Money Is Becoming a Protocol, Not a Permission

Transcript

Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. I'm Anna and I'll be moderating today's conversation. I just joined um Zuba as chief of staff, but my background has taken me from institutional finance at JP Morgan and Bluepool Capital to building my own company and working with early stage startups. So, I've seen payments and financial infrastructure from a couple of different angles. Joining me is Josiah Senu. He's the co-founder and CEO of Zuba. Uh Josiah was previously employee number 12 at Tea and helped scale the company to $10 billion valuation. Today, he's on a mission to building the world's most reliable bank starting with um crossber payments in emerging markets. So Josiah, you've

previously claimed that traditional correspondent banking rails are broken, but obviously there's a lot of fintech firms trying to build new rails. What makes you believe that crossber payments in Africa is still broken? >> When you think about the way that money moves across the world, it's fundamentally uh at its core about trying to make sure that money moves from one part of the world in a local currency to another part of the world in local currency. uh and when it does so you need to find a rail that does so in in an intelligent and a smart way. Uh today that rail um is has been built in the 1970s. A rail which um ultimately belongs in belongs in the past. Why?

Because it was made before the internet. Um and and today money moves on the internet and moves in a way which uh is much more intelligent and smart um at least in the way that people interact with each other. So when you look at the the environments uh like in Africa for example where mobile money is much more prevalent and is is moving quite strongly it's a response to the local challenges. So it's a response to things which are happening in the market. Um and really the the current system of moving money hasn't adapted to that new system in an intelligent way. So really what the opportunity is I think in in the African continent is to move to where in the way that money should move and that is um or where we believe on a

stable coin native rail >> right and what would you say what aspect of your thesis has changed the most since founding Zuba and I guess what's the most expensive lesson you've learned so far >> um I I think you know the the biggest lesson that uh we've learned is that ultimately people don't necess necessarily care about the infrastructure. Um what what they care about is uh the outcome that they're looking for. I.e. um I I find that money is a is a path to an action, right? My ability to move from A to B is to do something. So, you know, our tagline is make money move as fast as ideas. So, you know, an entrepreneur wants to build something. Um they want to, you know,

maybe there's an entrepreneur wants to buy a good from from China or Singapore or wherever and and and they're trying to do that. Um and they're not worried. They're not trying to think about, you know, how does a Swift payment work or uh, you know, how do I use the banks to move that money? They just want to get it done. Um, and I think it's it's it's ever more surprising at the fact that that's that's what matters the most and what we have to deliver as a business is that and I think the most expensive mistake that you can make I think is not listening to the customer. And I think we are we are really really focused on being obsessed with that thought.

>> Right. And what do you think is the biggest opportunity for stable coin adoption that no one has cracked yet? I >> I I think ultimately, you know, if you look at the way that international trade works today, um over 70% of international trade still clears in USD and and that means that it's still the heart of the operating account um in the way in which a globally first business will have to think. And so I think the the bank of the future, the business of the future, the infrastructure of the future puts the the customer at the heart of that and thinks through the way trade happens today. It finds the centers of global trade. I mean if you think about Singapore, Singapore was a port, right? That brought people together for trade and and ultimately I

think our our objective as a business is to make sure that trade happens much much more easier in a much more convenient manner and with speed, with access, with availability. And when those things happen, you get distribution and growth. Our job is to increase the GDP of the economies in which we contribute to increase the wealth of the merchants that we work for. And and so that's what at least makes me excited to to be building and and why I think that the secret source is thinking about what is the globally first operating account for any business anywhere in the world. >> Right. And for Zuba, I mean, Zuba positions itself as license and compliance first, but in emerging markets, you primarily operate via um partnerships with licensed partners. Why

do you think this is the right approach? And how do you mitigate counterparty risk in these cases? >> Yeah, it's it's really tough. I mean, when you're trying to build a global network and you're trying to provide an experience to your customer, you know, where money movement is super easy, uh, you have to think about those markets in a really practical way. Um, and, you know, we we are a a business that is operating at such a speed. We're moving incredibly fast. And to do that, right, to service our customers needs, it means that we have to partner. we can't necessarily have a license in every jurisdiction really quickly because those processes take time and they take time for a necessary reason. So in the meantime, we work with what we believe to be the bestin-class in these different markets. Uh and we ultimately

learn with them. We grow with them. Uh we believe that there's no zero sum game. We have a very open first approach to the way that we build. And so if there is a business that is doing a better uh is serving a corridor in a better way, in a in a cheaper way, in a more affordable way, in a in a more reliable way, then why wouldn't we use that? That does doesn't make sense. Our job is to provide again the best service to the customer. So whether or not we are licensed in that uh specific jurisdiction or we work with partners in that jurisdiction, I think it will always be our story to to deliver value to the customer.

>> But what is the long-term ambition? where where are you thinking in terms of this strategy? I >> I think the long-term goal for us is to ultimately be a a wealth and growth partner to every business and every uh consumer anywhere in the world with a globally first approach. Um I think that the the the parts of the world which suffer the most and are not integrated in the financial system is is in the emerging markets the global south today. I mean if you think about uh you know the fact that tier one banks have ultimately left um these markets the the the some parts of central Asia the Caribbean Africa etc. Um it's not just that we are you know providing a a

fundamental new technology which moves the world forward actually what you're doing is something more critical and more important which is that you're filling the vacuum. That is what's more critical because if a merchant today you know wants to uh buy goods from China they have to go through a set of correspondent banks. If they want to do it in Europe they have to go through a set of correspondent banks but the the branches are closing. um you know the Medici 700 years ago you know if they were looking on um you know they would realize that the the world is very different now and as a result we have to move with the times and again I'll say it crystal clear our strategy is to obsess over the customer and meet the customer where they are >> right and you've talked about how

blockchain has changed money from permission to a protocol what does that mean um in practice and how do you think it changes as stable coins becomes more mainstream. >> Yeah, I I it's fascinating actually. I think I'll answer that question with um an analogy. If you if you think back to um let's say the 1950s or 1960s in the way that information was distributed to people, it was often distributed um through uh core media channels, right? So big state media or large news corporations or major newspapers. And fundamentally that meant they had a monopoly over access to information, right? Um you where you got

your news was from these um key information sources. Uh and then what you had in the 2000s 2010s was the proliferation of social media, right? and you had um uh uh an ability for individuals to share content and you know platforms like YouTube and uh you know Twitter and and many others now X and ultimately that democratized the the access the availability of information and created widespread dissemination and the same thing is happening with money um today right what what's happening with money is that I no longer need a bank as an intermediary to govern the trust relationship between me and you actually I have something else this cryptographic blockchain ledger you know very similar to like TCP or IP protocol

which is the way in which I am able to interact um with you and so there's no intermediary I can do a direct transfer between me and you and that is such a fundamental thing because it means that now access has been fundamentally opened up there is no more a monopoly access over money and of course it's not quite the same as information because there are more barriers to entry but I think the path and direction of travel is very clear The money is no longer about whether or not a central bank approves my ability to exchange in a bilateral engagement, but whether or not we decide to do that, how we decide to do that, and which platform we decide to do it on.

>> I think just bringing the conversation a little bit back to Zuba. Um, I know I mean the sheer speed of growth that we're experiencing is mind-blowing. Um, what are the practices that you've put in place to make sure you keep a high performing team? I think you know when when I think about what our customer deserves um I think about that in my team. >> So I believe that our customer deserves unreasonable outcomes. They deserve to see a future that they would never have predicted. That's the most mind-blowing experiences and our team is like that. We try to push for unreasonable results and we try to move as fast as we can. Um and today I have it on on good word from a number of people that we are the fastest growing payments neo bank in the world today and in history ever. And

that gives me real excitement and because that comes from from the team. I think the second thing is about our ability to stay sharp. Our customer cares about the service that we provide them, right? The intentionality, the the focus. They have a problem, we pick up the phone, we're there for them. Whether it's 2:00 a.m. in the middle of the night when they've got a transaction that they need to process or it's 9:00 a.m. in the very morning when they've waited in order to discuss their problem. Our ability to stay sharp attention to detail and that transmitting to the team means that we drive incredible results. And then I think the third thing is us being known for our obsession. And I think that again translates to the customer. You know when a when a business person or a consumer when they enter that activity

and decide I want to start a company or they decide I want to open a shop in my local community. I want to provide service to others. They do so with the aim of making sure the people around them are better. And that healthy obsession leads to them doing well, their their family doing well, their community doing well, their friends doing well, etc. And that's the same thing that we want to do at Zubo which is that if we do well actually it means that our customer has done well that means our our industry has done well that means our economy has done well that means living standards have improved and that mission is much a much bigger mission than we can ever imagine.

>> It's super exciting. Um to wrap up I think the biggest takeaway is that stable coin is I think becoming less about crypto but more about building infrastructure. It's about moving money reliably, quickly, and serving in markets where traditional rails still struggle to serve. And if any of this has resonated with you, we'd love to chat. Please come find Josiah or me after this session or you can reach out to our team at salesuba.com and we'll get back to you within 24 hours. Josiah, thank you and thank you everyone for joining us.