Can the blockchain solve ‘identity’, with Jonathan Camilleri Bowman

It’s weird: when I moved house, the world suddenly stopped as everyone waited for me to get a new utility bill, at which point we resumed normal service with me once again a verified real-life person. We said it on this show before, but there has to be a better way to prove identities than a utility bill, a signature, and an unchangeable government-issued number of some sorts…

And of course, there are, but none of the ones we’ve discussed to date felt complete, which is why I was keen to speak to Jonathan Camilleri Bowman. Having got too-often bumped into issues when trying to verify identities for his earlier business, he founded Sekuritance as a CeFi and DeFi RegTech ecosystem that could provide a one-stop-shop on all compliance needs.

So in this episode we chat about what that means and whether the auditable nature of the blockchain might offer a solution to solving the identity problem.

You can learn more about Sekuritance on their homepage - www.sekuritance.com - and while their academy is not up yet, you can find more details on the Oxford University Blockchain course here

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), while you can find my action-adventure novels on Amazon, some versions are perma-free.

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Regards,

Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 0:00

So when a customer comes and says I want KYC... Okay, what do you want, exactly? Like what elements do you want to check on this person, are they all relevant to what you need to do? Is it an overkill to check all these bits and pieces? Number one, because it gets more costly, and number two, because it might be an overkill on the individual - the individual might tell you, 'hey, this is not relevant to opening a bank account, so why on earth would you want to know these bits of information?'

Brendan Le Grange 0:30

Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers. I'm your host, Brendan le Grange, and I've just finished my move, albeit I'm still surrounded by boxes. When you move, you're reminded about all the little day to day hassles that come with proving something as simple as the fact that you are who you say you are. It seems like you're not officially you again, until you're carrying a new water or lights bill. I picked up a parcel the other day and my driver's licence address now doesn't match my delivery address, I joined a new club, same thing. Luckily, none of those tasks were particularly tricky and the hurdles to get around were low, but they do underline a point we've already made a few times on the show: that the ways we prove our identity today are no longer fit for purpose.

But if not a utility bill, then what? Well, we've spoken about one possible solution on the show before, but then just in passing, and that's the blockchain. Our initial reaction when we hear 'the blockchain' might be to think about crypto and then to go to anonymity, but the blockchain is actually all about traceability. And therein lies some hope for more modern identity solutions.

Join me in a moment as I explore this with Jonathan Camilleri Bowman, technologist, entrepreneur and founder of Sekuritance. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show - before we talk about your current projects, I was looking at your background and you've been leading technology projects for decades now in Ireland, in Malta, and in London as well. Could you maybe start by talking a bit about how you got to where you are today, how you got to founding Sekuritance.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 2:21

Thank you, Brendan, for the introduction. So my background is software engineering. I've always been big things, creating new solutions and trying to solve problems. And originally, my background has been in customised software solutions, starting off in the oil and gas industry and public sector in various government solutions.

About 15 years ago, I ventured into the gaming industry. And I realised that they had a lot of problems both with KYC and monitoring, and also with payments. So basically, what happened was, I moved away from gaming and just focus on payments itself. So for the past, so I would say 12 years, what we've been doing is anything in the payment space. With that we've met a lot of frustration. So you're doing your identity checks, your proof of address checks, you're doing transaction monitoring, who you're selling stuff to, politically expose personnel, anti money laundering checks, I mean, it's never ending.

And it was a bit frustrating because we have to deal with so many different providers across the board. So I would say that security fence was originally built out of that frustration, and we want to to address the need to protect our own businesses. Now, when we started taking more of that outside the main bank system, and outside the main gateway, we realised that we have a really good, let's say, suite of solutions that we're using internally to protect us.

And we decided that since we are struggling and we considered ourselves to be, let's say the experts in that field, then we assumed that many other people might have been having exactly that same problem. So we decided to branch Sekuritance out as its own entity.

And the response has been amazing.

The reality is that the world has moved into a more compliant regulatory framework. Every single business has been requested to do its checks and balances from real estate to health to a number of different organisations. So I think we're in a very good space. And we're very excited.

Brendan Le Grange 4:16

Yeah, and I think when we talk in the lending space, we say how difficult it is, but it's actually, to some extent, a little bit easier because your customer is waiting for some money from you. So they're going to be as forgiving as they're ever going to get. In the gaming world. The experience you have to deliver, the speed at which you have to make these decisions, is even faster.

"It's my money. I want to spend it and you stopping me"

And sure, from a lending point of view there's some money at risk, but for most of us it is that regulatory side that is the biggest concern. And the gaming industry's got just as many regulators out there looking, so the problems are just as hard and it's even quicker that they've got to turn it around.

It's certainly an interesting part of the market and you just spoke there a little bit about blockchain and some of the new approaches you're taking it: I've had a few discussions on the show before about identity verification and in the lending world, a lot of those come from innovations of fairly traditional approaches. So they're more efficient, they're faster, they're more far-reaching, but they some familiar technology. Whereas I think, from my understanding, and maybe I'm putting some words in your mouth so I'll let you explain it, but I think you're taking some of this blockchain technology and turning that to the problems. So what approach is Sekuritance taking to this, and how you solving this tricky problem?

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 5:35

Most definitely. And I agree with everything that you've said in terms of even the speed of execution, and how some different verticals are maybe more forgiving than others, because obviously, they're expecting something in return so it's in their interest to provide it. Now, we don't kid ourselves, we know everybody hates going through this process. No one likes compliance. No one likes giving out his personal details. No one likes to be checked. But I think the world and everybody let's say who is transacting in some way or another electronically, or even in the physical world, let's say when you're going to open a bank account. I think people are starting to accept the fact that yes, their details need to be checked. It's a fact of life right now, they understand that many different organisations are bound by the regulation to see who they can transact to it. I mean, you can have a person who is a good person, has a good credit history and whatnot, but is not eligible to work with a particular product or person, just because of where that person or product is registered. So our life becomes a bit more complicated. It's a very interesting and complex solution.

And we realise that we can't solve it on our own. In fact, we are very open to global partnerships and in-country experts. And we do integrate with a lot of them, because in country there might be specific regulations which need to be met. So if we take the blockchain side of things, why is regtech, why is this KYC, why is this monitoring important on the blockchain side? so different jurisdictions around the world are right now taking different stances when it comes to, for example, blockchain projects and cryptocurrency projects - so the project can be legitimate, everything is checking out, the person is also a good person, everything checks out, no stolen funds, no funny background, no political affiliations, none of all that, but the two might still not be able to transact together because of certain limitations.

A classic one is that some cryptocurrency projects which are not licenced properly in the United States are therefore bound to not take on board any US participants, because that might be directly infringing the US regulation on that cryptocurrency. So when we are assisting companies to go down that path, it's not enough to stick to a know your client, let's see if his identity is correct - which means is the passport real, is it active, is it expired and stuff like that, for example. Okay, so you have a person and you know that he is living in Switzerland for sake of argument, but it's very important to go an in depth check, because even when everything checks out, but maybe his tax residency is US based, so on that parameter alone, that person even though everything else is checking out, and he's alright, he cannot participate in a particular project. So the whole, let's say concept of a KYC is much more enhanced, which is why we branch it into the regech space, which is not a new word, but it is any regulatory aspect which has a technology function to it is basically considered part of the regtech suite.

Now, if you take one piece alone, which is the proof of identity or proof of address, or antimony laundering or whatnot, it in itself will give you a good product. But when you join it all together, you get this holistic view that basically will help you understand your risk factor in dealing with that person. You know, if you go to your doctor, and he's going to check your blood pressure, and everything checks out, it doesn't mean he is going to tell you you're super healthy and everything is all right. It just means that your blood pressure is okay. But maybe he's going to check your stress test your ECG, your heart, that basically all together will give that doctor holistic view on that person. So this is very similar, but on your identity side of things.

Now, when we're looking at blockchain, I mean, the adaptations of regtech in blockchain are immense, not only because of new projects, but also because of the benefits it brings to actually considering the distributed nature of the blockchain. When we're talking about big data. Now, we're checking much, much, much more. Now one of the things that we are bringing to the space is accessibility. I myself obviously get subjected to KYC and identity checks all over the place, because obviously, not all the companies are using our solution. That means that I need to give out my passport to countless different merchants around the world continuously. If I'm opening a bank account upon transacting if I'm getting my company to do a partnership with someone, if I'm investing in something... so my own details are all over the place. So it's somewhat beats the whole concept of the whole GDPR that we're restricting where the data goes. So if you had to ask me, Jonathan, do you know who you submitted your passport to? The reality is 'no' and many people would have the same answer. Because your people ask you, hey, you need to do KYC, if you want to open that account, okay, you will do it, who has my data I forgot. So the data is everywhere.

So within Sekuritance, what we're, let's say, trying to also achieve is that as an individual, you have your profile, you're verified, you post all your checks and whatnot. So we become like a compliant identity provider. Like, we have banks, we have crypto projects, we have real estate projects, when they integrate with us, the people that would have already been passing through our system, those people are verified, all they do is they get a notification saying, hey, Bank A is requesting your personal data to be able to process your accounts, are you okay to allow it? So you allow it and that data goes through and for the first time, you can come into a compliance solution and say, okay, these companies have my data, these companies processes it, these passed, these failed, and yes, I want to withdraw my information from that company. So taking back control of your own stuff.

Brendan Le Grange 11:23

So it's a bit like Open Banking, that for your identity, where you get to control it, that you can fill it out once or you can hold it in one place, and share it. And I mean, you've probably even a more extreme example than me with your life in Malta, in Ireland in London, as well. Yeah, I'm from South Africa, I lived in Denmark for a bit in Hong Kong for a bit now, in the UK, one of my degrees I studied was with an American university, anytime any of these traditional KYC projects come up, it's a real pain to try and remember where you were, remember the data, try and fill in a form, Hong Kong doesn't use postcode, so then does the formlet you fill it in... And yeah, we're extremes, not everybody has such a complex identity to prove but we're becoming more and more global just by being online, things like investments, things like Bitcoin platforms, now you can buy shares and whatnot in different countries. So you can have your data all over the show, alter some traditional systems in place.

I've just done one now to verify myself for tax payments, and they were using things like 'when last did you open a credit card?' Yeah, they gave you a wide range, and I've only been in the country for a certain number of years, so I know kind of when it was, but because the process wasn't great, because we had to share it, it's weakened the security, it's made us use things that, frankly, we shouldn't know, you shouldn't necessarily know, when did you open your bank account.

If we could fix the system, like it sounds like you're doing, then we don't have to ask such bad questions and the whole system is a lot more secure.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 12:56

And in fact, like, they're obviously letting more complicated scenarios, because it doesn't mean that if today, for example, you did your let's say KYC, you got verified and whatnot, six months later, that application is still going to be valid - because within six months, something might have changed, your circumstances might have changed. I don't know maybe at that point you did get politically affiliated. So it can be anything, maybe one of your relatives got elected so that automatically gets you, you are a politically exposed person as well. So things change. So I understand when people need to update a records need to maybe do spot checks and need to recheck, but at least it is centralised.

And there might be projects which say, 'yes, I can see that you are verified and you're okay but I need you to answer one or two extra questions that make it relevant for this lending solution, which is totally acceptable. Maybe apart from your identity checks, you also need to do some credit background checks. So in that case, we also have, for example, credit scoring companies and, when necessary, we switch those on, and we would get approval from you to send that credit scoring to the merchant company that you're dealing with. So it doesn't mean that it's a one hit wonder, but at least the bulk of it, the heavy lifting is done, so the user experience is much more straightforward.

I'll give you an example. So one of the niches that we started last year is we realised that when a new blockchain project launches, when a new cryptocurrency launches, they go to a number of launch pads, these launch pads are bound to offer KYC services to their investors to make sure that these people that want to invest in this new cryptocurrency are eligible to take part. Everybody had his own provider, everybody had different pricing, they would send you a link, take the photos, upload, sometimes you don't have the data at hand and whatnot. It was a process that honestly was taking between five and seven days - until you fill it in, until they review it then they report on it: 'okay, out of the 2,000 people that applied they 700 can go through.'

Nowadays, I mean, that's not acceptable. People get fed up on it, people, you know, lose their hot instinct to go with that project because it's taking too long, because the speed of execution is super important.

Now, we are used to speed because when you are in the acquiring business, if you're trying to purchase something, as a tech provider, we have 200 milliseconds within which we need to do all our checks. It's as simple as that. So if you have a credit card, you want to buy something at Starbucks, you're not going to wait 15 minutes for that transaction to go through, you're expecting it to say 'approved' or 'declined' immediately, that's within 200 milliseconds. So we know what speed of execution requirements are.

Within KYC, it works slightly different, because when you're doing a full KYC, I can tell you that it never works 100% of the time. I think we have an automatic approval rate of between 84% and 86%. The rest all go into a manual queue, where one of our manual compliance officers need to go through it and verify some things. Maybe the selfie that you took was wrong, maybe you filled in your wrong date of birth or didn't match with your passport. But we managed to cut these launch pads' KYC process from seven days to 24 hours, under 24 hours. Nowadays, we have launch pads that send us up to 10,000 people within the space of an hour and a half. And most of them get approved in real time. And it's boom, boom, boom. So the participant is still hot, you know, speed of execution is is very important.

Brendan Le Grange 16:30

You're listening to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange. Don't forget to share it with any colleagues who might be interested in the material too. Now, let's get back to the show.

Yeah, and I'm glad you used a cryptocurrency example, because I think from the outside with cryptocurrency, the stories would be this is all about anonymity, this is all about shady deals and keeping the money and the transactions away from the eyes of the government. But that's not at all the case anymore. And in fact, there's a lot of identity verification solutions happening in the crypto world so I think for us in the traditional banking space, it's worth casting an eye there, you've got often a lot of people participating they're younger, they don't necessarily have a lot of the documents in hand. And providers have had to find solutions to validate IDs there. And so while we talk about identity being broken, and we can't rely on signatures, we can't rely on PINs, we can't rely on static national identity numbers, it's probably worth having a look over the fence to see what's happening in this crypto world.

And I think what's also interesting that comes along from that same narrative - and maybe I'm being biassed, maybe I'm further out the loop than most - but the way we frame discussions about blockchain, often it's almost as if it's the separate technology world: so you're either in blockchain or you're not in blockchain. But from the sounds of it your solutions using elements of blockchain working in the crypto world that you're connecting into government ID databases, you connecting into credit bureaus to get credit checks, you're doing facial recognition, this is not one or the other

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 18:03

A hundred percent. And I think it's the only way to go, because, first of all, you can't do everything yourself. We do connect, for example, to the likes of the interdicted lists, we do connect to, for example, other lists which are issued by by Interpol to make sure that people are allowed to transact. There are a couple of public databases that you can connect to, but even that is not enough. So if we know that, for example, our customer - and let's take because there are many lending companies nowadays who are venturing in the crypto side of lending - so there's crypto lending going on, maybe the proof of identity of the person is not enough.

Now, the beauty of the blockchain is - it's true many people consider it anonymous and that is why sometimes it maybe gets a bad reputation because many people would assume that it's only being used for fraudulent purposes or scams or hidden transactions, and this could not be further from the truth - is that these transactions are actually 100%. auditable.

So if something happened, then we're going to find it. If it's on the blockchain, we're going to see it. As simple as that. So if your wallet interfaced with any of the, let's say, known scams, it's gonna surface.

Now, if you take a brand new wallet on its own, and you let's say set it up, then you have that concept that okay, it's anonymous, but how are you going to fund that wallet? And where are you going to take the money out? Because at some point in time, the reality is that you are going to be interfacing with the fiat world. The reality is that the moment that you join those two rails, then basically the anonymity is gone, because now you've just attached your identity to it. And there is a lot of pressure on all the exchanges now to implement KYC as we've seen - even with Binance, because they got a lot of hate on their compliance tactics but they've improved on that a lot - the moment that you transact think properly with your wallet, then you can assume that the anonymous key is not going to remain in place. So that's 100%. For sure.

Now, sometimes people tell me 'okay, so it's anonymous, then why was there this ten-year discussion on who the inventor of Bitcoin was? How can we never have found his identity? It must be anonymous'. That's a very different story, because if you're creating something from scratch, and you are, let's say minting those coins from scratch, and you're not moving it, you're not transacting on it, you basically did nothing with those, then that's as anonymous as it can be. But the moment it gets transacted, the moment it moves, and then that is where you can start joining those dots.

Brendan Le Grange 20:44

When I started working about 20 years ago, compliance was one guy sitting in the corner complaining about any idea we had and largely being ignored. And there was no innovation at all happening in terms of regulation, it was just 'the regulator's going to try and slow things down, you're going to just have to put up with them'. And I don't think many of the creative minds were focusing in that space. But it's been moving more towards people who have got an understanding of the technology, you have innovative minds, who are entrepreneurs, turning their minds to some of these problems, working with regulators to deliver safe products, to deliver safe environments for for trade. It's really important and it's interesting to see just how much innovation is happening there.

Now, you've obviously been, to some extent, at the forefront of that as well. We spoken about identity now, but what other trends are you seeing in this rich tech space in the coming years? And under that umbrella?

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 21:43

Very good question. So yes, once you start looking at what trends companies are going down and and what we need to be involved in, right now, I think we're sort of hitting a bit of everything. So, many customers don't really know what they want. That's one of the main problems. When a customer comes and says, I want KYC... Okay, KYC is such a broad subject, what do you want exactly? Like, what what elements? Do you want to check on this person?

Because we have so many different data points that you can potentially check, are they all relevant to what you need to do? Is it an overkill to check all these bits and pieces, maybe your product or your project or your jurisdiction where you're regulated, might not need that all the checks that we offer have to be done on this person? Number one, because it gets more costly per parameter and number two, because it might be an overkill on the individual. The individual might tell you, 'hey, this is not relevant to opening a bank account so why on earth would you want to know these bits of information?' for example.

So one thing that we wanted is, why should a person, let's say, real estate - right now, in a number of jurisdictions it is being imposed that they do the KYC on their clients, before they even sell him a property, to make sure that this person is trustworthy, that the money he has got to invest in property came through legal sources - so before they even get in front of a notary, they already did the basic checks.

It gets double the work, because the notary himself is also bound by his profession, to do these type of checks on the parties, on the seller, on the buyer, etc. There's so much double work going on.

It's ridiculous.

And in fact, where before I think HR was starting to be one of the main departments within a business where people are spending a lot of money, nowadays, by far, I would say it's the compliance side. So naturally, these companies that are offering these services, they have so much responsibility, and personnel, that when they're taking merchants on board, they say, 'look, if you need to do five checks in a week, don't bother coming to us, you know, we're not for you'. The obstruction, let's say, to get a service, when you are not at that level is huge.

So we had a different business model, we said, 'look, this is what we do. These are all the systems we do'. Now, you might be an individual at home, and you might have an apartment, and you're renting it out via Airbnb, or some other platform. So you want to do a check on your new tenant, to make sure that this person is of good standing, what system will you use? Because you're not going to be paying for 25,000 checks a month, it doesn't make sense.

So we went with a pay per use system where you can come in first verify that you are an individual, which we can work with. But once that is okay, then you can use our platform to do your individual checks yourself. For your own business purposes, let's say a customised KYC roadmap. So you can come in the system and you say, 'the checks I want to do are: an individual or first name, last name, date of birth, blah, blah, blah. So these are the compulsory ones, because without it, we can't give you a good result, and over and above I would also like a selfie with a handwritten note so that I know that it is relevant, and a video saying, "I would like to use your product", for example. So you select those, it creates a customised KYC journey for you, you can white label it, put on your logo, or your name or your product. So a person knows that he's doing this KYC for you. And then he will also get access to a portal where he can come in and see the data that he submitted in retrospect.

Brendan Le Grange 25:26

That's a great example. Because we can forget about that side of things. You know, we're as consumers just always subject to these processes that prove identities, but in our own lives, we often have cases where we want to be on the other side of that. And I've never thought about it that way. It sort of feels like oh, that's something a government would do, or a bank would do. But you're right, for leasing out your apartments for Airbnb, there are many uses where you would want to verify... and it's information that'd be awkward to ask for in the old days, you don't want to say send me a photo of your passport or your driver's licence, certainly not say send me your bank accounts. Whereas, if there was a process that could be done in the same sort of anonymous and clean way that a corporate or government would do it, it would be a great boon to those people that have Airbnb businesses, but even just small landlords.

You talked about the real estate - trying to buy a house now, we've been renting, keep going through all these little checks. And yeah, if it's from a big corporate, they're alright. But when it's somebody who's got a house that they're renting out, they have to try and get a hold of your previous landlords, look you in the eye, get a firm handshake and sort of judge on that are you going to keep their house in a good condition. Whereas if you've made this channel available, it's another way for us with to leverage our good reputations, to allow people to see and confirm we are who we say we are in all walks of life. And sometimes we will be the ones who are checking, and sometimes we are the ones being checked on. But we've got a nice process that will work anytime that that level of trust is needed.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 27:01

100%, I can understand basically, that argument because I've passed to it myself. When I was in different countries, I needed to find a place to live, they asked me for all sorts of things like my background, my financial background, signed letter from my previous auditors, like completely irrelevant information. But if I wanted that place, that's what I need, I subjected myself to it basically. So I understand that what we're also trying to do nowadays is when you get verified with us, and you do participate in let's say the services, most times people are gonna ask you give me a reference. So you're going to have a friend that gives you a reference a professional person, that gives you a reference. So when you start uploading these to our platform, it becomes like a game, you know, the more references you get, the more points you get, the more let's say you advance in your verified identity type of thing. So we're trying to make it a bit fun as well, and put in, let's say, a bit more utility, even on our whole ecosystem.

So you get more services that you participated in, you get less negative feedback from the merchants, you get people that are recommending you as a client. So put all these things together. And it's true, you have a regtech but now you also have an identity. And now you also have a reputation sort of element to it.

Put these together. And you can say, 'okay, you know what, I want that guy as a client'. This is like when you go on Amazon, right? And you're buying something and you see the seller's reputation, the seller's reputation's a disaster, like never ships in time, sends out the wrong product, you know... you say, 'oh, my goodness, I just saved myself some hassle here, cancel the purchase, or look for someone else'. That is what I believe the regtech ecosystem is all about.

And there's a lot to come in the coming months and years.

Brendan Le Grange 28:39

Yeah, that sounds exciting. And it's interesting to be calling back to some of those, those old fashioned ways of being able to get a reference. I've been applying for some studies and they wanted a letter of recommendation from the last time I'd studied and all these old things - well, okay, I can email the university and try and find a professor from 15 years ago, and get them to write a letter about someone they're clearly not going to remember. But (exactly) you don't get in that school or you change your plans, you've got to do it again.

But recommendations are so powerful, it's such a good thing. You mentioned Amazon, they they've got a problem with fake reviews, and you can usually read a review and you can see is too good to be true, but it still exists in there whereas once it's in a system that's fully auditable, you can even see who's recommending and you can trace them and you can kind of see whether they're valid or not. So you can even get rid of that problem of fake reviews or bought reviews.

And going back to that thing that's so fundamental to how we would do it as humans you know, you are who your friends are, or your family, you'd always traditionally have 'oh here's my dad to put a good word in or something' and now we get back to that in a much more efficient and accurate way.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 29:46

And, like on that on that reputation side of things. I mean, I have a lot of respect for the platform like LinkedIn, you know, which I use heavily on the business side, but realistically, you're never going to have, let's say your parents or all your friends to put in a good word. This is always 'okay, how did Jonathan perform in this job when he was with you as a colleague', for example, you know. So it's very specific, whereas this is more on the identity side. This is more on the identity, the reputation, 'yes, you know, I've seen this person he exists, we transacted, he's a good person, and there's like a small questionnaire, are you related, where you emergent where you a client, and then you can get more of those data points.

That is what we're trying to, let's say, bring all together.

And the nice thing is, we are consistently looking for new partners globally, who have new data points that we can buy out. So we are more than happy for anybody listening to this podcast, if they have a specialised service in some jurisdiction, where they specialise in maybe transaction monitoring, or identity checks for specific businesses or individuals in a geographical, let's say, site, we are more than happy to see what they have to offer, integrate with them. And then if we have any requests for parameters that fit those needs, we would reroute our check on to that individual and bring in those scores.

Brendan Le Grange 31:09

And if they wanted to talk to you about that, what's the easiest way for them to reach out to you?

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 31:14

So we have a partner channel, they can simply send us an email on partners@sekuritance.com - it's monitored 24/ 7 and one of our partner management team will pick that up and follow through, like immediately. I think right now, at any point in time, we're dealing with five or six new partners. So it's a continuous programme that we launched.

We don't normally marketed this that heavily, because we're focused on the corporate side of things, but being in the blockchain space last year, we also launched our own token, which basically powers up the Sekuritance economy, which is the security token. Obviously, the market does what it does, markets fluctuate and one thing that we like to say is markets fluctuate, markets go up, markets go down, and builders build. We are builders. So we never speculate, let's say on anything, which is price related, but it is the token that powers up the whole security and economy.

Brendan Le Grange 32:07

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Can you just explain that a little bit more to me like, I'm five. So you've got a token within your system, which you use for payments for your services, is that is that the right way to interpret that?

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 32:19

Yes. And also using this as payment for services is the most basic utility of the token. And in fact, many token projects out there, unlike Sekuritance, to be honest, go out to the market, they create a token, but there is no product, barely a vision, maybe a roadmap, no team, and they go out there primarily to get funding, to get money in so that they can start working on that vision. Within Sekuritance, we'll work that out a bit differently. We wanted to go to the market with a product which is live, functional and working. And we wanted, let's say, to bring in a new audience primarily to help us bridge into that market.

And two, we want to show people look, we are serious, we use our own money to build products, we use our own experience to do it, we put our names on it. We're not an anonymous team, we are on LinkedIn, you can go check us out.

Of course, new investment and new participants will help us take it to new heights, but we have something that is revenue generating from day one. So the token utility, at its very core basically powers up not only the payment of services, but also there are, let's say discounted services. So if you are a security token holder, then when you need to top up your account to use our services, then you automatically get a discount based on how many tokens you hold.

Another one is one of our services is a launch pad. So when a customer wants to launch a new token project, let's say we assist with a tokenomics with a white paper review with the team reviewed background to help them do their legal opinions if they need in different countries. And anybody that is a Sekuritance token holder of a certain degree would automatically participate in that new launch, even if they do not invest it themselves. So it's like a thank you to help Sekuritance keep growing. So there's quite a lot going on in that token side of things.

Brendan Le Grange 34:09

Okay, so it's more a special share or membership.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 34:13

Hundred percent. It's more of a loyalty system with special privilege and access to special functions. So some are feature based, some are, let's say, privileged features, and some are actual blockchain utilities. That is why primarily up most of above anything else, it's always a utility token and never a security token.

Brendan Le Grange 34:33

Okay, great. So I think one thing I've also learned today is that I probably need to go and refresh myself on what is happening in the blockchain because it's clearly more complicated than I gave it credit for. And actually, in one of my early interviews, Felix Duku was freshly out of a course - I believe there's a good one running online on Introduction to blockchain and what it means.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 34:56

Last thing I'd like to tell you, Brendan, because you touched on the education side: one thing that we are giving back to the community, actually we started it last October but it's still in the making, is we're launching our own Sekuritance Academy. And the reality is this is not meant to be a money making activity. There are, I believe, three modules which are completely free, which are giving people an introduction to what is blockchain, what's happening in the world of blockchain, what's new, what is difference between a blockchain and cryptocurrency, what is the difference between holding and trading...

So there's all that going on. We're creating all that fresh content. And then the rest of the modules are primarily aimed at Sekuritance certification. So you can go become certified in one of the Sekuritance products to go and resell it, make money off it, start your own mini business using Sekuritance platforms to power up that business. So there's all that good stuff happening there. And one that I've used myself in the past and and I have a lot of respect for it. One is FinTech, the other one's blockchain and I believe it's being run by the Oxford University. Very good introductory courses.

Brendan Le Grange 36:04

Okay, great. I'll put that in the show notes as well. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to pick up on one interesting hobby that I saw on your page as well. You're not working all the time, I guess, living in Malta. It's almost unavoidable, but I see that you enjoy sailing and it looks like you spend a lot of time out on the water.

Jonathon Camilleri Bowman 36:24

To be honest, the water is what helps me balance out my life. I started sailing with my father when I was seven or eight, and I somewhat lost interest in my teenage years. But and then in my early 20s, I found my passion again. So I started cruising mainly and then in my early 30s I decided to basically start taking it up somewhat semi-professional and racing and in worldwide events. Yeah, I mean, we do the Rolex Middle Sea Race. We have our own team, we sponsor a number of sailing events around the world because we try and encourage the sport and even this weekend, we had the international championships. Honestly, when I have free time, it's a way that I can rest of my brain and get some time off, help to regenerate everything and then come back to work 100% focused. I love it.

Brendan Le Grange 37:13

Great. That's great. Yeah, Jonathan, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been great fun and really interesting for me.

And thank you all for listening. How to Lend Money to Strangers is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange, now just outside of Brighton, England, and today was edited by Kane Hunter of Hunter Digital, show music is by Iam_Wake, full written transcripts, show notes and more content can be found at www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show.

And as always, if you're enjoying the content, please like and share and I'll see you again next time.