1. Tell us about your role at Token?
Previously, as COO, I was responsible for the commercial, financial and operational functions of the business. I have recently taken over as CEO from our founder, Steve Kirsch, and am responsible for the entire business.
2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
I spent 33 years in the enterprise and financial software industry; twelve years at Accenture followed by 21 years at four successful start-ups, including a $1bn exit. I joined Token three years ago after meeting Founder Steve Kirsch and hearing his vision for modernising payments in a bank-friendly way. The opportunity to participate in two of the biggest disruptions to hit the payments and banking industries in many years, open banking and cryptocurrencies, was too good to pass up.
3. How do you think technology is developing the finance sector?
Technology is enabling a new layer of financial services; services that are faster, more convenient, and better integrated with our lives.
The incumbent players do not have a lock on providing these new services; in fact, this new layer is emerging to fill the shortcomings in the technologies and services from traditional players. Big tech and fintechs have been racing to create this layer, and banks are starting to realise they need to compete too – and can power these new digital services through API-based access to their data.
4. How has open banking empowered financial and banking organizations?
Banks are beginning to look beyond the requirement of regulatory compliance and are investigating how open banking can enable them to embrace ecosystem banking and launch new products and services based on accessing other banks. Ecosystem banking versus relationship banking recognises that, through APIs, a bank can meet its customers in their applications, where they live their lives digitally. If you think about it, accessing my financial information through a mobile banking app is a non-value added step. As a consumer, I should be able to access the data and services that I need in the context of what I’m doing in other applications.
Big tech and fintechs can also leverage open access to data and services within a bank to create new and more convenient financial services products. Furthermore, every application that holds a stored value in a “wallet” now has access to account to account payments and can load funds more cheaply than debit / credit cards, Apple Pay, and PayPal.
5. What are your future predictions related to open banking and what are the contributions Token is planning to make in it?
EU banks are increasingly looking to go beyond the bare minimum of PSD2 compliance and are now considering how best to compete in this new world. This is creating further interest in premium APIs that go beyond compliance and enable greater API-based banking capabilities, such as variable recurring payments. Token is contributing by providing banks with premium APIs that enable them to launch new open banking services and differentiate themselves in the market.
We are also going to see continued interest in open banking from around the world. Other regions have been watching and learning from Europe’s experiences, and will look to avoid the API fragmentation and customer experience issues that have inhibited the growth of the EU open banking market. In the Middle East, for example, Token has been selected by the Central Bank of Bahrain’s first licensed open banking integrator to provide the underlying infrastructure for a national standard.
6. How do you differentiate your open banking platform from your competitors?
Token is the only open banking solution that provides software for the entire value chain. While other service providers solely aggregate access to banks or provide APIs, Token provides third parties with a single API to access all banks for payments and data and provides APIs to banks for compliance and premium payment capabilities. Plus, our Smart Token technology provides sophisticated payments functionality which enables our customers to capture a much larger market with bank payments. This creates great benefits for everyone in the value chain – banks, PSPs, merchants, developers and consumers.
In addition, we white label our entire solution, enabling other players in the existing payment value chain to bring bank direct payments to their customers. This solution was selected by Mastercard to power the connectivity layer of its open banking.
A further crucial difference between Token and other companies in this field is that we emphasize payments, when so many others are prioritising data and data aggregation use cases. Our narrow focus has enabled us to develop deep functionality that makes accepting bank direct payments elegant and simple.
7. What advice would you give to a start-up?
Those that survive do so through determination, perseverance and the ability and willingness to adjust strategy based on early market feedback. For start-ups selling to banks, my advice is not to underestimate the length of sales cycle or the compliance, security and regulatory infrastructure that is required to work with them.
8. What digital innovation in the fintech industry do you think will mark 2019?
2019 is going to be the breakthrough year for open banking payments. Once the industry has mastered that we’ll start to see more ambitious use-cases. Consumers are warming up to the idea of sharing their data in return for quicker and more convenient services, and soon bank direct payments will become the norm. They are already being adopted across multiple industries like property, where they are speeding up and simplifying administrative processes and first rental payments. There’s also plenty of activity in travel money and investments – for example forex providers are using bank direct payments to cut costs and time spent on account registration.
9. How should companies prepare for a technology-centric world?
Just as companies had to adopt a digital first strategy at the advent of the internet, and a mobile first strategy after the emergence of smart phones, today, companies need to adopt an API-first strategy. For example: is visiting your application really a value-added step for your end users, or should your company’s information be accessible to customers in the context of other applications they use?
10. Can you tell us about your team and how they support you?
We take the recruiting and selection process very seriously and have a high bar for hiring team members. As such, Token has built a great team. We are equally balanced between San Francisco and London and work to build and maintain strong global relationships.
11. What are Token’s plans for the future?
Token has two significant goals for the next twelve months. First, we’re aiming to continue with the great success we have enjoyed over the last year, where we emerged as the market leader in open banking infrastructure. Second, we are looking to upgrade our connections to over 4,000 banks in Europe from legacy connections like screen scraping to PSD2 APIs.
12. What book are you reading at the moment?
Personal – I enjoy historical fiction by Bernard Cornwell and have two more books in the Last Kingdom series. Business – I’m reading Platform Revolution, by Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary. It’s fascinating because it is applicable to Token’s objective of enabling the next generation of financial services by providing access to all banks – and the simplest way for developers to connect to them.
13. What are the most-used apps on your phone?
I’m not into games…so they’re all very practical. WhatsApp, Citymapper, and now I live in the UK, of course Weather!
