#29 - The CLT Payments Season - Kelly Buchanan, Truist Divisional Chief Information Officer

Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to season two of the Pay CLT Payments Hub podcast, sponsored by Endava. I'm your host, Scott Harkey. And in this season we're going to take a deeper dive into the stories of our payments professionals here in Charlotte. Charlotte's got a lot, as they say around here, and we're excited to highlight the lives of people doing a lot of the fun things and payments and in our community. M. Hey, everybody. We're really excited today because we have Kelly Buchanan joining us. Hey, Kelly, how are you doing?

Speaker B: Good. How are you doing today?

Speaker A: Doing great, Doing great. It is a nice, warm spring. Ish. I don't know if it's technically spring yet. Spring, uh, feeling day here in Charlotte. So, uh, excited for that and the good weather coming this way. Really, um, excited to talk to you today. And I'm excited about this season of the Pay CLT podcast in general because we're really focusing on getting to know individuals. Um, so in the past we focused a little more on payment topics to talking about different, uh, things that were happening in the payment space. We thought it'd be really cool to actually get to know the payments community that's here in Charlotte and dive deeper into that. And so you're one of our early guests in this new journey. So, you know, you have to bear with us as we, as we kind of figure this out. Um, but I think, you know, really excited today to dive into some questions to hopefully learn a little bit about you and how you kind of got started on your payments journey.

Speaker B: I am game.

Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. What better place to start than asking you to just give us a little bit of, uh, overview of kind of you and what it is that you do in your job today.

Speaker B: Sure. So today I am the divisional CIO of enterprise payments and wholesale technology at Truist. And that is a lot to say. Really. What it means is, you know, enterprise payments is all the money movement. Right. So, um, all the different Rails, rtp, wires, ach, all that good stuff. But then also focus on the applications that, uh, support our wholesale or commercial clients. So Treasury Solutions, our commercial digital footprint, as well as things like our corporate investment banking wealth and commercial lending technology.

Speaker A: Awesome. So quite a large remit there. Lots to keep up with. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about just how you, how you manage all that in a little bit. Um, but why don't we start kind of at the beginning of your payments journey? Uh, I know you've got a. Well, uh, I started to say a long Career. And then I felt like, well that might actually make implied time frames. Right. So I'll just say, you know, illustrious career with lots of experience. Um, but what was your first payments job? What was your first job in the payments industry? How did you land it? Give us a little bit of how you got started in this space.

Speaker C: Besides.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll be honest with you, I kind of happened into payments. So um, at the time after college I was actually working in Overland Park, Kansas, uh, City, Missouri and working at Sprint. I had graduated with a computer information systems degree. Um, and I really didn't like, I uh, wanted to come back home. I was from St. Louis, born and raised and um, I wanted to do that. And I knew someone who worked at MasterCard, that was their tech hub at the time. Um, and they introduced me and I pretty much got a job as an associate software engineer which is, you know, at the time I think that was a rung above an intern. Um, and I started in there, uh, in their networking area. So it was really kind of the core systems, the core authorization processing systems. Um, you know, I think it's really cool. So I worked at MasterCard for 20 years and everyone was like well that's a really long time. It is. But it was a really interesting journey at MasterCard because I started when they were privately held which uh, will also date me. Uh, so uh, we really saw the company go from privately held, uh, to a public offering to really a technology company. Uh, now anything is a technology company. You can't run a company without technology. But back then it was this big thing that now we're a technology company, um, and who we were then serving M. You know we used to call them member banks but then it was oh, we have to think about the merchants, we have to think about small businesses and these consumers. And um, and then we really got onto the acquisition uh journey at MasterCard where there was um, you know we were, we realized that just doing authorization processing wasn't going to be enough to stay relative. So really started looking at value, we call the back then value added services and the loyalty space and um, you know the digitization space and whatnot. And I um, started getting in the middle of that as well. So I uh, was doing some due diligences on some of those companies and then when it was time to actually go integrate those companies, when we actually acquired them, uh, I started doing that M and a technical integration. So I was able to um, I moved to Sydney, Australia for about a year and a half and did that for a company there. Um, and then eventually, uh, ended my career at um, MasterCard in London. I, uh, went over there when MasterCard moved into the account to account space and the RTP space. Uh, they bought a company called vocalink, um, which actually runs, you know, the software for the clearinghouses rtp and also a company called Nets, which was running the uh, RTP network for Norway and Denmark. So it was really cool of an experience to watch. Um, there was always a new challenge to watch, kind of how they develop in the payments space.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's fascinating. And as you know we've got some overlap there in that, uh, at Edendava where I work, vocal, um, link, slash, now MasterCard is, is one of our largest customers and has been for the last 15 years, way back to the early days of Vocal Link. Um, and it is always funny when, when we talk about what we do because, um, I mentioned Vocal Link and you know, most people here in the US don't know who they are. Right. And then you say, you know, actually they're the ones that, you know, built and operate the RTP network and it's like, oh, wow, really? I didn't know. So, uh, certainly some of those kind of companies, uh, that are maybe less known but have played a key role. And obviously now in MasterCard, um, the other thing that you said that was really interesting to me, the coding aspect. Now I'm sure given your background, you've been asked this a number of times, but do you still code? Can you write any code these days?

Speaker B: I help my daughter with her Python homework sometimes, but no, no, I don't code anymore. Um, but I, uh, do love technology and I love being in technology and that space and kind of, uh, you know, when I went to college I didn't go thinking I was going to be in technology. Uh, and I ended up getting a minor in technology because I thought it was going to make me, you know, more marketable and I just loved it. I loved watching, you know, what it could solve and you know, uh, so I just have a lot of respect for it.

Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome.

Speaker B: I don't think they would let me anymore. Like, I think that if I tried to be like, please step away.

Speaker A: Well, that's, that's where AI is going to help us. Right?

Speaker B: That's, that's, that's the story that is true. I can code if I can get, if I get some of the AI platforms on my, on my laptop.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. All right, well, what about the Charlotte side of things? Right. I believe you moved here with Truist. What were your first impressions of Charlotte when you moved here?

Speaker B: I was really excited to move to Charlotte. You know, we had been in London for five years. And, um, I chose to come to Charlotte over some other locations because I thought, you know, I grew up, like I said, in the Midwest. I've got two smaller children and you know, being in a place where I thought was one really thriving in the payments and financial industry, but also just, um, a really great, um, really great kind of lifestyle of, you know, the weather and being out and about and so on. Um, I will tell you a funny story. My daughter, um, she pretty much grew up in London. And, um, when we moved here, we were out, we went to a concert, like our first weekend here. And, uh, we were walking around and you know, people are very, very friendly here. And so, like, everyone's like, oh, you know, how are you doing? I like your outfit. This is that. And she finally looked at me. She's like, why are these people speaking to me? Don't they know about stranger danger? Because, you know, bigger cities, like, London's not rude like other cities, but they just. There's so many people, you just don't talk to them. Um, and it was just, it was interesting. Just watch kind of, them kind of move into this. I call it, you know, Southern charm. Um, uh, that we have here.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's very true. So I, I've lived here most of my life and I've kind of just gotten used to it. But I, I've noticed when I go places and I interact, you know, I'm waving at people as they walk by and like, what are you doing? Why are you so weird? I just, I don't know. That's just the way I was raised, is you're friendly and you, you know, you'd be nice to strangers.

Speaker B: But, uh, I tell you, I still don't understand all of the, you know, I didn't grow up in a college sports area either. So the, the. All of the frenzy around the basketball and the, and the different college rival, I have not embraced just yet.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is the thing, especially this time of year. Um, I lived in the Raleigh area, Raleigh, Durham area for a while and it's even more so there because so many of the universities, you know, that sport in the college, basketball, etc, are there. Um, yeah, it's a thing. I'm surprised you haven't gotten sucked in yet. But, uh, it's definitely one of those things. Um, I think wanted to dive a little bit into just your career journey because I think it's interesting for people to hear kind of the, maybe some of the pivotal moments or just almost like what are the foundational steps that built you to your career, to where you are today? Are there any particular ones that stand out as um, just a really big transition or a really big set of responsibility or a new role that you took on that you feel like really shaped your success and your kind of career path?

Speaker B: I do. I think there's kind of two. Um, one is kind of more of the series of them where um, you know, I always say you work in a big company and there are some pros and cons of working at a big company versus a fintech, right? And one of the pros of working at a larger company is you really can move around quite a bit within the same organization. And I really took advantage of that at MasterCard, like every two to three years it was like I'd learn something in a space and just kind of be like, okay, now what? Right. And I think it's really important in the payments area because I always like to say, you know, payments crosses every system at a, at a financial organization or no matter where you are, right? If, if you don't understand the digital front end, like if, if our online banking is down, payments is down. If you don't understand, you know, the back end and deposits, if deposits are down, payments are down, right? So if it really was about kind of um, moving around to all the different areas and really understanding all the different nuances of that, um, which I think really, really did help me. The other one is again, you know, payments, I really like critical systems, um, that matter, right. So I've always enjoyed payments because of that, because you can really see how you're impacting people's lives every day. Um, I used to always say like, you know, if you want to, if you don't like, it's a special place for people in technology, right? Because when you mess up, it is a big, it is a big issue. And you know, you don't have that on some of the other. You know, I was like, if you want to go work on the websites, go work on the websites. Nobody cares if MasterCard.com goes down, right? Um, but this is, this is for tough people. Um, and I think that was the other thing of just uh, you know, the first big, big release I had that went really bad, right? We were actually doing ah, a credit card conversion and it just went really bad and we ended up having to go out to a lot of our large banks and explain what went wrong, apologize, build that credibility back up both externally but also internally. Um, and also understanding then how it impacted their businesses. Um, and it really taught me a lot one of just what it means to have operational rigor, what it means to if it doesn't scale, it doesn't matter. Which is what I, you know, like to say a lot in the payment space. Um, but also being able to understand that that's the job. It was really hard for me that one year when like everything seemed to be going wrong and you take it upon yourself. But then you realize especially in larger management like that that's just our job. No one call, I always say, no one calls me to go, hey, thanks for keeping payments up today. They call me when their car doesn't work or things are down. And so being able to understand that's the job and drive teams over those humps and those fires, um, is really something I learned. Um, and now I like it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's great. And I think especially in financial institutions, right, like working in payments is like that in general, I think because as you said, the criticality of you messed with someone's money and that's, that's where real, real emotion comes in. Right. It has real impact on people. It can having lack of or not having availability to move money or to, to make, get a deposit or whatever can mean someone can't go buy groceries or they can't pay rent or these real life impacting things. Um, but I think especially in financial institutions where, where you know, my view of financial institutions, the job of the institution is to protect the kind of the people's money in the financial system more broadly. Right. Um, and so it feels like it takes on an extra level of criticality there of it's not only payments, but it's payments in a financial institution whose responsibility is to make sure that it does work. Uh, and so it's like a heightened level of that responsibility.

Speaker B: It really is. And you know, it's a different also when you think about it from, you know, the different types of rails there are as well. Right. So RTP and Zell, like that's immediate, the customer expectation on that is it should work. And if it doesn't work, you're, you're not getting access to your money. And that's a real problem. Uh, for between us and, and the clients, you think about ach and wires, which, you know, if, if I'm having a hiccup at wires or ach in the morning I'm kind of okay. Once it starts getting later in the day, I get real nervous. Ah, because you know, look, that's the difference of people getting their paychecks. Um, you know, if I don't get, if I don't get payroll out on an ach payroll out by Friday, like they're going to go without the weekend with their paycheck. And that's a, that's, that's a lot of responsibility um, to our clients and the businesses that we help.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that I think is really interesting about your career is that you spent time in Australia and in the UK and I know from my experience that's given a much broader view of all kinds of things. But how has that impacted your experience and how you think about the ecosystem?

Speaker B: It was really interesting. So when I um, was still younger in my career when I moved to Australia, uh, and you just. I had, first time I'd really been out of the country like that and um, I think it's funny because I worked for a credit card company and I had a credit card and I went there and they, we didn't have chip and they were all chip and pin and even though they could take it, they, they wouldn't like if you, if they found out that like if you did it really quick it would be fine and they would get mad that you had to sign it but if they saw you start to do it they'd be like we don't take that. And then I'd argue with them and be like yes you do. You actually, you do. You have to take it.

Speaker C: You have to.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. I've had that argument more than once. It doesn't usually go very well with

Speaker B: a merchant but it doesn't, it doesn't. And so it was really interesting. And then, and then moving to the UK where it's very real time payments, account to account focused, right. Where someone would say like, you know, uh, if you, if I was going to pay something for the kids school and they asked me what my, you know, my account number was and I was like what, why are we doing, what are we doing? Um, or I was used to cash app, you know and they nearly have that. So um, it really has broadened one thinking about the difference. There's a difference in client uh, expectations or client preferences right wherever you go. And um, somewhat like we're not, we're going to be hard pressed to get away from some of the credit card stuff in the States because people love loyalty Points where you don't really have that in some of the other countries. So there's some parts of that. Of that. But then there's the other piece of it is, you know, just the difference between how m complex, uh, the United States kind of payment systems are, um, versus like in Australia or uk which one? They're smaller. They have the one central bank and they can regulate things and mandate things and really move the dial so much quicker. Right. Um, and I think that that's interesting and I think it's, you know, even in the States that there's so many people, even people that work in payments, honestly, that don't understand that this is already happening everywhere else across the world and we can learn so much from.

Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely agree. What, what about from a consumer standpoint or an end customer standpoint? Have you any picked up on any cultural differences when it comes to payments? Ways they think about the role that payment plays in their lives or how they like to leverage them or anything like that?

Speaker B: Um, you know, like I said, I think, I think that it is interesting how much more. And maybe it's just like the smaller. But like, if you think about it in, you know, when we're working in Norway or Denmark, like they knew kind of the bat. They knew their, their provide. Right. The battalion service in Denmark, where, you know, they run the bill pay, like they know the names of them. They're much more closer to all of that, um, and understanding kind of how their money's being used. And, um, I think that that's really interesting. And I think, like I said, uh, some of the ways that, you know, if you, if you think of India, which is like almost completely cashless. Right. Um, and not even a lot of that with being in the unbanked. So I think it's just really interesting. Some of it is kind of preference, but some of it is also the rate at which that the clients are able to adopt things and what they're exposed to. Right. Um, I think that everyone always asks me, you know, when are checks going away? And my answer is always, not in my lifetime. Um, and, you know, some of that has to do with preference, but also kind of the technical systems that we have and how hard it is to kind of move off of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. One of the more interesting things that I saw, um, from a cultural perspective was specifically with some of the Asian countries where super wallets or the wallets are a much bigger part of the customer journey. Right. In that they don't just have a wallet, but they have Everything loaded in the wallet, right? The Ali pays, et cetera, WeChat pays, etcetera. Um, and uh, so I, like I said, I grew up here in Charlotte and went to UNC Charlotte for undergraduate. And there's a study that UNC Charlotte did looking at that cultural element on payment preferences. And what they found was that in cultures that are, um, will say, heavily influenced by the government with a very kind of authoritarian view, uh, that people typically want less choice, right? In, in their personal lives and decisions. So they're kind of trained culturally to. There is an answer to this thing and there's one answer to this thing. Whether it's, you know, the milk that you buy or it's the payment service that you use or it's the grocery store that you go to. Optionality. And capitalism is not, not a thing, right? M as much prevalent versus in kind of Western cultures where everyone wants to choose everything, right? Like the theory is that we would never have a super app here in the US because as an end user, no one will ever use just one app for everything. They actually want an app that they feel is special for this thing or that thing or that thing. Um, but it was just really interesting because when you go to those countries you see it, right? You see the usage of those apps across everything. And then, then I'm sure you and you as well as I have seen plenty of companies try to do the, oh well, let's build a super app here in the US or let's try to load all this stuff in there, including some of the banks. Um, when I was at bank of America we, we had a plan at one point to load a whole bunch of stuff into our mobile banking app. Everything from tap to pay to coupons and offers and all these different things we were going to put in there but found that consumers didn't want that. They actually wanted an app for this or an app for that. Um, so I think some things like that are really interesting to see as well.

Speaker B: It's also really interesting these days to think about it in a, um, in the, even the generational, like what do we have like seven different generations now, um, that are kind of in the workforce or are across us, right? And um, it's interesting to see their preferences and how they've changed and how it's changing kind of what we're doing. I mean we've got, you know, a, um, more ah, mature uh, client base that still wants to go to the branch and they want to see someone, right? And then you've got Kind of some of the more digital savvy. I don't know my daughter, I have a 12 year old daughter who is the same where it's like also you know all the different apps that they have and that they want to switch between and you go out to dinner with someone now and it's like half of them take Venmo, half of them take Zelle. Someone's using Cash app like it's, it can get a lot. I have a new rule. I don't download M any more apps to pay someone.

Speaker A: Surely they, yeah, it's like come on, you can use one of the three I already have. Right. Like between Cash App, Venmo and Zelle. Sure. Surely we can make it work.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, so one, one of the uh, I guess if we look a little bit at the payment space more broadly. One of the areas I wanted to ask you about was just payment trends. Right? Like what, what do you think is one of the most underrated or overlooked trend in payments right now? What doesn't get enough air time or attention but you feel like is really important.

Speaker B: So funny. Um, I, I, I'm a payment nerd so I listen to so much stuff it's hard for me to like, I'm like they, they all do. Right. Like name it. AI rtp Embedded Finance. Right. Um, I don't think that so from, from my standpoint I um, think, I don't know that RTP real time payments is under, you know, under hyped but I think it's the value that it can bring is under um, underappreciated. How about that? Um, I think that there's so much value that it's going to bring to clients but also on the unbanked. Right. And what it can do for um, some of the small businesses that, that haven't kind of look, haven't joined the uh, more of the digital economy. If you think about um, you know folks that don't have bank accounts like there we look I used to work at MasterCard and they did so much in financial inclusion and financial inclusion was mostly aimed at um, underdeveloped countries. Right. Where we have so much of the US that is unbanked or people in the gig economy that ah, RTP can, can really help And I don't think that we have now that we've got you know, you've got FedNow coming out, you've got you know, RTP with the clearinghouse. Um, and I think you'll get more and more of that. But I still don't think that we've been really clear as financial institutions or payment products folks, or what have you to really drive out the key business cases that we should be going after. I feel like it's a little bit build it, they will come and a little bit haphazardly, as opposed to really saying like, this is the value that we can create for these different user bases and really start figuring out how we, how we drive that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. I am involved in a bunch of the different communities around real time payments, including, um, the Faster Payments Council, where that's a frequent topic of conversation. Right. We're trying to educate people on what are the use cases where real time payments provide value? What are the ways that banks can create those use cases to justify the expense in building out, you know, the capability? What are the ways we can help enable third parties to come up with these cases? I feel like one of the challenges is just, I mean, it's inherent in payments, but it's just the, the number of entities involved in the movement of money that have to kind of all be on board. Right? So it's like you can, you can build a consumer value proposition and a bank can enable that, but then you've got to worry about, well, does the receiving party of that also have it enabled? And then there's that complexity, right? Or if you go the commercial or the corporate side, the treasury side, well, then it's. Was the ERP enable that? And then if you go downstream from that, does the cash management platform enable it? Like, uh, so all these entities have to kind of have believed in the use case and enabled it. And I think that's part of what makes it really challenge where there's not such a compelling use case, where it's just like, oh man, if we did this, we could make millions and billions of dollars. And so we're all going to go do it. It's lots of, I feel like it's lots of little incremental use cases which, which clearly add value, but that, you know, it's almost like they have to get the inertia and the momentum behind them and then the ecosystem built out to actually enable them.

Speaker B: You're right. And you know, it's interesting even like, I would love it when we get to a place where we just talk about payments and how the payment needs to be facilitated. Right. Do you need the payment right now or can you wait? How much do you want the payment to cost and so on? Because everyone's like, I would, you know, it'd be great. We talk about it here of like, you know, uh, we talked sometimes, you know, I don't know if it's a buzzword anymore. I feel like I say some of these and people like, no one says that anymore. I'm like, whatever. Um, but you know, intelligent routing or, you know, smart orchestration or whatnot, where, you know, if we're having an issue with the Fed or are closing our, you know, ach or our wires on a Friday, you know, can I just flip that over to rtp? Especially now that, you know, they've increased their limits and still get people paid. Like, do we being more understanding kind of how should the end goal of getting people their money as opposed to being so rail specific of how that needs to go and then putting the onus on all of those people in that chain to, to kind of make that decision for us.

Speaker A: Yeah, what, what I find really interesting about that is, is you're right, like it's almost cliche to talk about like intelligent routing because people talk about it so much, but at the same time it still doesn't exist. So it's like, why can we all think that this is like the natural thing we should get to and believe in the value of it, but yet no one's built it yet. It's not a technical problem. Right. It's easy to build with today's technology,

Speaker B: but there's 5,000 payment hubs. Like I can't go to A, I can't get through my email in one day without someone pitching me a new payment hub.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it is. Like I said, I love the topic for that reason of where all the, all the payment nerds are like, yeah, absolutely. Like, this is, you know, let's talk about just, we want to get money from A to B and what are your criteria? Right? Is it speed? Is it cost? Is it. But yet it still doesn't exist.

Speaker B: I think it still goes back to. I think that that liability and whatnot of like, I'm then changing some, like if you're not as a client telling me exactly what to do with it, am I, am I changing it on the back end and you know, do we all understand kind of that. I always think about it, especially from my MasterCard days of like, who's liable here? Right? Merchant, Is it us? Is it the acquirer? Like where, you know, where are all these liability shifts happening when you're making some of these decisions on behalf of clients, but then otherwise I have to then educate clients though, to be able to make that Decision and I mean, we're payment nerds and it's confusing for us.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, uh, you know, now that you say that, I guess the other dimension is the regulatory aspect of it, right? Of like what, what reg apply depending on what rail it took. And, and if you made that decision, do you, did you get the right disclosures up front or were you assuming it was going to be like that? That's the kind of stuff that complicates

Speaker B: it gets us into trouble. Yeah. Ah.

Speaker A: Um, all right, so if you could change one thing about the payments industry, what would it be?

Speaker B: It would be kind of a little bit. What we talked about is that just lack of interoperability and the complexity. Right. I mean, it's inherently complicated, complex. It's been around for a really long time. And then we've, you know, we've, we've started building one. Uh, thing I like is over time, you know, especially when I was maybe like, you think 10, 15 years ago, right. Um, a MasterCard and a PayPal were, uh, they were competitors. Now we're realizing in the fintech space, right, is like we're partners and we need each other to do things. But then we just kind of taken some of the legacy systems and then plopped more and more, you know, fintechs or, or simplification systems on top of it, almost making it even more complex. And the interoperability, I mean, if you think about our two FedNow and RTP, like they're not, they don't work together. Right. And it just makes it a lot more complicated. So, um, I would like to see more operability and simplification.

Speaker A: That's a, that's a solid request. I think, I think we all could benefit from that.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, all right, so last one about this, this kind of part of the conversation, then we're going to jump into some local questions, but it's kind of a big picture question about you and that's. If you weren't in payments, what career would you be in? Do you have a, a side career or a thing you've always wanted to do or felt like you would do if you ever changed career paths?

Speaker B: Um, I mean, I've always wanted to be an heiress. Uh, that didn't have to work, but

Speaker A: I was trying to process that. I'm like. Is that like an aerial stunts, like.

Speaker B: No, no, it's just pendantly wealthy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: No, I would say a lawyer. Um, I, I think I would be a lawyer. I love everything crime and crime shows. Maybe a forensic scientist on that side Like, I like that aspect of it. But, um, I think, I think that I like. I like complex things. I like being able to look across things and figuring out, like, how do you put this together? You know, a lot of the things that I do, um, when you ask me if I code anymore, not so much. You know, why I always say what I bring to the table is being able to sit with our business partners and understanding what do they need, what are they looking for, and then getting the right technology solutions behind it to go like, let's do it like this and how do we execute against that? And ah, uh, I think like, when you can. I guess I can see that when I watch. I'm a Law and Order junkie, right. I don't even know if they're still making them. Um, I think I've like, watched every episode being able to like, see all that and like, put the pieces together and figure out the, the story. I love.

Speaker A: Yeah. I would tell you this is the career advice I always give to people in this space that are interested in technology but may, may not, um, see themselves as a developer, writer or be attracted to that side of things. And it's in that, find the space between the tech and the business, right? Like, be the person that can help translate the business needs into the technology solution. You don't have to understand at a detailed level how to code it or how to build it, but if you can be that translation layer that's got so much more value in it than being one or the other, because there are lots of people that can talk about the business, and there are lots of people that can be good engineers or build the tech, but if you can be the bridge in between and really help provide insight there, that's, that's way more powerful and can be way more valuable. So that certainly resonates. All right, let's ask some local questions to wrap things up. Um, if you could have dinner with any payments leader, pastor present, who would it be and why?

Speaker B: I would probably say, like, I don't have one, but like, you know, back in the day, I think, you know, when the clearinghouse started, you know, there was, I think that a lot of that started, I think, uh, in London back in the day. Uh, I would love to sit with some of those folks who remember they used to all come to the room with their checks and just kind of like, figure out the balances and then like, trade the money right there. I just think it would be so interesting to sit down and speak with them around, kind of what are they doing? Like, how is that Experience. Experience and then having that conversation about what our experience is now. Um, and, and I think that would just be a cool conversation.

Speaker A: You would just blow their minds. They, they might.

Speaker B: Although they might go, you guys haven't solved that yet. I'm like, no, no we haven't. We're still writing checks. Yes, we are.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. They would be surprised that those still exist. We thought that would die out after a decade or so.

Speaker B: Exactly. They were. They think we live like the Jetsons, but not, not so much.

Speaker A: Um, so the next one, you've, as we talked about before, you've been able to uh, to live and have you know, experience your career in different parts of the world. Um, Charlotte's a growing fintech hub. We've got a lot of activity here. We've always had a strong financial services background, but I think we've seen, you know, increasing that expand into other types of fintech and other things as well. Um, how do you, what do you think about our kind of payment ecosystem and how it compares to other markets or other regions that you've lived in before?

Speaker B: I think it's a really cool ah, ecosystem here actually. I think that you've got a lot of folks that understand the end to end pieces of payments in the financial industries. Right. They've worked. A lot of people here have, you know, worked at all of the different financial institutions and really just have deep expertise around how some of this stuff came about. You know, who's doing what in that space and you know, um, and, and where, you know, everyone's got an idea of like, you know, if I started my own startup, this is, this is what I would focus on. Um, and it's different because if you think about um, maybe uh, the, the west coast, right? Yes. There's some, you know, the, it's all about startup, it's about the tech. I think it's more about the tech than it is about the actual business of payments. Think about New York and it's a little bit more of that um, money management. Right. Corporate, uh, investment banking focus. Um, and here I just feel like it's more of our payment people um, that really understand those pieces. So I think it's really cool. And I think it's also, if you go back to as well, what we talked about Charlotte in the beginning being a very um, open community, um, people are really wanting to share their information. Right. It's not this like I need to be the smartest person in the room. Or, you know, I've got to show that I know this. People are really open to discussing it. You know, what they know, what they don't know. And I think that that makes it a really cool community.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's fantastic. I think that that makes me feel really proud of the community to know that that's the impression that you've gotten of it. Because, uh, I think that's all totally true. And, and my experience with a lot of the west coast companies has been that often they're lacking that deep banking and payments expertise. Great, great tech, great ideas, great customer experience, but sometimes lacking the, like, here's how these bank systems actually work and here's why this is so complicated, or here's why this, you know, takes the. The time it takes, or, uh, et cetera.

Speaker B: So Oracle Tech solution that, ah, they're like, it's cool. I just. No one. It's going to. No one needs it.

Speaker A: Like, Exactly.

Speaker B: Don't need it.

Speaker A: Not solving a problem. Yeah. All right, last question. What's your favorite thing about Charlotte? Or what's something going on in the city that. That you're really excited about?

Speaker B: So I live right on the, um, border of Uptown and South End. And, um, I love, I love these types of days, like these sunny days, like spring and summer, because people are just out and about. It's a very safe area. You know, I will walk to work and walk home late at night sometimes. Um, but I love the weekends and stuff. Everyone's out. We're running on the rail trail, you know, walking to different places to eat. I get to see, like, on the weekends. There's like. There was like, two weekends ago, it was crazy downtown where it's like, there was the basketball games, there was a parade, uh, and there was a, um, uh, football or the soccer, soccer, uh, games. And it's just. The city just kind of is alive on those. On those times. People are walking everywhere and you can just feel it. And I really love that. And the city's small enough as well, where it's. It's not so spread out to where you. You can still feel that. And we'll forget because we will. We live so close to it. We'll see all these people walking some days, and we're like, what's going. What. What is it this weekend? Right? What's going on? Um, and. And again, um, a mom of two smaller kids. Um, it's very family friendly, right. So I can take them, um, everywhere with us and. And they can also enjoy it as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Kelly, thank you so much. It's been a really awesome conversation. Really enjoyed getting to know you more and just hearing all your background. I'm sure everybody's going to enjoy hearing it as well. Uh, thank you. Thank you for being here.

Speaker B: No, thanks for having me. I really had a good time and I'm. I'm looking forward to doing more with, uh, the organization and being a bigger part of the community.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, we thank you for that and we thank everybody that's been listening today. This is the Pay Pay CLT Payments Hub podcast and we will see you next time.

Speaker C: Hey, Pay CLT podcast listeners. This is Nick Williams, the producer of the Pay CLT Payments Hub podcast sponsored by dava, alongside our production maestro, Chris Webster. This episode from our Charlotte community season may be over, but you can check out the episode notes for further resources. We'd like to thank Endava for their generous support and thank you for listening today.