Ep.193. Interview Chris Skinner, Author - Digital Human

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DB:  Welcome to Fintech Insider Interviews. Now, this is a-, kind of a weird one, because actually, we're interviewing somebody from 11FS, but let's see how this goes, in terms of what I'm doing. So, my name is David Brear, and today, myself and Jason Bates have the absolute pleasure of talking to Chris Skinner. And the reason we're talking to Chris Skinner is, Chris has a brand new book coming out, and it's really, really interesting. So, it's called Digital Human, Chris. What is it? Tell us a little bit more.

CS:  Yeah, nice to be here, David, and thanks for allowing me on, thank you, cheers to all. So, as you know, I've written quite a few books, and Digital Bank came out in 2014, and did pretty well, then, ValueWeb came out in 2016. And then this book is actually a divergence away from some of the things that I normally talk about, because it's based on my travel, and experiences with seeing different cultures, and learning a lot of history. And I realised, at some point, that we are in a revolution of humanity, it's not just technology, and that, first of all, we became human, and then we became civilised, some would say, and then we became industrial, and now we're becoming digital. And that changes everything about how we do business, how we make friends, how we make love. I mean, it's a complete transformation of the planet, but it's still very early days, I mean, it's only 70 years since the first computer came out. And, obviously, I do bring it back in to fintech, and banking, and money, but the bigger picture, the macro picture, is this fourth revolution of humanity where, suddenly, every single person on the planet has access to every other person on the planet, through the mobile network, and that's really the transformation. That includes everyone. Not just includes everyone in being able to talk and transact, but equally, to be able to actually exchange value, and be entrepreneurial-,

DB:  Yeah.

CS:  So it's a massive change.

DB:  It's-, it's amazing, because, like, having known you for a while, and, you know, known the-, the places that you go to speak, and the stories that you come back with, this is, sort of, threads of those things together. So, I guess, like, what you're doing is going through all of these different periods of human, so it's a-, it's as much a-, a history of humanity, as it is the lessons we can learn from those things, because they-, I guess they say the stock market is cyclical, but I guess humanity is, as well, right?

CS:  Yeah, I mean, one of the books that, I mean, has influenced me quite a lot, is Sapiens, by Yuval Harari, which, if you haven't read, I can recommend it, it's a great book, and that traces a lot of the history of humanity. And it says that, you know, the reason why Homo sapiens dominate the planet, when there were lots of forms of humans, is because we have shared beliefs, and lived in bigger colonies. And I learnt a lot about that, not just by reading about it, but by visiting South Africa, the Cradle of Humankind, which traces 7 million years of human history. And then, becoming civilised, I've talked for a long time about how money was invented, which was basically for sex, which is why prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, and accountancy is the second oldest. And I've learned a lot about that by visiting the Fertile Crescent, which is from Israel to Iraq, and within that, you've got all of the oldest civilisations, the Phoenician, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, and all of that humanity became civilised by creating money and commerce. And then I live in a museum, as you know. So, I live in the Historic Dockyard of Chatham, which is the naval dockyard of Britain, and a lot of becoming industrial was around how we could use techniques like making rope, using steam, to colonise the world, you know, that's how Britain created an Empire. And so, a lot of this is my experiences, as well as, obviously, my view of the future of banking, so a lot of it's about Open Banking, and fintech collaboration, co-creation, and equally, the transformation of the whole financial system. Because what a lot of fintech is doing right now is creating faster horses. I want to see what's the next generation of finance, and I think I've discovered it.

DB:  Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to reading it. What-, like, I-, I guess we're-, you know, were at that-, you know, we're on the cusp of all of this, aren't we, with-, with Open Banking, but, you know, digitalisation has been such a revolution. Why do you think that it's been such a-, a momentous shift for everybody?

CS:  It's been a slow burn. You know, when I started in the industry, everyone would say, "You can get a job for life if you work for a bank or for IBM." It's not true anymore. And the slow burn is basically, back in the day, we were dealing with mainframes that were slow to change, and expensive to implement. Then we moved to desktops, with Microsoft. Then we moved to cloud, and now we've moved to mobile. And I think the momentum and speed of change now is much greater, because you've got smartphones combined with cloud technologies, and very low-cost access to markets on a globalised basis, and so, almost overnight, you can launch something that changes the world. I mean, the example I keep using is Stripe, and the Collison brothers began what is now a multibillion-dollar startup when they were teenagers, that's changed the whole way in which we think about online checkout. You know, teenagers can change the banking marketplace.

DB:  They give it a go, Millennials, right? They think they-, think they know better, but it's-, like, I-, I really like the-, there's a line from the-, the book, so-, that you describe the human revolution as, "A revolution that creates inclusion for 7.5 billion people, in a connected planet." Like, that-, that feels like-, for some, that's a positive thing, for some, it can be negative, but how-, how do you see that, in terms of the-, the positivity that that can bring about?

CS:  I think a big issue-, and one of the endorsers on the book is Konsta Peric, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And anyone who knows Konsta will know that, when he talks about financial inclusion, right now, the people who pay the most to move money are the people who have the least, the poorest people on the planet. And the reason is that if they want to move money, they don't have bank accounts or access to the electronic network of the past. Now they do. And not only does it give them cheap access to move money, but equally, much more security. You and I were in Rwanda last year, and as you remember, the taxi driver was saying he feels so much better now he can use tap and go payments, contactless, on his mobile, because he's not going to get mugged. You know. It's a big change. And then we see that in many of the African nations, you know, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, which, I was presenting at a conference in Khartoum last year, all these nations have people where, a third of their population, or half, or, in some cases, three quarters, didn't exist, because they have no identity. You know, their birth has not been recorded by any formal institution, so they-, they don't exist. Those are the most vulnerable people on the planet, because they can be sold as sex slaves, and trafficked as human slaves. Now, recording every birth, in every nation, on a digital ledger, a project that the United Nations and the World Bank are actually implementing, is going to transform all of those countries. So, 4.5 billion people, who were underserved, or ignored, by the traditional corporations in the industrial era, are now included. That will raise them out of poverty, or raise them out of disease, it will give them hope, it will give them opportunity.

DB:  And-, and do you think it'll, sort of, aid distribution? Because, obviously, you know, we, sort of, live in a world where, you know, 50% of the wealth is owned by only eight people on the planet, type thing. So, you know, does this give a potential with, I guess the advances in-, not only with-, with identity, but even in to things like digital currencies that are-, are sort of coming through the-, the cryptocurrency landscape. Do you think we're going to see much more even distribution? Or is it always going to be, you know, reasonably, sort of-, sort of an Animal Farm-esque, sort of, distribution of services?

CS:  Well, certainly, there's the vision of Bill Gates, that there will be no more poverty on earth after the year 2030. I think that's probably a little bit early, it's going to take longer than that, but certainly, we're going to see, people will not be poor because the system makes them poor. It may be that there's, you know, a dictatorship, or war, or other reasons that make them poor, but the system will not make them poor, because it offers them inclusion and opportunity. And, in fact, I did sketch out a fifth revolution of humanity, in the book. So, the first was becoming human, the second, becoming civilised, the third, becoming commercial, the fourth, becoming digital. The fifth, becoming, um, multiplanetary, which is what Elon Musk talks a lot about-,

DB:  Wow.

CS:  You know, just going out, colonising Mars. And when you look at the future from the science fiction viewpoint, which, bearing in mind, most science fiction has become science fact, in my lifetime, you know, it's-, you either are a Star Trekkie or a Star Wars person, and Star Wars is dystopian, where everyone's fighting each other, and at war. Star Trek is actually a utopian picture of the future, saying, "Actually, we're trying to get the betterment of humanity by exploring space, and by meeting and greeting and engaging with other civilisations." And one of the core themes of Star Trek is that wealth is no longer the driving force of humanity, because accumulating things is no longer important to us. It's actually far more important to us to have self-actualisation, because money is now irrelevant.

DB:  Yeah.

CS:  Now, that's obviously something that's a very optimistic future. Is that where we're going? I would like to think it is. You know. Because the idea where everybody can actually have opportunity to be whoever they can be, and the best they can be, would be a fantastic vision of the future.

DB:  Yeah. Which one of those do you think we are heading towards, then? Do you think we're heading towards the Star Wars scenario, or the Star Trek scenario? And don't let your personal preference of which one you like, you know, best, to-, to play out. Because I guess, in the political environment we're in right now, and actually, even from a-, a monetary environment, in terms of where we're at now, then actually, the-, it's pretty much in the balance, right?

CS:  Yeah, but there's less disease and less death through war today than there ever has been, and that track and trend will continue. One of the things that you find, and I've blogged about this, and I talk about it quite a lot, is that, wherever you go in the world, you find brilliant people, who are really warm and friendly and engaging, and all they want is to have the best for their family, uh, and, often led by an idiot, you know, because the countries have people at the top who are just power-mad, crazy people. And it's how power-mad and crazy are those people at the top that determines how much of a basket case the country is. Gradually, those walls are coming down, because of technology, because of travel, because we are engaging everybody around the world, and meeting and greeting everyone around the world, and gradually, all those barriers come down. You know, these days, if-, if you're racist, you're called out for being racist. When I was a kid, everybody was racist. You know. These days, if you're mean to people who have disabilities, you're called out for it. When I was a kid, everyone was mean to kids with disabilities. You know. The-, the walls are coming down, globally, and I just don't think that's an irreversible trend. I-, you know, that's happening, and you can't stop it.

DB:  It's a-, an amazing level of transparency in society now, isn't it? Like you say, the-, you know, digital is bringing about the 24/7, 365 nature of everything, with social media, and everything that happens, you know, the-, even just the-, the forms in which we distribute content, you know, your-, your blog is read by hundreds of thousands of people, and that's through you doing that on one computer, that's not through a newspaper, like it would have been done loads of times before, like, you know, that-, and that's amazing, isn't it, really? And I guess, with all of this-, these digital trends, the digital concepts, that you-, you look at, at a more, sort of, macro level, the micro that you always focus on to is financial services, right? You know, money, and that concept. What-, what is it that-, you know, obviously, what-, what is it that draws you to money? But that as a concept. Because it's kind of a lubricant of society, but what-, what draws you to it?

CS:  Jeremy Clarkson, he of the, don't mention, uh, grand tour of the world Top Gear, once made a quote which has been used, actually, as an advertising campaign, which is that, "Money and rumpy-pumpy drive the world." You know. And-, and it's true. I said that money was invented for sex, which goes back to the goddess on earth, Ishtar, and the Ancient Sumerian society, and the forces that be invented money, basically, so he could engage in pleasure. Those are the two things that control our lives, you know, sex and money, that is what drives every individual on earth, which-, once they mature. Um. And, the more money you have, the more you can indulge in the sins on this earth, because you don't have anything that stops you. You know, the more money and wealth that you have, right now, the more you can enjoy your life. The less, the less you can enjoy your life. And people say money cannot buy happiness or love, but it can actually buy those things, in my view, because if you don't have it, then you have misery, and often homelessness, and that's much worse.

DB:  Well, it's-, it's the old saying, isn't it? Like you say, having money doesn't make you happy; not having money makes you unhappy. It does, you know, like, and that's-, that's the thing. So-,

CS:  It's-, it's that controlling factor in our life, you know, and if we take away that control factor, it gets quite interesting. Because that's what's currently happening, a little bit, with cryptocurrencies, you know, money without government, money without control, um, but equally, it's what I'm describing when I talk about the "Trekonomics" view of the future, which is, money no longer is the control factor, self-actualisation, realisation, is what we focus upon. It's going to be very interesting, as those walls are taken apart, around how-, you know, how can a government control Bitcoin, when there's no door to knock on, for the head office of Bitcoin. There is no head office. You know. You can control Facebook and Google, because you know where Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg live. Where does Satoshi Nakamoto live? 

DB:  Yeah. It's interesting, you know, they say taxes and death, right? And if you can't tax it, and you can't prove whether somebody's alive or dead, with Satoshi, then it's going to be an interesting world, isn't it? But, um, we'll actually be back for the second part of this, that Jason Bates will be picking up, very, very shortly. Thanks very much.

JB:  Cheers, David.


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JB:  So, I've taken over from Mr Brear, who I think is heading to the bar for his well-earned pint, and I'll take over the second part of the interview with Chris. I guess we've seen mobile phone usage, and smartphone capabilities, really radically change what it's like to be-, to live in the western world, in a very short period of time. What are your views on that, you know, where are we seeing that lead?

CS:  Well, it's not just in the western world, but it's-, certainly, these days, you can't imagine anybody not having a mobile phone, and yet, when they first came out, in the late 1970s, most people said, "It's just for idiots or yuppies, or people that-,"

JB:  Mm.

CS:  "You know, are just trying to show off. I don't need one." Now, it's essential. And it's so essential that you'll know immediately if you don't have your mobile phone with you, because it's almost like an extension of you, it's part of your body, it's part of how you live. And that's what's making us almost like a cyborg. So, downstream, you know, technologies that integrate in to our biological capabilities, actually internalising technologies, the idea of chipping children, so you can track and trace where they are, and the idea of having a chip inside you, that identifies you, so that you can walk through airports without passports, or without border controls. Sounds ridiculous, but you never see anybody in Star Trek produce an identification document, or, you know, paper. It's-, it's all wireless, it's all digitalised. And, in particular, I think the major transformation of the mobile smartphone, obviously, for us, it's putting the internet in our pockets and purses, but for people in the plains of Kenya, or in China, it's actually leapfrogged their lives-,

JB:  Yes.

CS:  In to a new world. So, I talk about a lot of European and American markets being quite legacy, because we still have a lot of the old, industrial-era structures and processes around us, like KYC onboarding in a bank. Whereas, when you look at China, you know, last year, $5.5 trillion transacted through mobile wallets in 2016, versus America, that's like $111 million dollars. You know, you can see these are countries that are leapfrogging with mobile.

JB:  Yeah, you see that-, that move from a country, a geography, that has those-, those inbuilt systems, that have evolved, and are performing very well, and suddenly, these new countries, new geographies are coming along, taking advantage of the new opportunities that technology affords, and then not having to be just a little bit better than the-, the technologies that come before, but actually leapfrogging, as you say. And I understand you went and did a case study with Ant Financial. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because I am fascinated by Ant Financial.

CS:  Yeah, I mean, Ant Financial became a 30,000-word case study in the book, and it's the first English language case study on the company that's been produced. There's lots of, you know, books about Alibaba, but there's not been one about Ant Financial specifically, and Alipay. And there's just a whole range of things that they said to me that are mind blowing, compared to what you see in Europe and America, when you talk to banks, or even fintech startups, because they're reimagining everything. So, for example, I met the Head of Systems Architecture for Ant Financial, who came from Microsoft, in fact, but he's-, but he's Chinese, by background. And the first thing he said to me is that he's been brought in to manage the fifth-generation systems architecture. So, I'm going, "Fifth-generation architecture? You're only 14 years old as a company."

JB:  Sure.

CS:  So, on average, every three or four years, Ant Financial is throwing away their whole architecture, and regenerating, which you never hear of any other company really doing that, in that way. But then he described why they're doing the fifth-generation architecture, which is because, they currently have 540 million users, doing 125,000 transactions per second, and they want to build the next generation, to support 2 billion users, doing a million transactions per second, with every transaction using artificial intelligence for fraud, and risk, and analytics of exactly where are their exposures. So, every transaction, which is a microtransaction, quite often, is being analysed by algorithms, with no human hand involved. And it is a wow, it's kind of-, I-, I-, you know, when you think of Visa and MasterCard, they're-, like, they're small fry, by comparison to what Ant's doing. And equally, their vision is quite amazing, in that, uh, they're now going global, so they have partnerships across Asia, they are the backbone behind Paytm in India, they're coming over here in to Europe, not supporting Chinese tourists, which is what we think they're doing as a strategy, but as eventually becoming the mobile wallet of the world.

JB:  Yeah.

CS:  You know, a great example is-, I was with ePassi, which is the partner of Ant Financial in Finland, and what they wanted to do is to have Ant Financial, Alipay, being able to be used in Lapland, for Father Christmas, for Chinese tourists.

JB:  Sure.

CS:  Do they believe in Father Christmas? Apparently they do. So, 55,000 tourists came in 2016. By 2020, 8 million will come to Finland. Across all of Finland, you can use the mobile wallet Alipay, as a Chinese tourist. But I said to Risto, who's the CEO of ePassi, "Why don't you put a Finnish, or Norwegian, or Swedish frontend on Alipay? And then I could use it everywhere," because, right now, they've got a problem in the Nordic region, which is, I can fly in to Copenhagen airport, and use mobile pay, but if I go 60 kilometres, to Malmö, in Sweden, I can't use it. But Chinese tourists can come 6,000 kilometres from Beijing, or Shanghai, and use the same app. And he said, "You know what? That's exactly what we're doing."

JB:  Yeah.

CS:  "We're going to put local version frontends on Alipay, so all the-, all the people in Nordic can use Alipay."

JB:  Yeah, I think we've-, we've spoken about it before on Fintech Insider, that there seems to be this really simple path to global domination. You know, do China, do it phenomenally well, get massive scale. Then convince all of the other countries and geographies that, "There's lots of Chinese tourists. You should really take these-, these payments-, this new payment scheme," and then it's a pretty simple step from there, to say, "Oh, this payment scheme is already in that geography. Let's start, you know, providing it to the-, to the end consumers," which I guess is a-, you know, a fairly simple approach.

CS:  Well, in fact, in the book, there's five key interviews which are documented. So, there's the Head of Strategy, the Head of Systems Architecture, the Head of Global Expansion-,

JB:  Sure.

CS:  And also, one specific one, which I thought was very interesting, was the guy who was the first guy who coded anything in Alipay-,

JB:  Wow.

CS:  He wrote the first code in 2003, and I didn't realise, the first generation of Alipay was purely an escrow service, to allow merchants who didn't trust consumers, to deal with consumers who didn't trust merchants-,

JB:  Right.

CS:  But they trusted Alibaba-,

JB:  Right.

CS:  And that's how it was all created. And it was all based on really old technologies, you know, fax machines. So it's quite incredible.

JB:  So, is there-, from your-, from your interviews there, did you sense that they had a different way of working from the-, the banks that you know so well?

CS:  Well, you know, there's a phrase that floats around at 11FS quite often, which is, "Get shit done," and that's what Ant Financial does. It just gets it done. It's what the Chinese do. They just get it done. And they're not a Chinese company, really, they are a global platform. I was at the Taobao annual conference for Alibaba, as part of my experience of doing the case study, where Jack Ma was presenting on stage, and at one point, he was asked the question, "How do you run Alibaba as a company." He said, "Well, we're not a company. We're an ecosystem of platforms and players, and my role is to be the governor of that ecosystem, to-," 

JB:  Wow.

CS:  Yeah, to-, kind of to be the president, to make sure it operates in an ethical and appropriate fashion. And a lot of people don't trust the Chinese, and this is something else that came out of the conversation. But why? Because they don't speak our language.

JB:  Mm.

CS:  You know. Everyone's speaking English, but how-, you know, how many Europeans or Americans speak Chinese? So, there's a-, there's a suspicion about the Chinese. But what I learnt, with Ant Financial and Alibaba, is actually, they're far more ethical, and focused on sustainability, than any other company I've met, on a globalised basis. So, for example, there's-, part of the case study is talking about the "Ant Forest", where every time you make a payment, you can plant a tree-,

JB:  Yeah.

CS:  Towards a better system of-, cleansing the planet of-, for more oxygen, as-, oxygenation. You don't hear these things.

JB:  No.

CS:  Because they're not reported, Because they're Chinese.

JB:  So, was there anything else that surprised you, that, going over, you were expecting to see, or not expecting to see, that-, that really grabbed you, while you were there?

CS:  Well, the reason I picked them is that I'd heard Eric Jing, the CEO of Ant Financial, at the World Economic Forum in 2017, saying that they wanted to have 2 billion people on their platform, using artificial intelligence, and distributed ledgers, to make sure it's an automated platform for the world. And what surprised me, I guess, is that they're not trying to take over the world, as Ant. What they're trying to do is export their experiences, and their technological capabilities, to local partners-,

JB:  Okay.

CS:  And that's the key part of the strategy. So, Paytm is not the Alipay of India. It's the Paytm of India, powered by experiences that they've imported from Ant Financial. And the same is true of KakaoPay in Korea, or of Ascend Money in Thailand, or of Globe Telecom in the Philippines. And I guess the reason why that's different is, no other company, American, European or Asian, had expanded on that financial inclusion strategy, until Ant Financial started to do it. The fact that they've done it first makes it very difficult for WeChat to do it, because Ant Financial's got the-, the partners. It makes it very difficult for PayPal to do it, because Ant Financial got there first. And that's the reason why it's a critical case study in the book, because the book's all about the fourth revolution of humanity includes everybody, and from a financial inclusion viewpoint, the company that's got there first is Ant.

JB:  So, do you think that that platform, those underlying rails, is-, is arguably a-, more of a threat to Visa, MasterCard, to that kind of thing, than it is to banks that-, you know, that sit around the world? Or who-, who are-, who is Ant's competitor? What market are they really in?

CS:  Well, the market they're in is creating the next-generation financial service, and so I often talk about the issue I have today with Monzo, Starling, Atom, or any other challenger, um, is that they are not thinking outside the box. What they're doing is making cooler, digital versions of what the banks do, and making it less frictionful, and much easier and more convenient. That's a faster horse, in my view. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's a good thing, because we need faster horses. But what Ant's doing, in my view, is creating the next-generation car, vehicle, financial service. So, for example, the merchants on Taobao, some of the most high-volume merchants get 300,000 loans a year, for any-, ranging from anything, from what would be 10 cents, to $10,000.

JB:  Right.

CS:  But these are not loans, in the way we think of them. What they are is assisting their working capital. Because Alipay is an escrow service, so the merchant doesn't get the money until the consumer ticks the box, and what Ant Financial is doing is saying, "We'll give you the money upfront, forget about waiting for the consumer to tick the box, because we think you're good for the money on a three-day, four-day, five-day, 14-day loan-,

JB:  Yeah.

CS:  From 10 cents to $10,000, depending on what it was. So, microloans, microsavings, micropayments, micro-investments, as well as macro payments, macro savings and macro investments, are all transacting through the same platform, because it costs you no more, with technology, to do a $10,000 payment, as it does a 10 cent payment. And that's what I don't think banks, or some of the fintech startups, get, which is the imagination to reinvent the whole world of money, rather than just trying to get faster digital money.

JB:  So, you've got a good view of China, what's happening there, you travel the world, you see the US and Asia, and Europe, and what's going on there. How do you see this playing out in the next few years?

CS:  Well, I'm very excited about everything I see in world, because I love travelling, and that's where a lot of the experiences of the book have come from. I think we have this fundamental challenge, in Europe and America, which is, we've built a last-century infrastructure that we are trying to maintain, rather than to break it apart-,

JB:  Uh-huh.

CS:  And, eventually, we're going to have to do it, we're just going to have to bite the bullet, and say, "All this legacy shit has just got to go," right, "We have to move on." Um. And the reason we'll have to do that is that China, Africa, Latin America, are moving on, and what's fascinating is south-south trade, rather than north hemisphere trade, and I think it's really best illustrated by Dubai. You know, I've been going to Dubai now for 15 years, and I just remember, when I first went there, there was maybe 20, 30 tall buildings, and then cranes everywhere, and skyscrapers going up everywhere. And then the global crisis hit, and Nakheel, you know, almost went under, and Abu Dhabi had to bail out Dubai, just as the Burj Khalifa was finished, and I was sitting there, at that point, 2009, 2010, and thinking, "They've built all this empty space. No one's ever going to fill it. Because where will they come from?"

JB:  Sure.

CS:  But they're there. You know. When I first went to Dubai in 2003, I could have bought a property on a Palm for about $300,000. I was there just on holiday this year, that property's now $3 million-,

JB:  Wow.

CS:  You know. And Dubai, to me, is where you see this vision of the future, you know, it's at the leading edge of everything. They're going to have the whole of the Dubai economy run on a distributed ledger by 2020. They just get things done, and I think-, and that's what you see in China, that's what you see-, that's what you see in the southern hemisphere, and it-, that's where we're going to rock the world, because we're going to see the southern hemisphere dominating in the next 10, 20, 30 years, and the northern hemisphere breaking itself apart to try and keep up.

JB:  Wow, so is that a-, a dystopian future? Or, I guess it depends which hemisphere you live in.

CS:  Well, we were just talking about dystopian versus utopian, because the time we get to that vision, we'll probably find that Trekonomics kicks in, and no one's bothered about wealth anymore anyway.

JB:  So, finally, and maybe most importantly, when does the book come out? Can people pre-order? And where do people, you know, order it, and find out more about you?

CS:  Well, you can order everything online in the normal spaces, I use Amazon, it's on Amazon right now for pre-order. There's a book launch on March the 19th, at the Innovate Finance Global Summit, and also at Barclays Rise, here in London-,

JB:  Great.

CS:  Where I'll be doing a book signing, and, you know, you can find details of that on fsclub.net, if you want to come to the Barclays Rise meeting, or Innovate Finance Global Summit, and then on April 12th and 13th, we're doing a New York launch, where there's a private launch in the evening of April the 12th, and if you want to come to that, just DM me on Twitter or Facebook, or on April the 13th at the EFMA Conference in New York. And then there's going to be lots of other events around this, like Money20/20, in Asia and Europe, where we'll also be doing book signings and launches. Because, to be honest, I was very proud of how successful Digital Bank was, I was really pleased with ValueWeb, but I think this one smashes it.

JB:  Fantastic, I look forward to reading it. Thanks, Chris.

CS:  Thanks, Jason.

JB:  And don't forget, you can find 11FS, the people who bring you this podcast, a challenger consultancy that creates and launches next-generation finance propositions for our clients, taking a startup approach to making a difference, come talk to us, @11FSTeam on Twitter, or hello@11FS.com, if you want to drop us an email. If you like what you've heard this week, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, and please leave us a review on iTunes, we love that. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.


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