How Real-Time Payments Revolutionize Cash Management

INTRO   

Welcome to The Treasury Update Podcast presented by Strategic Treasurer, your source for interesting treasury news, analysis, and insights in your car, at the gym, or wherever you decide to tune in. On this episode of the podcast host Craig Jeffrey joins Joseph Drambarean, Chief Technology Officer at Trovata to discuss how real-time payments revolutionized cash management. Their conversation covers the concept of immediate payments, the areas where payment innovation is happening, the importance of driving trust, and the payment revolution that is underway for the next generation. Listen into this lively conversation to find out more. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Welcome to the podcast, Joseph. 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Thank you, as always, it’s great to be working together again and I’m excited about today’s topic. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Yeah, before we get into how real-time payments revolutionizes cash management and exploring some of your thinking here, maybe you could give everyone a little bit about your career background and your role at Trovata. I know you’re the chief technology officer but let us know about your history. 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been with Trovata really from the beginning of the company, even at the earliest prototypes. And before I was at Trovata was actually at Capital One, which is you know, one of the most tech forward banks in the world. I was working within digital project, a product and engineering there and really kind of helped shape some of the largest projects whether it was you know, the conversational assistant or insights around your spending or even working on credit wise, I helped all those projects along so I’ve been in banking for a good portion of my career and before that, you know, I was at Marriot, helping found the mobile program they’re so been in IT forever. And when Brett and I kind of first talked about the possibility of Trovata and using cloud architecture to change you know, finance operations, and integrate directly with banks it just felt like such an obvious thing that that didn’t exist at the time. And now that we’ve had the opportunity to do this for years and work with some of the biggest banks in the world, it’s really incredible. Some of the transformations we’ve seen and one of them payments being one of the topics we’re going to talk about today. It’s on that same, you know, cusp of going through a big transformation and it’s exciting to be at that driver’s seat as well. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

We can assume to some extent what you do as Chief Technology Officer, but I think it’s better if you explain what are some of your core responsibilities at Trovata? 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Yeah, it’s a really diverse role. One of the foundations of it, of course, is maintaining our technology stack and the security apparatus that keeps all of our customers safe. So, from an information security perspective, I’m accountable for all the different systems and personnel that keep Trovata online. That of course from a product perspective, I am also the head of product, so I helped shape the future of our roadmap and all the features that we enter into it and how they come to life from an execution perspective. And probably one of the more fun parts of my role is then evangelism as well. Being able to tell the story of how we brought this all to life, and how it continues to evolve and how it’s the shape of it can help enterprises as well as institutions think about how data transformation will evolve and also how can approve finance operations. So, I play in all those roles, and it’s been a thrill. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Yeah, so now as we shift over from your background to this idea of real-time payments revolutionizing cash management let me ask you a couple of questions stacked up so you can explain them, I mean, one aspect of you know, I think of real time we can think of faster. Faster is usually better. There’s not many things that are going slower, but it isn’t often the only thing and so as we talk about real-time payments are you referring to well, maybe I’ll start with that first and get into the some of the more complex aspects of the question. When you refer to real-time payments, you’re referring to the clearing houses RTP or the concept of immediate payments or which would you be referring to in our discussion? 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

It’s a great question, I think that you could look at both angles of course the traditional answer to that question is the evolution of the clearinghouse’s perspective on the banking rails that are available in market for moving money in RTP as a newfound rail, which has really come to life over the last few years is a cornerstone to that strategy. But I think that at a meta level, real-time payments is a topic of discussion that goes much wider than just the clearing house and the evolution that’s been happening, whether it’s JP Morgan, you know, leading the charge in defining the spec and all the things that have gone into the foundation of RTP. But it goes wider, because there are so many players in the money, movement space that want to take a slice of that mindshare, whether it’s the evolution of crypto technology that has been trying to make a name for itself in the real-time payment discussion or the evolution of the clearinghouse rails that are bringing some of these technologies to life on traditional banking rails. This is a topic of discussion that is really central to the evolution of banking, and it’s because the internet economy has moved closer and closer to this concept of everything being real-time, whether it’s, you know, video, whether it’s social media and the communication aspects of the internet company. It’s been followed very closely by the gig economy. And everything that has happened is as a result of that, and as everything that we do you know, in our daily lives starts to become latency free and immediate. We expect our money to work the same way and most people don’t realize that to make that happen, requires an enormous effort, both from a regulatory perspective but also from technology perspective. So, I think it’s a complex discussion point. And, you know, we definitely can jump between the two of them, but I think that it’s wider than just RTP as a clearing house rail. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Yeah, fair enough. And I think the language will be confusing and unfortunate. You know, I say faster payments, there’s Faster Payments UK, well, that’s how you describe payments being faster, in real-time, the sense of so we’ll, we’ll live with the tension there on that but, but back to the topic at hand, you know, faster is usually better. Nothing’s moving slower. It’s not the only thing. But what about speed matters so much? You talked about removing latency. Why does this matter? And how do we think about that in light of some of the other elements about payments for example, that may not be speed related. 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

But when you think about payments as an element in the workflow of finance operations that traditionally indicates a moment of money leaving either your funding accounts to pay you know vendor or to settle, you know, a business operation of some kind or a strategic investment, whatever it might be. It’s essentially that nexus point that bridges business strategy with business execution, and the closer that you can get to that end-to-end flow being fully automated the more efficient your business operation can be. So you know, when you think about examples, whether it’s an e-commerce company that has a point of sale product that is positioned on a website and the moment that a consumer clicks on that product, and puts in their payment, and that payment gets processed, and that money enters your bank account, and then maybe you owe a vendor on the other side of that transaction, a cut of that money, the speed by which you can settle that last piece and do it in a way that is fully automated and roboticized allows for you to achieve greater scale, whereas the past if everything had to be done by hand, if maybe you had to have an internal manual operation to tie that vendor payment, you know, specifically to you know, that transaction that took place originally, that that slows the process down. So, that’s one element of the speed, but then the final little elephant in the speed is let’s say that you solve that problem and you’re able to automate it, that getting those funds into the vendors hands as quickly as possible is an important element of not only business risk, but also business opportunity because the speed by which you can do that, the quicker you can close your books and the quicker you can report on the outcomes of your business, and in many cases, automating that last step is a really big challenge. But that’s why real-time payments and just payment evolution has been such a fascinating area. It’s because it’s not just about having a real-time rail, but it’s also access to that rail in programmatic fashion. So, a lot of the use cases of real time payments over the last year, or you know, few years has actually been API based. It’s not been using, you know, traditional front-end applications. It’s, you know, the Squares of the world or the Venmo of the world taking advantage of RTP as an API to plug directly into their settlement systems and use it as a rail that is fully programmatically integrated, and not used, you know, as a front-end application in most cases. And as an end consumer, you know, you get excited when you see that, that little modal in your cash app or in your Venmo app that says hey, get your money instantly and you see that and of course, you see the fee and you stick yourself and you did that little calculus in your head what I you know, this money now better than money later, like, do I really need this money at this very second. And that value, then that’s created by getting it instantaneously is not only value from an operations perspective for Venmo or for, you know, for Square, but it’s also ultimately value generation because by offering that service, they’re able to capture a fee and open new business opportunities. So, because it’s a fully programmatic rail because it’s modern in every sense of the term, it creates not only business opportunity, but technology opportunity, which then ultimately can be, you know, a flywheel that generates business opportunity as a result as well. So, it’s fascinating how this has developed and real-time payments, I think is just the tip of the spear. There’s more to come with regards to payment rails as it starts to get sent, you know, over international boundaries and all those rules are figured out. It’s going to create this this moment of having to solve major problems whether it’s from a fraud perspective, or from a cross border payments perspective and having it settled through a common technology that is programmatic that can effectively use a single pipe to do the work of what may have been, you know, multi-step operations is exciting, and it can transform the way that we do payments. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

I want to make sure we come back to the multi-step and this latency comment too in just a little bit, but, you know, this idea of real-time payments, revolutionizes or is revolutionizing cash management you gave some examples on the consumer front, it’s like, “Oh, someone goes and buys you something’s, it’s no longer do I have cash? How can I get it to the other person? Do I have to write a check or some other method?” It’s like, “No, I just use a personal transfer, whether it’s Venmo, etc”. And essentially, instantly, everything’s done. There’s no write it down. Remember to send money later. I do it easily on my phone. And so when we think about this revolutionizes that’s a dramatic word. And we think about cash management. We’re thinking about businesses, so maybe you could talk a little bit about this revolutionizing treasury. And this aspect of the intersection of faster payments and this overall revolution of transfer of goods and services and value whether it’s for like you said, payment investment settlement, giving some other examples as well.  

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Yeah. You know, as you as you were talking about those different use cases I was visualizing in my mind, what does the future of treasury look like if you apply the assumptions that but as a consumer, the one that you just mentioned, has when they enter into a motion by money transfer to a friend, you know, to pay back for something, and that consumer assumes, first of all, that everything will be done instantaneously, that it’s going to be easy and that the problems of understanding, you know, how much needs to be paid in for what in and how that all plays out is baked into the motion. And I was reflecting on that when thinking about it from a treasury perspective. Because if you blow it up in you, you do it at the scale of a treasury operation, you know, that might be multinational and have many entities and as a result of having many entities also have many accounts across various different banks. And the complexity of which is you know, it’s dynamic and it can also be spanning many different types of business strategies because of that multi entity piece. Well, in a world where you assume the same types of capabilities within treasury that would mean that the modern treasurer would assume a level of automation that brings to bear all those details, whether it’s cash balances, whether it’s availability of intelligence across all those different entities, and if they are assuming it being done at a real-time basis, that the next assumption, of course is to be able to act on all of those insights. So, take a simple one. Let’s say that there’s a cash balance optimization strategy that’s at play that would allow for you to optimize your cash yield based on certain breakpoints you know, that are analyzed at an insight level and automatically applied across your various accounts across the various regions across the various institutions, and you don’t have to do anything. It’s just doing the math for you. Well, the next best thing, of course, would be having a rail or having a technology to be able to settle those funds and move those funds between accounts to optimize that cash instantaneously and not having to have any barrier or latency sit between that business decision point and the execution of that business decision point. And in a world where everything is done fully roboticized and, you know, based on levels of insights that are coming directly from the data, you would want technology and the capability to be able to execute that business strategy at the same pace. And I think that’s where things get really interesting from a treasury perspective, especially when you look at money movement, and yes, RTP will be one of those rails but it’s a… you have to think about it holistically because within treasury, it’s not just you know, settling funds between accounts and moving money around. It’s also strategic wires. It’s all the various forms of payments that are important to the treasury operation and if you see a future where all of that is being executed and done in an automatic way, you would want the payments technology to be keeping up and I think that’s why the word revolutionary is actually an important one because everything that I just said is definitely not the case right now. Right? It’s teams of qubits that have to be doing that analysis that has to be keeping an eye on all the various aspects of that data then making decisions based on the analysis that they do, however often they do it and then move the money by hand for various treasury operations. Now, there are solutions, you know, there are overnight yield solutions that you can use to automate some of this but having it done holistically is I think, where that revolutionary word comes in, because that’s where things are going and ultimately, that’s where they need to go. You know, in order to get to a new plateau of opportunity. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

As you were saying this thing some, a few thoughts came up one is the consumer side is quite a bit different than the business side in some important ways, and similar and others and you pointed out a few of those. On the business side, you know, it acts differently because the same person who knows that something maybe has been completed is different if someone picked up a lunch for me, and I need to transfer money to them. Well, I know it you know, they gave me the lunch, I transfer the money, everything is contained in my head. Whereas we’re sending payment out for something, or something transfer out for some investment or other activity there might be multiple people who are involved in knowing that this is authorized. Or this event took place at the same time. There’s other activities that people, like you said, people don’t have, shouldn’t have to be involved as you said fully roboticized “Hey, we have to make an interest payment on some bond we have”. The date should trigger it to who owns it, and it should, we shouldn’t have to touch it multiple times. And then finally, control like we think of segregation of duties, tool controls, there’s aspects there that are very, very different from the consumer side, but still, that’s the friction we see in payments so much and that seems to be the tension, whether it’s accounting, treasury, legal, these are all some attentions in that in the payment scheme. 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Absolutely. It goes even wider when crossing international lines because then the list of stakeholders extends outside of your corporation, right? It’s government entities that become stakeholders that need to check each of those transfers and make sure that there aren’t any issues from a fraud or from a compliance perspective. So, that’s where the automation becomes so key because every element of that approval workflow, of that making sure that all of the i’s are dotted t’s are crossed across the stakeholders internally and externally, the more that you can automate that the more efficient the whole operation becomes. That’s where I think some of the innovation has been at play because of the trust concepts that are baked into, for example, modern rails like RTP that perform a lot of those trust checks automatically. And through programmatic needs, where in the past, it may have been a manual process, you know, in the back of house of the bank, that accomplished a fraud check or then accomplished a compliance check. Whereas now, you know, using modern technological means, a bake in, you know, the UK can speak with a bank in the United States, fully through programmatic rails through an API and exchange not only trust concepts, but also verifications that that can be used to make a decision. It’s not tediously, about the validity of that payment. Those types of principles that are baked into these modern rails are really foundational to extending you know that capability and making the lifecycle ever shorter. Whereas in the past, all of these, these principles were baked into human processes. And especially when you think about it across international lines, when you send a wire overseas, and they have to go through a set of compliance checks. Well, those checks in the past were literally people reading a message that was being sent to them from another bank and going through and making sure that all of the details of that payment message checked out on the other side, that could have all kinds of delays baked into it. Well, if we can accomplish the same thing by going direct to database where all that information is stored. That’s where things get really interesting. Honestly, that same principle, whether it’s from an external stakeholder perspective, and doing all those compliance checks, and doing the same thing from an internal stakeholder perspective on some of the cases that you’re talking about interest payments that need to be accounted for based on time, lineage or covenants that are established. Those key data elements that are business intelligence that ultimately define a cadence or define an operation. Those are the total, you know, network that needs to be first of all defined and captured so that these processes can be revolutionized and brought together and pointed towards a single outcome through technological means and solving that equation. Both on the business side of the house, but then also on the bank side of the house, really leads to a future where when you bind it all together through, you know, through API’s or through to fully programmatic means, you can create workflows that are you know, totally independent of, you know, human involvement. That can be based on business criteria, based on compliance criteria, and executed without the need for human intervention. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Okay, Joseph, so, you know, I want to ask about the innovation of payments. You talked about RTP and some of the aspects around there that related to compliance and thinking through on the international side and where is payment innovation happening? You’ve described some of that already. I know. But maybe you could talk about that in terms of both value transfer, which I think you mostly covered, reconciliation, and then maybe on broader business processes. 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Yeah, absolutely. Reconciliation is such an obvious and clear one because of the fact that if you know the sooner that you can settle, the sooner that you can get to the statement, the sooner that you can reconcile how that varies with your data in your ERP system. And that is, by definition, a time latency problem, right? So, the less time that is required more accurate the output data, the easier it is to reconcile data on the back end, and that’s why, you know, fully programmatic integration, you know, from the point of payment initiation, which feeds the data with important metadata, things like the remittance information, things that would help you bind that activity back to a record on the ERP system. That’s where a lot of this innovation is happening, especially considering the fact that these rails are not bound by the same rules from a metadata perspective as old technology was bound. So, more metadata providing seating for context on invoices and activity coming from the ERP system, whether it’s on batch or individual, providing remittance detail, which gives context on the receiver of that payment, and the specifics around that payment. All that information that can be used in conjunction with the fact that it can be executed on a real time basis to then see the process on the backend. The other side of that equation, which is once that payment has been executed, being able to use the very same statement data to then forward that data to a system that’s waiting for that information, so that it can go ahead and reconcile itself and then continue the chain and taking these systems and bringing them together and using you know If This Then That almost without methodology of payment got initiated wishing triggered events to pull statement data to see that payment hitting my statement because of course it’s already settled. Then taking that statement data and forwarding automatically to my ERP system that my ERP system automatically using that fresh checking data to go ahead and reconcile again on a real time basis and see if there are any issues. Having that kind of end-to-end chain is of course, the Holy Grail, right? It’s what whatever your accounting team dreams up, and it can be possible using these modern rails it today, we’re not even talking about, you know, at some point in the future, the technology is there now to be able to accomplish this kind of automation, but it really doesn’t end there because as we get deeper into the opportunities with real time payments. Of course, the next problem is well, if you really great if everybody used this, right, that’s the next frontiers. You know, how can we get away from kind of checks, how can we move fully to digital payments? And one of the things that needs to help bridge that gap is the concept of trust that I was talking about before establishing both sides of the house in a way that gets that trust, fully executed and allowing for a seamless payment initiation or request and that payment then to be set or settled. So, in many cases, driving a clear way, whether it’s through a web technology, or through a registry that allows for any third party to be given a request for payment. And then to be able to seamlessly execute that request without having you know, massive overhead, whether it’s account signups things of that nature, having to have, you know, a login with 18 different payment providers, just to execute on all of your business operations. That’s I think, where there’s a tremendous amount of thought and innovation taking place right now. And it’s a problem that needs to be solved in order for this to come together in a meaningful way. That I’d say from a domestic perspective, we’re, you know, we’re making strides there but then when you think about it internationally, the implications are so much wider. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Yeah, there’s other hurdles and other points of friction that are a little bit more troublesome, perhaps, as you’ve as you’ve talked about some of these items, and this this mindset of into some extent. We’re, to some extent we’ve moved to a real time, world and other areas are much, much slower the time latency disconnect between information and payment and value transfer exists. What remains for us to move to real time? There’s you mentioned a trust factor. There’s obviously a technology issue, right, if one parts fast or slow. It was slow factor. There’s a mindset that goes on. You talked about things like tools like a registry, I guess maybe you can talk about that. And then I’ll throw this into just so you can continue your dialogue on this. If we remove friction and float or time latency, value latency, information latency, will anyone care about the actual payments, will they disappear too almost and a non-issue? We talk about payments a lot, will our conversation shift future to something else? 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

That’s a great question. I actually think that’s a great way to think about it. Because if you think about the state that we’re in today by using a wide vision cast at the beginning, imagining a world where it’s fully roboticized with automation to solve a lot of these problems well, a one doesn’t just do that, right? And you have to you have to have vision yourself within, you know, the corporate structure that you’re in to design a system like that and have the willpower to see it through. And I think that that’s where, from a management perspective, there’s this whole generation of leadership that needs to come together in order to execute on some of these opportunities and it will happen, right? It’s an inevitability. But I think that that’s what stands in the way is first of all, embracing that vision, and embracing the value that that vision brings. But then putting a design hat on and not only designing the necessary organizational structure, which of course will evolve because as you introduce this kind of automation, and you introduce these types of new operations, you don’t need that type of human capital that you used to have to accomplish the same thing, which means that you will shift your priorities as an organization to more strategic thinking and more opportunistic thinking. And instead of spending time on human capital-intensive activities, you’ll spend time on creative and strategic activities that can drive real business value. So, that’s one element is the design of the organization. But I think that another element of the design is that the processes themselves and how they integrate with technology. Ultimately, I think that there’s this posture that exists today of, you know, choosing your vendors and choosing your technology stack just based on you know, a set of functionality criteria, but really, there needs to be a pivot and pivot to a more objectives focused design, where you know, you want to get to a fully automated end goal. And it may or may not include multiple technologies and multiple processes to get you there and stitching that all together, whether it’s in house custom, or you know, partnered with another vendor, that design is something that should be thought out from the very beginning to accomplish that end goal. And that’s a posture that is, you know, not normal within the treasury space for sure. But it’s also something that is an acquired skill, skill. Set within the finance operation as well. And I think it comes by partnering tightly with technology and accomplishing, you know, goals from a high-level perspective, but also from a process perspective. That’s definitely you know, one big gap I’d say that needs to be closed but that that the final piece, this part is really fascinating is, as you said, if this all just kind of disappears, if we get to a point where payments is a non-issue, because it’s an assumed no latency business transaction that automatically gets applied to an intelligence system from a statement perspective and then gets consumed and forwarded to an accounting and ultimately a reporting system. Then it begs the question, what is that time gets spent on the time that was used for thinking through the payment operation and making sure that it’s done accurately? What does it get forwarded to? And I really think that by assuming no latency, it opens the door to strategic opportunity. You know, it’s already happened. We don’t. I don’t have to assume this. You know, we can already see it in the wild. Whether it was it was Uber moving to a model of instantly settling funds to their drivers, you know, multiple times a day, I’m sure that they could probably drive it even faster if they wanted to. It’s these types of business moves that become a realized opportunity, because you’re no longer thinking about the implications of settling business transactions, right? And that that is an exciting place to be. And the only way that you can be sitting in a posture like that is by doing the hard work of transforming and revolutionizing your workflows. And I think that it can be built on the foundation of some of the concepts that we’ve been talking about today. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Yeah, I like that example of Uber. I know we’ve talked about that before they won an AFP Pinnacle Award for that. I think it was a couple years ago. And like you said, they can settle things four times a day. And that’s interesting, right like you would say, it’s fast, but it’s also more frequent. It’s like I did a rider to I get it. I get a money transfer. Now I can buy gas, you know, in the gig economy if I’m driver, I need another hit. Like why should it be limited? Once a month, once a week? Once a day? It’s very interesting to see how that how that took place. So, that was speed was a huge speed and self-service was a key factor there, you know, and that business to consumer business to gig service providers. What will be the driver, Joseph, on the business side? Is going to be speed and metadata so that it’s things like reconciliation, settlement happen. Will it be speed and registry or networks for trust factors? What’s the Uber story for payments going to be? 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Is it fair to say all of the above? In a more serious way, I’d say that each persona within the various stages of you know, corporations that we would have throughout the world, whether you’re a very mature operation, you know that is highly complex, and really the value is flipping the funnel, right? It’s taking the human capital operations that have been in place for decades at this point, and flipping that funnel by introducing more and more automation, which drives value, maybe from a cost savings perspective, maybe from a speed to market perspective, maybe a more crisp end operation. You know if you’re thinking about supply and supply chain logistics, of being able to do that, you know, through flipping that funnel is very powerful vector. So, for some personas, that will be the driving factor is cost savings for others, just like the Uber example, it might be an end-to-end business strategy opportunity, right? Because with Uber, the rail wasn’t necessarily the thing that created the business opportunity. It was the first Lego piece, if you will, that when established as the foundation created this macro-economic model that influences the behavior of the end, you know, that consumer here being the driver, right? And if the driver behaves differently at a macroeconomic level, what does that mean for the business operations and then also for the strategic opportunity of getting more drivers into a market and be more available so that more sales can be driven? And so that you can do it in a more automated basis? Those types of video game out scenarios where you think through all of those angles, when you assume a system underneath the hood that can keep up with the pace of those assumptions, it drives your business opportunities that could be a persona. For others it could be, I definitely think that this is an interesting case for new businesses, so businesses that are growing super-fast, maybe they’re in the you know, the FinTech space or in the tech space coming out of Silicon Valley. And they’re thinking about, well, how could we scale how can we get to the next level? Well, they are going to have the benefit of building on foundations that are, no baggage, if you will, they have the best of the best, and they will be able to create brand new business models using these rails. So that’ll be a brand-new persona, how that innovates and how that plays out. It’s going to be interesting for the next generation of businesses that come online. So, it really is multifaceted, I’d say, and it depends on where you are in the maturity lifecycle. It depends on the size of your organization. It depends on you know, the factors that apply to your specific business as it stands in terms of how you make money and how you execute on your operation. But I feel like payments plays that you know, that wide of a role where it plugs into every business no matter what and innovating on top of it allows for all kinds of opportunity. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

That’s a great summary, payments plugs into every role and therefore creates the opportunity. Great way to say it. You know, as we kind of bring this podcast to a close any final thoughts, any of your thinking on what the future holds or the transition from the current state to the future state that we should be thinking about? 

 

Joseph Drambarean   

Well, I think that there’s a whole audience, my colleagues on the crypto space inside of the house would beg to differ on a lot of the views that we have today. And I think that’s a natural tension in all of these discussions is to what extent is this just you know, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to payments transformation. What will it look like? 10 years from now 20 years from now, as new technologies come online, and the propagation of those technologies gets to a boiling point and whether that’s on you know, the public blockchain, whether it’s new rails that are, you know, created by banks, and through collaboration across different banking institutions. I think that’s the last piece of this puzzle is, are we even close? Right? Is there a whole other generation, a whole other wave, that we’re not even talking about? I think that we’re getting a glimpse into it. With some of the technologies within the blockchain space, but it is definitely a wild west area of payment settlement, but it’s one that is worth keeping an eye on because of the transformation that it brings cross border and what it can mean with regards to businesses engaging in that model, and of course, some of the examples that we’ve been talking about today, when there’s payment companies like Square, you know, PayPal, they’re already in that space, right? So that’s a factor for them in dealing with the realities of a multi-platform, multi payment type operation. 

 

Craig Jeffery   

Very good. Thank you so much, Joseph, for talking about payments and the revolution that’s well underway. 

 

OUTRO   

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