The mobile wallets information I see, in a way, as a parallel option to Open Banking. It's really where somebody's having their financial transactions give us an indication of their income or their ability to spend, as well as some indication of the consistency of salary over time and the income. So I think what we've seen is combining that with the credit bureau data, you know, really provides a really strong indication of risk.

And we talked about the different data sources, some of the data sources we may not be holding within the the credit bureau, but what we're trying to do is actually facilitate so we can provide decision modules where we're bringing together that data that may be held by the telco or the bank in the mobile wallet and combining that with the credit bureau data so it's easier to use to generate those decisions for the lenders.

It's interesting, you're kind of tying the stories together between India and Canada. But yeah, a lot of these alternative lenders don't have distribution, right? They have good products, but it's very hard for them to access new traffic, and they can get new traffic but a lot of that traffic may be absolutely terrible quality. So by partnering with us, we're able to drive traffic to them that's meaningful, you know, we do a lot of the pre qualification. So we cover off costs of credit pulls and things like that. And by the time we send it to them, you know, the goal is to have about an 80% chance of them converting with that lender.

So their cost of underwriting is lower, they're getting the lead flow that they want to get. And it's efficient, right? They don't need to do any marketing, their cost of acquisition is predictable. They pay us a per-funded fee. So again, predictable, you don't have to pay per lead. But yeah, they want a distribution. And we could provide the distribution.

And remember, the consumer is not our customer, the merchant partner is our customer. And if you love a brand, and you buy from them two or three times a year with PayJustNow we may be empowering you to buy more of that product, or more often. I think back to our very first merchant partner -they had no reason to, but they gave us a chance. They're called Freedom of Movement known by the acronym FOM. And they at the time probably had about 20 products, they were above average value, they were durable, they were aspirational, was high quality, and at that time in 2019, the last relaxed memory that we have was the World Cup in 2019. You know, they traded off the popularity of what was their most iconic product and that was the FOM x Kolisi. It was veldskoen shoes, which they made in collaboration with the Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, in the same year that he took our nation's dreams and team to Japan and inspired us all with that scintillating campaign that gave South Africa yet another Rugby World Cup title.

So I think along the way, partnering with merchants, storied merchants that have a following was quite an important thing to get right from the beginning. And then we needed to overlay that with consistent, predictable, transparent service to the consumer that could build trust.

Convenience being such a huge motivator means that we don't need in my view to educate people on what open banking is, we just need to provide the reasons the benefits, especially around convenience, that get people to connect their bank account. And as you said, it is safer sharing that data through a secure channel as a regulated business like like us than, you know, photocopying or printing out your bank statements and then sending them into the post to some unknown place.

And these are all topics that have been talked about for a long time. But it is great to see the use cases start to develop the market start to mature, our understanding of these topics really starts to develop the fact that we don't need to educate consumers on what open banking is we just need to provide them a reason to call to action that makes sense. And if we do that, they get where they need. The business gets what they need. The regulators are happy because there's more richer data to personalise and, and really provide that responsible approach to to those lending situations and, and we just get on with their life. It's exciting.

So we had to tweak it and move it to image-based selection. And one thing led to the other and ConfirmU evolved from something which is good for the English language but is not scalable for 207 dialects in India, to an actual gamification, which would be much more engaging for people at the bottom of the pyramid. So what better way, you know, of engaging people in that kind of a segment. And our initial pilot was with Experian the nd Grameen Foundation in India, which is really exciting, because in my vision, Grameen Foundation is financial inclusion.

Now, as you said, ConfirmU started out as prop tech before expanding into financial services. What does the product look like today?

What we take pride in is the fact that we collateralize and localise the game to any market that we go to - credit at the end of the day is a matter of cultures, and we need to embed that within our game. So we will do a pilot and we will build a bespoke model for those lenders based on, you know, our understanding from the lender of the practicalities and the characteristics of that audience. And then we would send the link.

I can answer your question as a consumer. And in general, I can also share my viewpoint on the whole market. No doubt Hong Kong is a very competitive market, the credit card issuers are facing strong competition. For myself, I think I have more than five cards but in general, I will focus on one or two cards that're my major transaction medium. Why I want to just focus on using one or two cards is because of the benefits, because of the discounts, because of the cashback. You can go to different shops or restaurants, you have discounts, you have rebates and then on different purchases, you have also other privileges. That's the major motivation. I think, in general that's true for other consumers in Hong Kong.

And on the other hand, as you're said because they're always new cards coming out with new features, especially the welcome gift, you spend a few $1,000 and then you can get some cash coupon or you can get some premium or whatever - then that will motivate you to to apply for new card, but after that it will just sit there. I think that's a very normal way of life.

Yeah, it was about helping a friend to get on the property ladder. She's done very well in her career now, but at that point, she needed some help. And she was like, I really want to stay in my local community, and I really want to buy with my husband here. And she just asked us on WhatsApp if we'd lend, but it was just a lot of money to a group of people at that time. And it was like, how are we going to get paid back because we were all recently graduated. So although that loan didn't happen, that's kind of what inspired the idea for JustLend. I wanted to provide opportunities to people could do what they wish to do.

There's a whole bunch of people out there where the traditional model doesn't work, there simply isn't enough information on these people to make a reasonable credit call...

This is a space where lots of people are working, but very few people can claim results. Because this is also the sort of space where lots of AI propellerheads think they can crack the problem. To some extent, that's true. This is also the classic case where progress is both hindered and aided with experience. It's actually good that some youngster on a beanbag, with long hair, thinks about this stuff completely unhindered by any previous industry knowledge, because that's anyone with too much experience probably thinks too much inside the box. At the same time, with something like credit, you do need to have some other people in there who can say, 'well, yeah, that's cool but you need to take these following five things in'.

That doesn't mean that the thinking needs to be restrained, but someone needs to make it practical in the end. To simply let the same space cadets go mad on this is likely to land you in a heap of problems, if you don't actually understand the lending industry.

So that was my focus point is, if you've got nothing, that's where we start… for existing clients, you can just go with the Chief Operating Officer to a branch, have your scoring, talk to the loan officers about the clients, they know them, right, you'd be surprised by how many they have but they know them by name, and test the scoring.

We are always on the lookout for new data sources, or external providers, and whenever we see something that's interesting, we test it… In the end, it comes down to what can we pay per gini point of lift?