FLOSS Weekly 726 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Doc Searls (00:00:00):
This is FLOSS Weekly. I'm Doc Searls. This week, Jonathan Bennett and I talked to Paula Hunter of Mojaloop. We talked to her a year ago, and we're going over all the progress is made in the meantime, and especially on the topic of digital public goods plus everything surrounding that. What Mojaloop does is a foundation. There's also an open source project working with the less developed world on whole new ways to do transactions that are cheap and affordable and based on open source and will reduce the number of readers that people have to deal with that retail counters and many other side effects. Besides that, it's a really interesting project, and that is coming up next.
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Doc Searls (00:00:54):
This is FLOSS Weekly, episode 726, recorded Wednesday, April 5th, 2023. Mojaloop and Digital Public Goods
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Doc Searls (00:01:33):
Hello again, everybody everywhere. I am Doc Searls. This is FLOSS Weekly, and I am joined this week by Jonathan Bed himself there in the chair. That makes him look less tall than he really is. <Laugh>, because it's huge. <Laugh>.
Jonathan Bennett (00:01:48):
Indeed. It's good to be here.
Doc Searls (00:01:50):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Great. And everything fine. You got with your enlarged family in Oklahoma there?
Jonathan Bennett (00:01:57):
Yeah, doing pretty well. Took about a month off. I told everybody my wife is due in March. I'm probably gonna be gone for a while. We've, we've gotten that taken care of. Baby is out and doing relatively well. Few things to work through, but that's all right. We're, we're doing well.
Doc Searls (00:02:12):
You always have those. I I spent time yesterday with in our new neighborhood here with the family across the street, which is a husband, wife, and a three-year-old who really, really, really wants to explore the street. <Laugh>, you know, <laugh>, they're yelling at him. Stay on the green, stay on the grass. Stay on the grass. <Laugh> being a three-year-old boy, he doesn't do that.
Jonathan Bennett (00:02:35):
<Laugh>,
Doc Searls (00:02:37):
He takes that as advisory <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and not a command. Anyway, see? Yeah. You've already got at least one. Right?
Jonathan Bennett (00:02:45):
I've got a four year old and a two-year-old, and we are
Doc Searls (00:02:47):
Working. Oh, man. You've got
Jonathan Bennett (00:02:48):
Three that process some various different things. No, there's nothing you're to do that is okay.
Doc Searls (00:02:54):
And they're not the same. Oh my God. They're all, they're, oh, no, they're all different. <Laugh>. Yes.
Jonathan Bennett (00:03:01):
We were talking about that last night. Our, my son, my wife is working on doing some preschooling, and she was telling me things that she's struggling with him, and I'm hearing my own mother's voice echoing in my ears and things that she complains that I did when I was growing up. And I'm like, I'm so sorry that I gave you a mini me. Oh
Doc Searls (00:03:18):
My God. We our youngest is now 26, but he amazingly he could walk at nine months. He was a talker early on, and like, not much over a year. He, he toilet trained himself. And then after that decided he didn't like that he just rathered <laugh>. He just preferred the diaper for like the next three years. <Laugh>, dude, you can talk, we can negotiate this. No, he wasn't doing that <laugh>. It's like, wait a minute. The others all know, knew, you know, and Yeah,
Jonathan Bennett (00:03:59):
<Laugh>. Oh, kids are crazy. They're just crazy when they're that young.
Doc Searls (00:04:02):
Goodness. <laugh>. Anyway. Well, the adults are too, so well,
Jonathan Bennett (00:04:06):
That's true.
Doc Searls (00:04:07):
Have you done any homework on this one for today?
Jonathan Bennett (00:04:10):
Yeah, so I'm, I'm pretty sure I caught the show live last time when we talked about Mojaloop. Mojaloop. done a little bit of looking into it since then. And I, I have some questions and of course we're gonna do a checkup on, on where it's gone and what's happened. But from what I understand, it's all about letting people do banking with nothing more than a cell phone and not necessarily a smartphone. You know, not a, not an Android like most of us have in our pockets here in the States, but, you know, in other countries, the, the feature phone is still popular in some places. And from what I understand maybe remembering the wrong show, I suppose that's always possible. We've done a bunch of them. But from what I remember Mojaloop is all about letting people take their feature phone and have access to banking. And it's an open source project to really enable that. And that's, that's neat. And I'm, like I said, I've, I've got questions and I'm, I'm real curious about where it's gone in the intervening time since we talked to
Doc Searls (00:05:04):
Him last. Well, well, that is awesome. And I, I did not re-list to the last show, but I did dig a a bunch, so we'll hopefully I'll remember enough also from the last show. So Paul Hunter's our guest, she's the executive director of the Mojaloop Foundation, a charitable nonprofit focused on extending financial inclusion the efforts of the Mojaloop open source software project. So there's the foundation in the project. She leads the organization's strategic planning and direction grant membership, strategic partnership, bunch of other stuff, evangelism. She's an open source in technology leader with nearly two decades of executive director level experience managing industry advocacy groups, open source organizations, standards organizations. She was tapped by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the plan and structure for the open source based Mojaloop again, and and which they successfully lost in 2020. And she's also has extensive experience with United Linux. I actually have to scroll down while I'm reading this <laugh> cause it's so, so long and, and well put. And it's a good source of open source vendors funded by I B M HP and another technology company is. So if Paula, welcome back to the show.
Paula Hunter (00:06:18):
Glad to be here. Yeah.
Doc Searls (00:06:19):
And for those of you watching really, really good camera there and a good mic. We always like that. So, so tell us, so tell us, you've got the foundation, you've got the open source project. Tell us how those two fit together, and especially whatever sort of outline what's happened since the last time we talked was a little over a year ago.
Paula Hunter (00:06:40):
Yeah, so in the last year, what we've really been trying to do is focus on deployment. So of course, we have to keep the open source project vibrant. We need to continue to grow the community but we also need to get deployments in the field. And, and as I mentioned in the last call our focus is developing countries, particularly in Africa, parts of Asia. We have a new opportunity in, in Mexico right now, but in markets where the banking infrastructure is not nearly as sophisticated as we see here in the states or, or in Europe. And there's at least one and a half, if not 2 billion unbanked or underserved citizens that we're trying to reach in new ways. And so while the open source project continues afoot we have a you know, extensive roadmap and work streams that are iterating. Now we've shifted more of our activities to market focused. So we're talking a lot more to the central banks, the regulators, and the whole ecosystem that is involved in rolling out a Mojaloop deployment.
Doc Searls (00:07:51):
So, Jonathan, you wanna ask about the phone thing?
Jonathan Bennett (00:07:55):
Sure, I can go into that, yes. So now I'm just going off of memory here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it, it is all about tying finances with a cell phone or a cell phone number, right? Isn't that the, isn't that the basic idea of moja?
Paula Hunter (00:08:12):
Well, the basic idea is to provide the, the plumbing that banks and other financial institutions can use to, to transfer money to its citizens. And yes, the most logical form factor is going to be a mobile phone. As you mentioned, Jonathan, these are not, you know, high-end smartphones. They're feature phones. And in, in the, in Africa and other developing markets, a lot of them are Android base, but they're not Samsung or, you know, high-end platforms. They're, they're very low cost phones. And so very accessible to those folks that may not have internet access at home, may not have any access to a local bank branch. So that's the way in which that, that banks or other financial providers, whether it be a, you know, a microfinance entity or even a government agency that wants to dispense aid the bests the most logical route to that citizen, except with the exception of cash, of course, would be to a mobile phone.
Jonathan Bennett (00:09:16):
So that, that handoff just a second ago was a little rocky because I had a memory spark and I was searching for it, and I found it. So there is a story that Jeff Bezos tells, and this, this happened. Well, he tells the story years ago. Cause obviously he's much younger in the video clip. But the story happened in 1995 when Amazon was first, really first got started. And he tells the story of one of their first customers paid with cash in 95, and was someone that lived in Bulgaria, and they took $200 bills, and they folded them up and they put 'em inside a floppy disc and mailed the floppy disc to Amazon. And if I remember correctly, the, the explanation was, if I just send money in the mail, there are, you know, there's the corrupt people in my country. There's the corrupt people on the mail, there's the corrupt people in your country.
(00:10:07):
Someone is gonna steal it, but if I hide it in this floppy disc, nobody cares about a floppy disc. And it actually made it through that way. And I think about that story, and then I think about how the rest of us pay for things on Amazon, which I'm sure everyone is like me. And you're tempted to pay for something on Amazon at least once a day, multiple times a day, probably. And just the, the difference it makes to be able to do that without having to worry about how am I gonna get this piece of paper, this piece of cash over to, you know, where I need to make this transaction. And it, it really does seem like giving people a reliable way to do that is such a game changer for them, isn't it?
Paula Hunter (00:10:47):
Yeah. And, and, and think about it also from the perspective, if you're not banked, you don't have a credit card, you don't have a debit card, so you, that whole venue is lost to you. So having some type of wallet functionality with your phone so that you can transmit money digitally is a game changer. And if you think of, you know a woman that has a, a roadside stand, she, she has a microfinance loan to, to underwrite her inventory. She collects cash all day long. She walks two miles to a local exchange or a merchant to, to pay off some of her microfinance loan. She might wanna send money to a, a sibling or another family member in another country. Anytime someone wants to take that cash and transmit it elsewhere, pay a bill, pay utility, pay off a microfinance loan, give money to a family member, there's a transaction cost associated with that, and that, that, that woman might be making a hundred dollars a month. So every time there's a transaction cost for her to convert cash to some other form of payment, it costs her money. And when you're making a hundred dollars a month, that whittles away at it very quickly.
Doc Searls (00:11:58):
So, Paul, you just mentioned transactions. As it happens, I, I have a good friend who's way smarter than me, and maybe even everybody who really knows all kinds of things about finance and so forth and networking, and came out of the phone world actually. And one of the lessons he has, and I'm not sure it's a lesson or not, is that there are always transaction costs, no matter what you're talking about. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that even the internet, which has nothing about billing built in for the most part in the world, is deployed through phone and cable companies, and they need to make money somehow. So somewhere downstream is always a transaction cost, even if an individual doesn't, doesn't pay it. And when you seem mindful of those things, so what, if I understand you're right, what you've got a way there to avoid transaction costs or to reduce them to the least,
Paula Hunter (00:12:46):
Reduce them for sure. Reduce them. Okay. Yeah. A and again, a lot of cases, there's so many intermediaries that you can't do it all through one interface or through one network. So you're hopping on and off across different platforms. And again, there, there's a cost associated with doing that. If a central bank can implement an integrated instant payment system, everyone can use the same rails. And you're not trying, you're not trying to find different competitors that will provide you services for an, you know, a much higher fee than if you use the backbone that your central government has employed.
Jonathan Bennett (00:13:26):
So I have what I suspect is a dumb question but I want to ask it. We've, you mentioned digital currency. We're not talking about something like Bitcoin, are we, what, where, what's the difference? Okay. Where, where does that, how, how does that plug in? What are we talking about when we say digital currency and how is that different from the world of Bitcoin?
Paula Hunter (00:13:47):
Yeah, so I, I, I may have misspoken, I'm, I'm trying to imply digital transactions where you might have currency in your wallet and you wanna send it to someone else's wallet or account. It's not crypto, it's not a, a digital currency or a central bank digital currency. It's fiat currency. And and you're just making that transmission as you do, you know, if you're trying to transfer funds from a bank account to another account it's not, it's not crypto, it's an, an electronic transfer of funds. So that's what we're trying to facilitate there. Not to say that you couldn't use my Mojaloop as the infrastructure for a central bank digital currency or cryptocurrency. We don't care what form the currency is in or what currency it is for that matter. What we want is there to be an authenticated transmission process and settlement of one currency from one account to another account.
Jonathan Bennett (00:14:49):
So does Mojaloop tie the, the Swift system the, the whole swift payment system? That's, from what I understand, that is kind of the digital transaction system that the whole world uses.
Paula Hunter (00:15:01):
Well, the whole, the whole world, except if you're, if you're unbanked, you don't well,
Jonathan Bennett (00:15:06):
Well, that's fair,
Paula Hunter (00:15:07):
Right? But, but yes, we have the APIs to plug into Swift for, for currency transfers. But again, the, we don't deploy Moch loop, a central bank or, or a major bank deploys Moch Loop, and then they use our open APIs to plug it into other legacy systems, if you will, so that they can tap into all the other pipelines that they use to transmit funds.
Jonathan Bennett (00:15:32):
So you, you jumped ahead of me. I, let me, let me get one more in doc, because she No, go for it. Go for pass. He, she half answered the question I was next going to ask. And that is, Moja is the project, it's not the deployment. Where are, let's talk for just a second about some of the places that you've seen deployments and I think the three of us are all in the United States. Is there a place in the States? Is there a bank using Mojaloop in the States? Where's the, where's the closest one?
Paula Hunter (00:16:00):
No, our center of gravity is Asia, and you're in Africa. We, we don't have any people on the ground promoted Mojaloop in the United States. We're trying to ha use Moja to penetrate markets that have no other options available to them. Anyone's free to use Molo in the United States, but, you know, I have zero business development people focused on us. Our most recent deployment, which I mentioned the last call, is in Tanzania. So the, the bank, the Central Bank of Tanzania implemented what's called their TIPS system Tanzania Instant Payment System. And they knit, knitted it together with 45 or so other financial institutions in Tanzania. So everyone's using the same plumbing to transmit funds make merchant payments and, and the likes. So they, they rolled that out in Tanzania. They just went live in the past, past six months.
(00:17:01):
So that was the first installation of Molo. Another one that I mentioned on her last call is a, a project called Wine Pay that's in Myanmar now, that's ready to go live, but they're waiting regulatory approval. So the Central Bank of Myanmar implement this project, another consortium of, of, of financial institutions have created a platform called Fine Pay. And they're, they're just waiting for regulatory approval to, to flip the switch. We also have new projects that are starting in Rwanda, Mexico, Guinea. So I, I, you know, Mexico is a outlier in that Yes, that's North America, not, not Africa or Asia. But they found us that they found our, our story compelling, and it, and the solution works for their needs. But it's important to to point out, you know, to the open source folks that are listening in Mojaloops is an open source project.
(00:18:02):
We don't sell or deploy Mojaloop. We rely on the local ecosystem of systems integrators and solution providers to, to deploy it. The people that typically would deploy Mo Loop are a central bank, a national bank, or some other digital financial service provider that wants to roll out new instant payment functionality to existing customers or potential new customers. So, so back to your original question about the United States. No, we, we don't have any deployments in the US and are, are not, you know, actively seeking them. We're really trying to address markets that have a shortage of financial services out to the, the unbanked and underserved.
Doc Searls (00:18:44):
Okay. So I'm interested in how you sell this. Okay. You said it's, it's all locally deployed but it it's the banks and financial institutions that are using Molo to create new solutions, get new customers, make retail work, that kind of thing. Is that right?
Paula Hunter (00:19:02):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yep.
Doc Searls (00:19:03):
Yeah. So, so you're dealing mostly with them. Do you pitch them? Do, do you, do you contact them how they find out about you and come back? Do they watch this show? By the way, we're, we're a worldwide show. We're not just, we're only open source. Yeah. But we're, we're, we're everywhere.
Paula Hunter (00:19:17):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So I, I would say that Moja ends at advocacy and education. And what we do is work in market. Like, for example, we do workshops. We did recently did one in Rwanda where we brought in local systems integrators that have expertise in financial solutions and FinTech sector. And we trained them at Mojaloop not only to deploy it, but to, to help sell it. And so it's an opportunity for solution providers in country to add to their portfolio an open source offering that they can sell services, maintenance op, you know, operational support around and then they go to the central banks and the financial institutions. In some cases, they bring us in to talk about the project and its history. Happy to do that. But, you know, we're, we're nonprofit. We don't sell anything.
(00:20:13):
So we have to really depend on the local market, because that's the other thing is, in particularly in developing market countries, they're used to big actors coming in from offshore, and they wanna be more self-sufficient. So with us spending time in a, in target countries developing skills and capacity with the systems integrators and solution providers, when a on a big entity is ready to roll, some of their, their major gaps in a deployment is skills and having the capacity to, to, to do the deployment. So the systems integrators come in and, and provide additional skills and capabilities to help the bank design, implement and, and deploy the solution. So it's a complex, very complex sales cycle. I won't, I won't mi minimize that at all. Because the other factor that we have in play in developing markets is oftentimes the, the government doesn't have the money to do the implementation.
(00:21:15):
That said, there are a lot of philanthropies out there that fund or, or either fund or provide loans for infrastructure projects. And in most cases, this is moja is considered infrastructure project. And so what we do then is we play matchmaker with the local government, with aid agencies that might have in infrastructure funds to help support the deployment. So that adds, you know, it's not your chip procurement site cycle that you would see with a proprietary platform in a developed market. It, it's, you know, tad more complex and, and therefore the sales cycle is, is much longer.
Doc Searls (00:21:57):
So, so you mentioned system integrators, and that's a term that was like really big in the eighties and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and the nineties. And when, you know, you know, we had net, you know, NetWare and stuff like that. We are out there. What are system integrators look like in the, in the environments where you're working? Are they one person shops? Are they several person shops? Are they you know, independent
Paula Hunter (00:22:25):
Operat know, they, they're usually usually bigger than that. You know, we're looking at folks that have a customer base have proven projects they've deployed before. There's kind of a fuzzy line between them and some of the fintechs that are trying to create custom services and solutions from the marketplace. You know, I I, if you go back to, you know, the whole Red Hat model, I mean, is red. What is Red Hat? Were they a software company? Were they solution provider? You know, they were taking Linux and wrapping their services around it to, to deploy in large institutions. We're basically looking for many red hats. You know, companies that have a set of skills and understanding of a market, sector finance and can help implement and deploy a, a fairly complex solution. So it's not a one or two person shop. In most cases they're much, much larger than that, but not necessarily. And they may be cross bordered, they may be multinational but maybe not international.
Doc Searls (00:23:32):
That's interesting. On our back channel somebody said that here, system integrators basically means somebody builds PCs. I dunno if that's still the case <laugh>, but <laugh>, that's probably what they were back, back when. Now, this is kind of a side question, but we had somebody from this on the show not long ago in India, there's a a new system called Beckon, B E C K N. Do you, have you, are you familiar with that at all? No, I'm not. And if you're not just put it in your radar then as but let, let, but let me jump sideways in and into another topic. As you mentioned, wallets the Open Wallet Foundation has been created by the Linux Foundation, which is the foundation at Spawns Foundations <laugh>, which makes things even work confusing. And I joined it because I felt like they needed somebody who actually used a wallet rather than made a wallet. But, but I'm, I'm wondering, are, are they on your radar? Are you involved with that at all? Or is that, is that a little too highfalutin further up the stack or elsewhere? I'm not sure more of a flexible problem. Well,
Paula Hunter (00:24:41):
It seems to be more of a first world problem at, at this point in time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, again, if you're, you're an unbanked or underserved individual, where are you gonna get your wallet from? Right now it's gonna be in a local, in, in the local market, in a, probably a banking institution, maybe a mobile network operator. But how the front end is implemented, so the wallet functionality that's really determined by the service, the per entity that's providing the services to their consumer. So they're gonna choose whether or not they have a plug and play wallet you know vanity Wallet for their own branding, or use some other capabilities. But so we're more ambivalent about how it reaches the consumer. We wanna make sure everything flows. And so that regardless of what the wallet is on the receiving end or the disbursement end, that our, our system provides the necessary rails for the, the money to flow.
Jonathan Bennett (00:25:45):
So, I, I have a different angle that I want to run down here just for a minute, and it's kind of technical. But let's, let's start with this. So it's tied to a cell phone. Does, does Mojaloop technic, does it use actual text messages? Is it based on G S M?
Paula Hunter (00:26:01):
Again, that's up to the, the implementation party to just mm-hmm. <Affirmative> determine what, what technology I wanna leverage.
Jonathan Bennett (00:26:08):
Okay. But
Paula Hunter (00:26:09):
In cases, yeah, they can use tech messages. From a merchant standpoint, they might use Q QR code scanning mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it really depends on the use case and how the entity itself wants to deploy it to their, to their current, to customers and future customers.
Jonathan Bennett (00:26:29):
Yeah. Makes sense. I, I, cause I was thinking about about gsm. So there's this saying with email that emails are as secure as a postcard because they generally get sent in the clear GSM is a little bit better than that, but we Sure. We've seen some attacks directly on G S M, but also SIM swapping has been very popular among, you know, kind of the digital criminals over the years mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I'm just, I'm just curious what is built into Mojaloop to keep it secure? How does that work when it's using something like G S M or QR codes, both of which seem to be kind of very postcard esque <laugh>?
Paula Hunter (00:27:04):
Yeah. Well, now you're getting into the technical underpinnings and, and how the institution deploys their know your customer mm-hmm. <Affirmative> rules. And so again, they, they are in, in, in control of that, not moja. We you know, it's, it's not sexy, but we're, you know, we're the plumbing we're making, we're, you know, we make sure that the, the, the funds transmit back and forth between many different systems and end user experiences. So we don't dictate the end user experience. We wanna make sure that the transaction is secure when it leaves the bank and when it, and it is received by the, the recipient, but the, the recipient's wallet is secured by whatever service provided they're working with.
Jonathan Bennett (00:27:56):
Got it. All right. So one of the, one of the things that kind of got whispered into my ear is the idea that maybe there are some lessons that the unbanked world has learned and can teach the, the developed world. What's some of the flowback that you guys have seen that maybe we can learn from some of the places you've done deployments in?
Paula Hunter (00:28:20):
Wow. what's, what's interesting is, you know, walking into a lot of situations where there is no legacy, right? So you can start fresh. So they don't necessarily know what the pitfalls are of developed countries in how they've deployed instance payment solutions, cuz this is all greenfield for, for us and for them mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. so they don't have necessarily the perspective of how it's been done in the past because they've never offered instant payment solutions in the past. So we're starting with a whole new set of technologies, and we're also starting with the assumption that the consumer relationship is different than what you see in, in, in developed markets where people were, may, may rely on their bank branch. Although that's starting to shift, of course, as people become more more in favor of online banking. But that banking relationship that we experience here in the states, or even our relationship with a Venmo or PayPal does not exist in developing markets.
(00:29:26):
So there, the challenges in developing markets is how do we, how do we reach potential? I hate to even use the word customers recipients. I mean, so like, there's a really important push for our government aid payments particularly to migrant workers and refugees. How do you access those people? That's not a mok problem. That's a, you know, that country's problem. How do they reach migrants? How do they reach a refugees, how do they reach citizens that are unbanked? And that's, that's part of their challenge that the commercial sector in the US and and other markets has, has resolved through, you know, the historical bank branch model. But now the online experience as well. Bear in mind in these developing markets, data's expensive. You know, mobile phones are cheap, data's expensive. So they may not be able to do the same type of advertising and promotion to a mobile phone in a developed market that you would see here in the states. Everyone's, you know, online 24, a lot of people are online 24 7 and have, you know, unlimited data on their phones. It's a different marketing push to get out to those types of citizens.
Jonathan Bennett (00:30:46):
It very much reminds me of the early two thousands when eBay first became really a thing that, that entered the public consciousness. And then you had PayPal. And boy, I have, I have memories back in the day generally my parents buying things and, and always seeing this, you know, PayPal preferred or only pay with PayPal. And it, it, it really strikes me that there are some parallels there that, you know, we went through kind of this digital revolution in the two thousands with how we in some ways banked and bought things online. And, and it kind of seems like Mojaloop is, is bringing that same revolution but now of course tied to smartphones into more people. But there, there are some parallels that's there, aren't there?
Paula Hunter (00:31:34):
Oh, for sure. And, and you know, what techniques have been used in the past to reach potential customers is, is of course, important to learn from, because there are ways I I think we talked about this on my last call about the mobile network operators. You know, of course if someone has a, has a mobile phone, they have a rela some type of relationship with an operator, even if they've gotten that phone through a merchant. And so how does, how do we leverage that relationship? How does the bank leverage that relationship? We had a project underway in, in Africa. It was a joint venture between Horan and MTN to roll out a Mo Molo instance. The problem was, is the regulators didn't like it. They don't want the mobile network operators getting into the banking business. So there's still some regulatory evolution that needs to occur that allows other players to enact transactions between customers and not require them to be a bank. Because that was barrier to moving that project forward with a captive audience of, of you know, mobile phone users. So it's unfortunate that, you know, that'll come over time. It's just, you know, the regulators need to become more comfortable with this concept of it's not just the banks that can transact these types of you know, activities.
Jonathan Bennett (00:33:02):
So I'm, I'm struck by a thought there that there's some bootstrapping that has to happen. You know, someone has to have a phone to be able to use one of these Mojaloop instances, but you've gotta pay for the phone. But once you have the phone paid for, you're probably going to want to use Mojaloop to continue paying for the phone. And so there's this kind of cash based bootstrapping that has to happen before you can get into the, the, the Mojaloop to get the Mojaloop Mojo started for you <laugh>
Paula Hunter (00:33:27):
For humans. Yeah. Well, you know, and, and right now when they go to, when they, they go to get a phone, they buy it for cash, and if they need to top it off, they go to a local broker or agent, and they, they carry cash to that shop and say, you know, add, you know, top off my phone, sorry. Now it's all very much cash based mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but there's obviously, there's a lot of inherent problems with cash, but it's the, it's, you know, everyone understands that as a mechanism what we're trying to do is get people access to new ways to pay off their microfinance loan rather than walking two miles in the dark, carrying a wa of cash. Not exactly the safest way to, to pay off your microfinance loan.
Doc Searls (00:34:14):
I'm wondering I'm remembering from friends working in Africa that, and this is a few years ago that M Pesa was the, like a big part of how economies worked there. And I'm trying to remember even what M Pesa is, and I'm sure, you know, I see you nodding so <laugh>. I know. You know what it is. So, so fill us in if there's any connection between M Pesa and, and what you're doing with Mojaloop and where the carriers involved.
Paula Hunter (00:34:44):
Yeah. So <inaudible> has been particularly successful. It's a vodacom initiative proprietary and closed loop. So if you don't have Vodafone you can't participate in that digital economy, if you will. So you know, if you are in mar markets where ESA is deployed and you are at a merchant that is MPE a enabled, then you can exchange transactions with that merchant or with another peer for peer-to-peer payments in you know, from phone to phone. The problem is, is, you know, a because it's proprietary, the transaction costs can be high and they're under the control of, of a commercial entity. It's not an open loop, which is Molo is moji Swahili for one, one loop one loop for all. What we want be able to do is see folks cross over and not have to care whether or not someone has a Vodafone deployment sorry, vote com deployment, or you know, Iran or MDN or Central Bank of, of of Rwanda, that any of those different types of systems can talk to one another.
(00:36:07):
You go into some merchant shops in, in, in some countries in Africa, and the merchant will have six or eight card readers because the platforms are not interoperable. So they have to buy a reader if they wanna accept a certain card. And so that's a cost to the merchant. And then of course for if you happen to have a card that that merchant reads you pay a transaction cost as well. So yes, those merchants are offering it as a convenience, but it's complicated. I mean, I literally, you, you have to stop and look and determine which which system you think your credit card will be accepted by. Now, if you're local, you probably use the same one every time, but if you're your traveler, it's, it's, it's totally perplexing.
Doc Searls (00:36:54):
So, so Mo it's
Paula Hunter (00:36:55):
Like M VCO took care of that. And, you know, M VCO took care of that in, in US and Europe.
Doc Searls (00:37:01):
What did, I'm sorry.
Paula Hunter (00:37:02):
Em vco, they're the standard by all the credit card companies use, so that you only have one reader when you go to the grocery store. The, the,
Doc Searls (00:37:10):
I was not aware of that gas station. I just sort of thought something happened and oh
Paula Hunter (00:37:14):
No, M v em VCO is a very, very powerful organization that is a, a collaboration with all the major bank cards credit cards, sorry. These MasterCard, discover mx, et cetera.
Doc Searls (00:37:29):
Yeah, I mean, it, they're
Paula Hunter (00:37:30):
The reason, there's a reason why, why we no longer have magnetic swipe or, or getting rid of it in the United States.
Doc Searls (00:37:37):
So were they the ones that, that finally decided that we could have chips and cards 10 years after they had 'em in Europe <laugh>, or 20 years after they had 'em in Europe? Well,
Paula Hunter (00:37:46):
You know what the problem was is the merchants didn't wanna wanna pay for new readers.
Doc Searls (00:37:50):
So, so,
Paula Hunter (00:37:51):
So, so the card companies were taking on all the credit, all, all the fraud risk. So when the card companies said, okay, if you wanna continue, just do a mag stripe mag swipe at your, your store, the risk is now on you. If you get a chip reader, we will take on the risk. And that's how they move the market. The credit card company said, we're no longer gonna underwrite the risk for magnetic swipe. It's too expensive.
Doc Searls (00:38:18):
Wow. And it's too easily wiped out inside your, your, your credit card as well. Cause you, you know, you put it next to your watch or something that has Yeah. A magnet in it. So, so it, it, would I be right in saying, is it sort of a, not, not a summary, but a but a way of making sense of what you're saying, that you actually run a kind of reader reduction program for the, for points of sale. Is that, is that right? I mean, you can
Paula Hunter (00:38:43):
Have, yeah, ideally, yes. Yes. Ideally, yes.
Doc Searls (00:38:47):
D does the, does the word Mojaloop percolate down? I mean, you've had a B2B sell away, but but when, when, when ordinary citizens start seeing fewer readers at a store can they, will they know that Mojaloop made that happen?
Paula Hunter (00:39:06):
Probably not, no. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> probably not. I mean, it's, I mean, obviously we, we'd be delighted if the, the banks and financial institutions leveraged our brand, but you know, they're very proud of their own brands as well. So I don't think it's likely, I mean, like, why don't, why don't you know who EMVCo is, right?
Jonathan Bennett (00:39:24):
Yeah. There's, there's just gonna be a tiny little footnote on a webpage somewhere, right, Howard by Mojaloop. <Laugh>.
Paula Hunter (00:39:31):
Yeah. That's okay.
Jonathan Bennett (00:39:34):
Yeah. So I'm, I'm curious whether there's been a lot of problems from regulators, and we've, you touched on this just briefly but, and, and maybe this isn't as much of a problem in developing countries as it would be in, in first world countries but pretty much any time, particularly when it comes to finance, something new is being introduced and pushed. There always seems to be some pushback from regulators. And you know, to some extent that's an appropriate thing because you're, you're talking about messing with people's money, and so that's, that's why those regulators are there, right? Is, is to keep changes from happening too quickly and, and from too much, too many things from going underwater and all of that. But is that, has that been a problem, or is that just, you consider that part of the process when trying to do a rollout?
Paula Hunter (00:40:24):
Both. it is a problem, it's a challenge in that introduce something new. People are skeptical. They wanna know that it's proven that other people have ded with this new open source trend. And I have had to reset my own talking points with regard to open source for the developing marketplace. My experience will then goes back 20 years. And so I take for granted the benefits of an open development model of a, a collaborative community, of the security implications of having that collaborative community and many eyes on, on the code that's all new to developing markets. So I've had to kind of dust off the old you know, value proposition of open source in these developed markets. I mean, a lot of them use Linux, but they don't really understand the open source development model. Right. And where it becomes most impactful is if we can get the regulators involved with our community.
(00:41:29):
So we do three to four community meetings a year, usually in Africa. We did one in, in Kali, Rwanda back in March, early March. And we invited regulators and bankers and central banks, and we had probably representatives from about 10 countries. And what they saw in, you know, for a week is technical experts in the area of, of payments that, that are deploying op, open source software that are en enhancing and maintaining moja. And as they talk to these people, what they realize is the depth of expertise that these individuals have, and the fact that they can tap into that expertise just by being part of the community. And then you, then they start realizing, oh, so this is how they iterate the product development cycle for Moja. They, they come together four times a year with their community. The community can include regulators and bankers and systems integrators and tech companies, and they prioritize the requirements and the features and functions that we wanna address for the next program increment the next development cycle.
(00:42:36):
So that's their opportunity to feed into the roadmap without right open, opening up their checkbook and saying, please build these features for me as they would for a proprietary software offering. Yeah. So as they, as they witness this evolution of the project, you know, in real time with the developer community, they start to realize the inherent benefits of the open source development model. It, it's very hard to convey that, you know, with just slideware. So when we can get them involved with either a handful of open source developers or community, when, when we have those meetings, it's kind of an aha moment for them because they realize I can be part of the solution. I'm not just the customer. I can, I can expand on what my requirements are, what my issues are, and there's all likely to be like-minded individuals in the room.
(00:43:30):
They have the same problems. And guess what? I'm not gonna have to pay to maintain that either. If I stay on the Mojaloop core and don't don't for it, this community will test it, integrate it, and maintain it. And I, again, I'm not writing a check to suffer company for that. So they start to realize the total cost of ownership benefits of the open source way. It's not just about the fact that it's a free license, it's the lifetime usage of the open source code base that provides incremental benefits as they, as they use the, the, the code.
Jonathan Bennett (00:44:07):
I f I am going to try forevermore to, instead of saying PowerPoint presentation, to just call it slideware. I like that a lot. <Laugh>. So do you get a whole, do you get much return in kind? So do you get patches from your integrators the, the different deployments? Have the people behind that kind of now started to plug back into the community and push fixes, push new features? Or is it pretty much all flow one direction?
Paula Hunter (00:44:38):
Yeah, it's early. Right now it's, it's more one direction. But we do now have a product council, and what we've been doing is inviting the early de deployment participants into that product council to talk about the feature set, the functionality performance, how do we need to enhance it? So getting market requirements is very valuable to the developer community. What, what, what should we prioritize? What should be working on? And, and so that's the first part of the contribution, is let us know what your needs are and what needs to be fixed or enhanced. The next step would be, oh, and by the way, if you've done this work yourself, share it, and then we will, we will help maintain it for, we'll test it and maintain it for you. But I mean, I, I was at a, a conference in New York City recently with pheno, which is the open source FinTech arm of linnux Foundation.
(00:45:31):
And, you know, they, they talk about contribution, and they, they've got Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, all the big brands there in the room. It's still taken them years and years to get contribution back, back, back from that of those companies that are accustomed to being the customer. So again, I think having these community meetings in their backyard, having them rub elbows with developers, we'll get there. But, you know, our priority right now is making sure that we enhance and, and extend the current offering in a way that meets the, the broadest set of needs for the marketplace. The contributions will come over time.
Doc Searls (00:46:11):
So we've actually managed to go 45 minutes without <laugh> while covering all new territory. I think mostly from our last conversation more than a year ago, <laugh>, and, and we still haven't touched dpg s digital public goods, <laugh>, which is what was sent in your prep document. So I, let's, let's go there. What, what exactly are digital public goods? Because it seems to me like that is as a three word acronym, goes at T P D P G. I think that's, that sounds great, but what are those?
Paula Hunter (00:46:43):
Well, they're organizations that somewhat emulate open source projects and, and foundations, but it takes it a step further in bringing them to market, typically in government led initiatives. So one that I'm pretty familiar with right now is mosk, which is a digital id initiative. So it's a public good and it's really targeted at government, so wanna implement digital IDs. And, and the, the characteristic of these dgp dgs, whether it be moja or Moosa or nifo, there's this alphabet soup DGS out there now, is that we're not, we're not commercial actors. Our, our code is available to everyone. It's open source, globally available, and the governments and the aid agencies that typically fund these types of deployments want to ensure that we adhere to these non-commercial principles and that as we develop and enhance and, and extend the offering we remain focused on public good big difference in the United States from a tax code standpoint.
(00:47:53):
I'm a 5 0 1 [inaudible] [inaudible]. So I'm for public good. The next foundation is of c6, which is for vendor, good for industry and consortium. So they can do things that derive specific vendors benefits to their vendors. I can't do that. I have, everything I have to do is for public good. And so what's happened is more and more organizations, there's the digital Public Good Alliance that is trying to create a foundation and a directory of DGS to help governments navigate this whole new collection of software offerings in most cases that are f you know, their foundation are open source. But they are being DEP targeted and deployed in most cases by, by government agencies, central banks. They're often funded by philanthropic organizations like Gates Foundation, U N C D F, Rockefeller Foundation. Again, there's acronym soup of of entities that provide that kind of funding.
(00:48:54):
But I've been talking with the different executive directors of dgs about what are the barriers to success? And you, you mentioned the regulatory challenges Jonathan you know, getting to the regulators and making sure that they understand it's not just moja, that you can avail yourselves up. There's a whole there's a whole collection of digital public goods that you could use in your government agencies rather than going down the proprietary road. The other thing is, is, you know, the World Bank, in many cases, his historically funded a lot of these big infrastructure projects. Well, open source licensing doesn't fit the procurement model that's in been, you know, deployed, you know, internationally for these types of infrastructure projects. So collectively, the digital public goods are going back to the World Bank and saying there needs to be a procurement model for open source projects.
(00:49:55):
Cause there's still money needed, it costs money to deploy an open source solution. These aren't shrink wrapped offerings. So the bank may need you know, people to write the rules and the, and, and the governance structure for this, for the mojo instance, someone else to scope out the infrastructure requirements and build out the infrastructure, someone else to customize or tailor, tailor the solution for that particular bank's needs. All of that is money that goes out the door. And, you know, world Bank and other philanthropies often fund these projects, but they need to recognize that it's not the traditional proprietary approach. There's a lot of cases you, you, you know, are, are competitors in the proprietary sector. They take the lead in promote advocating for their solution with the bank. The bank mix, you know, does an rfp and, and, you know, the, the major players come in and respond to that.
(00:50:51):
It's a whole different model of dgs. And I mean, the good news is that it, it opens up opportunity for local, local players to participate who are often locked out because not big enough, they don't meet the requirements of World Bank. But it's, it's a, you know, it's, it's a process that we all collectively are going through. There's a new organization too called Co-Develop, which has built up a fund to help mitigate some of the deployment challenges that we're finding in these countries and help advocate for TPGs more generically rather than, you know, me as my own entity advocating. So it, it helps in having other major players out there in the marketplace talking about open source, talking about dgs, breaking down these, these longstanding principles in the procreate model. So, you know, I spent a lot of time talking about the business side of moja rather than the technology side.
(00:51:52):
That's the, that's almost the simple part is pulling together the code base and, and in going through a traditional software development cycle is, is pretty well understood and, and something we can replicate over and over again. It's breaking down the, the, the business barriers and, and the regulatory barriers that require some work. So we're really you know, on the cusp of a whole new way of these developing countries to deploy technology in, in, in market. And so when you're new this, you know, you, you, you learn, you know, there's challenges, there's awareness, there's education that's required. And so we're trying to do it more collectively now, rather than everyone out trying to, you know, break down these barriers independently.
Jonathan Bennett (00:52:41):
So I wanna jump in with a couple of quick questions. The first one being, when you, when you talk about A D P G, I'm reminded very much of a couple of other terms, and I'm curious if they're synonymous. And that is a corporation for the public good or a public benefit corporation. Are those examples of TPGs or are we talking about two different things?
Paula Hunter (00:53:00):
Yeah, we're really talking about tax code. And so those, those terms don't necessarily resonate worldwide. You know, digital public goods is more of a, I, I, I'm, I'm thinking un un CDF came up with that, that acronym some time ago as a way to characterize these types of, of offerings. Whereas the terms that you used really have more to do with your tax base. You know, as I mentioned, we're a c3, so we're digital public good. Mm-Hmm.
Jonathan Bennett (00:53:30):
<Affirmative>. So a, a DPG refers more, I'm more
Paula Hunter (00:53:34):
You, I'm sorry. We're a public good. Yeah.
Jonathan Bennett (00:53:35):
Right. So a DPG refers more to the offering, the, the technology itself, the, the piece of software, not necessarily the organization behind it.
Paula Hunter (00:53:44):
Right,
Jonathan Bennett (00:53:45):
Okay.
Paula Hunter (00:53:45):
But, got it. But you know, there are, there are requirements to be enlisted as a D P G mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with regard to, you know the fundamental characteristics that the digital public alliance articulates are non-rival, non-excludable and globally available, which, you know you know, ideally one would hope that you could see that that happening with most open source foundations. But, you know, once you start getting into the commercial players that are, are advocating for technology that's funded by Google and an I B M, et cetera some of those requirements fall by the wayside.
Jonathan Bennett (00:54:25):
Sure. and then the other thing that comes to mind is, is when we talk about kind of this struggle to, to really to break into this to use very business term, to break into this new market I'm reminded of a bunch of stories from open source. Back in the early days before businesses really knew what it was. And there were, there were two things that you would hear that would happen all the time. And that was somebody in the business wanted to use this new open source technology, but legal said, you've gotta pay for it. So there had to be some way to pay for it, even though it was open source. And then the other story I've heard several times is business deploys it, business loves it, and wants to send money back to the open source project. But again, legal says, we've gotta have an invoice to be able to send money. And so, you know, the, the, the integrator at the business would get ahold of the developer at the, at the open source project and say, Hey, we need you to send us an invoice for this amount of money so that we can cut you a check to be able to fund your project. And the open source guys would go, we don't make invoices. We don't know how to make invoices
Paula Hunter (00:55:28):
<Laugh>. Oh, I can invoice
Jonathan Bennett (00:55:29):
<Laugh>. Yeah. my, my thought was always, you may gimme a piece of paper and a pencil. I'll make you an invoice if you wanna send me money <laugh> Yeah.
Paula Hunter (00:55:37):
And understand the problem, because we're not allowed to sell services and solutions for profit. I can't sell a membership in the Moja Foundation that helps underwrite our operations and activities. I can also get funding for certain specific projects on a cost recovery mechanism. So that can be done, but I, I haven't heard that be a roadblock. Thus far. What I have heard is skepticism in market, that open source, because it's free, will undermine business opportunity with local systems and solution providers. And what I've had to remind them is, yes, I'm funded by philanthropies to offer this software for public good, freely licensed. We're not asking you to deliver your services pro bono. You should be ch charging market rates based on the skills and expertise of your company to design, implement, and install emoji loop instance. So there is market opportunity. You just don't have the burden of the license fee on top of all that.
(00:56:47):
Because, you know, we, you know, we had solution providers that thought we were trying to undermine them, you know, with a free offering. I can't, I can't deliver it. You know, I can, I can put it on GitHub and let people download it, but I, you know, Chu Foundation doesn't deli provide the services to deliver it. And that, and again, it's not as, I think you've probably leaned, it's not a trivial you know, pull the shrink route off, install it on your server type of offering. It's, it's far more complicated than that. Yeah. and, and so there is business opportunity, and we're not trying to bring in the, you know, the top five systems integrators from, from around the world to do your deployment. Central Bank, we're trying to build up expertise in country so that you can spend your dollars in country to, and have a local resource pool that can support your, your solution on, on the long term.
Jonathan Bennett (00:57:42):
Yeah. Go ahead, doc.
Doc Searls (00:57:44):
Oh, no, no. Finish your thing and then I'm gonna, oh,
Jonathan Bennett (00:57:47):
I was just, I was just gonna comment. It sounds like all of, all of these stories and then the ones I told about business and open source it's kind of the same process. Like the, the whole idea of open source, everybody's very skeptical of it at first, and there's education and really just a, a, a time of proving like people have to see that, yes, this does work. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and we did it back in the nineties and the two thousands with open source and, and business here in the States. And it sounds like you guys are, are very much forging a similar path with DPG s and rolling out to you know, these underserved places. And it's, it's just, it's fascinating to me to see kind of that story repeat itself in another way.
Paula Hunter (00:58:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Doc Searls (00:58:31):
There's a a connection here and I just found it, and I, I put it in our own back chat here. There is a digital public goods alliance and they have a blog. And on the blog in February, they note that the open source initiative is the newest DT D P G A member. So that's more, more connection there. You know, between different
Jonathan Bennett (00:58:56):
Call Simon
Doc Searls (00:58:57):
<Laugh>. I was gonna say that we should have, we should have had Simon in, he's, he's very involved in all this kind of thing. He's another one of our, of our team of of of co-host.
Paula Hunter (00:59:08):
I'm still a member of osi, so yeah,
Doc Searls (00:59:10):
I'm quite familiar. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, so you probably know Simon then. So we're, we're getting pretty close to having to wrap this and, and it, I, I'm just gonna throw this out there because it's a a a, a former FCC chairman told me once that the one thing that most lawmakers don't, under the two things that most lawmakers don't understand are technology and economics and <laugh>. And, and here you are trying to deal with that and but I, but I think in a part of the world where people are actually much more resourceful and therefore more likely to know about these kinds of things, is that, is that the case? I mean, that it, it's when times are tough, people get smart and, and I I'm thinking that you may be in a seller's market for Mojo Loop in, in in those cases. Is that right? We're
Paula Hunter (01:00:05):
Still, yeah, we're still addressing some of the same hurdles that we saw 20 years or 15 years ago with open source. Is it safe? Is it secure? I don't understand how it's maintained. So there's still an educational process. Once they get it then they, they understand why some of these proprietary vendors that are knocking on their door are gonna lock them into something that's usually benefiting someone offshore and is gonna be very costly over the long term. Cause there's very few, you know, mo offerings in the marketplace. And and the ones that, that I know of are proprietary, or the biggest one is as a company out of Russia. And, and so there's all kinds of baggage right now with sending your money to a Russian company to, to handle your, your, your money transfers. So as they, as they get educated, they see this opportunistically, but this, that educational cycle is still required. Open source just isn't mainstream yet in these markets.
Jonathan Bennett (01:01:17):
So I do want to ask, just before we close, there's a question I like to ask everybody because we get really interesting responses and we may not hear, but we may, what is the most surprising thing that you've seen someone do with Mojaloop? Like what deployment is the most innovative or just unusual that you've seen?
Paula Hunter (01:01:35):
It's the one in Myanmar. I mean, this is a situation where, I mean, the government is, you know, it's chaos in Myanmar right now, now, and what it, it was the agricultural farm bureau in Myanmar that said, we need to be able to transact business with farmers in rural locations. So it wasn't a bank at all, but you know, they have to be able to transact with farmers probably for them to purchase seed but also for them to sell commodities. And so they use, they're using Volu to implement this. And you know, I I, they, in retrospect, they probably didn't think they needed banking regulatory approval, but because the transition mission of funds, the, the, the regulators in B M R are requiring them to go through those next, those last steps or for regulatory approval. But you know, that was a, you know, in for all practical purposes, it's not a banking implement implementation at all. But it in, you know, microfinance companies, are they banks? Well, you know, they're really loan companies, right? <Laugh> they don't have the same regulatory requirements as, as, you know, bank of America or, or name the bank in, in, in Africa. So that's the other thing is, is the regulators are starting to have to deal more and more with non-traditional banking type institutions.
Jonathan Bennett (01:03:04):
Now I wish I'd asked that question sooner because there's an entire different direction that we could go with that conversation about what happens in a failed state and all of that. And we are too, way too far out of time to get into any of that. Yeah,
Doc Searls (01:03:16):
Yeah. Well, this is
Jonathan Bennett (01:03:17):
Next time,
Doc Searls (01:03:19):
Save up for next year. So I think I asked you, well, we asked everybody this, and, and you may or may not have an answer for it because it's, that has not been an especially technical show, but what are your favorite text editor and scripting language?
Paula Hunter (01:03:33):
Yeah, you, you've, you've asked me that well text editor, whatever the source document was created in
Doc Searls (01:03:40):
<Laugh>.
Paula Hunter (01:03:41):
So
Doc Searls (01:03:43):
<Laugh>,
Paula Hunter (01:03:46):
I, I'll be honest, I've been on Windows for all my career. I've, I've had an Apple Mac and I'm dyslexic when it comes to back. It's just, I, you, everything's opposite. So
Doc Searls (01:03:55):
Well then try Lennox. So
Paula Hunter (01:03:58):
I was on, you know, Lotus 1 23 person from way back, so I still know those keystrokes. They're just embedded in my brain. But really I'm totally ambivalent. It's whatever's set my way and I don't code. So, you know, the, the whole, you know, editor issue is different from me. It's more just yeah, getting a, a doc, you know, a document out. So,
Doc Searls (01:04:20):
Well, you're clearly on top of your deal, so, and you're running a great project there. So thanks so much for being on the show. This has been fantastic.
Paula Hunter (01:04:28):
Oh, my pleasure.
Doc Searls (01:04:29):
We'll have to have you back again in, in another year, cuz you're in a very active area there and we're expecting progress.
Paula Hunter (01:04:35):
All right, well thanks again. I'll look forward to it. Thanks, doc. Thanks Jonathan.
Doc Searls (01:04:41):
So, Jonathan, that was, that was a quick hour considering that we even started early, ended a little bit later and had no ads <laugh>.
Jonathan Bennett (01:04:51):
Yeah. Goodness. It was fun though. I glad to, glad to be here to get to talk to her. I do, I remember listening last time we interviewed her, but wasn't on but it was, it was neat to be able to cover some of that. You know, at some point when we have Mojaloop back, of course we'll have to have her back. But it would be fun to talk to maybe somebody on the integration side because boy, there's some technical things that I really wanted to ask. It's like, ah, that's, that's not the direction this conversation is going. So another time it would be fun to dig into some of those technical questions, although, like she said, so many of those vary based on deployment. So it's, it's difficult to get I, I suppose globally, globally valid answers on 'em.
Doc Searls (01:05:34):
Yeah, well, my, my own very admittedly limited experience in the less developed world. The, the, the big impression I always come away with is these people can be very, very, very resourceful. Cause they have to be. And this fits right in there. I I think that we're gonna see more and more innovation coming out of places like that. And projects like Mojaloop, I think are gonna be extremely helpful. And payments are just so essential and transactions are so essential. They're you know, they're the foundation of every economic system. And you have relationships and you have conversations, and you have other mechanisms that are present in a market, but unless transactions happen, nothing else is going on. And you know, where things are more difficult or less organized or less federalized or some other thing like that you get, you get innovative solutions. So it's great to see this going on.
Jonathan Bennett (01:06:39):
Yeah. And it, it's taking care of problems that we kind of take for granted here. And you know, people of a certain age just have no memory of what the world was like before. You know, there was PayPal and there was digital credit cards and online banking and all of those things. I mean,
Doc Searls (01:06:59):
I
Jonathan Bennett (01:06:59):
Like term, it would surprise
Doc Searls (01:07:00):
People of a certain age referring to young people instead of people like me, <laugh>,
Jonathan Bennett (01:07:04):
<Laugh>, I'm, I'm just getting to be old enough that I'm starting to use that sort of terminology, <laugh>. But you know, I mean, there are people alive today. There are kids alive today that may never really have any, any handling of cash. I mean, who uses cash anymore? I carry a little bit around, but not a whole lot. Doesn't use, don't use it very often. And I don't, it's just, it's just crazy to think about the the different ways that people interact with that idea of payments and making transactions how, how different, how, how disparate that scale can be.
Doc Searls (01:07:40):
I I, I remember when Microsoft organized a CD conference and heard somebody the other day, a young person say, what's a cd? So <laugh>, they've already, we've already reached that point. So what, what would you like to plug there, Jonathan? So we can
Jonathan Bennett (01:07:58):
So two things. First off, Hackaday now you can't see it, but I, I write for Hackaday and we have the security column go live every Friday morning. Yeah, 282 articles. Goodness, been there for a while, apparently do the kind of, the security beat for Hackaday. Have a lot of fun with that. And then the other thing that we wanna make sure and plug is Club TWiT. It is, it is the club. It is where all the cool kids are at. And it's only $7 a month. It's ridiculously affordable. And that's like a cup of coffee these days. I don't know that you can get a cup of coffee from a nice place for seven bucks, but you can still get Club TWiT.
Doc Searls (01:08:35):
We haven't plate at the price of Club TWiT. <Laugh>.
Jonathan Bennett (01:08:38):
Yeah. So it's, it's ad-free access to all the shows, but it's also three exclusive shows. There's HandsOn Mac, hands on Windows, and the Untitled Lenox Show hosted by yours, truly. And if you want to take a look at those without, without going all the way into the buy-in, there's actually some free episodes of all three of those. And we have just recently, in fact, in just the past couple of days, published the first free publicly accessible episode of the Untitled Linux Show. So you can go to TWiT.tv, go to shows, pull up Untitled Linux show, and there it is. You can check it out. And <laugh>, and there is, there is yours truly talking about the world of Lennox. And it's a blast. We would love to have everybody come and join us there.
Doc Searls (01:09:21):
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great program and and we have a very, very loyal and energetic audience. Actually we've been in business for like 16 years. 18 years, something like that. This show alone. I mean, the Time TWiT is a pioneer at this stuff. So, so thanks everybody. And I'm normally queued up on what I have next week, and I'm not this time, so let me do this real quickly. And C K, okay, I got it. Rand Hindi the c e o at Zama, Z A M A data of Privacy with fh e.org. So that is coming up next week and I will see you then.
Jason Howell (01:10:04):
You wanna hear about the latest news happening in the tech world from the people who write the article sometimes from the people who are actually making the news. Well, we got a show for you here@TWiT.tv. It's called Tech News Weekly, me, Jason Howell, and my co-host Mikah Sargent. We talk with some amazing people each and every Thursday on Tech News Weekly, and we share a little bit of our own insights in each of us bringing a story of the week. That's at TWiT tv slash tnw. Subscribe right now.
