Fintech Talks: Money20/20 Europe | Hugo Horton: Cross-Border Payments, Stablecoins & Global Growth

Speaker A: The Georgia FinTech Academy podcasts are available on itunes and Spotify. To obtain additional information about the Georgia Fintech Academy, please visit our website at Georgia fintechacademy.org hello, welcome back to another Fintech Talks. Laura Gibson Lamoth here from the Georgia FinTech Academy at Money20 20 Europe in Amsterdam. I have here with me Hugo from Soken. Hugo, can you just introduce yourself quickly for our audience?

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Hi everyone, I'm Hugo Horton from Soken. I'm um, an uh, enterprise partnership manager based out of the uk.

Speaker A: And Hugo, I have to ask, how did you navigate your pathway into the role that you're in now?

Speaker B: Previously worked at another international payment company for about five and a half years in partnerships, then moving into the treasury role as well. And then after that I actually moved into defi space. So I was a OTC crypto trader for a couple of different businesses before moving back into TradFi. But trying to combine tradfi and defi

Speaker A: with token, that's been one of the pillars of conversations that people are having and tying it back to the work that you're doing with Sokin. And we talked briefly about infrastructure and the word modernization gets tossed around quite often. But for the students I work with, I lead an academic program and so I work with college students across a very broad university system helping them navigate pathways into fintech. And so for the conversations I'm having, it's interesting thinking about my career and working with very antiquated, uh, tech stacks within some banks. And when I think modernization, I think of all the challenges operationally, costs and whatnot. But from your perspective, I know it's a long winded way to set up a question, what does that modernization look like from an infrastructure perspective?

Speaker B: So I think the simple answer to that is basically looking to use one platform that can do everything that you need. So one thing that we find with a lot of different businesses that uh, are either already global or looking to go to new jurisdictions, expand to other areas of the world, they're using multiple different banking partners, FX providers, Treasury platforms. They're also interested in stablecoin as well. And so, so can, can basically do all of the above.

Speaker A: I do know from my personal experience it has been, what do you call it, that buyers kind of drive where it's just, I need to solve this problem, I need to offer this thing for customers because now that's what they're expecting and we uh, just need to get to market as quickly as possible without necessarily thinking about the overall offering and to Your point? How do you navigate having those conversations to inform and educate those that you work with to onboard, consider, soak in and really take advantage of all of the facets that you guys offer as part of solutions?

Speaker B: So I think it depends on what type of business we're talking to. So if they're what we would define as a direct customer, a business that's transacting internationally, they've got customers abroad, is very simple to be onboarded, very quick and you've got access to international payments, international bank accounts. If we're talking to another fintech that are looking to potentially expand into Europe or the US and they're UK based, for example, they can leverage our platform, our licenses to expand to these new jurisdictions as well and service new customers in new jurisdictions.

Speaker A: And so for you guys here at Money20 20, you're having those conversations and seeing such a broad variety of folks, players in this ecosystem, how finding yourself at this event this year, being your first time and thinking about the business development opportunities and all of the educational thought leadership you guys have to offer.

Speaker B: It's my first time at May 2020, as you said. I've done a bunch of different payment events based in the UK and some other places as well. Really excited to be here and there's a lot of different conversations that we're having. So there's catching up with some existing partners, some new conversations going on with brand new startups that are looking to potentially uh, use our Rails or banking infrastructure and then some existing conversations that we're having as well with companies that are looking to expanding to the US or into Europe. So it's a very crucial event for us. Obviously it's the biggest fintech event in Europe.

Speaker A: It's the biggest, best place to be.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Thinking about the startups when back home in Atlanta, Georgia we have such a strong, healthy ecosystem of FinTechs and over 260 FinTech companies operating out of Atlanta, Georgia. And then from a startup perspective we're seeing a lot of growth in that perspective. Some of the conversations I navigate, and I'm not necessarily an advisor to startups, but I'm curious when you're having a conversation with a mid sized larger company and from paired to a startup where uh, it takes a lot more handholding and a lot more consult consultative type of approaches, what does that look like for you and for Sokang?

Speaker B: So it works both ways, where a bunch of different fintechs might be talking to us that they're looking to add a certain product to their offering. So for example, talking to crypto businesses that want to add account issuance from a fiat point of view to their offering. They might be, uh, a regulated crypto company, but they don't have the regulation to hold fiat. So they're looking to use companies like us to enable that for their clients and then likewise vice versa. Uh, it might be a brand new company that's scoping out what, what the situation looks like, how to expand into a new jurisdiction, how to add a different capability and then all the way through to a more established business that might already be working across, say, UK and Europe. They're an, uh, international payment company similar to us. They want to expand into the US and they want to do it quickly. They've got demand from their clients. They can obviously spend a bunch of money and a bunch of time trying to get the regulation themselves or they can go through us and um, enable it most instantly.

Speaker A: In thinking about the regulation piece that you mentioned, I hear a lot of folks talk about it, even at this event. It's been a conversation in the US with the Genius act and we have like now just this flurry of folks that are hopping on board but being mindful and I think being conservative, what are some of the measures or considerations that someone has to consider as part of their journey and embarking on developing and not offering related to stablecoin.

Speaker B: So I think in the last few years regulation has been the key word. Realistically, there's obviously a lot of acts coming in like Junius Act. The FCA is looking at regulation as well with an FCA sandbox for stablecoin issuance for the uk. So there's lots of different things that are happening. Obviously stablecoin in general has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years where everyone's talking about it. Uh, every company wants to offer it to their clients or as a payment acceptance method. So it's basically doing in a compliant way, making sure you're using the right partners, they've got the right licenses, pricing is obviously good and it works is the key thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is a great transition into my last question. What are enterprise clients prioritizing right now? Speed, process capability, flexibility, envision cost efficiency. At the start of this conversation, what is the priority?

Speaker B: I think the simplest way to put it is all of the above. But then just to delve a bit deeper into each individual one, it purely depends on what the business itself is looking to do, what they're looking to offer and what corridor they're specifically looking at. So there are certain Situations where customers might want, they'll prefer speed over cost. They're willing to pay a little bit extra to make sure that it's very fast getting to the end beneficiary, end user. Others will be more interested in the cost aspect. But realistically I think out of uh, um, the different use cases that you mentioned, flexibility is the key one where it's kind of for this market I want it to be cost effective, I want it to be fast, I want to be client. For this one I care mostly about speed. For this one I care mostly about cost. And it's basically being able to be a flexible partner to these, these businesses to basically enable flexibility across the board.

Speaker A: There's so many different levers.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Is situational, uh, in the aspect of you might. Not necessarily. When we talk about real time payments it's like do we need, how real time do we need?

Speaker B: And I think it's quite often it's customer driven from our clients as well. So if uh, we're talking to a fintech that's, that's expanding or they're looking to add stablecoin or a certain offering that we can offer them, it's their client driven. So it depends on what their clients are asking for, where it might be named accounts in a certain currency or it's the speed of transfer. When it comes to stablecoin, it's purely client driven across the board.

Speaker A: So just wrapping up our conversation for our audience, how do they follow along and maybe get access to some of the offerings that Soak in has. Is there any recommendation you have for people to connect?

Speaker B: Soak in.com's website. We're on LinkedIn as well. Reach out to some of the sales guys, the uh, partnership team which, where I sit or across the globe with multiple different offices. Um, and just reach out on the website.

Speaker A: Great, thank you. And thank you all for joining another Fintech talks. We'll see you later.

Speaker B: Thanks very much.

Speaker A: Welcome to the Georgia Fintech Academy podcast. The Georgia FinTech Academy is a collaboration between Georgia's fintech industry and the University System of Georgia. This talent development initiative addresses a massive demand for fintech professionals and gives learners the specialized education experiences needed to enter the fintech sector.