 2: will introduce developers, you know, new natives to blockchain, natives
Speaker 2: to blockchain, to the ecosystem, and then bring them to
Speaker 2: the table so we can work directly with them, or
Speaker 2: we can you know, understand their use cases and give
Speaker 2: them benefits like oh, you can use the Western Union
Speaker 2: stores or we can give you loyalty for.
Speaker 3: That use case.
Speaker 2: So they have this really great development arm that takes
Speaker 2: our foundation and really drives out those use cases. And
Speaker 2: they've been a fantastic partner in that, and they promise
Speaker 2: that at the time of picking, and they've really followed
Speaker 2: through with that stuff. So they've got some interesting things
Speaker 2: going on other blockchains. You know, we're going to do
Speaker 2: ethereum contracts at some point. You know, obviously we're an institution.
Speaker 2: We're moving to an institution. Having our own smart contracts
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 2: If there's plenty of blockchains coming out of your circle
Speaker 2: has their own, friends that Stripe have their own, you know,
Speaker 2: there's Base then you know all of them like this, right,
Speaker 2: you know, so they're all developing, they're all evolving, they've
Speaker 2: all got unique use cases coming to the market. There's
Speaker 2: all things that they're going to bring to a financial
Speaker 2: institution like ourselves from money.
Speaker 3: We're written space.
Speaker 2: Where we can go to those blockchains for use cases
Speaker 2: as well. And again, this is foundational for us at
Speaker 2: Western Union. It's not a three month project and then
Speaker 2: we're going to go and do something else, like genuinely
Speaker 2: as a foundational piece for organization for the next iteration
Speaker 2: as we evolve as an organization.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing that thought because that was going
Speaker 1: to be a question, is this a R and D project.
Speaker 1: Temporary thing, but it sounds like it's going to be
Speaker 1: a big part of that fabric.
Speaker 3: Pet No, it's absolutely fabric.
Speaker 2: So to give you some insight and how we think
Speaker 2: about these things, the guiding principle at the moment is
Speaker 2: we're going to partner with best breed technology. We're going
Speaker 2: to partner to accelerate ourselves into the market. There is
Speaker 2: a long, deliberate strategic roadmap and plan of building capability
Speaker 2: around digital asset. We're evolving into a digital asset payment company.
Speaker 2: You know, this is fundamental for how we move things
Speaker 2: in treasury, the use cases, it puts consumer and essentially
Speaker 2: you can certainly see a day where all of them
Speaker 2: are movement moves on a USDPT coin you don't need
Speaker 2: to move feet around if you follow the train through.
Speaker 2: So this is absolutely foundational to what we do. It's
Speaker 2: not an R and D project. We're long past thinking
Speaker 2: about R and D and POC and testing here. We're
Speaker 2: into the you know, of the fifty seven markets. We're
Speaker 2: going to launch a card which one and it's all
Speaker 2: fifty seven, like you know, we're having lots of interesting
Speaker 2: conversations around what's the first market we're going to try
Speaker 2: and then launch the rest. So it's very much a
Speaker 2: you know, we're going and doing this.
Speaker 1: Now. There's lots of demand for the US dollar around
Speaker 1: the globe because it's the world reserve currency, but there
Speaker 1: are other large currencies like the euro. Are there plans
Speaker 1: to potentially create a euro version or whatever else?
Speaker 2: So I'm European, so I mean, no, we're going to
Speaker 2: be US do now I'm joking. No, absolutely, So I
Speaker 2: think like part of the logic of calling it USDPT
Speaker 2: so PTB in payment token is that USD denomination can
Speaker 2: change to MX for Mexico.
Speaker 3: Or ERK for Europe or whatever coin we choose.
Speaker 2: The interoperability of that will be within our organization, and
Speaker 2: the ability to say, like we need a micro compliant
Speaker 2: European coin. The swap of that we can control. So
Speaker 2: you know, I can send you you're selling Spain, I'm
Speaker 2: signing in the US. I can send you USDPT and
Speaker 2: then you can decide don't want to hold US dollars
Speaker 2: in Spain, or I can just swap it to you
Speaker 2: it becomes European PT. So what you're doing there is
Speaker 2: you're taking that traditional finance EFS currency marker moving into
Speaker 2: a stable coin layer, which is really just that fast
Speaker 2: transaction and that swap happens where you know, we would
Speaker 2: do the FX. We do FX today. We're actually quite
Speaker 2: good at FX, right, we do the FX and do
Speaker 2: the swap. What's interesting, you actually open some very interesting
Speaker 2: user experience problems with stable coin movement. So if you
Speaker 2: take a use case where I think you spoke earlier,
Speaker 2: it was Ghana, Guyana. Ghana is a different place, ones
Speaker 2: in that time, ones in Africa, yes, so when you
Speaker 2: send currency there. So if I was to send my
Speaker 2: mum today money to the UK, and I send the
Speaker 2: US dollars, you know, bless her, she's a nurse in
Speaker 2: her seventies. She's like, what am I going to do
Speaker 2: with dollars? Like, I don't want dollars, It's not going
Speaker 2: to be helpful. So actually, and the user experienced sending
Speaker 2: that USDPT and holding it and then being able to
Speaker 2: represent the local currency in the UI. But this is
Speaker 2: what US dollars is worth in GBP today is really
Speaker 2: interesting because you've got to do that based on where
Speaker 2: they are in the local currency before they tap the cards.
Speaker 2: So it's it's opens some interesting thinking and challenging around
Speaker 2: what is the local user seeing they're holding dollars. They
Speaker 2: want to hold dollars, but they want to see that
Speaker 2: local rate. And if I spend on my card, I
Speaker 2: want to know my coffee was, you know, three pesos,
Speaker 2: not you know, a dollar seventy. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: it's going to be an interesting consumer test here of
Speaker 2: how they accept spending the US dollars. Do they eventually
Speaker 2: go away from local currency and I don't think they
Speaker 2: do and don't know the local currency and governments don't
Speaker 2: want to hurt that.
Speaker 1: So and speaking of the user experience, so will Western
Speaker 1: Union present this stable coin in the forefront of using
Speaker 1: their Western Union app or website or will they just
Speaker 1: be running in behind the scenes, or you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that may change over time.
Speaker 2: It's going to change over time. Certainly, if you take
Speaker 2: the standard users we have today and I have today
Speaker 2: their money transmitted users, they don't, they're not. Some of
Speaker 2: them are crypto native, so we can't be generalized. So
Speaker 2: some a crypto native, some are crypto users, but the
Speaker 2: majority are I'm sending money for a purpose and I
Speaker 2: want to send I'm going to give you dollars and
Speaker 2: it's going to pair as pesos on the other side,
Speaker 2: and what I want to know is the fee, the
Speaker 2: FX rate and what am I telling my loved one
Speaker 2: or the person I'm sending to how much they're getting
Speaker 2: so they can walk into store and getting it. So
Speaker 2: USDPT is going to be in the background, it's not
Speaker 2: going to sit in the forefront of those users. The receiver, though,
Speaker 2: the person getting the fund is going to be on
Speaker 2: the forefront. So when you get that funding message, which
Speaker 2: is you know, either or WhatsApp or a text message
Speaker 2: or a Nomini channel message saying you have money from Malcolm,
Speaker 2: then you have the opportunity to say, well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go and walk in and get my cash, or
Speaker 2: I'm going to get a USDPT stable card. I'm going
Speaker 2: to hold it in USDPT on my visa card. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go through the process to get that visa
Speaker 2: card and then I can tap wherever I need to go.
Speaker 2: So the sender is not going to see it, but
Speaker 2: the receiver is absolutely going to see it. So again
Speaker 2: that's down to the use case of where the users
Speaker 2: are needing it and kind of filling that need versus
Speaker 2: let's just put it on the front end, let's put
Speaker 2: it all over the place, like we're being very deliberate.
Speaker 2: Over time, that's going to change. And again, it's a
Speaker 2: journey we're on. We're not doing this as a R
Speaker 2: and D project, So the journey will get us there
Speaker 2: when the users get.
Speaker 1: There, that's incredible. And then are your plans to offer
Speaker 1: a yield? A stable corn yield is a big thing,
Speaker 1: especially in the United it's big debate happening right now
Speaker 1: with the banks.
Speaker 3: It's going to be loyalty based.
Speaker 2: So I think there is a little bit of grayness.
Speaker 2: So if my legal friend was sat here, he'd be
Speaker 2: burning through me with his eyes right now about how
Speaker 2: I'm going to answer this because I have a very
Speaker 2: different opinion than the legal opinion. So there is a
Speaker 2: lot of grayness in offering yield, I think in europit
Speaker 2: so no, no, you know, in certain parts of the
Speaker 2: world they've already been very explicit about it. You can't
Speaker 2: share yield, you can't share you know, you can't share
Speaker 2: yield for holding. So hold my coin for thirty days,
Speaker 2: or hold ten thousand coin, and I'll give you yield.
Speaker 2: That's been done for me. It's about loyalty and it's
Speaker 2: about giving usage loyalty, which we do today. So if
Speaker 2: you use x number of money transmissions, will give you
Speaker 2: x benefit for doing it. So if you use the
Speaker 2: card x amount of times, will give you your points against
Speaker 2: ju sage. You know, we'll give you one percent cash backs.
Speaker 2: So that's a normal market construct that exists today. We
Speaker 2: will follow that same construct as opposed to saying explicitly
Speaker 2: you'll hold the coin for ten days and we'll give
Speaker 2: you share of yield. I think that gets into the
Speaker 2: security is it's a security holding model, and we want
Speaker 2: to avoid that.
Speaker 3: As best you can.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, absolutely, especially Look, we have the Genius Act
Speaker 1: pass here in the United States, but across the globe,
Speaker 1: legislation is still being worked out in different countries and jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: so you kind of have to wait to see.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And that's where you go back to what
Speaker 2: is commonly acceptable, like cash back is a commonly acceptable thing,
Speaker 2: like usage. You know, if you send X, you get
Speaker 2: free usage of X. It's very much a construct. But
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting you talk about why is stable
Speaker 2: coin valuable versus other currencies or cryptos. I think you've
Speaker 2: got that peg of one to one and it's always
Speaker 2: worth whatever one you put in.
Speaker 3: So in this instance US dollars.
Speaker 2: People don't want to get paid in something they're not
Speaker 2: sure about. So if I'm a gig worker in pick
Speaker 2: a country, India and I'm working for a US employment company,
Speaker 2: I kind of get paid in the US dollars easily.
Speaker 2: I don't have an account to do that, but they
Speaker 2: can pay me in crypto. So paying me in a
Speaker 2: coin or a value that I know is worth one
Speaker 2: dollars to one dollar that I can exit is actually valuable.
Speaker 2: They don't want to get paid in air miles. They
Speaker 2: don't want to get paid in stuff that really isn't
Speaker 2: quantifiable and could change. You know, they can then turn
Speaker 2: that into bitcoin.
Speaker 3: Or want to really wish.
Speaker 2: But really that's where these interesting use cases go later on.
Speaker 2: So you know, the construct of future roamap of how
Speaker 2: do I create what would be a normal direct deposit
Speaker 2: account or a bank account now is a digital wallet
Speaker 2: where you can get your salary paid into that in
Speaker 2: a stable coin you can trust that you can exit locally.
Speaker 2: That changes that traditional finance to digital finance. That's a
Speaker 2: very different constructor banking right now, that's the same thing
Speaker 2: like your bank. You get your money in there, they
Speaker 2: give you a mortgage and things. Well, get my money
Speaker 2: into my digital wire, I can move it globally quickly.
Speaker 2: Stuff to pay my mortgage, of course, But that's kind
Speaker 2: of an interesting place where I see these things becoming
Speaker 2: more native in that space.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. Let's talk about how USDPT is compliant with
Speaker 1: the Genius Act and the requirements of reserves and how
Speaker 1: that all functions be kind of seeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we again partner first. So we're leveraging Anchorage
Speaker 2: Digital Bank. So Anchorage are an OCC bank and very
Speaker 2: much as you would expect if you're in this space.
Speaker 2: If you're not, i'll explain it slightly. So the reserve works,
Speaker 2: you know, we deposit and Anchorage, we mint the coin
Speaker 2: directly in Anchorage, and then that coin becomes available in
Speaker 2: the exchanges through the market makers. We use it our
Speaker 2: treasury and then we could use it for use cases.
Speaker 2: So they're an OCC Genius compliant bank. Genius Compliant is genius,
Speaker 2: don't you know. They don't give you a compliance tag.
Speaker 2: They give you we have no challenge here. So our
Speaker 2: coin has a no challenge on it, which means it
Speaker 2: fits within the Genius framework regulation. So that's how we
Speaker 2: stay complining. I think others have got pre approvals of compliants,
Speaker 2: so the paxoses and others in the space have So
Speaker 2: that's really how you can ensure that adoption. I think
Speaker 2: some are going to have to change their business models
Speaker 2: slightly now. I know some give big yields or shared
Speaker 2: on holding coins. Again, they'll just call that loyalty at
Speaker 2: some point, or they'll call it cash back. Like they'll
Speaker 2: figure out a way. Maybe they'll listen to this and
Speaker 2: just be like, what is quite a cash back now?
Speaker 2: So who knows. But yeah, So that's how we remain
Speaker 2: and we stay within that compliance piece, and that frameworks
Speaker 2: important because again we're a regulated entity through money transmit.
Speaker 2: We're regulated entity in you know, many countries, we have banks,
Speaker 2: we own banks in Europe and some parts of NATAM.
Speaker 2: So we want to remain in regulatory framework in pretty
Speaker 2: much all we do. So the Genius Act gives us
Speaker 2: that box and framework that says, hey, if you behave
Speaker 2: in this framework and stay within it, then you're in
Speaker 2: a regulatory bounds.
Speaker 3: Which is a good thing.
Speaker 2: So again Genius Act was a catalyst for us to
Speaker 2: accelerate this stuff. Versus if you didn't exist. You're always
Speaker 2: wondering what the regulator might do, investing time in people
Speaker 2: like myself and others. Regulator comes in, it's like stables
Speaker 2: now a security. You're like, oh great, now we're an
Speaker 2: R and D project. Good job.
Speaker 3: So that's that's important, Malcolm.
Speaker 1: Do you see this model of what Western is doing
Speaker 1: as a future of payments Let's say ten years from now.
Speaker 1: Stable coins are powering the rails, right, and the end
Speaker 1: user may not know, but in certain instances, like how
Speaker 1: Western Union is saying, hey, you can do it on
Speaker 1: the you want to use the card or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, this is the model.
Speaker 3: I think. My answer is a lean towards yes.
Speaker 2: I think so, And why I'm not one hundred percent
Speaker 2: yes is because we've it's very hard to make those predictions.
Speaker 2: I think again, if you take the construct that a
Speaker 2: stable coin is the speed of global movement and it
Speaker 2: provides that one to one security, then everything is lining
Speaker 2: up well to say, yes, this is going to be
Speaker 2: the payment and how payments in the future are going
Speaker 2: to move.
Speaker 3: Here banks remain their remain.
Speaker 2: Token assets, their remain local market banks have difficulty because
Speaker 2: the central banks moving to global models quickly, whereas payment
Speaker 2: companies can they can ride across those global models. So
Speaker 2: we can ride banking rails in Europe, we can ride
Speaker 2: banking rails in Mexico, we can ride banking mails rails
Speaker 2: in the US, and then put that stable coin across
Speaker 2: the top of that. So as a user, you can
Speaker 2: get the fast access to funding. And then you can
Speaker 2: dip into the local rail if you need it to
Speaker 2: go into a bank account and get changed in this currency.
Speaker 2: Or you can dip into the payment rail of visa
Speaker 2: to spend it. Or you can dip into a cash
Speaker 2: rail of Western unions get cash. So I believe, yes,
Speaker 2: this is the future of payments, that it will ride
Speaker 2: on top of a new layer, and you still dip
Speaker 2: into the traditional finance places to We still have to
Speaker 2: pay a mortgages, so we have to put something into
Speaker 2: the bank to pay the mortgage. We still have to
Speaker 2: pay our phone bills, so our phone bills work on
Speaker 2: in most countries. You can go and pay it in person,
Speaker 2: but generally it's a digital transaction with a card. You
Speaker 2: still need cash to pay the market, so you still
Speaker 2: need cash. So I think all those three things still exist.
Speaker 2: I think this just allows the money to move globally
Speaker 2: at and much quicker speed, and you're seeing some interesting
Speaker 2: payment and then you're seeing DeFi stuff coming in that
Speaker 2: now is becoming a bit more real.
Speaker 3: So I do believe I'm leaning.
Speaker 2: Towards yes, this is the way this will go, and
Speaker 2: a western union of the belief is that's how we're
Speaker 2: going to move things.
Speaker 3: Like we will. You know, this is a digital part
Speaker 3: of our company. We have three parts.
Speaker 2: We have your money in, money out, and digital, which
Speaker 2: is funds use. So this is how funds get used.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting.
Speaker 1: A follow up question on what the end users say,
Speaker 1: I send money to my cousin in another country and
Speaker 1: the options they get. Do you think it's necessarily for
Speaker 1: them to have some sort of Web three crypto wallet
Speaker 1: or it's not necessary because I'm already using the ecosystem
Speaker 1: that are app from.
Speaker 3: I think it depends.
Speaker 2: Look, consumers evolve quickly. They evolve in very interesting ways
Speaker 2: that you sometimes can't plan for. So I think in
Speaker 2: certain markets, having Web three crypto while this is going
Speaker 2: to be a thing. So for for me, the easiest
Speaker 2: way to solve that is be interoperable. So coin is
Speaker 2: improperable it's open. At some point, we'll support multiple wark chains.
Speaker 2: At some point we'll support multiple wallets. So if a
Speaker 2: user says, look, the only thing I need right now
Speaker 2: is cash, they can go and get cash. I really
Speaker 2: need a card, I can get a card.
Speaker 3: I really want to.
Speaker 2: Move this and start investing in crypto. I want to
Speaker 2: start buying, or I want to start using it in
Speaker 2: web three use cases, So I want to start using
Speaker 2: it in DeFi I want to start using it in
Speaker 2: something else. Then the ability to move an into that
Speaker 2: and swap it for exchange or do those things that's there.
Speaker 2: So I think that's how you want to make things
Speaker 2: as utility based as possible in the background so the
Speaker 2: users can decide. And by the way we spoke about
Speaker 2: Solana and the way they've got their pods, I'm sure
Speaker 2: they call it pods. If they don't, I'm going to
Speaker 2: get a phone call about this. They have their communities
Speaker 2: or pods where they drive out those use cases globally
Speaker 2: and what people do, the stuff that's going to come
Speaker 2: out of that. It's really hard to foresee what a
Speaker 2: community in Africa is going to do with a stable,
Speaker 2: instant digital currency in a use case that we possibly
Speaker 2: don't understand in the Western space, so being open and
Speaker 2: interoperable is going to be important for those things.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you mentioned interoperable. That seems to be the
Speaker 1: name of the game because there's so many means and
Speaker 1: new chains could pop up.
Speaker 3: Two vendors, some vendors, yeah, ten vendors for everything. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: That must be a lot to manage to get all
Speaker 1: these partners and vendors on board.
Speaker 3: It's it's a fun experience.
Speaker 2: So we have a lot of inbound at the moment,
Speaker 2: a lot and a lot of conversations. But again, you
Speaker 2: just have to be open to we don't know everything.
Speaker 2: You're never going to know everything in this space. And
Speaker 2: you're spokes some organizations today that they're doing super interesting
Speaker 2: things that you're like, oh, actually, there's some opportunity here
Speaker 2: in this.
Speaker 3: Region for that.
Speaker 2: And you know, my view is you we're an open coin.
Speaker 2: If you want to use the USDPT to do that,
Speaker 2: that's great. The other thing, and the reason why we
Speaker 2: built our own coin is for the right partners and
Speaker 2: large institutions we work with, we can program that specifically
Speaker 2: for them, so you know, direct mints, so we can
Speaker 2: guarantee one too. One direct burns and direct access to
Speaker 2: the small contract is something that we're willing to do
Speaker 2: in the right instances because unlike using the coin a
Speaker 2: third party coin where you don't control it and you're
Speaker 2: not sure what they're going to do in the future,
Speaker 2: we absolutely control the coin, which means we can determine
Speaker 2: how it goes and where it goes, and the regulatory
Speaker 2: frameworks of that versus a tether or USDC, which are
Speaker 2: just open market things that you know they're going to
Speaker 2: do what's right for them. As a business, we have
Speaker 2: to do what's right for us. So it's an interesting
Speaker 2: again trying to be open, trying to create the shareable
Speaker 2: layers so that you can move into these things very
Speaker 2: quickly and really they become R and D projects if
Speaker 2: you like. So that's where you do your R and
Speaker 2: D at the very front.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, you know. Earlier you mentioned that having
Speaker 1: a stable coin it helps to free up capital that
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, it's Nostril Vostro accounts to sit
Speaker 1: around the world where you have to have the pool
Speaker 1: of capital too. Yes, so that opens up kind of
Speaker 1: working capital for Western Union.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So I can't give you the numbers because I don't
Speaker 2: remember them, but they're big. So if you think about
Speaker 2: our business, you know, take a holiday period where we
Speaker 2: have to pre fund our agents so they have cash
Speaker 2: and draw and so on a Friday, the treasury team
Speaker 2: will go work out through their treasury magic how much
Speaker 2: they need to prefund a country essentially for the capital
Speaker 2: usage and cash usage over that holiday weekend. So that
Speaker 2: is capital parked. So you're buying currency, you're parking it there,
Speaker 2: and it sits there and it's left your business and
Speaker 2: it's set. And the percentage on that quite high. So
Speaker 2: now if you can say, okay, I'm not parking that anymore,
Speaker 2: I'm creating an agent white layer and you know, actually
Speaker 2: giving them a water moving and loading as they need
Speaker 2: or they're pulling and calling.
Speaker 3: It's a very different business model.
Speaker 2: So that operational efficiency not just in terms of how
Speaker 2: you move the funding, but in terms of the treasure
Speaker 2: is not going to lose his hair on a Friday
Speaker 2: afternoons she's trying to figure out how much or she's
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how much right down to the
Speaker 2: capital usage. So it does change the whole capitalization a
Speaker 2: part of that business as well.
Speaker 1: Malcolm, the race is on. It seems like with even
Speaker 1: Western unions, competitors, banks, payment, different payment companies, everyone's trying
Speaker 1: to create their own stable coin using blockchain, tokenizing and
Speaker 1: much more. What's it like, you know, from your perspective
Speaker 1: to see the race and who's running in parallel with you.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I guess I don't look because you
Speaker 2: want to be You want to hope you're out in front,
Speaker 2: and you don't want to have a look behind you
Speaker 2: because you'll trip up. So that's kind of my very
Speaker 2: briteche view of the world. And there's not being in
Speaker 2: front of me. I'm the fastest at all. It's interesting.
Speaker 2: So you have you obviously, you have the other money
Speaker 2: remittance companies and the people in our space. They're all
Speaker 2: doing similar, not too similar things.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Some of them have gone a bit before us, some
Speaker 2: of them have gone after us. I think the use
Speaker 2: cases all become about the same. I think you have
Speaker 2: to leverage what you do as a fundamental business. So
Speaker 2: we have, you know, I mentioned it before, a huge
Speaker 2: retail business, four hundred thousand stores, so you're leveraging that
Speaker 2: with third parties. We have, you know, over one hundred
Speaker 2: and something million customers is where we can now issue
Speaker 2: cards to that don't have them today. So really it's
Speaker 2: not about a race to who can do the first
Speaker 2: coin or who can do the first blockchain. It's who
Speaker 2: can furnish the first use cases. So if we can
Speaker 2: go to an emerging country and emerging space that is
Speaker 2: underbanked or nerve bank and give them digital visa cards
Speaker 2: that they can get funding to from loved ones, you've serviced.
Speaker 3: The use case standard. They have a need.
Speaker 2: They want to hold us dollars because the economic currency
Speaker 2: situation isn't great.
Speaker 3: You've serviced a need versus we've got a coin on
Speaker 3: a blockchain. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the race. The race is what
Speaker 2: am I users need? Where when do they need it?
Speaker 2: And can we service that need? Do we have to
Speaker 2: do it right now? So place like Venezuela they're opening up,
Speaker 2: it's very interesting space where they're already spending tether. They
Speaker 2: walk around with tether while it's they buy hot dogs
Speaker 2: in tether. I spoke to the local market people like
Speaker 2: we used to tether all the time, So giving us
Speaker 2: a stable card.
Speaker 3: Is very interesting. That's in need.
Speaker 2: So it's not about solana USDPT or what blockchain or
Speaker 2: which who's blockchain or this vendor that vendor. It's about
Speaker 2: how do I get a card in the hand of
Speaker 2: a venduel right now so they can get funding from
Speaker 2: the US family friends and live like It really comes
Speaker 2: down to that layer. How are you helping people live
Speaker 2: where they are not They're on a still on a
Speaker 2: blockchain and we've got USDPT.
Speaker 3: They don't care, nobody cares. Nobody cares.
Speaker 1: No. Well said for the end user, people who are
Speaker 1: going about their lives, it needs to work make their
Speaker 1: lives better, right. Yeah, there's a lot happening in a
Speaker 1: tokenization market where you know, stable coins where the first
Speaker 1: example of tokenization, but folks are looking to put stocks
Speaker 1: in equities, gold and other commodities on chain. Is Western
Speaker 1: Union looking at any of that, any plans along those lines.
Speaker 3: So we haven't started.
Speaker 2: I think at some point we're an institution so tokenization,
Speaker 2: I think when your banking layer starts doing that, then
Speaker 2: you start doing it. So again, whilst we talk about
Speaker 2: the stable coin and the innovation how fast it's going,
Speaker 2: we're still a traditional company or over one hundred years old.
Speaker 2: We have banking institution relationships. So as they start tokenizing
Speaker 2: those assets and those investments in those commodities, then yeah,
Speaker 2: we will start tokenizing that. But I think that's going
Speaker 2: to be more a push from the layer versus that's
Speaker 2: pushing down in the layer. I think that tokenization is
Speaker 2: incredibly interesting for those spaces like it just we smart
Speaker 2: contract tokenized years ago. It's really stable coins has become
Speaker 2: a big thing. The bank's like, we've got to do something.
Speaker 2: I worked in big banks, so you kind of know
Speaker 2: how this goes. It's like, what are we doing in
Speaker 2: stable coin and they're like, well, we could do this,
Speaker 2: or we can tokenize the gold.
Speaker 3: Well, it's tokenized the gold.
Speaker 2: So it's a little bit of that going on. So
Speaker 2: I think, you know, again, overall, it's going to be
Speaker 2: driven by the institutional layer. I think that traditional finance
Speaker 2: layer is really going to drive that piece versus a
Speaker 2: payment layer. Where we sit clearly in the payment layer,
Speaker 2: which is where stable coin is the you know, the
Speaker 2: opportunity of innovation.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, and you alluded to it earlier. Of the
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven market, we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: these exchanges and much more are looking to go twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven to match crypto, which I would say
Speaker 1: they started it all. Crypto has started all right, so
Speaker 1: how are you. I don't know if that changes your
Speaker 1: businesses at all, because Western Union has.
Speaker 2: Been I think it's funny I walked past, so again
Speaker 2: I had the great opportunity this weekend, I'm actually taking
Speaker 2: some vacation time and getting away from the horrible.
Speaker 3: Snow in New York.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because I must have walked past number
Speaker 2: of money exchange places on the High Street in Columbia
Speaker 2: and they're all closed. So what was super interesting was
Speaker 2: it's a Sunday afternoon at six pm, and every single
Speaker 2: one of them's closed. So in the cash world, there's
Speaker 2: still a nine to five mentality. We spend twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven. So this is another opportunity to say the
Speaker 2: use case when I send money to a friend in
Speaker 2: Columbia on a Sunday at seven o'clock and everything's closed
Speaker 2: because retails closed on a Sunday afternoon because people lives.
Speaker 2: They need to spend it now, they need to do
Speaker 2: something now. That's why I think the stable coin with
Speaker 2: the cards or the digitizations go to somewhere else or
Speaker 2: spend somewhere else or bill pay somewhere else. That really
Speaker 2: creates that twenty four seven layer. I think that twenty
Speaker 2: four seven layer has some maturing to do. Cash layer.
Speaker 3: Cash is king in a lot of places.
Speaker 2: Let's yes, you know that's still going to be the case,
Speaker 2: but there are instances, and they're growing instances of where
Speaker 2: you really do need cash outside of those layered hours.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's it's going to be an
Speaker 2: interesting evolution for sure.
Speaker 1: A brave new world markets going twenty four to seven payments,
Speaker 1: all these things.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I think so it just means we get
Speaker 3: less sleep, you know.
Speaker 1: So on a note, you know, with the advance of AI,
Speaker 1: you know, are you looking at it? You know how
Speaker 1: that can assist in certain ways.
Speaker 3: I want to announce we're doing an AI stable coin.
Speaker 3: Both puts words together. No, AI is interesting.
Speaker 2: So I think you could you can spend two hours
Speaker 2: talking about R and its own and the evolution and
Speaker 2: humanoid robots, and it's it's going to be awesome.
Speaker 3: It's going to be great. It's nothing's going to go wrong.
Speaker 2: I think AI just adds to that speed of movement,
Speaker 2: so you know, you get agentic bots, you know or
Speaker 2: origentic agents working on your behalf doing things. So you
Speaker 2: know you say that, hey, I'm going on vacation, sit
Speaker 2: and wait till the flight gets the cheapest, or sit
Speaker 2: and wait until these hotels in these areas at this start,
Speaker 2: and these are my five options. Get the right place,
Speaker 2: or I get my last points and do these things
Speaker 2: on my behalf. They happen automatically twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: So I think you're getting to faster commerce. You're getting
Speaker 2: to fast the decision.
Speaker 3: Certainly.
Speaker 2: Now I think you're not researching and Google anymore. You're
Speaker 2: researching in the AI. And so the next evolution there
Speaker 2: is I've researched, I've found what I want. I now purchase.
Speaker 2: So if you think about your natural flow in a
Speaker 2: Google aura, pick your search engine, and you're like, I
Speaker 2: found what I want and I'm going to go to
Speaker 2: a site I'm going to purchase. I think that natural
Speaker 2: flow just goes through that process and then it comes
Speaker 2: down to do I have the funds to do it?
Speaker 2: How do I get those funds? So in our instance,
Speaker 2: we're in the Western space, it's in our account. In
Speaker 2: other instances, you know, these are needs things like my
Speaker 2: heat is broken. I need one right now? How do
Speaker 2: I get that? Well, you send me money for my heater.
Speaker 2: You can pay that automatically through where it needs to
Speaker 2: go in the product to arrive. So I think it
Speaker 2: all starts tying together and it's just speed. It's going
Speaker 2: to get driven by speed that those natural hops are
Speaker 2: just going to get faster and they're going to close
Speaker 2: and you're going to get recommendations at some point, just
Speaker 2: like you did from Google, where you know it's listening
Speaker 2: and you get the fifty things you never wanted all
Speaker 2: the time, Like I didn't know I wanted that, but
Speaker 2: now I need it. That's that's happening. I think at
Speaker 2: some point. Oh yeah, that's going to.
Speaker 3: Be quite scary, Yeah, for sure, because that's going to
Speaker 3: get quicker. Yeah, it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It's almost inevitable, right, Yeah, it's just part of the course.
Speaker 1: What's on your road? Metfit is here for digital assets.
Speaker 1: Obviously the stable point is a huge one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think it's really my road maplik. I
Speaker 2: like simplification. So we have the three use cases, you know,
Speaker 2: bring those to the markets that they need to go to.
Speaker 2: So the treasury piece with the coin, you know, We've
Speaker 2: already started minting our first coins in treasury now, so
Speaker 2: it's well underway bringing that to market and really closing
Speaker 2: out some of those places where we park money today
Speaker 2: and actually removing some of that as a okay, where
Speaker 2: can we really make a big dent on our operational efficiency.
Speaker 2: The second piece on the road map is really the
Speaker 2: stable cards, like how do we push those out, really
Speaker 2: driving some of that adoption and really getting you know,
Speaker 2: some of those users that are you know, the receiver side,
Speaker 2: leveraging those products, and then in the digital asset network,
Speaker 2: really growing those partners, like really helping them with their
Speaker 2: own wallets and their adoption. So these assasas partners that
Speaker 2: have multiple wallets, multiple companies they serve, so really how
Speaker 2: do they convince those guys that cash is.
Speaker 3: Real on the back.
Speaker 2: So the roadmap issue is quite simply that and then
Speaker 2: building out the core capability in the company. So we're
Speaker 2: very much, unfortunately in a boring implementation phase. Itment's gone
Speaker 2: for me. It's like now we're trudging through the implantation
Speaker 2: and complying some legal meetings and the usual thing you
Speaker 2: would expect in a big organization. So it's quite a
Speaker 2: boring road map and Refrain twenty twenty seven. AI coins definitely,
Speaker 2: pagentic coins. Just find a buzzword, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, next year micro is obviously
Speaker 2: you're we have European banking licenses, so that's on the cards.
Speaker 2: You know, how do we do you know, is an
Speaker 2: mx PT a thing? Do we need to do a
Speaker 2: Mexican based coin. Mexico is a big remittance market for me,
Speaker 2: So it's really growing out that ecosystem even further into
Speaker 2: the next layers. I think be interesting. My DeFi gos
Speaker 2: are really keeping an eye on, you know, the communities
Speaker 2: and pods and people likes onnor and seeing what pops
Speaker 2: out of there as things we can support. And then
Speaker 2: on the big corporate side, you're working with our big agents,
Speaker 2: so how do we help, you know, get liquidity moving
Speaker 2: between us and those things. So it's interesting that everyone
Speaker 2: wants USDC today we need to move to U SDC
Speaker 2: and like, okay, yes, you're.
Speaker 1: Right, we do so well that's exciting. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you got to hit the ground running right to get
Speaker 1: all this implemented and get adoptions. So I'm excited. And
Speaker 1: you know, as things progress. I would love to have
Speaker 1: you back on to talk about it. I got some
Speaker 1: wrap up questions here for you. First, if you could
Speaker 1: create your own metaverse, will the theme.
Speaker 3: Be so look for people who don't normally know.
Speaker 2: I got this question and event so if you asked
Speaker 2: me without sending me, I would have got stumped. So
Speaker 2: I thought about this a little bit, and then I
Speaker 2: went into my personal life and I'm like, I think
Speaker 2: it would be quiet by design. So for me, I
Speaker 2: like simple utility of things. And I'm getting older, which
Speaker 2: means we're any more grumpies than Englishmen. So simple utility,
Speaker 2: you know, I walk around going why does it just
Speaker 2: not work? Why does that just not work? It used
Speaker 2: to just work. So quiet by design is kind of
Speaker 2: interesting to me. Where you're constantly being hit, there's constant
Speaker 2: alerts for everything. And I think in our space when
Speaker 2: we're creating products and utilities, it has to be in
Speaker 2: the background.
Speaker 3: It has to just work.
Speaker 2: It has to be quiet and what it does and
Speaker 2: just be running the function of what you're doing. So
Speaker 2: a good example would be I really like the stable card,
Speaker 2: for example, not because we're building it, because of the
Speaker 2: fundamental thing of what it is It's just a very
Speaker 2: simple way to say I'm sending you money. You don't
Speaker 2: have to touch a thing if you say you want
Speaker 2: it on this card, it's just going to be a
Speaker 2: it's just going to appear. So you can send me
Speaker 2: a text saying, hey, happy birthday, sent you fifty bucks
Speaker 2: and I know it's on this card. It's quiet by design.
Speaker 2: I get the interaction I want with you, and my
Speaker 2: money's there. That's that's the perfect metaverse for me. I
Speaker 2: don't have to do anything to touch anything.
Speaker 3: It just works. It's quiet.
Speaker 2: So I think it's that, and I thought long and
Speaker 2: hard about it. I'm like, yeah, I just want everything
Speaker 2: to be quiet as I'm getting older, you know, I
Speaker 2: ask somebody who's twenty five, like, I want noise on
Speaker 2: flashing lights, someone on the chin's going off on my
Speaker 2: phone every three minutes. But as yeah, as you get older, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: just piece and quiet would be nice.
Speaker 1: I can totally relate to that. Rapid fire questions favorite food, hamburger,
Speaker 1: I do like my cheeseburg. A favorite musician or band.
Speaker 2: I think, you know again, I'm a Manchester lad, so
Speaker 2: it's got to be the Stone roses Lean a little
Speaker 2: bit towards Oasis for the people who know what that is.
Speaker 2: For the American Stone Roses, you know that's my it's
Speaker 2: my era. That's the Manchester Boys. So yeah, it would
Speaker 2: be the Stone Roses, I'm afraid.
Speaker 3: Very cool.
Speaker 2: Favorite movie, Oh, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels like
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: That English.
Speaker 2: Yeah, favorite book, favorite book. You know there's a Netflix
Speaker 2: show about it. It's the eleven sixty three. It's a
Speaker 2: Stephen King buck about a guy who goes back to
Speaker 2: stop the assassination of JFK. I read that years ago
Speaker 2: and they're just on the Netflix. A quiet for a
Speaker 2: short on Netflix. You should watch it. It's super interesting.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the actors in accept terrible that's this
Speaker 2: is the Old Brain coming in. Yeah, so that that
Speaker 2: would be my favorite book. Like I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of horror books, but that was That was a
Speaker 2: very good buck in The Netflix show is really cool.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have to check out both. I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of Stephen King bid. I have not heard of that
Speaker 1: and I would definitely watch on Netflix.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other one is I caught it recently missed. The
Speaker 2: Mercedes is another Stephen King book that again, that's on Netflix.
Speaker 2: In Columbia I discovered because I loaded it, but not
Speaker 2: here another bad shout out for Netflix.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that I'm not a big Stephen King genre,
Speaker 2: but that seems to be the one that Sorys stuck
Speaker 2: from me. It's like, it was just a really interesting
Speaker 2: concept of if you went back and changed history, what
Speaker 2: would it be assassination of JFK? And then what would
Speaker 2: that look like? And it was quite dystrobian actually.
Speaker 1: So very interesting. I love time travel movies and teens,
Speaker 1: so I'm fascinated by that. So I'll definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: And when you're not working, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 2: So I'm really getting into my pedal at the moment,
Speaker 2: a lot of moving tennis and padella and getting older
Speaker 2: so I can't play the big impact sports, so getting
Speaker 2: hit by a ball still doesn't hurt too much, So
Speaker 2: I do enjoy that. And then you know, I really
Speaker 2: enjoying my family. I have an awesome twelve year old
Speaker 2: and my wife. So traveling with those guys, really you've
Speaker 2: seen different parts of the world and how people live
Speaker 2: and work and enjoy life. It's it's eye opening and
Speaker 2: I've had great opportunity to travel to a lot of places,
Speaker 2: so I'd encourage anyone to do that. Get off and
Speaker 2: go and see something. Oh, get off the pinging phone,
Speaker 2: go look at something.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, experience life, experience different places.
Speaker 3: Yeah again I sound like an old guy today. I'm
Speaker 3: definitely not having an old guide Malcolm.
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure. I love what Western Union is doing and
Speaker 1: I would love to do around too. No.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, this has been great fun.
Speaker 2: It's the first in person when I've done like this,
Speaker 2: so this is again we're getting back to in person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the
Speaker 1: like button, subscribe if you haven't as yet. If you're
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Speaker 1: please follow and leave a five star rating. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much.