What is Open Banking and How Will It Impact Your E-Commerce Business With Kieron James

Unlock the door to e-commerce mastery with our inspiring guest, Kieron James, as he traces his exceptional journey from web design to his innovative role in the domain name registration arena. With a keen eye for strategy and a heart for entrepreneurship, Ian's story isn't merely a personal saga; it's a blueprint for aspiring business moguls seeking to chart their own paths in the dynamic world of digital commerce. His candid discussion on the importance of automation, the art of SEO, and the value of exceptional customer experience serves as a beacon for those eager to learn the ropes of online business success.

Prepare to have your perspective on payments transformed as Kieron James, CEO of Wonderful, leads us through the promising landscape of open banking. This episode peels back the layers on how this technology is reinventing financial transactions for businesses and charities, offering a glimpse into a world where high card processing fees become a relic of the past. Ian's journey through the challenges of establishing a fundraising platform to pioneering a payment processing solution reveals the untapped potential of open banking to significantly impact the way we handle money.

Lastly, we examine the tangible benefits of open banking for small enterprises and nonprofits, with Ian bringing into focus how instantaneous transactions can breathe life into the daily operations of these organizations. He shares how his payment processor, Wonderful, is carving out novel pathways in the UK's commercial sector, buoyed by the success with charities. We wrap up by spotlighting the human side of entrepreneurship, from Ian's favorite reads to his views on corporate dynamics versus startup agility, and the crucial traits that define a triumphant entrepreneur. Join us for this compelling episode that promises not just insights but a roadmap to thriving in the e-commerce and fintech arenas.

How can the guests contact?  website, email, social?

Website: https://wonderful.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kieronjames

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieronjames/

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The Digital Revolution Podcast
Welcome to The Digital Revolution Podcast, where marketing experts share their expertise.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:41

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have a privilege to interview here in James, an entrepreneur with 30 years of experience in launching and scaling startup businesses in the technology sector. Mr James is the CEO and founder of Wonderful, a company that provides simple, fast and secure instant bank payment technology. On today's episode, we are going to dive deep into Mr James' extensive background in entrepreneurship, which includes starting, scaling and exiting nine businesses over the last 20 years, including two NASDAQ listed corporations. We will also learn about open banking and how merchants and e-commerce can use open banking to generate huge savings by this platform at just one penny per transaction. We are very excited for this show. Welcome, mr James.

Speaker 3: 1:55

Hi thanks. Thanks, David. Hello Ken, great to meet you. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Absolutely so. To start off the episode, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your path in entrepreneurship?

Speaker 3: 2:07

Yes, certainly quite a securitist one. But I got started in my own business in 1998, I think it was having worked in teaching prior to that and for a UK trade association prior to teaching. So kind of very odd route into e-commerce. But 1998 I was working in a training institute in the Middle East, running a training institute, and it was a kind of strange arrangement between the UK and the Omani Institute owners which ended up with a lot of the staff not getting paid and me heading home with my family. One of the last things I did in the training institute was start looking at some marketing plans for them. In 1998 they were asking me to put together a PDF to do some marketing, and I was thinking probably we should be looking at the internet. So I started building a mini website. Got back to the UK, that job was over, so it wasn't so much firing the money, it was more the man being fired or made redundant at the very least. So I came back really thinking what can I do? I've got no job, got no money. But I felt like I wanted to do something on my own. So it was a quick trip down to the bank, tried to get a loan, for I think it was probably about £600 to buy a computer, and I thought the first and most obvious thing that I should do is probably start a web design business. I guess the rest of the UK in 1998, but hey, that's how I got started.

Speaker 4: 3:27

So Tiron, let's dive a little bit more into your experience in launching and scaling, and you exited nine businesses over the last 25 years, so let's chat with the listeners about some of the common threads that have led you to be able to not only launch and scale but also exit nine businesses. Is there anything in common that you've kind of isolated?

Speaker 3: 3:49

Definitely, and it is a range of different areas. So just wind back to that 1998 web business. I started off doing the design and quickly had a need for domain name registration because obviously all my clients were starting websites, we wanted to register domain names for them and that's how we started to get into the mass market side of things. So I teamed up with a company based in the Northeast in the UK who owned the domain name, domain namescom and they had actually at the time they registered. They weren't even sure what they wanted to do with it. So they started off by registering a few domain names and using it as an after sales market really. So not cyber squatting, but general names, and then it might be accountancycom or something similar to that, and then seeing whether there's a market for them, I think then quickly realized the integration with Nominet in the UK and network solutions, as it was back in the day, meant that they could resell domain names. You know a brand new point of registration. So that was my first kind of dip into this sense of if we can automate something, if we can make that process slick and easy, that makes for a very good business. And it's all digital and I think that's been a recurring theme. For me, it's one of stick to the knitting. I guess it's what I know, but whether that's been in telecoms, in domain name registration, in company formation and then laterally in payments, it's all for me about, you know, digital products. We have ventured into doing some physical products Actually game, probably back in 2004, 2005,. We started an online vegan hamper for Christmas business and because it was so niche and I guess you know this predates social media and everything, so a good search engine query you'd end up on our website we were overtaken by demand and I found that really, really difficult to cope with that. We were actually having to, you know, find suppliers and source stock and get it out in time. So we were busy backing hampers and doing all sorts of things right up until Christmas Eve. So that was my lesson learned that I'm not really great in that kind of space. Others, I'm sure, excel, but for me if it's digital, if it's zeros and ones, that's where I think I perform best. And then, in terms of the common threads, ken, I think again it's worked well to focus a lot on a couple of things. One is being found. So, again, going back to 2000s, early 2000s, search engine optimization was a lot more straightforward than it probably is now, but that was a key to the success making sure that we were highly visible. I think then, from being found, it was a case of, can I now source this service quickly and easily? So what's that user experience going to be like, from clicking this search result on Google through to actually completing a purchase? And we've worked really, really hard on that through all the businesses trying to scale with as little contact with the customer you know in terms of telephone calls or that level of support as possible, so allowing them to sell service through good UI, through good PDF support back in the day now using AI, and so on foot for some of those aspects. But how can we get that customer from that first search and search engine result through to purchase with as least as minimal touch as possible?

Speaker 4: 6:53

I really like that. That's it's simple, it's lean and it's fast, it's automated and a great process, and so thanks for sharing that. And one thing that David and I like to do on this show. I know a lot of shows don't like to talk about failures, but I think, as an entrepreneur, we all have so many ideas that we're spinning out, we're trying and not all of them work. Everybody has to be honest, and so are there any failures along the way, that you've learned a lot from that you want to share with the audience.

Speaker 3: 7:19

I think that the vegan hampers was the standout, but there have been others. We tried to carry that on. I think we got as far as Valentine's Day and then just decided this wasn't for us. You know, it was just one of those things, and it's knowing your strengths. I think the other thing that's important is knowing when you've got to pivot, or indeed just hang up the boots and say this isn't working. I think that happens. We'll all have ideas, so we've had a number. When GDPR was being introduced in the EU, we were looking at product ideas around that, around data and so on, and again we couldn't really make it work. We came up with a couple of ideas, launched gently a product and then, in fact, no, this isn't going to, this isn't going to pay out for us. So we backed out of that and I think it's just recognizing that it's. It never is a failure, it's just another lesson learned. I think that's a very, very strong way of putting it.

Speaker 4: 8:11

Yeah, failure is kind of a harsh word. Lessons learned or the learning process is probably more like it. But do you have a? Is there like a tipping point or something that? A light bulb that comes on whenever you're like, okay, we've tried this enough, it's not working, let's, let's take it out behind the barn and let it rest, like is there a point where you know it's not going to work?

Speaker 3: 8:30

There is my background and I've worked with the same guy for all of these businesses for the last 20 or years. That mentioned domain names at the beginning. That's how we got started Actually probably predates that in the publications business. So when I was teaching, he was doing educational publishing. He's really strong on finance, probably stronger on business development, marketing and those kind of ideas, so we work together really well as a team. So, as a light bulb moment, he's my light bulb and what I say many, many times when people ask what's the most important lesson learned or can you share a quote. I had no idea where this came from, but someone said to me at some point in business, the successes is about being passionate and dispassionate in equal measure, and it's something that I think is really important, because if you've got the passion and the belief in a particular business idea and that often comes from starting something that you enjoy, that you know that's, I think, that can be really, really important, a really significant ingredient in the success. So if I love yoga, do I start a yoga business? If I love making music, do I look at ways of selling that online? One of the problems with that, however, is that you can become a little bit blind to when that isn't working because you're so passionate about it, because you've got that unstoppable belief that you don't see actually people aren't sharing that belief and that passion for the thing that you love. So the dispassionate bit comes in the numbers and I think the numbers just tell you black and white if it's not working. And it can be really hard and a really bitter pill to swallow. But sometimes you've just got to stand back, look at those numbers and be 100% objective and go maybe I love yoga but maybe there isn't a market for this thing that I've developed to help people do the yoga. Passion and dispassion in equal measure is the thing I would live by, even now.

Speaker 2: 10:07

I am glad I really like that quote because it is entrepreneurs are really optimistic and fired up on the front end of a processing. Sometimes that momentum doesn't stop, even when it should. So I really really like that. Let's pivot a little bit and it folks our attention on e-commerce and in checkout optimization. So what trends do you see as shaping the user experience in online transactions in the coming years?

Speaker 3: 10:31

Oh, big question, Many, but I think there are a couple of standouts. I think e-commerce owners now store owners need to be very aware of omni-channel sales approaches and the link of that between social selling should we say so, buying directly from Instagram or buying directly from Facebook or wherever it might be. I think those are really really key trends going forward. I have been for a little while, but that's going to continue. So, making sure there's a consistency in your approach, in your branding, in your messaging and everything across any different platforms that you're using, I think that's going to be really key and also an ability to again going back to that discoverability piece back when I was talking about search engine optimization. It's the same thing now on TikTok and wherever else. It's making sure that your content is visible, is interesting, is relevant, but also, critically, the path from that content to completing a purchase is really easy and friction free as well. So, irrespective of where you're finding that product or service, what channel that's appearing on, that process wants to be consistent throughout. That message wants to be consistent, and I think it's one of the things that can get left behind a little bit. You focus very much on your own website. Your messaging is up to date and relevant and your blog posts are all up to date and so on, but that mission statement might have got a bit of an out of date on one of the other channels, so it's keeping all of those things really, really tight. I think the other one that we can't ignore is AI, and clearly that's here to stay. I was astonished actually just a few weeks ago to hear that chatGPT was one year old, because it feels like so much has happened in 12 months. It's extraordinary, but leveraging that, I think it's again for a lot of people, I guess, and myself included 12, 40 months ago it's a little bit terrifying, but I think we have to be leaning into that, and there are any number of ways in which e-commerce store owners can be thinking about how they can leverage AI. Whether it's from a customer experience point of view or helping with forecasts, whatever it might be, there are lots and lots of ways to leverage AI. Content creation is an obvious one as well, though I think still I'd be saying use it as a jumping point for content creation. Don't rely on chatGPT to write your blog posts, but that's my own view. I'm sure there are many people who are using it very successfully to write blog posts.

Speaker 4: 12:40

So, Kieran, can you share a story behind the inception of the wonderful organization and what motivated you to create a free fundraising platform?

Speaker 3: 12:47

Another long answer to a short question. 2016 was my 50th birthday and it was also our 25th wedding anniversary. A couple of the kids had significant birthdays, so it was a 21st and an 18th, and we all as a family felt what can we do to mark this year because there's a lot going on. So I've been running charity for many, many years, decided I was going to do the New York Marathon again in 2016. Actually, a little bit before that, probably early in the year, maybe even back end of 2015,. I was thinking, if we do this, how do we go beyond just running the marathon and raising some money? And I had this crazy idea of well, let's build the fundraising platform that supports all of the money raised, and my rationale for doing that was that I felt there was a space in the market. So it was a little bit aspirational that you look at donors and fundraisers and charities and every day those people are getting up and doing wonderful things, and we thought there's a space in the middle of those for platform to be equally wonderful. How will we be wonderful? Well, we'll ensure that every single penny that's raised goes to the charity, with no deductions for anything. So this will be an entirely free service. So we set about building this and I was running a telecoms business at the time and the engineers were super supportive. They gave up their lunch breaks and coffee hours and weekends and so on and helped us build this platform. And we launched and we thought the charities were all going to come on in big numbers but of course they were a little bit skeptical about our motivation. So that was a lesson that we learned quite quickly, as you don't just email cancer researcher UK and expect them to go oh this is fantastic, it's free, let's join. There are lots and lots of hopes to jump through and so on. But as we launched that platform, one of the things that became apparent very quickly was that the cost of running the platform was going to be prohibitive because it was largely around card processing fees. That was our predominant cost in running the platform was the amount that we're paying Stripe every month. So essentially, we had to find a solution to that which brought us to the business that I'm now operating, which is wonderful payments and that's solutions in open banking. The routing to getting started for it was an odd and very personal one and again it's quite for me it's been a really important lesson learned that sometimes the best laid plans in terms of what you do in your business can be overtaken by something that comes along that's entirely serendipitous, that creates an even bigger opportunity. So we had that light bulb moment with a fundraising platform where we thought actually, in solving this problem of the cost of moving money from a donor's account to a charity's account, we can solve exactly the same problem in moving money from a customer's account to a retailer's account and reduce those costs massively. So that's how we got started, and then it's been a kind of interesting route in selling the telecoms business and moving all the stuff into a payments business.

Speaker 4: 15:24

So before we kind of pivot into the payment piece of this, can we go over more of the wonderful organization and kind of some of the goals that you've set up for that, as well as what do you foresee? The organization, you know, the long term goals?

Speaker 3: 15:38

We had one mission and that was to be free for charities completely free, so there will never be any cost and any charities using our service. That will always be the case. As I say, that became difficult with credit card processing and debit card processing, but we've solved that particular problem. So we had this very low ceiling on our impact and reach. That's been removed, which now allows us to do lots more things. Essentially, if you think about it, we were funded through corporate sponsorship in the early days. So we undertook to be the first corporate sponsor as the telecoms business, then we got a UK bank to be a sponsor as the platform grew and then we got to a point where actually we don't need a sponsor anymore because the cost of processing those payments is actually so low that we can grow without one. So, in terms of goals and ambition, now is fantastic for us because we're able to use the technology open banking to do so many things moving forward for charities that we wouldn't have been able to do before. We can serve many more for one, which is great. That ceiling has now gone, but open banking goes as well as a payments piece, gives us ability to do lots more very interesting things with donors and charities. Let me give you one example. If you look at go to pay or donate to a charity at the moment on their website, very often you'll see the same kind of approach which is you'd like to make a donation today, would you like to donate 25 pounds, 50 pounds or 100 pounds? And there'll be three things presented to you three numbers presented to you typically, and then maybe an option to add a different amount of your own. Those three numbers typically come from the charities doing lots of research amongst their donor base, but that's still effectively a bit of a one way monologue piece. It's the charity saying here are three options, choose one. What open banking allows us to do is say, actually, with the consent of the donor, we can use our account information service permissions from the financial conduct authority here to go what's the affordability like right now? What's it like next month, what's it like in three months? And actually have much more of a meaningful dialogue between the charity and the donor. So instead of just presenting those three numbers with one consent check, we can actually the affordability for you is probably around this kind of point, which becomes really, really interesting, I think, a lot more 21st century in terms of that relationship. I'm not sure charities should be taking the approach whether they do or not, or whether they admitted to doing a lot of the kind of gym membership subscription model of let's keep taking 20 pounds a month off these donors and hope we don't disturb them too much in the carry on paying it. That doesn't feel right now. It doesn't feel like the right kind of relationship. So open banking I mean that's just one example of how I think it allows us to provide better services and grug so just a quick follow on there.

Speaker 4: 18:13

I really like what you're doing with that organization. I think that's really really cool and I wish you the best of success there. Okay, so now I'll kick it over to David and we can kind of dig into the payment processing piece of this, which I think there's going to be some very unhappy businesses and banks that are operating in the margins that are not going to want to hear this conversation, but I'm excited to hear it.

Speaker 2: 18:33

So my follow up question is is open banking? Is this a concept? Is this what is open banking? Can you explain what that is Okay?

Speaker 3: 18:41

So open banking. In the UK it kicked off with the competition and markets authority basically mandating the top nine banks to open up API's for FinTechs like ourselves be able to do a number of things. I mentioned in that last piece there a little bit about account information services. So we're using API's with the correct consent in place. Obviously, the people that are sharing information with us will consent to do that and they want to get something in return. But similarly for making a payment, you can provide consent for us, as a FinTech, to take money from your account and pay it into another account. Now that's a tokenized, super secure payment and it's a permission that we will have in place for about five minutes from you giving us authority to do that. So you've got to complete that. Once you've said okay, can you want to give £10 to cancer researcher UK? Give us your permission to do that now We'll take £10 out of your account. What would happen then? And again, I'm guessing you'll have a similar kind of thing in the US as we have here. So if you make that payment via a card, what you'll often be asked to do nowadays is to make a confirmation, and that might be through a one-time password sent via a text message or it might be a link into your bank account to use your mobile bank account app to authorize that payment. Eu, now that's mandated for transactions over 30 euros in a number of circumstances. So what we have is this situation now where, instead of going, I'm at the e-commerce checkout, I'm about to pay and being asked for a 16 digit card number and being asked for an expiry date and being asked for a CVV. I might be being asked for a first line of address and a ZIT code and I might be being asked for a card hold and then I then make the transaction, only to find that the next thing I'm asked for is to confirm that payment, either using an up one-time password or in my mobile banking gap. Now, what open banking does is it skips all of that card entry and just goes you're about to make this payment. Will you confirm this in your mobile banking gap? And that's essentially what we would do to a person making a donation or making a purchase. We just go, you want to pay 10 pounds? Select your bank. You select your bank in the UK, just tap on that. That would open your mobile banking gap and it would say right, you're going to pay 10 pounds to Cancer Research UK or you're going to pay 10 pounds to whatever vendor it happens to be, and you'll just authorize that in exactly the same way as you would with a strong customer authentication on a card payment. So, really, really simple cutting out lots and lots of data entry which can be either fat fingered or lost or compromised or whatever else. It's just cutting that all out and going straight to the bank. When you think about it, in the majority of uses of a card ie a debit card, which certainly here is the majority of card transactions effectively that's all the debit card is doing. It's allowing you to move money from one account to another. It's just a 60 year old well, actually, debit card is slightly sure to maybe a 30 year old method for doing it.

Speaker 2: 21:24

Interesting, there's typically these that are associated with that. From, I'm understanding open banking.

Speaker 3: 21:31

Now, when you think about the card transaction. You'll have up to 14 intermediaries or middlemen taking a slice of that pie, which will be in the range of, in the UK, typically, 20 people transaction and 1.4%. We look at that and we say here's my analogy if you're making a payment 20 years ago and that payment was for 50 pounds and you put a check in a post and stuck it in an envelope and sent it to somebody, you look at the cost of a first class postage stamp to send that in the UK. That will be broadly equivalent to the cost of processing that 50 pound payment. That's fine, that all makes sense. Now I take that check out of the envelope and I put a check in the envelope that's for 5,000 pounds. If the Royal Mail in the UK said, actually you now need to put a stamp on that envelope, that's for 120, 120 pounds, we'd be a astonished, shocked and disgusted. And yet that's effectively what's happening with card transactions all of the time. So our view coming into this was to be super transparent and fair. We want to make a charge for making that transaction, but that doesn't have to depend on the value of the transaction. For us, that revenue that a small business is earning is their revenue. It's not ours. Just to take a piece off because we can't.

Speaker 2: 22:42

I love that analogy. That really makes it clear for me. I really like that, so thank you for that. How did you discover open banking in this solution and what do you think is going to be the impact over the next few years? The?

Speaker 3: 22:55

discovery was made in the first three or four weeks of COVID. So I mentioned, we were running a telecoms business at the time and we were providing all of the wonderfulorg platform completely free, but actually effectively seconding our telecom staff to operate that platform free of charge. When COVID came along and Boris Johnson announced lockdown in the UK, the next thing that happened was our telecoms business. We ran a free telephone conferencing service as part of that service and which was used by the National Health Service in the UK and many, many others. So you can imagine, we get that announcement and literally within 14 days the capacity on our telecoms network went up by 20 fold. So we looked at the platform that we were running for the conference service. We looked at the platform that we were running for the charities and we thought something's got to give here. We can't possibly manage both. We're a small team. Let's just pause the fundraising platform for now and concentrate and providing telephony services, because that seems really really crucial. Three weeks in, I then made a donation to somebody on LinkedIn who was having their head shaved during lockdown for charity and that donation was made using open banking and we'd reached this point just prior to effectively closing the platform, or be it temporarily, where we were thinking we're going to have to tackle this problem of car processing fees and we've got no idea how we're going to do it. I then made this payment, this donation, via a link on a LinkedIn post. That was so quick, so straightforward and unbelievably easy. I got in touch to the provider and said you know how is this working? And they said, oh, it's all open banking powered. And we said we need to talk. So that's really how we discovered it. It was through first time use in the platform well, not in the platform for wonderfulorg, but then, as soon as we made that, I'd made that donation. It was like this is the way that we get the platform back up and running and reduce our cost massively. So it was a real world experience and we basically replaced the car processor instantly, reopen the platform exclusively using open banking and then set about getting our own authorization.

Speaker 4: 24:50

Interesting, and so are you still working on the telephony piece, open banking piece, or have you switched to just the open banking now?

Speaker 3: 24:57

Yeah, so the telephony business I mean that was again quite, quite instrumental in going back to that serendipity point earlier I think we just realized, you know we were in voice telephony space. How often you see people making phone calls now or receiving them. So the phone, mobile phones, are being used for entirely different purposes. And there's that moment again when you go back to the passion, dispassion when you go. This business has probably got some life but it's not going to continue growing. What do we do with these very talented people? Here's a new opportunity that's come around through Open Banking and we cheaped the entire staff, barring one who was a real specialist in telephony and the acquirers wanted him. Everyone else came just to wonderful payments and that business was born.

Speaker 4: 25:37

That's interesting, yeah, and personally coming, I worked telephony earlier in my career with 16 kilobit phone lines and so I transitioned to optical networking and so I kind of I understand the transition there from a legacy technology to a newer one. So let's pivot and let's talk about Open Banking in the future and kind of where it is now you had talked quite a bit about in the UK. Let's talk about what do we think it's going to be like in the future, and then also, is it like that in the US? Is it going to be like that? Do we know?

Speaker 3: 26:06

There's been an interesting journey that's been happening in the countries that were adopted Open Banking and it's one from it's taking us from Open Banking into Open Finance and then to Open Dayton. People talk about Open everything, so just the potential that we're seeing now is growing massively. I think we've seen significant growth in payments. I talked earlier about the account information services and the number of queries that were happening through those APIs always exceeded on the account information service side, always exceeded the payments queries that were happening, and actually they've now crossed quite recently and the growth that was seen in payments is absolutely huge. That, I think, was definitely the incentive and the growth around. That was through that mandatory mandate of the CMA9 banks in the UK. Had they not been required to do that and open their APIs up to FinTechs like ourselves, I'm not sure we'd have seen the growth that we've seen. So that's been instrumental and now the other banks will be following suit. So we'll soon have coverage. We've got coverage of about 90 odd percent now of people who have bank accounts, but the remaining 10 percent will follow In the US. I think we're slightly behind in terms of that regulatory mandate, but I think that's happening and I think you'll see very soon the same kind of progress that we've seen in the EU and in the UK.

Speaker 4: 27:56

So that's on its way and just to kind of talk about, I guess, the impact of this. So, like our e-commerce store on our own website, we use Stripe to process payments and I'm going to lie, it's probably in between 2% to 4% that we're paying Stripe. I'm not exactly sure where. That's a substantial amount of money. And so what will happen in the US when the open banking comes in, and will that completely go away? Will Stripe not charge fees? Will there be new providers? What does that look like?

Speaker 3: 28:24

It's a very big question and a really important one for open banking we talk about at the moment is the fact that open banking for an e-commerce provider is not a this or that solution. It's a this and that solution. So we wouldn't be asking anybody to do what we did with wonderfulorg, the fundraising platform, where we just said no more Stripe, no more cards. What we'll see, I think, is this approach at checkout. So if we look at our integration with Will Commerce, for example, you can, in the UK, use wonderful to make a payment through Will Commerce in the same way as you would when you get to checkout with a card. You can select card provider be that Stripe, be that whoever it might be, or you can select wonderful. The motivation for the retailer is really strong because it is at least in almost every scenario in us. It's probably even more than this, but it's going to be north of 80% savings. With us we're quoting 97%. So it's literally a penny a transaction and so for £9.99, we're giving you a thousand transactions a month of any value in Siri. So I think that's going to be really instrumental in driving adoption, because what can merchants do with that money, those savings? Well, they can put in place their own loyalty schemes so they can use those to fund all those savings, to fund all sorts of things. And again, another analogy I like to share a lot of the time is it's okay that encouraging people to use a credit card to get a discount or VIP lounge at an airport, but what benefit does that actually give to the merchant? Not. All it's doing is really increasing loyalty for the card provider, not for the merchant. So if I can save 97% of my processing fees, I'm probably likely to promote open banking amongst the payment options that are available at checkout, and we've seen that happen. You know we're seeing that happen already where people are. An airline in the EU was doing that and open banking was number one on its list of methods to make payment. This was a big airline. So I think you'll see that I think the critical thing about this being of this and that solution is really important. While that adoption and that awareness and that information piece are going on about this new technology, what's also great to see is that once people have made their first open banking transaction, 90% of them will go back and make another. So it there's really strong adoption. So it's that typical thing about new technology first one's a bit difficult or a bit challenging or a bit scary, or I've not seen it before, and then, once you've done it, once you go actually why would I ever put my card details in the game? Because this is so much quicker.

Speaker 4: 30:49

I think that's fascinating. Yeah, and definitely I think the adoption rate, like you said, in the UK was just massive. I really see the same happening in the US. Last question, then I'll kick it over to David has there been any pushback or lobbying from large organizations? Has anybody come knocking on the door like what are you doing to us?

Speaker 3: 31:06

Whether that's been overt or whether that's happening behind the scenes is a different thing. There are clearly lots of there's a lot of interest in this not working let's put it that way or not working soon. And you may see that, if you're asking me as a cynical person. Things like the downtime if there's an open banking situation with one of the big banks, would they allow the same amount of downtime technically for a card payment? Probably not, because it's not in their interest to do so. Similarly, things like if you look at the limits on an open banking transaction can be up to on a single transaction they can be up to a million pounds. So some of the banks business bank accounts will support a one million pound transaction in one open banking payment. Typically they follow the same kind of value as faster payments in the UK, which will be in the 20 to 25,000 pound mark. Some of the banks, however, would say we're going to limit open banking to 3000 pounds per day. There's no good reason or justifiable reason why they would do that. So you know. Again, ask me if my cynical hat on, is it a blocker? I don't know, but I think ultimately the writing is on the wall we're all going to have. I think what's happening at the moment is we're trying to slow down that process because there's a lot of vested interest in that remaining the same for a while. One other thing that I just should mention, actually, when I talk about open banking and one of the other key advantages is that settlement time. So that's really key for small businesses too, because the moment I authorize that payment is the moment it hits your bank account as the merchant or the retailer. So you're talking about near instant it's a couple of seconds as opposed to waiting for you know a car provider to settle those funds out to you. Or in the charity world, we see providers that are taking up to 30 days or more to actually pay the charities which they take that money and hold it and make interest on it.

Speaker 2: 32:50

But my inter-accountant is jumping for joy as I think about cash conversion cycle and how that would really help out with that, that instant transfer of cash. I really like this, so my thought is this huge.

Speaker 3: 33:03

For small businesses, obviously it's the lifeblood. You know it can be. It can be. The difference between them operating and not operating is cash is often the case. It's fine if you're a larger business, which is again one of the reasons that we don't offer discount for bulk. We're not offering discount for volume. For us it's. If anyone needs discounted payment processing, it's a small business. So you know, for us it's a penny of transaction. I don't care if you're huge, it's still a penny of transaction.

Speaker 2: 33:27

I like that. I like that For our listeners that are doing business in the UK can they use Wonderpool as a payment processor?

Speaker 3: 33:34

Absolutely so we're at the moment. We're rolling out a number of things. We've just gone live with the commercial products fairly recently, so we've been very focused on making sure everything works since we took off over from our previous payment providers. And the great thing is doing that in the charity space again, with no disrespect to charities, but they probably wouldn't be your target market for a payments innovation product. You wouldn't be the first people you'd think about oh who can we do this with? Because we were a bludge force to do it, because we had no alternative. It's been a fantastic learning curve for us and we've been able to see what the adoption is like amongst the charity donor demographic, and the feedback we've had has been fabulous. It's been really, really strong. So I think that's really key is doing that and testing that in the charity market has given us the scope to now release those products in the commercial world. So the way that we're doing that is through integrations. Typically, we're very focused on the small business market. That's where we want to operate and our route to doing that is through integrations with accountancy platforms, with e-commerce platforms, and we'll be rolling out a number of those over the coming months. So we've started with WooCommerce I've mentioned. We've got a number of other platforms under development at the moment. We've also launched an integration with the zero accounting platform. Phase one of that's now live and phase two will go live soon, so there'll be a number of ways that you can implement this on your website, along with a public API. If you've got your own setup, then you can use us equally.

Speaker 2: 35:01

At the end of every episode, we asked our guests the same questions. This is what we call the fire round. Are you ready? I'll do my best.

Speaker 3: 35:09

All right, kieran what is your favorite book? Anything by Haruki Murakami, but probably Dance, dance, dance. I think it was the first one I read. I just love his writing. I just find him absolutely unputted downable. If that's a word, I'm sure it under. It is now All right.

Speaker 4: 35:23

What are your hobbies?

Speaker 3: 35:24

Running I've mentioned already, that's been a lifetime passion. Bolt Yoga, I also mentioned. I really enjoy my yoga. So those two things keep me balanced in the hectic startup life. And music music production. I started life as a drummer many, many years ago and then moved into doing electronic music production more recently.

Speaker 4: 35:40

Okay, very cool. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?

Speaker 3: 35:44

Inertia, I would say just that, the larger organizations, just the speed at taking decisions and implementing them. I guess it's one of the reasons why, historically, we've exited businesses reasonably early. I think this is a different one, because the opportunity is great, but also I love that small business. Get things done, just get it out, get it live, test it in the real world. So Inertia, don't miss that tool.

Speaker 4: 36:08

I like that one. Okay, last one what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who gave up, fail or never get started?

Speaker 3: 36:15

You know, I was listening to Matt on your last episode and I couldn't agree more with them. I think you know that point of it. You don't fail, you just learn lessons. I think is really, really important. But I think, going back to against some of the comments earlier is that tenacity is the ability to keep going when things really, really feel hard. I think that's really key, having that passion in the first place. Don't choose something because someone else is doing it. Choose something that you want to do, because it's something that really interests you. I think that's a great way to get started in business. And then it is just knowing when to stop. So almost those two things seem in conflict. But if it's not working, move on, do something else you know, and that can be another business. It doesn't mean stop doing your own business, but just recognize it's not working.

Speaker 4: 36:58

Okay, excellent.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Absolutely Want to thank you for being a guest on the Buying a man podcast. People are interested in using Wonderful as a payment processor. What would be the best way? Wonderfulcouk.

Speaker 3: 37:07

So very simple. Domain name goes back to my domain name registration day, so registered out of Nominet in 1998. And finally got a good use for it.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Awesome, very nice, and we will post links to all that in show notes. Kieran, want to thank you for being a guest on the podcast. This has been an outstanding conversation. We've definitely learned a lot about open banking and looking forward to the future on this. So thank you so much for your time, my pleasure.