Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
Brought to you by Kestrl: The Muslim Money App, software to help Muslims grow their wealth without compromise. Find out more here: https://kestrl.io/
Muslim Money Talk
Muslim Millionaire: Investing in Gold, Moving to Dubai and Entrepreneurship | Shahid Munir Ep 41
Meet Shahid Munir, founder of Minted and Minted Edge, as he shares his journey from a family-run corner shop to leading fintech ventures in gold investment and Islamic banking solutions. They dive deep into entrepreneurship, ethical finance, why Muslims love gold, and how to tackle being “debanked” in today’s world.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
Find out more about our app here: https://kestrl.io/
And how we help banks here: https://business.kestrl.io/
Show Notes:
00:00 - Trailer/Introduction
03:20 - Childhood inspirations and origins
06:43 - Moving to Investment Banking
09:21 - Industry experience before entrepreneurship
11:17- The Dark Side of Investment Banking
13:53 - Early interest in computing
15:46 - Childhood attempts at entrepreneurship
17:38 - Scaling first business in telephone systems
26:00 - Minted: Making Gold Accessible
32:07 - Why is Gold important to Muslims?
34:55 - Could a gold backed debit card work?
40:00 - Minted Edge: Protecting charities from Debanking
47:25 - Dubai vs UK for Entrepreneurs
50:31 - Making FX payments more efficient
55:23 - The biggest financial problem for Muslims today
59:38 - Advice to Muslim founders
Not many people know this about me. I'm not actually very motivated by money in itself. It's not my motivator to amass wealth. Success is more of like what gives me that buzz.
Speaker 2:Were you always interested in gold? What was it about gold that drew you to that?
Speaker 1:Actually until then not at all.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I didn't even give gold a single thought. I thought it was just something my mom buys for jewelry.
Speaker 2:So Minted made gold available to everyone, to anyone who wanted to purchase this asset. Why is gold so attractive to Muslims?
Speaker 1:I think we have a cultural affiliation with it, but it's also ancestry as well. As Muslims, we know it's an asset. So you know, if you buy gold, it's a physical asset that exists and it doesn't get any more Sharia compliant than that.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, I'm joined by Shahid Munir, serial entrepreneur and the founder of companies like Minted and Minted Edge. We talked about everything from gold and why are Muslims so attracted to it, could it replace existing fiat currencies and what the future holds. We also talked about the future of Islamic banking and finance in general and why so many Muslims find themselves being debanked just for donating for charities that they believe in. So, as always, I'm your host, areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Before we begin, we actually noticed only about 10% of you are subscribed to the podcast. So if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us and see more things Muslim and money related, then please consider subscribing and, of course, leaving this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you. Now back to the show, shahid.
Speaker 2:Assalamu alaikum, welcome to the show, man you've uh, honestly, it's such an honor to bring you on here because you're one of the people I've known for the longest in this industry. I think five years ago when we started Kestrel Minted was like going through it. You guys were going from strength to strength, master of law. Really, you've been trying to follow in your footsteps as an Islamic fintech. So real honor to have you here. And we're on the road for the first time People road for the first time. People might recognize the studio from some other podcasts, but we're here in dubai hijacking some other people's studios, um so, yeah, thanks for welcoming us to your city thank you, ruse pleasure to have you here and pleasure to be here as well.
Speaker 1:It's uh, it's uh. As I was saying, it's not something I do too often yeah yeah, but you know, it was when you, when you asked uh, I couldn't refuse alhamduldulillah, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. There's so much that I want to get into with you. I've always seen you as kind of the gold expert, and that's such a passionate topic for Muslims around the world and not just Muslims, a lot of people especially as gold prices are rallying now. You're a serial entrepreneur, someone who has made hijrah from the UK over here to the UAE for a variety of reasons, and I want to discuss how is the UK ecosystem for startups versus the UAE as well, as well as what the future of payments and banking might look like for the Muslim world. So before all of that, I'm going to do what I usually do, which is did you imagine as a kid that you would be doing this? Being a back-to-back entrepreneur, being out here in the Middle East? Is that ever something you imagined for yourself growing up?
Speaker 1:I think Middle East, definitely not An entrepreneur. I think it was ingrained into me from the very early years just watching my father go through that journey, albeit at a small scale, but still go through that journey, albeit at a small scale, but still going through that journey. My family, wider family, seeing them in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, as you'd say, so yeah, so I think from very early on, as far as back I could remember, I just remember the word business, buying and selling.
Speaker 2:What did your father?
Speaker 1:do? We had a corner shop, yeah, yeah, um reasonably sized corner shop, uh, in in the suburbs of the west midlands, okay, um, and we lived behind and upstairs.
Speaker 2:It's literally, the shop was literally our front room really yeah, yeah, wow, and whereabouts in the West Midlands.
Speaker 1:Stourbridge, stourbridge.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, wow, wow, fantastic. But that was almost like your education into business and you thought that is something I can do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's something that you want to do going forward?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But then how did you find yourself in this world of FinTech and payments?
Speaker 1:uh, interestingly, look, I was I still remember, uh, in year 11. Uh, my my science teacher, dr erb, telling me he's like shahid, you're at a position where, um, you're at a juncture in your life. Now you can choose what you want to do. You know, you've, uh, you've got the grades across, you know the spectrum of subjects, so now it's, it's up to you to decide what do you feel like specializing in? What do you want to go into? And, to be fair, I was super strong in sciences, like science was my thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it still is.
Speaker 1:Actually, I take quite a passion in science, um, and you know, however, you know what gave me that dopamine hit, which I've, you know, realized much later on was the business side and was seeing, you know, my, my father, bringing in new products into the shop. You know how now we have to try to promote them to the customers, to sell them. So I think that's that's where, that's where the passion came from. And again, you know, business studies, studies, computing, that was kind of what I enjoyed doing, okay, but not only enjoyed. I think I found it easy, you know, I found it the easiest amongst all the subjects, um, so naturally, I just tended to go, you gravitated towards yeah, I gravitated towards it.
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted to ask, before moving, what was the biggest business takeaway you learned from watching your father run that shop?
Speaker 1:It was passion. So I think you need to have passion for what you do. If you don't have the passion, you're never going to put in the work that's required to make it work.
Speaker 2:So chasing the money or the revenue isn't enough. No, you have to believe in some sort of higher mission.
Speaker 1:Yes, because entrepreneurship is hard, as you might know. It's not a day job anyone would choose. It's one of those that's glamorized, it sounds good, but what you have to go through is a completely different story.
Speaker 2:Hold that thought because we're going to return to what your passion is. But you found yourself moving into investment banking shortly after after university yeah, is that right? That's correct. So you went from, I think, jp morgan. Yeah, what? What made you move from investment banking to entrepreneurship? Um?
Speaker 1:so here I was like a, um, a young man from starbridge and now, you know, in the middle of the city, amidst, you know, the financial center, um, in canary wharf at the time. So for me it was a huge change. Um, you know, I even went to university, uh, in birmingham, aston business school. So. So for me, moving, moving to London, was a huge shift. It was a huge change. I had to adapt, which I did reasonably well. I got into the world of investment banking and I did my stint there, but I couldn't adapt to what I would probably term as the lifestyle of the investment banker at the time.
Speaker 2:Were you a trader? Yes, I was trading. Were you a trader? Yes, yes, I was trading, so it was it was long hours.
Speaker 1:I was working in the Chinese markets and commodities and um, yeah, it was. It was long hours, uh, trading, it was, um, you know, having to do things which probably I wouldn't want to do, Um, but do things which probably I wouldn't want to do, but were very much the norm, Such as Such as you know, having to go for dinners where typically I probably wouldn't go myself personally, and then there's a whole culture where you're influenced into certain places.
Speaker 1:I think that was my biggest factor of saying it's not the person I want to be.
Speaker 2:I'm reading the Trading Game by Gary Stevenson right now, where he details his journey in investment banking as a trader in Citibank in the short-term interest rate trading desk and the way he describes it where, like all, the days just blended into one, from getting into work at 6.30 am every day, staying there until five and then inevitably ending up at some crazy, fancy, dimly lit um restaurant correct, then a bar with brokers and other traders until late in the evening, 11, 12, 1, often sleeping around each other's houses, sometimes even just going straight into work again the next day. Absolutely all for that buzz, that thrill of that buzz. Let me make a little bit of margin, exactly profit where I can, betting that interest rates are going to go down if I make that loan and you never caught that bug yourself it was never.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, look, I've uh not many people know this about me. I'm not actually very motivated by money in itself. It's not my, it's not my motivator to amass wealth. Success is more of like what gives me that buzz. So, being in that environment, you know there was, there was no work-life balance. It was just, it was just work and it was aggressive to try and as you said, make as much as you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, and I guess I also saw it ruin lives as well. Um, so I spoke to people who were, you know, post their investment banking career, uh, and just saw what it actually did to them, um, and felt this is not, this is not how I want to end up. And again, you know, it became. It was taking me away from my true passion, which was entrepreneurship. Um, you know, I I knew I had to do a stint.
Speaker 2:Why, why, why did you feel that you had to go straight into the corporate world?
Speaker 1:Because I I always feel, if you, if you don't do that, you'll always reach a ceiling um in a business.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's plenty of examples of people who've broke, broken through that ceiling uh, without having any exposure to the corporate world, uh, but it just sets you up nicely to understand, um, how things work, uh, in the world of business, um, and generally in the world as well, interacting with, with different people. So I do feel it's a uh, it's something which sets you up for not only business skills but but life skills as well, I've certainly found that In my own entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 2:We started Kestrel after I'd spent seven, eight years in management consulting and I'm still shocked at how many doors open when they hear that you have a big name on your CV. So I was at Deloitte and then PwC. It matters. It may not be fair, but that and then PwC. It matters Like it may not be fair, but that signaling does matter to people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay so it's like validation, yeah, almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, people need that validation. You said something interesting earlier, where you said you weren't motivated by money, you were motivated by success.
Speaker 1:So what does success mean to you? You see, I'm a builder, so it's taking something from nothing and then seeing it out in the open world, people using that. I think that's what gives me, like I said, my dopamine hit. That's what gives me my buzz. Obviously, the commercial element is super important. Of course, Without that you cannot sustain it or grow it.
Speaker 2:To that extent, so very important but it's not the driver behind behind what I do. When you say you saw people's lives being ruined, could you expound on that, because I think a lot of people listening may be thinking oh, there's a very, very glamorous lifestyle and investment banking, but also it's kind of tinged with ribba as well it is the whole way through, and a lot of people don't always see the impacts and the detriment to that, especially when you're making money from it. Yeah, but what did you see in that lifestyle?
Speaker 1:what I saw in that lifestyle and like. So, when I come on to like the people that I saw who post their career, um, actually, what many people don't think is health issues were the biggest factor. Really, you know, you, you've got people with health issues starting in their mid thirties. Um, you know, high blood pressure and, uh, depression and all, all, all, all the stuff that comes with it. It's almost a celebrity esque. Um, when you, when you think of, uh, hollywood celebrities at times and some of those troubles that they go through, Okay, troubles that they go through.
Speaker 1:oh, okay, goes through, okay, um, and so it's. It's kind of tainted with very similar traits, yeah, in that industry as well. And it kind of makes sense because, again, like you said, the long hours, the long uh socializing, um, the environments that you're socializing, yeah, and the people you're socializing with, they all play a factor in shaping who you are as a person, it's it creates a norm which is not really the norm for most people yeah, it's your own little bubble this way of universe and then when you step out of it, you just feel like you don't really know how to function.
Speaker 2:That's it. Yeah, I had a slight taste of that in management consulting and that's kind of what motivated me to just say I don't think I can do this, like when I was helping big banks and wealth managers to launch digital products that were all river-based things I couldn't use, my family couldn't use, my community couldn't use.
Speaker 2:I was like what on earth am I doing this for yeah, you know, at the end of the day, and plus to get ahead in firms like that. Not always it's changing now, uh, but there's a lot of socializing and environments that aren't really conducive to a Muslim. Yeah, absolutely, and that's just unfortunately how it is in a lot of the Western world. But tell me about how you broke away from that to pursue your true passion then.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this comes on to like slightly earlier journey where I have been fascinated with computers and programming since I was probably seven years old, seven, eight years old, which is very early. And again, you know kudos to my father who bought me my very first PC at the time and it was and it was a PC in the sense of it was a shell which you know I would break every other day in terms of, you know, by running. You know different programs.
Speaker 2:At seven years old.
Speaker 1:I downloaded, yes.
Speaker 2:What were you doing at seven?
Speaker 1:I was installing a program that was meant for a different operating system version like a different. Windows version, and so it would just break the whole thing. And then my dad used to be like well, you know, fix it.
Speaker 2:So you had to figure it out. Trial by fire, yes, okay, yes, yes okay, um, so yeah, by learning.
Speaker 1:It's actually interesting because, thinking back, these days we have so many tools available to us. We have the internet, you know, we have uh ai now yeah to give us the answers in quick time. Um, back in those days you had to problem solve. It was, it was books, it was by asking experts, you know, and I think we're losing a bit of that in in one time.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, I think, respect for uh subject matter experts, for scholars, for people who've put in the work to figure things out, that is really, really depreciating a lot of time and we're seeing that.
Speaker 2:But I think it means that for people who put in a little bit of the extra effort yeah, who, I don't know, read 10 pages a day or or look to to do that, they can really, really become experts, whereas in the old days you had to do a lot more, yeah, to really become that. So me, um, so you went on to found your first company, is that right?
Speaker 1:Yes, so actually through that journey again, we had a corner shop per se. My very first, I would say, entrance into entrepreneurship was my well, yeah, it was basically in the times where I found I happened to stumble across a supplier of phone cases, so facials for those, the nokia phones okay, different kind of phones interchangeable. Yeah, yeah, yeah and I managed and, and you know, I just I just bought some and, uh, I remember displaying them under the counter in the shop, yeah, and before I knew it, they started selling.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:And that was a great little small venture within the shop itself. And then my second one was whenever it come around late October it became fireworks season. Late october it became firework season. So my father would say okay, now you know, you come with me to the um fireworks supplier and you choose which ones, which ones you think will sell in the shop, um, so I was, you know, I, I, uh, I don't know why I didn't use any of this like uh, there's no real there's no science.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no science, like as a kid. Yeah, it's just like this looks like it looks cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so that works, yeah, so I'd bring them back uh, and then I was in charge of uh putting the entire display in the shop. Um, I used to love it because I used to make immense money really oh, the markup was incredible, wow, um. So every year then it just became uh, you know that that's my time to make yeah, that's my, it's my season.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, cash, it sounds like you owe your father a lot for those lessons instilled in you earlier okay that's incredible and then you decided enough was enough in investment banking. Let me go on to found my own thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think rewinding. I remember finding out that you had to be 18 to register a limited company in the UK, right, so I bided my time and I still remember that day in college where I registered my first limited company, which you know as an 18-year-old probably more common these days, but back in then it's not something you'd think of.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's still that common to do. But to do what though?
Speaker 1:It was really again my passion of computers. It was building PCs, fixing PCs. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship on my own.
Speaker 2:Michael Dell-esque. Yeah, michael dell-esque.
Speaker 1:Yeah, michael dell-esque, go on bringing the parts um, I remember at that time the website that launched was ebuyercom. Um, so I'd go on ebuyercom, I'd order all the parts, bring them, put the pc together and then and then sell that on to people wow um, so yeah, so that was quite, uh quite an interesting we're doing that throughout university, at us throughout college and I was doing that throughout college.
Speaker 1:Um, and then I kind of honed in on my software skills. I started doing uh web design. So I started websites for uh different companies, uh from real local real estate agents, um to like e-commerce websites selling bags. Um, at that time I think tech knowledge was, you know, few and far between. It would either cost you a lot of money to do something of that line.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't the the gig economy that we have today that that didn't exist back then. So I was reasonably successful at that. And then I remember one day my uncle came to me. So my uncle ran a huge telecoms firm and he came to me and he said, shahid, will you build me a website? I need a website. I'll pay you a thousand pounds a month. At the time I was like happy days. I was like I'm all in, so I'm doing university and at the same time I'm. I built my uncle his website for telecoms. But then, as I built the website, I uh, he, he actually introduced me to somebody. I still remember his name Steve. Uh, he introduced me to his uh, his expert, his lead engineer, who was running the entire telecoms infrastructure. So his name was?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, his name was Steve, and Steve would just be on the phone to me. I'd ask him questions for the website. You know, shall I make a section about this? Tell me more about it, the more he would tell me. I think he realized and he identified that I had something where I'm more interested in the programming side as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more than just being a website designer, correct, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he actually trained me and taught me how to build uh phone systems, pbx systems at the time. Uh, he's like have you got any uh spare pc lying around? I was like, oh, absolutely I have plenty, so I so I grabbed one um, connected it up to the network and then he actually taught me how to build an ip-based telephone system on a pc.
Speaker 2:Uh what did he get out of that? He just wanted to teach you yeah, wow again.
Speaker 1:I'm immensely thankful, yeah, um, that he took the time out to uh to do that so when you say a telephone network, explain what that means. So essentially, when you are in an office, you'll you'll see every desk may have a phone system or sorry, a phone, a handset. That handset is an internal handset so you could dial internally to speak to someone, and then you can dial an outside line and speak to the outside world and receive calls. So it was, in essence, building exactly that the engine that powers all of those phones internally.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm starting to see a linkage between payment systems as well. Yeah, okay, that's very huge. There's a huge link.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so once I started doing that, I then realized I said, okay, well, you know, I can start building phone systems and selling them to local businesses. That's exactly what I did, um, so I started putting these little phone systems together. Uh, ultimately at that time then I shifted to the cloud. So I started installing phone systems on the cloud, um, and again I'd go out to local businesses and say why are you going to pay? You know, 20, 30 000 pounds for a phone system? Pay me, I'll charge you monthly for each handset.
Speaker 2:So it was the sas, the beginning of the beginning of the software as a service model, and this is what mid 2000s it was mid-2000s, it was mid-2000s, mid-2000s, yes, okay, wow, 2006.
Speaker 1:All right, how?
Speaker 2:did people react when you just walked into their shop?
Speaker 1:Funny story. They always thought I was the engineer.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Working for a huge company.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I would play along.
Speaker 2:So you'd never correct them.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, I'm just an engineer. Yeah, what was the name of the corporation? Uh, at the time it was, uh, ycv business telecoms. Okay, um, which then transitioned into air 21 air 21, which was a see.
Speaker 1:Air 21 was an interesting one. I I walked into a call center one day because they needed a phone system for their admin office and, um, and I was like, yeah, how many handsets do you need? And there's like, yeah, we need 15 handsets phone system for the admin team, ops team. I said great. And then I remember looking through this glass pane and I saw nearly 150 people sitting on the floor and I said, oh, what do they use to dial out? And it's like, oh, that's something called a dialer software. I was like what's that? An auto dialer?
Speaker 2:so what does?
Speaker 1:that do, it goes up, you upload, you know a bunch of numbers, thousands and thousands of records of numbers, uh, and the dialer will automatically dial them. And only when someone answers and says hello, it connects to the agent oh so these are people just doing like cold outreach cold calling so instead of them having to click a button or dial a number themselves.
Speaker 2:It's just constantly cycling through the system until someone picks up.
Speaker 1:That's right, wow, okay. And I said to them well, how much did you pay for that system? And I said oh, we paid nearly 200 000 pounds. Um, and you know, every time we get a new one, it's another license of 5 000 pounds I was like you know, I remember walking out of there thinking I'm in the wrong business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to figure out what this software is. And that's exactly what I did. I went back home, I did my research, um, put a small team together, uh, six months later, we launched day 21, which was our own, one of the first hosted cloud-based uh call center dialing platforms. Um, and then hamdallah. That scaled. Uh, it scaled rapidly, it was see, I come from um. You know I don't like the journey of raising funds, getting investment, because I think I've never hamdallah. I've been fortunate where that first business air 21, my first client's deposit, was my capital, so you bootstrapped your businesses.
Speaker 2:Have you ever taken capital investment?
Speaker 1:For minted gold. I did, okay. Yes, we'll come on to that.
Speaker 2:Incredible. Incredible, I mean so many of us. When we do start the fundraising process, it can be fun, there's lots of ups and downs, but it's all you're going to be doing sure it takes you away from actually building, from talking to customers, from getting in revenue.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, which I think is free of that. Yeah, to be free of that is is incredible again, you know, not everyone has this opportunity.
Speaker 1:I was fortunate that that client um said I took a gamble to say oh, you know what, you're a new company.
Speaker 1:But then again he will say he was about to save nearly 150 000 pounds wow of course, by trying this, yeah, and I, and I remember he, he gave me a check for 25 000 pounds, wow, and I built the platform. I built. It was up in bradford, actually, I went up and I set, I set up um 20 seats, uh, of agents on my platform and they had 40 on the existing platform that they were using. Yeah and uh, you know, hamdila, our platform way outperformed by like four times in terms of what? In terms of speed, in terms of speed, in terms, so, so they were having more conversations, which means they were selling more, um, so they were doing four times the revenue of of that team um and that was the beginnings for me.
Speaker 1:And they said look, we just want the entire floor. That same client a year and a half later was 250 people.
Speaker 2:There's so much I want to ask you about that, but I know the viewers want to move on from it, so I'll ask you? I mean in terms of like pricing, how you went forward, how you renewed the contract, but Air21, Marshall did really really well. And then you found yourself at the helm launching Minted yeah, which allowed people to buy and sell gold digitally, seamlessly, Store it, have it delivered to themselves. Yes, Were you always interested in gold? What was it about gold that drew you to that?
Speaker 1:Actually, until then, not at all. Okay, I didn't even give gold a single thought. I thought it was just something my mom buys for jewelry. Um, it was when two of my friends came to me, um, hamza and haroon, um, and we had a set and we had a sit down and they mentioned an idea of you know, uh, there was an app actually in germany that was doing this, um, which was allowing savings into physical gold using a mobile app. Uh, but the ui wasn't amazing and the experience wasn't amazing. Um, so they're like it's a concept, what do you what do you think?
Speaker 1:honestly, at that time I felt it unique enough, um, because I thought, okay, how do people buy gold right now? They go e-commerce, yeah, they will. They will go onto a website bullion website buy bullion online. Do people really trust that? I'm not sure. It's not something I've ever done. Jewelry, which I know myself, has a huge markup. I used to hear stories about gold being mixed and you never know if you're gonna get yeah, old um, so. So the concept was good, but then it was okay well, where do we, where do we buy the gold from and why would people pay a margin to us to buy through us?
Speaker 1:in essence, um, yes, the convenience of buying it online digitally through an app. Um, you can buy it fractionally. So that those were all good, good usps, um, but then again, like why, uh, why pay us the margin? And it really was actually coming out back to that point was because we could provide it at fractional level. So what does that mean? So fractional means, for example, typically you cannot go into a shop and buy one gram of gold. Um, if you do, there are coins that exist are half a gram, one gram, but the markup because the production that goes into that is is huge, so you're paying easily 30 40 premium. So it was. We can offer people a fraction of gold without having to pay that huge premium. So so we're now bringing gold for lower budgets, which means that you can start to accumulate, and I think that became our main driver in ESP.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Muslim Money Talk. If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim Money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed, how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that.
Speaker 2:If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create an auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for, and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, linked you towards sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download kestrel today and try it out for yourself. Now back to the podcast, because I remember I used you guys earlier. It was the first thing I used to actually purchase gold myself awesome I think minimum uh investment needed was like £30?
Speaker 2:Correct £30 to buy whatever equivalent grams of gold. That was at that point and you would do a monthly thing if people wanted that, you would just keep purchasing 30 grams.
Speaker 1:30 grams, 30 grams.
Speaker 2:And I did that for a good couple of years and then put it away and the gold I didn't have to store the gold you were looking after that, yep, where do you put?
Speaker 1:that. So we have arrangements with vault facilities um the likes of brinks, um some of our refineries also. We we take, we rent vault space from the refineries. So there's actually four locations around the uk where in the uk.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'd always thought people do it in switzerland. Yes, why is that?
Speaker 1:no, but a lot of people do um. So switzerland is your. Switzerland itself is a vault, if you think of it. Um, it's a vault for cash, yeah, it's a vault for gold and any other assets that you may have. Um, so, typically, banks in switzerland, you know, you know, are holding huge amounts of cash, pallets and pallets of, yeah, just cash.
Speaker 2:Um, and gold is also, you know, one of those assets do you like the prop that we brought just to uh, to emphasize the point that was already there. I can't take credit for that but it works out really well um okay, but you also had a facility that if I wanted to bring the gold to myself, if I wanted to hold it in my hands you could actually offer that facility to deliver it correct. Okay, so was that part of the basis for having it sold in the uk?
Speaker 1:I think. I think that actually came from. We want people to trust us. You know um, yes, we can get as many accreditations as we want. We can do is show as many public audits as we can, but ultimately, how does somebody know that that gold exists? You're buying it online, you know yeah that trust element, that trust element.
Speaker 1:So for us, the delivery side actually adds a huge amount of uh overload in terms of our operational um how we operate, however, by, by, you know, making the gold accessible and deliverable now, all of a sudden, you know, adds that element of trust that okay, the gold must exist because I can click a button and the next day I have royal mail coming to me with an insured package.
Speaker 2:Okay, with my gold bars inside so minted, made gold available to everyone. Yeah, to anyone who wanted to to purchase this asset. Why is gold so attractive to Muslims?
Speaker 1:I think we have a cultural affiliation with it, but it's also ancestry as well. I'm talking from a Muslim perspective. We've always heard the terms dirham and dinar, which is gold and silver. So we also know that through the ages of Islam, gold played a huge um. It was a huge contributor. You know it's a huge factor um, and so I think we always have that affiliation also as muslims. We know it's, it's an asset, so you know it's.
Speaker 2:If you, if you buy gold it's, it's a physical asset that exists and it doesn't get any more sharia compliant than that exactly, and in today's times where fiat currencies pounds us dollars um abu dhabi sorry, uae their home, um, none of them are linked to physical assets anymore. There used to be something called the gold standard, where whatever cash was in circulation had to be linked to a real amount of physical gold in vault. But I think around the 60s or 70s, post-world war ii, that went away yeah, entirely. So now what that means is people could just print and print and print correct, and a lot of people have brought up the criticism that that means that anything that we're doing with cash is inherently non-sharia compliance, because it just you know there's nothing real, there's nothing tangible yeah.
Speaker 2:So what is there? A future there and I guess that comes on to what the other stuff that you're doing with minted as well where we could go back to using a gold standard in some way?
Speaker 1:see, I think, I think gold is a great, can be a medium of exchange. You know, some scholars say it must be physical exchange and I think, in the modern world that we live in, the globalization that's occurred, I feel that physical movement is, you know, can make gold, prohibits gold as a restrict restricts gold, I should say as yeah, actually, uh, you know, to be the form of currency I guess that's why cash came about, just because correct such a hassle to move huge amounts of gold and keep that safe and keep that secure.
Speaker 2:So I think look, can it?
Speaker 1:um, yes, you know, we do have the facilities available for it to be in exchange and for the people that may, you know, want to do that, it's absolutely possible. Can it override fiat right now? Probably, not just because of the way the world is set up. You know, we're living in a world of instant gratification. And that also means we want everything now, and that includes our money.
Speaker 2:What about a gold-backed debit card? In some way. We've seen various institutions do it. Some of them tried and it didn't work out. So that isn't the actual movement and paying of things with a gold card, but a world where you have a banking card. It's linked to a vault where there's there's actual gold there. It's just that when you purchase something, a certain amount of that gold is instantly liquidated, sold and changed into a fiat currency of your choice. Yeah, is that something you see happening? And, technically, is that gold backed you?
Speaker 1:know it's a. It's a very good concept. It's been done by some um. It attracts, I would say, people who really truly believe in gold, but that person really has to be willing to pay that little bit more um for that service, and I think that's what then, uh, you know, doesn't make it the instrument for mass adoption, um I would say just because, you know, gold does attract a premium.
Speaker 1:The value of gold does fluctuate I wouldn't say it's volatile, but it does fluctuate, as does fiat currency. But with fiat, the um, you know, the amount of currency stays consistent. Um, here, the value of the gold will stay consistent. It's, you know, 0.5 grams. It's still 0.5 grams, but I feel like the value of it fluctuates to a degree where, you know, on one day you might have less money than than the next day. Um, so I feel like it's a great concept. I feel like gold is a great uh instrument for saving and to hold wealth.
Speaker 2:Because, even though it fluctuates, in the long term it has gone up. Oh, I appreciate it At the time of recording. Gold is really, really rallying. Absolutely. How much is a gram of gold today? Absolutely, I couldn't even quote it because it changes all the time. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:In the last two, three weeks's it's gone up, you know, dramatically, um, but having a card attached to your goal to be so it's more accessible. That's a great idea, um, because you know otherwise now having to liquidate your gold, sell it again, get the funds, move the funds into your account, then be able to use it. I think that's what a card achieves. It's an additional cost for the bank, I would say, or the payments company that's providing this. However, having the card attached, it allows that accessibility.
Speaker 1:Would, I use my gold card for everyday spending at this moment in time, probably not just because of the cost to be able to do that, but having the card to access my gold, that's a fantastic concept.
Speaker 2:We're seeing a lot of people do that recently at Revolut. Revolut allows you to invest into cryptocurrencies Bitcoin for example and then immediately issues you with a card which you can use to spend from that, which is a crazy concept because for anyone who had invested into Bitcoin, this isn't investment advice. For anyone listening, anyone who's invested into Bitcoin at its recent low point when Trump announced the tariffs say you put in 2,500. Anyone listening, anyone who's invested into bitcoin at its uh, recent low point when trump announced the tariffs say you put in 2500 pounds. It's gone up, say 20 in the last two weeks.
Speaker 2:So you could be in a weird situation where you're spending from that similarly and similar to the concept you just described with gold, where you know you liquidate the bitcoin and then it becomes fiat and you're spending every day from profit which is just being generated over time. So I guess that would be the same thing. But your point is the bank who is allowing that to happen would have to charge a premium of some kind they would.
Speaker 1:Because, um, look the way most standard fiat banks work are the fractional reserve model, which in essence means you deposit your money with us and then we use that money to make more money in essence and that kind of funds the cost of your retail elements.
Speaker 1:However, in gold you know to some degree gold is not yielding, especially if you know the bank doesn't own the gold. You own the gold. So that gold is not yielding, it only appreciates, it only has capital appreciation. So who can fund the cost of the card operations? Has to be the customer, it has to be the customer I see what you mean.
Speaker 2:Okay, because it's not a fractional reserve model, the bank can't do anything with it, but I think that's why it's so appealing yeah, to, to the where there's this idea that all the banks, even though I'm not getting any interest in my money, even the money in my current account, it's just being lent away and the bank's making money on it anyway for my hard-earned halal money, whereas with gold there's nothing you can do with it. Yeah, it's stuck there. Maybe people would pay a premium for it. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Stay tuned maybe something there okay, so.
Speaker 2:So with minted. You ran that for a while, but then you decided to take it to the next level. Was that right? And that found you coming out here to the uae yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think I think spending uh two, three years in the fintech industry I would say from 2018 you learn a lot, um, and then also holding an EMI license. It teaches you a lot about the FinTech ecosystem, the compliance that's involved, and you're getting involved in a lot more than you know what you offer, which is gold. So you know, we had our b2c proposition, which is the gold app, but we also had an FCA license where we could hold money, hold funds. That was the electronic money license.
Speaker 1:That's right right okay, um, and I think that that's where you know what we could offer as a solution. Uh, it kind of, you know, broadened um, and hence why we started looking into payments. Um, and it actually happened by accident, I actually came here in Dubai just before Ramadan 2023, so around early March and I came here to speak to one of the government organizations here to embed gold into their application. In essence, that was the whole reason I decided to do it. The contract value was good enough that I could, you know, afford to make that move and make that shift. Okay, so that that was the basis I came here.
Speaker 1:However, when you, when you land in dubai, um, you, you meet a lot of people, uh, and, and when I see you meet a lot of people, is I started going to networking events? Yeah, one thing I, one thing I realized is people come to dub Dubai looking for an answer, sometimes, to some of the challenges that they're having in their local markets or they've outgrown their local ecosystem. They want to go to that next level. Let's go Dubai and network, let's see what's out there, what's the new thing. So I was coming across a lot of these type of people and I happened to come across a Muslim NGO organization who were having challenges with their banking. You know they're not doing anything out of the ordinary. They're providing humanitarian aid. Yet you know banks don't like to be associated. Sometimes not all banks, but certain banks don't like to be associated. Sometimes not all banks, but certain banks don't like to be associated with those type of organizations.
Speaker 2:Specifically Muslim organizations? Yeah, specifically. Muslim organizations, or sometimes where the territories that the organizations operate in or fundraising for, yes, where they're giving charity to yeah. Correct of course.
Speaker 1:So that poses challenges. It's a problem. So I was faced with this problem. Can you help us solve our banking challenges? And that's what I think was the birth of Minted Edge, which was a do you?
Speaker 2:want me to describe it? Yeah, please so.
Speaker 1:Minted Edge is a aggregator of banks, so Minted Edge is a aggregator of banks, emis, payment companies, all onto one single platform where you now have a banking partner almost, or banking liaison service, as Minted Edge. So what I mean by that is you're an organization, you come to Minted Edge. Minted Edge will bank you with a number of banks, including our own EMI license, but it's designed to de-risk your banking infrastructure. All your eggs are not in one basket so explain to me how that works exactly.
Speaker 2:It's that, as a charity, if I'm using one bank, yeah, to store all of my donations and to give, give donations out to different places there's, there could be a risk that one day that bank says by the way, we're pausing your account, yeah, we're debanking you, correct, for whatever reason, but they can do that and you know, they don't have to give a reason yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's happened to so many people in recent times, Nigel Farage included.
Speaker 2:So what you're saying is you can immediately switch them to another bank account.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, our platform will do that automatically. Our platform will de-risk you. It will hold funds in multiple accounts.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see Okay.
Speaker 1:But then we're also a layer between yourselves and the bank. We have a very, very, very talented compliance, banking and payments team which speaks to the bank on your behalf. So most organizations will approach a bank but not have the internal know-how to get an account at the end of it because of the huge complexity in the bank's compliance and the questions that they ask and the manner in which they want the frameworks put together.
Speaker 2:What are these questions? Can you give me like a mock interview? Okay?
Speaker 1:interesting. So you know how many countries are you sending funds to?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'll say okay, 12 different countries, most of them are in the Middle East, in conflict zones. Okay, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:We'll see you later. That's it. I failed the interview. No, no, no, I'm joking, it's um, it poses a challenge.
Speaker 1:I mean information gathering is what delays the process. Okay, banks compliance teams are so overloaded that you know if there's an easy account here, I'm not going to spend my time. You know 10 months more time going through this account and sadly, you know, we live in a commercial world so that's how it works. So you know a charity will have to wait four or five months. You know longer than you know an will have to wait four or five months. You know longer than you know an average trading company, for example yeah, just because of the nature of what it does and the complexity they're involved.
Speaker 1:Um, you know it's as as a charity. You know you don't kyc every single customer um that that donates to you I always think about that.
Speaker 2:The masjid, right right where people go around with the bucket collections, and then you. So you don't know sometimes who these people are, and yet the bank is going to ask you have you done due diligence on each?
Speaker 1:exactly that so I mean, look, it's, it's practically impossible to do, but there's measures that you can put in place, like if it's's a if it crosses, if a donation crosses a certain threshold in terms of the amount or frequency, or in within the year, then then you do your due diligence on and find out who that individual is. That's that's given you those funds, but it's it's having all those things in place, which is what you know, where we support the organizations to do Amazing, which is where we support the organizations to do Amazing. We speak the bank's language, so we're there on your behalf to speak to the bank.
Speaker 2:So Minted Edge is almost like an open banking platform for charities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you think about it in that respect. Yes, yeah, because you're connecting them.
Speaker 2:You've got API connections with each of these different banks, a single charity can come to you and say okay, we need five bank accounts open. So even if two of them close down, three of them close down, four of them close down, we still got one up and running, so we don't have to halt our donations, which is our essence and everything we're doing. Yes, incredible, incredible, and that's what brought you out here to the buy to do it did, yeah, um.
Speaker 1:I mean, look, most of the organizations that we help um and the clients of ours are in western jurisdictions, so uk, europe, usa, uh, australia, um, so that's where all our clients are um, but we operate out of dubai I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2:As an entrepreneur, leaving the uk and coming here to dubai is becoming more and more popular, I'm finding or just leaving the uk. In general, is the UK still a good place to do business, to be an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:It is. It is. Look, I think we, like most of our business, comes from the UK. In essence, we still operate in the UK. I would we have teams in the UK, it's. It's a great place to do business, it's a great place to be from. To say that you, you know, we're a uk-based company.
Speaker 1:Um, I think I think the challenges that you find is with the uh emergence of ai as well is, if you have a business idea, or if you have an idea, you need to take that idea to market as quickly as possible. Um, or you get left behind, or your idea is too old or it's out of date. Now, what you find in the uk is we are inundated with distractions, but also a slower work ethic. Um, we work certain amount of hours a day. You know we're we're up at the nine to five model, um, and if you want to work outside that model, you cannot because no one else is. Um, so, like you know, I'll, I'll work up until midnight, but but you know, try arranging a meeting with somebody in the uk at midnight no one's coming out, and I think that's what attracts, that's what makes dubai and the uae in general attractive and literally never sleeps.
Speaker 2:It's open all hours.
Speaker 1:Someone called called me at 1am last night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I picked up the phone and they said come for a coffee. Yeah, I was like what they said. Okay. So I went downstairs. We've had a coffee. We had like an hours meeting. At 1am I prayed, fajr went to bed woke up again at that's very normal here.
Speaker 1:That's, it's almost. It doesn't surprise me because it's so normal. Well, yeah, I will have. I will have meetings at 11 pm, yeah, at midnight, at 1 am, and it's just considered normal. They're normal probably because there's so much lighting here as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a beautiful place, but other aspects of the uk you miss. Or do you think that the uk brand still holds enough power or weight that people respect it here? Do you find that you're able to leverage that? You know I'm from the uk. At a base there. You know I worked in massive investment banks in the uk. Do people respect?
Speaker 1:that here, or does it not really matter anymore? Absolutely, look, I think the uk has, uh, an incredible, incredible heritage of rules, regulations, laws, laws, infrastructure and frameworks. So when you, when you say that you know you were based in the UK and you've come here and you're from the UK, it almost gives people that reassurance that that you've, you know, you conform to those at some stage, that that those frameworks and those regulations. So it makes you know, know, it builds that trust and the uk is a huge brand, huge, huge brand and, um, you know, I think saying you're from the uk, it, it holds value absolutely does.
Speaker 2:Okay, incredible. So I guess, what's next on on? What's next on the cards for you? Yeah for me. I think uh, you know, are you all in on minted edge?
Speaker 1:I know you're doing some other stuff as well, yeah I mean, alhamdulillah, minted edge is, is is growing, uh, growing rapidly and, um, you know, we've, we've grown to a team of 55 now 55 overall. Yeah, all based in the uae or globally, half in the uae and uh, in london and in pakistan as well. Wow, yeah, I'm sure, and Poland and Turkey okay this is very normal for a modern company yeah you have people everywhere.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so Minted Edge is growing. We're growing our partnerships. We've just launched a new service, which means we will bank a company regardless of their jurisdiction okay as long as they're not in a hard sanctioned country. So so you could be a Dubai company and we'll give you a UK bank account, a multi-currency UK bank account, and that allows you access to do bank. You know business in the UK, and the same with the US.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay Cause what I've noticed in the foreign exchange game. I've had a conversation with like three people sure in the last day, uh, about fx. The way that revolut does foreign exchange is that it seems like they're opening an account for you in whatever country yeah, you go to spend it. Is that something minted edge could, could provide in some way?
Speaker 1:yeah, so we do it through our partners, so we have partner networks um. I call them the arteries of uh, the finance world okay in essence, we're plugged in. We're plugged into the, the money matrix um around the world, um. So, yeah, when you have partnerships, as many countries as you can, uh, you can make money available in that country, uh, almost instantly, in essence, and I think that's the service which you know we're looking to provide, because we have no uh, what can I say?
Speaker 1:we have no benefit of holding on to your deposit, whereas a bank if you say so, one bank sends money to another bank. Uh, let's. Let's take, uh, the uk and uae, for example. So from a uk bank, you send money to the uae now, that will most likely go through an intermediary bank.
Speaker 1:Uh, it will most likely will go over the swift network. In essence, what that means is, once the uk bank has sent it, it will go to the intermediary bank. Now, the intermediary bank will then check and see who they're the the end parties in the uae and then send to the uae bank. Right now, the banks have an incentive to hold on to that money because if they hold it for even a day, they earn money. Oh, an interest, they're an interest, okay, um, and so I've seen payments, uh, and it's a complete lottery.
Speaker 1:I've seen payments that can take go halfway across the world in five minutes over the swift network. I've seen payments that can take go halfway across the world in five minutes over the Swift network, and I've seen payments that take two weeks or five days. And then you think, okay, so the technology allows you to do it, and it's the same payment from the same bank going to the same bank, for the same client to the same client. So exactly same payment that can take minutes and that can take three, four days so it's human intervention.
Speaker 1:It's human intervention.
Speaker 2:Yeah how is?
Speaker 1:that allowed. How is that fair? That's the house. It's just how it's been wow, and that's swift.
Speaker 2:So, for people who don't know, swift is, I think, one of the original systems for sending money, correct? You're sending money and there Swift is, I think, one of the original systems for sending money, correct For sending money, and there are new ways of doing it, but many of the banks, the major brands in the world, are still using that system. Oh yeah, everyone uses Swift. Yeah, still, but you're looking with Minted Edge. That would be entirely different. Yeah, so Minted Edge.
Speaker 1:We also use Swift as well. However, we also have alternative methods as well now, so we're leveraging the blockchain uh, we're leveraging stable coins. Okay, to send money, um, where at times you know most of time you can reach a lot faster, uh, but most people don't understand how to send a stable coin or how to send a payment over stable coin. What? What's a stablecoin? A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency which is backed by a fiat currency.
Speaker 1:So, for example, USDT is backed by the US dollar and is backed by US treasury bonds per se, but it almost mimics and matches the rate of the fiat currency.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the idea is that it's just easier to send and faster to send over a blockchain, absolutely as opposed to going through a SWIFT system. Yeah, is the idea Correct and it's meant to be a like-for-like exchange. It's a like-for-like exchange.
Speaker 1:It's a like-for-like exchange, essentially, so it's almost you're. You're not going over the banking network. Yes, um, you're going peer-to-peer.
Speaker 2:Understood, understood I mean, there's so much I want to ask you like there's this wealth of knowledge within you about entrepreneurship and gold and fintech, but what do you think the umma needs when it comes to financial services? Because you've seen the rise and fall of so many different business models, so many different companies from robo advisors, digital banks, lending institutions what do you see as the biggest problem for muslims when it comes to financial services today?
Speaker 1:I think the biggest problem is that we are underfunded, um. So to build a product which matches the conventional product and I'm talking in terms of the service it provides, how it looks, how it's built there's a reason why you use an Apple phone and I use an Apple phone just because we consider Apple to be one of the best. Can we have a Muslim equivalent of an Apple phone? Does it have you know? Can we have a muslim equivalent of the app of an apple phone? Does it have you know? Can we, can we build that? Because only then we will achieve the adoption that we need in the world, and I think that's that translates also into financial services. The companies, um, some of them that they mention have all been startups, um, but of all being stifled startups, um, they're forced to prove the business model. Yeah, very, very quickly, very early.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, they can't rely on the, on the monzo model of you announce the idea with over a weekend, you raise 10 million exactly for most of us that doesn't, yeah, for most of us yeah, that doesn't work, um, and there are some in in the, the muslim world, who have, you know, achieved that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, and you know, are starting to do, you know, reasonably well now, very well, um, but yes, I think, I think that's one of the biggest factors. It's not necessary that we don't have the talent, we don't have the skills. Um, I, I feel like we need, we need more, we need, we need to back, uh, as muslims, we need more, we need, we need to back as Muslims, we need to back other Muslims. I think that, yeah, that needs to, that needs to widen. But then again, you know, from a business, if I'm gonna choose two products, yeah, you know which one do I choose, I'm gonna choose the one that's best for my business exactly I say so.
Speaker 1:The Muslim product needs to be just as good as when it comes to costing as well and that's often the biggest critique we find whether it's a mortgage or a small business loan.
Speaker 2:Why on earth is this Muslim version of it an Islamic equivalent?
Speaker 1:two to three times more expensive.
Speaker 2:And that's when people say oh well, you know, is it really Sharia compliant?
Speaker 2:Let me get under the hood and then people start opining on things, despite not being sharia scholars, which we've. We've talked to death on this program before, um, but I really think that's it. Yeah, it's the cost, and in the uk at least it's. It's not exactly the force of the institutions. There's a cost of capital issue. There's not a lot of liquidity available, so people to run yeah, that's what it has to do, but it sounds like what you're saying is more businesses built by muslims for muslims is what we need. Is there room for a new islamic banking player in the western world? Because I feel like that has been lacking for the longest. You're shaking your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I it's it's something that's mentioned nearly every single day and uh, and I think it's time. Uh, I mean, look, there's been people who gave it a shot some years back, you know. And then, unfortunately, the circumstances didn't work.
Speaker 1:But I feel like, with the right people, actually, I'll go back. For that to happen, it has to be a collaborative effort. It cannot be led by one person or, you know, a team. It has to be a collaborative effort of people who have spent time in the industry to come together and build something like this not a fintech alone, not bank alone collaboration across the board, correct okay almost going against what everyone has tried to do.
Speaker 1:So far, which is just me, me, me, let me, let me try and give it a go yeah, are you optimistic about that?
Speaker 2:do you think it can be done?
Speaker 1:within our lifetimes. I think we should uh watch this space. Okay, yeah, okay, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it announcing a castral mint in partnership what a way to drop it on this podcast.
Speaker 2:What advice would you give for anyone out there working in this space, thinking about coming into the space? What advice would you give to me as a as an islamic fintech founder trying to solve this problem, trying to balance making good revenue and and trying to support ourselves with ultimately trying to fulfill a mission that is bigger than?
Speaker 1:ourselves. I think the biggest advice I would give is build your product with the ethical and sharia principles in mind so the foundations have it. But build your product that you can go out and sell to anyone, and not just for muslims. You should be able to sell to anyone.
Speaker 2:It should be that good and that compelling yeah that you can sell it to anyone do you have an example of someone who's doing that right now in the muslim like? It's inherently muslim, it's inherently sharia compliant, but it's used by all yeah you'll have to give me some time I like n save. I like what the n save guys are doing.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know what?
Speaker 2:mashallah bless him. Did you meet him at muslim tech fest?
Speaker 1:I did um, and we've spoken a few times yes, doing incredibly well, uh, and I think you know I wish him well on that journey. But, yes, something along those lines. That's, that's, yeah, because it comes to mind.
Speaker 2:It's muslim owned and muslim backed. It can be used by anyone. Yeah, it is the thing. So that's what immediately comes to mind. And for people who don't know, unless I'm getting it wrong, nsave is almost like digital banking for immigrants or for refugees Correct In particular.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the Western world, the unbanked, who would never have access to those services, will find it extremely difficult. Nsave is, I believe you know a solution Incredible. I believe you know a solution incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that, shahid. It's been a pleasure having you on. If people want to find out more about what you're doing, where can they go to do that?
Speaker 1:best place for me is LinkedIn okay. I try to answer as much as I can, so please feel free to reach out anytime, or through the network. You know I'm in a mashallah networked with a lot of brothers and sisters in the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, somebody should know me okay, and you're going to be in London very soon. I will be Muslim Tech Fest this June yes, alright, see us there.
Speaker 2:I think we're doing a Muslim Money Talk Live, so, who knows, maybe you'll see us there, shahid. It's been a pleasure, assalamu alaikum, thank you. Thank you for listening to the muslim money talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to muslim money talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really really helps us out. Thank you, assalamu alaikum, and see you next time.