00:00Let's meet our guests for the What's Next segment. Elizabeth Rosado, CEO and founder Finance, is joining usnow. Finance has been a market maker in major African currencies. Elizabethwelcome. Congratulations on your designation as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst for 2021 Bloomberg. It was great to be here. We were hearing passionately about the views of the unbanked in Latin America. It was a great opportunity to hear the needs and perspectives of the people who are able to access money and participate in the economy. Before we get into the crypto world, which you know well, you should be focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises. We would love to hear about the impact that currency is having on Africa. We are the largest nonbank broker of foreign exchange and treasury solutions. Businesses from all over the continent, and around the globe, work with us. We offer foreign exchange settlement treasury as well as all types of corporate payment solutions. If you think of syntax that is working in payments, you often think about retail. Africa is what we think of. All of the syntax taxall financial institutions that have been growing and thriving across Africa over the past decade need services. We are here to help. We handle all financial payments for corporates, from the top to bottom of the vertical. The banks are booming. This is something that we now associate with emerging market small businesses. It has been growing and thriving. What is the state of fintech worldwide, and in your particular world? What is your experience as a finance manager? Does that make you feel any different? It was a help or a hindrance. There are many financial sector incumbents. They were able to hold the sector in a stronghold, whether through licensing or brokerages. In certain markets, such as francophone West Africa. In the past 15 years, we have not seen any nonbankfinancial financial institutions. It's quite remarkable. It's amazing to think that East Africa and southern Africa were the first countries to experience mobile money booms. This was in a time when Francophone Africa did not have a single bankfinancial institution permitted to enter the market. Many of the traditional banking, which we call trad five banks and banks, were out of service. They did not have a policy of working from home. It takes three hours to commute in Lagos. All of his employees spent so much time driving to work. They didn't stay at home. It is possible that they didn't have power or internet access where they lived. We saw no disruption in traditional financial services for the first few months after the lockdown. Clients ran into the vent. As we all know, syntax was booming in the continent. Two years ago, there were zero unicorns. There are only two unicorns on the continent, and we have none in Q1 20 21. It shows that even though it was a bad year for many other things, it was a great one for fintech on Africa. You've been expanding and doubling down. MBNA seems like the best option. What are your goals? Do you want to buy other companies that do the same thing in Africa? What do you think the continent needs? We've been doing this for eight years. Our goal is to provide this level of service. This platform has a thin layer and a wide one across the whole continent. Pan African service. What you don't see are many companies expanding beyond their home markets. You can see that fintech is often very successful in their first markets. Nigeria is an excellent example. It's a beautiful, tempting jewel as we call it. It requires all the resources you have to invest in one market. It can be difficult to find the time or resources to diversify. We were diversifying right from the beginning. This has been our business model since the beginning. We are very fortunate and strategic in our quest to expand into new markets. In fact, we entered our first market in the second year. In year three, or in four markets, and you're 4, we had our licenses not only in East Africa, but also in the U.K. We have grown from there. We look at local winners when we are looking to buy a company. They might have a strong relationship with a local bank partner and a local regulator, but they can't seemto grow outside of their home market. Or maybe they don't want to scale. For many founders, it's difficult to get financing for the Africancontent. It doesn't matter if it's exposure to investors, telling the story, or showing that their home market has high market capture potential. Venture capitalists are looking for this when they invest in Africa. We really see the continent as one. To do this, we need to build and rent the infrastructure in each market where we operate. So far, we have been renting out our buildings and buying them. Now it is time to purchase. We've just acquired our second acquisition, and now we want to move on. These payments are subtle and affect trading. In large part, it's on line block chain. Here are the results of the poll. It's a good idea to make this public for our audience. Only 4 percent of respondents actually believe that crypto currencies are a speculative bubble. This is something to be aware of. However, 53% of you think that cryptocurrency is a bubble. 17% think that it threatens sovereign currencies. It is interesting to see the Fed and other central bankers looking not only at stability but also at the regulation. Twenty six percent of emerging economies usequick crypto cryptos for cross-border transactions. This makes them indispensable. Talk to Elizabeth about how it is driving your business. When you look at emergingmarket currency flows, is BLOCK Jane necessary? What about crypto? First of all, I would like to say that I believe those who are passionate about crypto have a passion for block time but hate the others. This is misguided marketing. It's misguided marketing, to be honest. Digital currencies are digital finance. It's digital currencies, it's digital finance. You know that crypto currencies are attracting a lot of attention because it is speculation. I don't mean that we sit here at Bloomberg, which is you know trading market who are focused on speculation and market dynamics all around the globe. That's how markets work. Speculation isn't a dirty word. You know that abuse of customers can be considered a dirty term. Other words are also dirty. This is not what the article is about. Access is what this is all about. It was difficult to be a counterparty when we started the company to trade foreign currency. If you don't have a bank account all around the globe, it was difficult to accept payments from customers and pay them out. When we started the company, we used bitcoins to trade and not just fluctuate. To trade with other parties, we actually use bitcoin. Then we kept track of it all in the bitcoin block. It was used for two purposes. It was a means of exchanging money, a way to accept and pay out payments, and also a record. We didn't have enough money to invest in S&P, heavy infrastructure or open source software. It was easy to access and was free. It was fast and available immediately to all other startups in the world. It's also being used by us. We had instant counter parties in Canada, Singapore, and China. Even in South Africa with Luna. It was, for us, the best way to get in. It's a great stepping stone that's bringing many people to this space. From that point on, we've created our own infrastructure. Because I have the ability to both pay in and out, I can be my counterpart in many markets. I can collect in all of those places. I don't need any other form of currency, digital or fiat. I keep my own balance sheet. At this stage, less than 10% of the game's revenue is going through digital currencies. We treat them as any other currency. My cry is to normalize digital currencies. It is no longer a block-chaincompany. It is just a company. It's not a digital finance. It's not just finance. Any financial institution that doesn't invest in digital finance is presumed to be the source of blockbuster videos. This is the future, I think. We are here to stay.
