International Payments Alliance Meeting Part 2

In this episode of Wrestling Payments, Joe Casali and Kevin Olsen continue their discussion from the International Payments Alliance meeting by Nacha, diving into various topics surrounding payment systems and regulations.

They start by addressing the move in Germany to eliminate checks and explore how the reduction of paper transactions could simplify banking systems. Kevin points out that while checks have been a long-standing payment method, most use cases for checks can be replaced by instant or recurring payments, except for scenarios where checks are deliberately not meant to be deposited.

The conversation then shifts to comparing the regulatory frameworks and roles of service providers in the US and Europe. Kevin highlights that in Europe, service providers often have more direct regulatory oversight and higher requirements compared to the US. He discusses the implications of such differences on the efficiency and responsibilities of these providers.

Finally, they dive into the concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and the digital euro, reflecting on the controversies and discussions around privacy, technology adoption, and regulatory challenges. They note the contrasting approaches and advancements in digital payment systems between the US and other countries, emphasizing the potential and complexities of moving towards a more digital financial ecosystem.

To hear this episode and many more like it, listen here or subscribe to Wrestling Payments on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

For show notes, transcripts, and other resources visit www.wrestlingpayments.com.

Host: Joe Casali, EVP, NEACH

#wrestlingpayments #wrestlingpaymentspodcast #paymentspodcast

Transcript

NEACH - Wrestling Payments - International Payments Alliance Meeting Part 2
season2 episode12

Joe Casali: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Wrestling Payments. Literally, we are just continuing to part two of the International Payments Alliance meeting by NACHA, because I don't think I didn't get through one page of my notes so far. So let's keep going. When we last left, we were talking about the LEI and verification of ID and receiver, if you will.

Do you want any more to say on that?

Kevin Olsen: I think we got enough on that. I mean, I think I know I will, I'm sure you will too. I know NEACH will probably be putting out some stuff to be able to help explain what that is, what to look at as far as what's coming. Can I give you the, one of the biggest quotes that I got out of Payments Innovation Alliance that made me go, what?

Joe Casali: Yeah.

Kevin Olsen: That it was this, Germany is getting rid of checks.

Joe Casali: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, in the back of my mind while we're doing all this, it's How many banks are compared to how many banks in the U. S.? Is it a couple of [00:01:00] things, right? Is it easier with less institutions? Because people, checks have been around for a really, hundreds of years.

People are pretty attached to them. The other part is it easier with less institutions? But is it easier when you can say, No more checks. It's a mandate. We don't do mandates a lot here in the U S we do laws and we pass, things like what am I got stuck.

Kevin Olsen: Well, we pass regulations, rules, and all that. I actually say we do recommendations. We recommend that we get treated like the regulations, but they're really not.

Joe Casali: Yeah. The thing I lost was the Dodd Frank part. Dodd Frank, the, they stuff. A bunch of changes at once as a reaction to things. As opposed to, I think it's a little different over there where. Do we want pieces of paper flowing through the system? I, I, as an ACH guy, I say, no, how do you say, [00:02:00] no, you corporate treasurer can no longer write those little pieces of paper.

Kevin Olsen: Well, okay, the part two of that that blew my mind was they said, all but one of the use cases that they have found, how checks are still used, can be resolved with an instant payment or a recurring payment. So, and basically, a FedNow or RTP or an ACH, right? All but one. Do you remember what that one was?

Because that one blew my mind. The one use case is for the

Joe Casali: It was something silly. Yeah.

Kevin Olsen: It was silly. The one use case of what they can't solve for is when somebody sends a check, hoping it won't be deposited.

Joe Casali: Yes. Hard to solve for that one.

Kevin Olsen: I was like, wait a minute. That's a real use case. And they were serious that there are, I guess, rebate type check situations, which I've actually seen before to where these are checks that go out and people do hope that, Hey, they never get cash. They get the money back, which is a weird, unique use case that I'd never realized [00:03:00] until that meeting and then talking about getting rid of checks.

That it does also exist here in the U. S.

Joe Casali: It does. Oh, absolutely. Yep. I remember, so I got a bunch of notes. This is the part of the meeting for me where it was really, an alphabet soup of SEPA, ISO target to PSD three. So, it seems like a lot of they're so used to speaking about these solutions that they're throwing out, like we do in our meetings, code words and faster payments are certainly further along in these countries.

I mean, they've probably been around for a decade or more. So. It's not I get the feeling in the U. S. they're still seeking the use cases for how we switch to instant payments for payments we're making. And over there it's everyday instant payments, [00:04:00] was it millions or billions of transactions a month? 

Kevin Olsen: For their instant payments, it's still in the millions, but they're reaching it higher. So they're in millions and millions though. Whereas we look at RTP, which I would say is successful because it's millions per month now too, but there are more like millions per day.

Joe Casali: Yes

Kevin Olsen: Now, it's funny that you mention the different acronyms that were actually used too. And I thought that was great because. If Dr. Mario Reischel, I have to look up his name, make sure I get it right, and I'm probably saying it wrong. I hope I'm not, Mario if you're out there listening to this.

He shared with me that there's actually a German word for having too many acronyms. It's called A Kufai. I mean, I'm sure I'm saying that wrong to my, I'm not a German guy. I've studied Spanish for years, but they actually have a word for having too many acronyms, which I thought was great because we suffer from that here too.

I bring that up because Joe, I don't, if [00:05:00] you recall, there was 1 point in time where they're talking about service providers and I had to go, wait a minute. I'm confused because you're saying a service provider can do that and this and that and the other, and I'm going no, you can't, and what it came to was.

There are all these different definitions, all these different acronyms that are out there, and they are actually slightly different in how they're used over, let's say across the pond. So payment service providers were one of them. There's a lot of similarities, but there's, I guess you could call it capabilities that their service providers have that ours don't.

Joe Casali: And remind me I think i'm going to say this right but remind me if it's not true their service providers are More regulated if you will they have responsibilities and it's It's I think it's you know Probably using the wrong word here a little loose here of who you know who oversees or examines

the service providers [00:06:00] and over there, they are, they certainly get into the, get the keys to the kingdom, but then they have responsibilities.

Kevin Olsen: Well, here we have, and there's, I mean, there's some great organizations out there, even really that pay attention to this, but we have, third party service provider management. Requirements, we've got all kinds of rules that have been passed on managing your third party service provider. We look at say, operating circular a, it does have a section specific for service providers.

But overall, it says the financial institution is going to be responsible for their service provider. And the section really says, hey, as a service provider, if you do anything that affects the financial institution, you have to let them know. There, it is more like the service provider signs up directly to work with the central bank to be vetted by and approved by the different associations, organizations and central banks that allow them to get their licensing to be able to proceed and move forward.

And they have to do things and meet standards at a. I don't know if I want to be [00:07:00] higher, but at least a different level than what providers in the U. S. have to do. Now, and I got to be careful, I am a service provider, and I know that a lot of it is different. And I do know there are some things that as a service provider, like with the FedNow service that we have to be able to meet, with the RTP service that we do have to be able to meet, but it's just handled differently there because of the way it's looked at, I guess.

Joe Casali: That's an interesting point is, but as we're talking when, and feel free, we can cut this out. If it's not a good question, that's because you're signing an agreement. as a vendor, if you will of a tie into a solution over there. It's more the licensing part, right? The regulator.

So I don't, I mean, I don't, is FedNow a regulator of their stuff as well as a provider of their stuff.

Kevin Olsen: And I see, I don't think so. I think it's a little different. This is opinion. Of course, on my FedNow [00:08:00] friends, if you're out there, cause I look at say FedNow audit requirements. Okay, my personal opinion, they're kind of a joke. And the reason being is you're just meeting the assurance program, the Fed's assurance program, which doesn't go into detail, doesn't say, look at this, type of stuff.

It just says, make sure you're meeting our security requirements according to operating circular 158, whatever, right? And I believe in my opinion, there should be more. And I know that over there, that is what they do have is they have the higher requirements of you have to meet these and check off these different boxes versus here.

We just signed forms saying, Hey, we know we're responsible. Yes, we're doing these things. But I mean,

Now that's the form in all transparency going a little bit down the rabbit hole here that now RTP do have high requirements for what service providers are required to do to meet their connections.

Yeah, I mean, as far as how long they have to be on the levels of security that have to be on there and the different checks. So I don't want anybody thinking out there. Oh, man, the U. S. is really [00:09:00] lackadaisical on this. They're not. We just approach it in a different way.

Joe Casali: But the difference still is you're, you have, in one case, a relationship between a provider of a service and a vendor in that service, as opposed to a regulator of an entity.

Kevin Olsen: Yes,

Joe Casali: Okay.

Kevin Olsen: That would be it. Oh 

Joe Casali: dun, was on the digital euro. So if you aren't aware, and I don't I, forgive me, I don't know where these rules came from. The Payments Alliance follows Chatham House rules, which means you can say what happened at the meeting, but you can't attribute it to anyone. So no one ooh we gave David that quote. I think David's probably said

Kevin Olsen: I think, yeah, I mean, I've been mindful of that. Like you mentioned Dr. Mario. I think he would be okay with it, I said that, whereas there's some other things, especially getting the digital Euro. I'm not going to say names or opinions on that. I'm going to [00:10:00] that one alone.

Joe Casali: But if you've ever had a meeting, a session, a town hall on something that touched a central bank digital currency, and it tends to get a little bit heated, there was heat, there was controversy, there was Energetic discussion around the digital euro.

And I think it goes back to the same issues, right? The privacy issue. I think a little fear of technology for me, as far as. If it's literally not a piece of paper anymore and there was a lot of great discussion about those folks who have been around in banking for a while, an ACH, right?

Is that digital money, right? Because. Paper never flows. It's really just balances. There are those folks that would argue digital money is already around because money's moving and transferring from institution to [00:11:00] institution, from an account to account, never existing as a piece of paper. So there's that argument, which I appreciate.

That's, I could argue, I could jump on that bandwagon, but this was the whole idea of it. They didn't introduce it as a CDBC, but at the end of the day, it's a CDBC.

Kevin Olsen: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Joe Casali: Yeah, that was fun.

Kevin Olsen: Well, what was fun too, is we were just talking about a PSP there. It would be distributed by a PSP there. I mean, Oh,

Joe Casali: wow. Exactly. Imagine that your favorite third party service provider is actually maintaining those currencies, real current, I mean, like a bank vault, they would have a grouping of whatever digital currency they received for whatever they were already doing and get redistributed.

It's, it's, for me, it's, it becomes that same conversation. Now, I did read recently, I don't [00:12:00] know where I read it, but it was a headline somewhere that said, as you look globally, Lots of central banks are really hot on this central bank digital currency idea, but when you sit in a room and talk about it, there's a lot of but so thoughts.

Kevin Olsen: this is going to be a hot topic for decades to come. And I said decades, because though it is moving forward in some countries, others, it's not moving as fast as people think the Asian markets are definitely adopting this. Philosophy a lot more the government controlled banks like, say China absolutely going that route But the more free markets, let's say No, I mean, I think in the u.

s. We are far from seeing it my opinion, too I don't think we need it Fed now solves for what a digital currency would do anyway without having to have the same level of information that maybe we don't need to look at my opinion [00:13:00] Now the way they're talking about it there though is it is moving forward faster than, of course, what we're seeing here in the U.

S. And they're looking at the end of this year to be able to start releasing more on. This is what to expect. People I've talked to. No names are gonna be saying here, it's gonna happen. It's a matter of the wind and how, and it's also the wind within the next couple of years is what I'm hearing from my sources over there.

So that's mind blowing to hear too. But there are a lot of issues that as they're doing the doing this the right way to, I mean, I gotta say that they're doing this the right way. Multiple groups, multiple organizations are involved. Everybody does have a say. So lots of research is being done. Lots of discussions like the 1 we had are happening to that.

They are uncovering. Hey, this would be an issue. This is how we resolve it type situations. But I wrote actually in my notes that, look at November 23 to 25 is where we're at right now. It's, which is, they're going to be going [00:14:00] into that phase to the preparation state. And prepping for it to actually be in place.

So come the end of this year, we should be able to see more on, Hey, what's happening and how's it going to move forward. But we also heard sources who can't be disclosed that it may slow down some while they have identified some of these issues and find the right solutions to solve for them.

Joe Casali: Yeah. I mean, it's again I don't think it was much different than a digital, a CBDC meeting here. The thing, the note that I did, I, at this point I realized my mistake. I was writing my notes and. That means I need to rewrite my notes. But so one of the things that caught my eye is Stablecoins are regulated.

Kevin Olsen: this.

Joe Casali: Stable coins are already regulated in you, which I think there's a lot of proposals in the U S but I don't [00:15:00] think we've reached the stable coin is regulated in the U S.

Kevin Olsen: We've had a lot of things come out from different organizations. It's a couple different letters. I know FDIC has put out some stuff. There though, they have MICA. MICA is actually the Marketing and Crypto Association. I thought that was, whoa. And they have come out and said, Hey, here are some things to know about dealing with stable coins, cryptocurrency type situations to where there are higher levels of requirements in place.

Joe Casali: We should figure out how to share notes because literally we have the same notes. I have right here. 

Kevin Olsen: Well, Joe, that's I was sitting beside you, copying your notes. I

Joe Casali: The other note I have here is Bundesbank, which you had to learn how to say different institution names, has four versions of the digital euro. Do you recall that note?

Kevin Olsen: recall what it was, I understood it to be more like a use case. So I was wondering in that I got a little confused [00:16:00] because I was wondering in that discussion, are we talking about four different versions? Are we talking about use cases? Was that one that things got lost in translation? Oh, quick note on the Payments Innovation Alliance international meeting.

It's all in English. But not everybody there is a native English speaker. So that should be noted, but it's 100 percent in English, 100%. You don't need an interpreter, anything like that to be able to talk to these people from different countries. However, maybe it happens in the U S too. We start saying things like, is that a soda, a Coke or a pop?

And so there was some of that, that would happen. And if you weren't a native English speaker, I felt like maybe it's getting lost in translation. So I could be wrong, but I felt like they were looking at and discussing more. How this would be used versus the different versions, but I think what it was is there were different versions for the different use cases.

Joe Casali: And again, this is being in the payments alliance for a long time, these are not conferences. These are not, you go, you listen to a [00:17:00] session and you go to the next room. These are intended to be conversations and interactive. And this was, if, and this is why we maybe. Cause I remember seeing some slides in the presented slides.

You didn't get to the slides cause the conversation, immediately talked about privacy. Let's talk about privacy. When we went off on a spiral, it was great.

Kevin Olsen: Well, and you're right though. I mean, I can't talk good enough about Payments Innovation Alliance. I've recommended it to people for years. We're coming up on the 10th anniversary this October for the Denver meeting. People sign up. You want to be able to learn this stuff. Sign up. If you're afraid of that, Joe and I are going to out you on a podcast.

Again, we will not bring up anybody's names, anything that shouldn't be brought up outside of the meeting. It is, and it's where I go to learn. It's where I've gone for decades now. I can say to be able to learn because you get the top of professionals in the industry, we can say around the globe to be able to come in, [00:18:00] help educate you.

I

Joe Casali: not being paid by the Innovation Alliance say all these

Kevin Olsen: for as many people. If I pushed over to Payments and Innovation Alliance, I'd be going free for the rest of life. But you know, back to the digital euro, one of the things that ended up being its own session too, that I found fascinating and didn't realize as much was offline payments.

Now, when you say offline payments it kind of needs to be defined and it is basically an instant payment made when the user The instant payment service isn't available. Wait, what? Yeah, and I was even, okay, how do you do that? And they explained it would be like a card, or similar to what we see with cards.

It would be the storing of the information to be able to process it later. It would be for people who maybe don't have a phone and don't have a way of doing their own instant payment. It was that in itself was like, wow, like I'm going to get with one of the speakers there. [00:19:00] Who's, expert on that?

Because I got to learn more. I

Joe Casali: It, I Expectation and blowing away your expectations. I, I thought, when I thought of an offline payment, look at the session title and you go wonder what that's about. I imagined cash over a counter, definitely definitely different and really valuable presentation way more than I expected to have a little mental break at that point.

It was it was a

Kevin Olsen: catch up on email. I'll be fully transparent is, you got, there's rarely a conference you can go to or a meeting. And this is definitely the exception to every single topic, something that I'm going to pay heavy attention to. So, every now and then I'm just like, okay, I mean, a lot of us, I got to be able to make sure, hey, this gets taken care of.

I didn't touch my email. Yeah. Didn't get even close to it.

Joe Casali: Yeah. The whole idea that you're going to get work done while you're in this, not happening.

Kevin Olsen: Well, and even in the offline payments, they talk about Norway's cashless But then brought it up, but we had a problem for 1 day. [00:20:00] It's where the system wasn't available for a little while. What do we do? How does that get resolved? So, I mean, that's 1 of the fears in going all digital. Now, it's all digital.

A lot of people are talking about going to the digitals, even the CBDCs. Are not eliminating cash. They are just lowering the need for having the cash. Let's say, however, in Norway, they are considered cashless because nobody carries it around. Nobody uses it. Doesn't mean you can't have it available, though, but nobody uses it.

So it's hey, it's non existent. 

Joe Casali: I'm going to jump back for a second, but from an observation perspective. So, I've recently listened to a podcast, which was a commitment because the podcast name is acquired and. They originally started out as talking about acquisitions that are happening in different industries, but they've evolved into like full fledged research papers on topics.

And they recently [00:21:00] did a three hour and 45 minute podcast on Visa. And that turned into really talking about the card industry and how cards work. I observed, and it wasn't in necessarily in any session, but the idea that and not to speak poorly of anyone or any system, but the idea that cards have a, not a monopoly, but the, they're the easiest way

anywhere to make a retail payment or make a payment. And the idea that, EU the companies that are running the card industry, aren't necessarily you EU companies, the problem is how do we develop an alternative solution to a. Completely in, [00:22:00] it's not embedded. It's and they dug in as an, the easiest way to make a payment is with a card.

Is there an alternative way to make payments? And I say that because if we're done with the digital Euro the, again, a session that blew my mind was. the UPI session,

Kevin Olsen: Yeah.

Joe Casali: And one of them, I highly recommend again, not paid by these guys. This acquired episode on visa was fascinating and it was fascinating because, I'll only pick on one piece in a transaction. The only one that doesn't actually, I think either pay or get payment is the consumer, the person using the card. So An acquiring bank, they get a piece of that payment. There's an incentive there for them to be an acquiring bank. There's an incentive to be an issuing [00:23:00] bank. I got this, and this was a UPI session.

They built UPI, an India Payment Solution that is, you know, you could imagine it, today, me and Kevin create a digital payment system in the U S it is great. It will do everything you want it to do. Our adoption is going to be. Pretty slow because we're just another solution in a world of solutions.

I got from this UPI that they built incentives in for the users, for the vendors, and an adoption of it blew up. It didn't just la, it blew up. Your impressions of UPI

Kevin Olsen: 14 billion transactions in one month. All right that just, now it wasn't at the beginning, but in [00:24:00] May of 2024, 14 billion transactions, billion with a B.

Joe Casali: with a B.

Kevin Olsen: But okay, there's a lot of things in UPI now. I got to tell you, granted, the parent company of Pidgin is VSOFT, which is in India and in the U. S. So I and it was UPI that really helped in the building of the Pidgin service that we learned from. So it wasn't my first exposure to it, but in seeing how well it was presented and getting more of the deeper details there was some government intervention, full disclosure.

Yes, we know that. But to see how well it's perceived by end users, that was phenomenal. To see the actual numbers, the use cases, that was phenomenal. I

Joe Casali: I mind you, this is at the end of an international trip with two days of hardcore learning. This was at the point where I started scraping things that I could [00:25:00] remember off the top of the discussion. And the one part I scraped in there was so much, was there an incentive that if you signed up for UPI, you got free internet for a year.

Kevin Olsen: I think there was one of those, because there was other different types of incentives like that, that, India is again, huge. I mean, 135 million people, more than the U. S. I mean, I get a lot, sorry, 1. 35 billion. Let me get the

Joe Casali: Bah, bah.

Kevin Olsen: So much bigger, they're also, different sections like are different states in the U.

S. They do things differently. So there were different incentives that were offered from different regions. I want to say. I

Joe Casali: Compare it to a card, no one's ever said use this card and you'll get free internet for a year, so just that adoption. 

Kevin Olsen: would argue, because I'm a big guy on what cards I use because of the kickbacks I get, and the points and how they're used. So, I mean, there's some incentives that come along with them, but it is different. It's from the card network. It's not from [00:26:00] the payment network. That's the big differentiator.

Joe Casali: And then the one of the, the big differences here, which I think we're seeing in the U. S. was the whole idea that again, correct me if I'm wrong. You can post a QR code and it, and at the merchant and in order to pay them, you, you scan the QR code, you say, pay them this amount, boop. And then on the merchant side, they see that you paid that amount.

Fascinating.

Kevin Olsen: Again, I've helped to build a system based off of that. We have that capability and it is that exact reaction. For me, when I'm able to see it be used, it does take the network and both sides, having that capability though. So it is fascinating though. When you see it's used the part that gets me with UPI that we don't see here in the U S though, is the fact that Joe, I can send you money, but I can also text you within the UPI system about the money I sent you, or you can send me money back or information back, Hey Joe, here's the [00:27:00] money I owe you for lunch, and you can send a thank you back.

And it's through the secure same channel.

Joe Casali: That's fascinating. I, we'll have another session on it someday, but there's this book out called Smart Instant Payments by some members of the Faster Payments Council. And I don't know if you have read it yet? Reid

Kevin Olsen: I may have read that. I might've wrote a

Joe Casali: Oh, you were a writer of it. No, I forgot about that.

Reid's chapter, he's like in the beginning And it's all about communication. It's, it didn't, he's not, doesn't start off about payments. We are going to have a session. I am going to have an episode on that. 

Kevin Olsen: I was gonna say I need to go grab the book. It's over there on my shelf, but there you go. You got it. Thank you for showing that.

Joe Casali: yeah, I'm Matt. Thank you. We have a are you, did you hit number one yet? Because we certainly bought a quantity for our members here. Kevin Olsen. Oh yeah, we did. We bought a bunch. But so far, I can, let me speak to the author and give you my real feedback. [00:28:00] This is great. I just made it through the I know we're off topic here.

I just made it through the ISO. Chapter and so many times you start an ISO conversation and you're off the cliff. You're the people who are in the depths. I would argue that if you were a student of payments with little to know understanding of ISO. This chapter gives you a great foundation.

I haven't gotten to what chapter you are in here. I didn't get your chapter.

Kevin Olsen: Yeah, I think you'll find. I wrote the chapter on use 

Joe Casali: I haven't gotten to use cases yet. I was so enamored with the ISO chapter.

Kevin Olsen: Well, I get that too. And I, I gotta say, cause I'm a, got to talk and work with people on that. I built a course on ISO where I do it as Neo from the matrix to help. I don't know if you've ever seen those videos. They're the most fun I've ever had with the course. I am really Neo.

I'm asking you to pick which bill you want to [00:29:00] take, but to be able to explain it because it's got to be done in a fun way. And I think the book did a great job of being able to break it down to give you that foundation or like when you mentioned Cindy earlier to, hey, this is what you know, this is how you can relate it.

ISO at first for me years ago was intimidating. But then I realized it's actually pretty simple. It just does complex things, but it's not as complicated as we make it out to be. Now, having said that, if you are a programmer, there's a lot more to learn for it. Okay.

Joe Casali: I was going to say that 

Kevin Olsen: a payments geek like us who needs to understand its uses.

For example, when we have, when NACHA comes out with the faster payment certification, which also will be from the Faster Payments Council, they're doing that together. I believe there will be questions on ISO and I'm not afraid of it. And I don't think anybody else should be after you read that chapter or go through my course, because you'll find it's not as complicated.

I, I think it's easier than ACH [00:30:00] formatting. 

Joe Casali: I don't

Kevin Olsen: the light bulb goes off, at least

Joe Casali: Yeah. So from an AAP perspective, I agree with you from a, I got to program this to work in a system that's deep. What I was going to ask you is your version of it. I'll ask you later. I'm going to, I'm going to, I think I'm going to have you

Kevin Olsen: I'll get you, you can see what I'm talking about.

Joe Casali: All right, I think I'm gonna have Steve Wasserman wrote that chapter on ISO and the use cases when I get to it cause we have to promote the book where we again,

Kevin Olsen: You are. It's a good

Joe Casali: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I haven't there's so much history to read stuff through. Cause I'm like, why am I talking about a printing press?

Which brings us back to UPI, a messaging system included in the UPI system. It's definitely something different. And from an adoption perspective, it is, it's huge. It's

Kevin Olsen: Well, okay. And [00:31:00] another key to the adoption of UPI that people need to know about is it's also you could call it a mega app. And what I mean by that, and it's something I don't think we'll see here in the U. S., is I can go over in India, I can get in an app that uses UPI for payments, and I can send you money, or I can receive money from you.

But I can also pay my rent, I can pay my bills, I can buy tickets to a movie, I can buy dinner reservations, I can pay for a tax, I mean, you name it, you can pay for it, use it all in that app. Uber built into your app, DoorDash built into your banking app. Imagine it that way. Bandago built into your banking app, all of it into one place instead of the separate apps like we experience here in the U S is one of the key reasons why UPI is utilized and used so much.

Joe Casali: fascinated. It was again a session. I thought, Oh, India UPI. I think I heard something about that fantastic introduction. I've connected with the speaker on [00:32:00] it I, I think, so, I don't know if we've reached another 30 minutes

Kevin Olsen: I'm not surprised. 

Joe Casali: Anything you want to say in closing?

This will be part two of our Payments Alliance International Review. Anything you want to say in parting? Something we missed? Something,

Kevin Olsen: Well, I think we nailed it all. I think we nailed it enough that, if you want to learn more, you need to sign up for Payments Innovation Alliance. You need to go ahead and use this podcast as your use case for why you should go to the international meeting and let your bosses watch it.

Because, we're not giving you enough reason. I mean, I'm already anticipating next year. What are the things we're going to be able to learn? We already know in the U S when we put payments experts together, we're able to resolve issues. And not just does a great job of doing that. When we get to the level of going global, we are solving it on a much higher scale.

I know for me, I saw the solution to problems we haven't had yet, but I know we're going to have, so I can encourage you guys enough. Go out there while you're signing up for [00:33:00] NACHA, that smarter instant payments book that NEACH's got for you too, you Faster Payments Council, that's REIT is also involved.

It's another great area if you're working with payments to get involved with. Both of them I highly recommend.

Joe Casali: Yeah. And I'll just echo what Kevin said. I think this international meeting is really valuable because you do get outside of your thought process and say, Oh, that they had a problem and they solved it this well, I never thought of that solution. Really important.

Great people and great topics. And I know as a lifelong learner, I need to be shaken up once in a while. This was a great meeting. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Kevin.