 Hello, my name is Lauren Gibson and I'm a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State. Thank you for joining us. I will be your moderator for today's global innovation through science and technology or GIST TechConnect conversation on fintech, the future of financing. New technologies are revolutionizing the financial industry. Innovations in blockchain, mobile technology, biometric data, machine learning and more are making financial transactions easier, cheaper, faster and more secure. Today we are going to talk about these fintech innovations, why you should care, and how you can apply fintech to your startups. Remember, you can join the conversation by sending us your questions and comments through the chat space next to the video player or through Twitter at hashtag GIST TechConnect. Let me begin by welcoming our panel of experts. Joining us today is Dale Nirvani Pfeiffer, the CEO and founder of Good World, a fintech startup changing how people pay for things on social media. Also joining us is Victor Brattonaris, an instructor for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and an expert in blockchain applications for the financial industry. And joining us in the chat space to help answer your questions and share links to resources is Summer Youssef, a program associate at Venture Well. Thank you all for joining me today. As we wait for viewers to send us their questions, I'd like to kick off the discussion by showing a short video that explains what fintech is. There's a wave sweeping the tech sector today, and it's opening doors to financial opportunities, security and prosperity around the world. It's called fintech. And even if you haven't heard of this booming industry just yet, you've probably used some version of it countless times. Fintech is the buzzword used to describe all services associated with financial technology. If you've transferred money via mobile app, accessed alone with your financial institution's e-banking service, or paid for goods with an online wallet, you've used fintech. Beyond everyday transactions, however, fintech has been making major global market shifts since its surge in 2015. Many of the first fintech startups thrived in the U.S., where early investment was accessible. And in just a few short years, global investment in mid-2017 hit $8.4 billion. Payment and lending platforms in India continue to see massive growth, serving both Indian consumers and its entrepreneurship sector. Australian fintech disruptors are set to add $3 billion in new revenue to the financial industry. And on the African continent, where mobile communication is growing rapidly, fintech is projected to increase competition and provide access to capital for Africans who had previously been excluded. In fact, fintech has spawned another growing industry called Regtech, to provide tech solutions to those securing this space. Investment in entrepreneurship in fintech is not only providing opportunities within the industry itself, but also creating inroads to people starting businesses, raising families, and gaining financial security across the globe. Dale, can you talk about one innovation in the fintech space right now that you find interesting? Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on. You know, one innovation that I find really interesting is the growth in digital payments and digital wallets. You know, there is massive changes, structural changes happening to the global payment system right now. And that is particularly being driven by commerce and being driven by commerce on mobile phones. People are rapidly changing the way that they shop, that they pay online, they're doing it in-app, they're doing it in mobile, and they're also still going into stores. So that actually opens the way for a huge amount of innovation for third-party technology providers. You know, much of this is of course being driven by the millennial generation, who are really the first generation of digital natives that have been bought up in the digital era. So, you know, people are going, as I mentioned, from, you know, having cash to checks to credit cards. And now what's happening with payments is that they're going online and we're not actually having to hand over anything tangible to pay for things. And, you know, consumers, particularly millennials who've been bought up online are increasingly comfortable with this. They're increasingly comfortable with their money living in the digital landscape, rather than it being something that they touch. And so, you know, as I mentioned, this really opens the door for a huge amount of new players, both players that can create their own technology companies that can come in absolutely disrupt and take over a large swath of payers, or, you know, companies that also want to work with large financial institutions and can really partner in a powerful way to help them be more innovative and bring those customers to them. And this, and this is, and I think this is particularly relevant for people, you know, who are on the ground. There's been a huge amount of investment put into VC and we'll go over that and got gone into Fintech, over $36 billion alone in 2016. And it went into fund 12,000, over 12,000 companies. But I do think that payments are very localized. And there's a huge opportunity for us all to see the pain points of consumers in our regions and really look for a way to solve that problem for the communities that you're at, which will have a huge, make a huge difference for the people that you know and people like them. And of course, digital payments are often connected with a digital wallet. So just like your everyday wallet, but it is absolutely online and all of your credit cards and everything can be stored there or just a wallet can be created without the need for a credit card and things like loyalty points and other things can also be stored there. And what that really creates, particularly for entrepreneurs is an opportunity with data, because once a digital wallet is created and it stores a whole lot of different things in there, can create a huge amount of data that can help retailers and others understand how that person wants to be, how that person wants to consume. And I think one thing that is particularly exciting to me is that many people now who have not had access to financial services in the past are being able to create a digital wallet. Often that's through one of the big retailers like Amazon or Google or Facebook. You can now create a digital wallet and without actually having to open a bank account. So people who were not able to participate in the global financial system in the past are now able to participate. So those are two of the really big things that I see that are very exciting are digital payments and digital wallets and ripe for disruption. Thanks so much. And Victor, same question. What is one FinTech innovation that is catching your attention right now? So I really want to expand and blow out a little bit more about what Dale was talking about and really talk in broader terms. It's not just individuals that are responding, but it's the broader industry that's responding. You're seeing banks and you're seeing transfer agents getting very involved in the process. You're seeing an efficiency increase. Entrepreneurs are going to be able to interact directly with people who want to lend them money. Entrepreneurs are going to be able to track where their product is in the shipment process at any given second of the day. And they'll be able to get virtually guaranteed payments from the second that it leaves their warehouse. There is the front end that Dale spoke about with people on the street who are going to be benefiting from this. But what I find exciting as well is that there's this very large back end that's going on right now in the banking industry, in the logistics industry in particular. So where information is going to be visible and transparent to everybody within the chain and every step of the way in the chain. And we can affirm that one of your entrepreneurs, the product that they shipped, where it is at any given moment and that they have met all the requirements of the contract and they should be able to get payments for their product within minutes, within seconds, that I'm speaking about blockchain here, once that smart contract has been fulfilled. So we're seeing just a massive increase in efficiency and information flow that's taking place. And more importantly, from an entrepreneur's point of view, we're starting to see the technical term as disintermediation. We're taking people, we're taking institutions out of the chain because you'll be able to interact directly with your customer. You'll be able to interact directly with the payment agent. And those agents that sit in between the chain are all taking a fee. So Dale mentioned about payments. We're seeing massive reductions in the cost of sending remittances across the world. We're seeing massive reductions in the cost of just transferring money because we're eliminating certain steps along the process. We're eliminating paperwork. We're eliminating mistakes. And the net result is that the person on the other side of the transaction, whether that's somebody you're sending money to or you're receiving money from them, you'll receive more of that value as a result of these changes that are going on in fintech right now. These increases in efficiency, this increase in transparency, and this increase in general, where I like to say we're starting to institutionalize trust as far as product goes and product transfer. So from my perspective, I'm seeing a lot of activity that's really exciting in trade finance for entrepreneurs. How can somebody get their product financed? Their invoice is financed so that they can actually grow their business. And the general logistics of moving and shipping your product to anywhere around the world and being able to track it and know that what you sent out your warehouse door is getting to delivered to the customer that you have the agreement with. Thank you. That was great. Now, Dale, I have a question for you. Could you speak briefly about the broad range of opportunities in fintech? Absolutely. And I think this is a really interesting one. And I think there's a graphic that's going to go up here in a second which shows just the huge range of opportunities from crowdfunding to e-commerce that we've already touched on briefly through to charitable giving. And I just want to tell a very quick story because this wasn't important and I know there's a lot of people who are entrepreneurs. This is really important lesson for me as an entrepreneur. When I first started building my company, I noticed that there was a big opportunity for new payments innovation for charitable giving. And when I first started pitching my company, I was pitching it as a charitable giving platform. And the market size here even here in the US was huge. It's $372 billion a year that's donated to charity. But when I started pitching to investors and they were like, that's not big enough. I was like, are you kidding me? This is a huge market. Then I realized with the jolt one day that I could reframe the positioning of my company to be a fintech company and for it not just to be payments to charity on social media, for it to be payments in the broader scope of things. It could be payments for commerce. It could be political donations. It could be all sorts of things. And so by redefining the scope of my company from a charitable giving platform to a fintech platform, that really helped me attract the interest of investors. So I really encourage you to look at whether or not your company can fit into one of these hot groups that the investors are running after right now. And if you can perhaps redefine the opportunity and the scope of the opportunity, the language that you're speaking about the opportunity and the scope of the opportunity in terms of fintech. Thank you. Now let's dive into the poll question we asked on social media in the days leading up to this program. We asked, what financial technology innovations most interests you? You can see the results on the screen. The top answer was mobile payments followed by lending platforms that increase access to credit, then crowd funding and lastly affordable ways to transfer money. Victor and Dale, what are your reactions to the poll? And Victor, let's start with you. Well, I can't help but smile Lauren as a serial entrepreneur. Nothing's really changed. All entrepreneurs are looking for money in the most efficient way to help grow their business. And I think the poll really reflects that. What I think is really the big story for today's presentation is that we're starting to actually harness the interaction and the internet to actually connect people to solve some of those problems. I think crowd funding is probably the oldest on that list as far as using technology and the technological advances to bring it to the broader audience. But I think the mobile payments and the lending are really exploding right now. You're seeing just every day, I see probably half a dozen announcements about people wanting to work in that area. Thank you. And Dale, what are your thoughts on this? You know, I thought agreeing with Victor, I thought that the list really reflects, essentially, where we're at in the problems that we're trying to face and the trends in investment. And, you know, one thing that I just, you know, did want to add was that I think, you know, we have a unique opportunity where we exist, you know, where we live our daily life to see the pain points that are going on. And so when you can see a pain point, you can really understand that problem, be it mobile payments, you know, not being able to get access to, you know, money that we need at the time that we need it. Like, you know, there's so many different ways as well to think about loans and, you know, whether it be, you know, remortgaging your student loans or, you know, a mortgage for your house or, you know, there's just so many different ways that we could think about loans and everything. So, you know, one thing as an entrepreneur that I really also recommend is, you know, while scaling up to the categories that where the investment is going on, really identifying, and this is what this list reflects, identifying the problems, I think that the list reflects, identifying the problems that you see and that you can understand right there in your community and then creating a solution that can scale that up. Thank you. Now, let's take some questions from our online viewers. And the first question is for you, Dale. What are the market drivers creating fintech innovations and opportunities? That's a perfect question. I think that they're, I actually asked for a slide to be prepared because I think this is the other way that's really important to be able to, like, identify where is the rapid change. Looking for rapid behavior changes always creates a great opportunity for entrepreneurship. So, one thing that we've already mentioned, you know, social media, millennials, cloud computing, you know, the aging generation and things like that, that they will need. Financial inclusion and, you know, the rapid advances right now to, you know, really bring people into the global economic system, the global banking system. So, you know, I think those are some of the trends, but really looking for those big rapid changes in behavior as a really good indicator as to whether you're on to a big opportunity with your company. Thank you. And, Victor, the next question is for you. The viewing group at Embassy Port Louis Mauritius asks, are there costs associated with integrating fintech into a startup? So, before I answer that, I want to add to one thing Dale said there. I would encourage any entrepreneur who is having the problem themselves, who's having an issue getting payments to step back and go, okay, here's an opportunity for mobile payments. Here's an opportunity to expand. If you are looking to get started in the fintech space, the other bit of advice I would suggest or recommend is look at any place where there are a large number of people touching the process. And that's where fintech and not only blockchain, but other advances are looking to streamline and pull out inefficiencies in the market. What I want to jump to now is the question. As far as costs associated with integrating fintech into your solution, if you are a fintech company, obviously that's the overhead that you're incurring is to build a solution. However, if you are a high-tech company, if you're building a medical device, if you're building some manufactured product, if you are shipping, my advice to give you is to seek out those people who are now really pushing the envelope in these advances. And they're really big names. They're people like IBM, they're people like DHL, they're people like Samsung, who are pushing the logistics and the financing piece for industry. So I will tell you that in the ideal world, unless you are directly involved in fintech, these expenses are going to be invisible to you. They will be just the operating system that runs your business from a logistics point of view, from a payments point of view and a financing point of view. If you are a fintech company, you're going to have those same type of expenses that any high-tech software company is going to have. You're going to have primarily programming, human resource type expenses, as well as the hardware and the software sort of tapping into and working with those pieces. So the barriers as an expense are relatively low. I would say if you are a non-fintech company, you will be tapping into somebody else's solution and it will be your computer system tapping into the internet, into the cloud. And so they're relatively inexpensive from an entrepreneur's point of view. Great. And Dale, did you want to add something? Just very quickly and I agree with everything Victor said. I think one of the things that's really fueling this next generation of fintech is data. So if you have a lot of users and if your data can be valuable to enhance, one of the solutions that Victor was talking about from one of the bigger players and everything, that's probably one of the fastest ways to piggyback on fintech is to be a data provider so that to fuel the insights and innovation in new fintech. Thank you. Now you both talked a little bit about fintech innovations, but what are some of the innovations that every startup should be taking advantage of? And Dale, I'll start with you. Absolutely. So right now there is huge trends in fintech that are also the trends that we're hearing a lot about in a lot of different areas of entrepreneurship. AI, artificial intelligence really is one of them where we're learning that like robo banking and robo investing and so we're quickly replacing and I don't know how quickly, but it is happening now where instead of actually signing up for a financial advisor and spending a whole lot of money on it, there is a robo advisor that you can use in the interim. Another thing is machine learning. So that is particularly important for data with CS bots on financial institution websites and things like that. There's languages playing an increasingly big part with things like with Google has a lexer and you can all of a sudden you can from your speak to your language recognizing system like Alexa, please go to my banking website. Alexa, I want to pay my electricity bill and through language recognition, people can all of a sudden without even going to your computer or going to your mobile phone, you're able to make a financial transaction. So those are three of the big ones that that I'm seeing and hearing discussed. That's great. Thank you. Now Victor, this question is for you. The American Corner and Kamenjay Barundi asked, with the increase of fintech facilities will traditional banks disappear? So I know that there's a lot of talk around that that banks themselves are going to go away. I don't think that that's happening anytime very soon. Many of the largest banks in the world are driving fintech advances a lot about five, six years ago. We had a lot of startups working on asset tracking within the financial services industry and the big banks, the big players came in and started buying up those startups. So the big banks, I don't envision going anyplace. They are certainly nervous about some of these transactions and some of these transfers. But we also need to remember and you know, Dale and I are very excited about where fintech is and where it's going. We also, I just want to throw out the caveat that there's also a lot of unknowns still playing out in this space and that, you know, you also can't go a couple of days without hearing about how somebody has hacked a fintech solution or has and has stolen certain assets. I think the role of banks are going to have to become much more efficient. I suspect that the number of banks may start to consolidate in and around a handful of the major banks. There are a lot of the major challenge that's out there right now for fintech is the role of regulation tech and governance. So it's very exciting that we can go through this process of having peer to peer lending, peer to peer, giving transfers of assets. Historically, governments don't like to let go of that process and they've used the banking system to oversee that process and regulate that process. And that process of regulation and support has been put in for a number of reasons. One of it, one of which was to prevent fraud and to stop theft. And so I don't think this is going away. I do think that your local bank, however, is going to start to evolve and will not look anything similar to what it looks like in 10 years, won't look anything similar to what it looks like today. But there will, I personally think that there will always be a role, especially in large transactions for major banks to continue existing. That's really interesting. Thank you. And Dale, I think you had something to add. Just very quickly. I think that they're, I totally agree with Victor. I don't think big banks are going to go away very quickly, but they are scared about not being able to innovate quickly so they can stay around. And what this does, it affords a big opportunity for us entrepreneurs because they have developed programs which allow us to partner with them and rapidly scale our technologies. For example, this is not a bank, but we have partnership with MasterCard through a program called StartPath. Now, StartPath looks for the world's best fintech startups around the world and brings them into MasterCard and helps them rapid scale prototype and work with their customers who are big banks, many big banks and large merchants. So, you know, I think what this does is this fear that, you know, that banks have around not being able to stay relevant, just there's many of these programs now around. And I would encourage you if you want to work with banks to seek out those programs because they are looking for you. Thank you. Now, we have a question about credit cards. And Dale, I want to turn this question over to you. It's from Haiti. Now, the question is, since many people in Haiti don't have access to credit cards, what do you think of an app that would allow people to pay with the minutes they purchase for their phones? Interesting. Wow, I think that that is a fantastic idea. What I've seen of global trends around, you know, paying with certainly with mobile payments and everything, it certainly seems to sit really well with me of not knowing anything about Haiti and the system there. But what I would say to you is that it doesn't really matter what I think about the idea. What it matters is who what your customers would think about that idea. So my challenge to you is go out and do 60 customer interviews or maybe 40 if you can only do 40. But I would say at least 40. I think 40 is the magic minimal number and go out and just really, you know, set up a series of interview questions, ask people if they would use or ask people if they have other ideas and really go and do that customer research. And I bet you after you do those 40 interviews, you are going to know whether that's a good idea for your customers and you're going to have so much more information to build your product. Thank you, Dale. For those of you just joining us, you're watching the Just Tech Connect conversation on FinTech, the future of financing. I'm joined by panelists Dale Pfeiffer, Victor Brantneris and Summer Youssef, our chat expert. We are currently taking live questions from viewers. You can submit your questions through the chat space next to this video or on Twitter using hashtag just tech connect. Blockchain technology has helped drive innovations in the FinTech industry. But what is blockchain technology? It's essentially a decentralized database of digital information that is stored and updated on a network of computers. Entrepreneurs should be aware of blockchain as an underlying technology for a lot of FinTech. Victor, can you briefly explain blockchain and how it works? Sure. So I think we have a graphic that's coming up. The historically systems, I want to think of every, I want to have everyone think of just the ledger that you would have for your business. And it can be a sheet of paper and a pencil that keeps track of everything that you have bought, everything that you have sold to somebody, how much money you received for all of that, et cetera. Historically, we've had every individual has their own ledger. And it's a centralized system, centralized in the sense that I have my ledger, you have your ledger and we control that information and all those other bits of information coming out, coming into us have to go through my particular process and my particular software and my particular analysis. What we are moving to and what we've there's an interim step of decentralized ledgers wherein you might have a large company that has multiple locations or you might have intercompany interactions where the trucking company that you're dealing with has its own ledger and it somehow interacts with your ledger. What this makes for is great inefficiencies and a higher risk of mistakes happening during data transfer, during transactions. What blockchain does is creates a distributed network and what a distributed network allows, it does a couple of things. Number one, we all share the same ledger at that point related to these transactions. In an example, so that's the centralized network. There's the decentralized and Jonathan, if we can pull up the distributed. Now everybody can see the same information everywhere along the process and what I can do quickly is I can just run through a very quick example and the best one that I have is that I love to use since I love bananas on my breakfast cereal every morning is there's a supermarket chain in the US that wants to buy 10,000 tons of bananas for their stores. The plantations in Central America are then contracted to deliver those bananas. They put them onto a truck who then delivers them to a logistics company at a port who then takes them through the exporting process with the government for that particular nation, transfers them to a shipping company who then transports them to a port in the US, who then in turn, who takes it through the importing, a logistics company then takes it through the importing process where fees and taxes are attached along the way. And then that logistics company turns it over to another trucking company who delivers it to the supermarket warehouse, who then delivers it to the individual supermarkets before I can go buy my one little banana for breakfast. The point there is in that example I believe I laid out 12 people, 12 institutions, 12 organizations who have their own ledger and their own software systems to keep track of how that product is moving through the chain. So you may have been the plantation owner and uploaded a thousand tons of that 10,000 ton order, and you have right now it's only paper and some amount of software that lets you keep track of that product. But it will take weeks, if not months, for you to get paid for that product. And you have to go get financing and you have to go get loans in order to deliver that product. What blockchain will do is in a very secure, and I don't want to get into the security background here because we get into a very techie discussion very quickly, but blockchain will allow all of us to talk together and all of us to see those bananas move through the process every step of the way. So that instantaneously once your contract is fulfilled you'll be able to get a transfer. And since we're all watching the process and all of us and 51% of us have to approve every step in the chain, there's a built in trust and a built in tracking of what is moving through the blockchain. So each block, every time we meet one of those 12 people, a block is created, there's cryptography, there's security around that block, and then we move it to the next step. And we can follow the chain of blocks all the way from beginning to end, including your payment and including anything that happened to those bananas along the journey from Costa Rica to Des Moines, Iowa. That's a great example. Thank you. It's very understandable. And I have another question for you that's related. How will blockchain technologies affect entrepreneurs in the near, medium, and long term? So I think we've talked quite well about the near-term solutions. I think we're seeing a lot of activity on financing, on credit availability, and we're seeing just trade finance in general. We've got a nice graphic here. This is what the current system looks like. The data flows between all the various components of the system. I have my own bank, my buyer has their own bank, and they have all their own paperwork. With blockchain in the short run, eventually we're going to have this smart contract and this way where we will all interact together. Now, I know this eliminates the banks, and I know we had the question about banks going away. I don't envision that. I envision that there will still be a bank, or now it may not be invented yet. It may be a brand new company that's going to come into play. But there will be some process for which to centralize these transactions. And there will be some way to move these assets. And the reason I say that is as great and wonderful as it is to get around the regulatory side and not have to pay taxes. In my experience, the tax authorities always get their money. I think there's going to be some governance issues, which gets me to the medium term. The medium term things that I'm most excited about for startups, for folks in your audience, is the regulatory side, the reg tech. It was mentioned in the video. The ability to facilitate and increase the efficiencies of tracking assets, of who's getting what, have the right amount of tariffs been paid, have the right amount of fees been paid, has everything moved along. This can take months and in some cases years to track the paperwork. We can increase this efficiency. We can really, if you've got a solution that can increase the efficiency of that data management, you're going to have a lot of people very interested in your solution. The other piece of it, Dale touched on it earlier in the presentation and I would kind of cap it off as Internet of Things. I believe that if you are going to be shipping any sort of product, we can use my bananas example right now. Very soon, we are going to have sensors. It won't be on every banana, but it will certainly be multiple sensors inside every shipping container on every ship in the world. That's going to feed data up to the cloud so we'll be able to track not only where those bananas are, but under what temperature are they? Did it take a half an hour longer? Were they ever exposed to a sudden loss of power in the cooling or the heating? That amount of data, you're going to see, I suspect that entrepreneurs are going to see pressure to make sure that they have sensors put either onto their product or in the transition in the shipping part of your product in order to track these transactions and this travel through the value chain. The last thing in the long term, again, is the artificial intelligence, the AI. There is, as Dale mentioned, just a huge amount of data that is going to be collected in the process. That AI is going to drive predictive and I think the biggest, the most interesting thing to me is how that's going to drive predictions on supply and demand, how it's going to increase efficiencies in how an entrepreneur, how quickly or slowly he or she has to ship a new product, you're going to see that data is going to translate into changes in how we buy and how often we buy. So if you are a startup that does data analysis, if you can tie this into fintech, tie this into inventory tracking, tie it into logistics tracking, the big players are getting into this realm, the federal express, the DHLs of the world, all the shipping companies, Maersk, all the huge companies are getting into this. So if you have a solution, you know, go find out from them what their biggest pain point and problem is. The only thing I'm going to dispute that Dale has said is that I don't think it's 40 interviews. When we teach the iCorps program for the National Science Foundation, when I'm teaching that program and we bring in 20, 25 budding entrepreneurs, we ask them to do 100 interviews in six weeks. And I will tell you that the amount of learning you're going to get as to not only what your customer problem is, but what he or she is willing to pay for is invaluable. So I strongly endorse what Dale said about getting out there and talking to people and making sure you're solving problem number one on the list and not problem number 18. But that's where I see it going. It's really trade finance now, reg tech and IoT in the medium term and AI in the long term. That's really good. Thank you, Victor. Now we have an opportunity to go back to some questions from our online participants. The viewing group at Embassy Port Louis Mauritius asks, can we use fintech to raise new capital? And Dale, I'd like to start with you. You know, I think that there are a lot of companies that have been gearing up so small businesses can lend capital that otherwise wasn't available to them. I'm not sure Mauritius where that is and I'm not sure if a lot of the American companies, a lot of them are only underrated to do loans in America. But I'm sure, you know, there is such a lot of investment going into this space. I think it is a very promising, you know, something that you should definitely go and look at and see what's available to you. And the other thing, of course, as entrepreneurs, you know, I bootstrapped the company and like floated the company for the first two years by myself on like practically no money. So, you know, the other thing that might be possible is a personal loan. There's a lot of services which are now offering kind of, you know, smaller, you know, quit personal loans that may be able to, you know, float you as a human with your accommodation and food and everything while you're able to get the company up and running. So I think that there are definitely options that to look at. That's really good advice. Now, Victor, the American corner in Kaminjibarundi asks, will the regions that are less digitally connected be left behind? In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, what can they do to follow the fintech movement? So, first of all, I just love to add two sentences on what Dale just answered. There are blockchain solutions out there right now that are allowing for peer-to-peer lending. They, I know we don't want to get into cryptocurrencies, things like Bitcoin and Ether, and I, that's a side trip that is very difficult and very complex. So I understand, but there are people out there where you can find micro loans and micro payments. It is very, it's very much kind of a wild situation. So I would just warn people that some of the interest rates you're paying can be very, very high, but there are solutions out there and there's more solutions every day where that people can explore. Regarding the, so clearly we're going to, you're going to need some amount of internet access. And as I have traveled the world, it seems as though more and more people at least have a cell phone, at least have some amount of cell phone access and cell phone connection, which allows them to have some internet connection. So long as that's in place, you can get into those, you can access this information, you can access these resources, but you are going to have to have some way of connecting into the cloud and into the process. So that it's not so much that I think they're going to be left behind. It's just a recognition that this is an expense that you are going to have to incur in order to get access. And I think that the pressure will be on local governments to provide some of that internet access and support, but it only takes one access point to access that information. You're not going to have to have a room full of computer servers. One smartphone can access 90% of what's going on in the FinTech world right in the FinTech solutions that are out there right now. Thank you, Victor. Now this next question is for you, Dale. How is FinTech growing on a global scale? It is growing very rapidly. As I mentioned earlier, there was just in 2016, there was $36 billion invested in 12,000 companies. And you'll see here on the chart how it's been growing over the years. The growth has plateaued a little bit, so there was a huge amount of investing in it. And then there is a little bit of common wisdom that some of these spaces have got a little crowded now. So the investment is plateauing. And actually, as the ecosystem is evolving, what we're seeing is actually larger amounts of money invested in fewer companies. So what that means now is that all of the seed stage companies have kind of had their opportunity to show whether they can grow. And then the Series A, Series B, Series C rounds in VC are bigger amounts of money are going into the companies that are being successful. So I think it's still a really promising area to go and see investment in. But I think the growth has kind of passed its boom heyday, if you will. Thank you. Now, Victor, this next question is for you. The American quarter in Kakata, Liberia, asked if there are any potential downsides to some of the new FinTech innovations? So I think the that's a great question. I think that the my biggest concern right now is the a lot of what is happening, particularly in blockchain and around cryptocurrencies are people are running experiments around around these things. They're raising money by these initial coin offerings as a way. And I think that people need to be aware that these that a lot of these models have not been completely fleshed out yet. And so it really from my perspective depends on your particular startup and your particular entrepreneurial effort. If you are looking to move product, a product that you have manufactured and are looking to deliver it to another country and get payment, then the easy answer is to say, you know, let's stick to the big players. Let's stick to people like IBM. Let's stick to Samsung and those folks who have, you know, who are established companies and you know they are going to be there. That having said that, there's a lot of activity and a lot of great entrepreneurial activity in the micro payment world. So pay attention to what's going on in your world. Pay attention to who's using what micro payment. Is it M-Pesa? Is it ABRA? Is it is it one of these other organizations? And see what's working and what isn't working in that particular space. Again, my I'm very excited about blockchain and what it can do from a security point of view and an asset tracking point of view. My experiences, all the hacks that I have seen on that have taken place have not been with the blockchain. They've been with the software that people have put on top of the blockchain. Having said that, there's going to be some sort of shake out there. We're still very early in the blockchain revolution. But I think it's only going to grow. I think that we've hit on a number of the industries that are going to benefit from that. I think if you're in the any sort of data analysis type of solution you're going to do, you have an opportunity to do very well in the fintech world. Thank you. Now, Dale, this next question is for you. It's from the U.S. Embassy in Lomay, Togo. And they want to know if an entrepreneur can use fintech without a background knowledge of computers. So I'm going to answer this question in two different ways. First of all, if you're an entrepreneur who wants to found a fintech company and you don't have a background in technology, I personally don't have a background in technology. It is all about the team. I am very good at marketing, PR, communications, and some of those kind of those softer skills. Actually, one of my best friends since I was at high school is the chief technology officer at my company. So really, as a team, you cannot build a company by yourself, no matter how much you'd like to think you might. Or maybe some people can, I mean I certainly couldn't. But it is really about the team. So it's about a part of your job as a founder of a company is to bring together the right team to build the right technology at the right time. So yes, I do think you can. And also, I think that there are opportunities if you don't really know how to use computers. There's a group of people who are of course kind of being left behind a little bit by this whole digital revolution and fintech, which is older people. And a lot of them are people who are technologically not literate. And I think that there is a way to kind of, you know, work with those people in terms of, you know, I'm sure there's still some innovation that can go along cash payments and things like that, or even helping those people kind of become part of the digital economy. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now, Victor, this next question is for you. The viewing group at Embassy Port Louis Mauritius asks if crowdfunding is a legitimate source of financing for startups? So, I tend to have a slightly contrary opinion about crowdfunding in general. My concern with crowdfunding is that it has sort of, I don't want to say the bubble has burst, but crowdfunding, at least from my perception, is being these programs like Kickstarter, etc., etc., are being used almost as marketing testbeds to say, okay, could I get enough hits and people interested in my prototype product, then I'll go build it. As opposed to, I'm looking to raise some money to start a business. The average, the last time I don't have the statistic right in front of me, but I believe a couple of years ago, the average amount of money raised on Kickstarter was less than $5,000. So, depending on what you are building and what you are raising, it may not even be close to the amount of money that you need in order to get your company off the ground. I agree with Dale. My first startup, I ate a lot of canned spaghetti because we were bootstrapping and we were trying to do everything we could to figure out and pouring everything into the company. My concern right now with crowdfunding is that the payoffs, the people who win, win very big, but everybody else seems to be left with very, very small amounts of money. I'm just not sure that it's worth the energy, the entrepreneurial energy you're going to have to spend to go out and try and do crowdfunding. Thank you for that. I would actually like to turn this next question over to you as well. The Yonor Liberia viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia asks if Fintech can play a role in building a developing economy? Oh, I think it's a sensational opportunity to build a developing economy. I think it is, again, it needs a coordinated effort. It needs a coordinated amount of assets and resources. There are a lot of very bright young people who are looking to get into technology solutions and the degree that you can support that infrastructure and that community, you're going to grow some really substantial companies. Again, we're talking about data analysis, we're talking about data management, we're talking about increases in efficiency and those type of solutions always get traction somewhere in industry. I was reading this morning before the session started that there's a funding project in Afghanistan to teach young girls how to code. So, you know, that there's opportunities out there to tap into talent that exists. I think it's a great opportunity because, again, it's relatively cheap to have a few computers in a room compared to having to build a massive manufacturing facility to create Tesla cars or medical devices. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. Fantastic. Now, Dale, this next question is for you from Edwin from Guatemala. He would like to know if Fintech can help facilitate international payments or money transfers? It did, it can. And there are already a number of startups doing this that, again, is the point that Victor has made a few times and is so right. It's all about creating increasing efficiency, the speed of the transfers, the amount of people that can actually make the transfers. There are companies now, and there's been a huge amount of innovation in this space. You know, there's companies now where, you know, the way I'm from New Zealand and I live in the U.S. and the way that I make my transfers from New Zealand to the U.S. or vice versa is essentially by not transferring the same money but by putting an amount of money here in the U.S. into a bank account and then that is matched by money that is already in a bank account in New Zealand. So the cost of the international transfer is just reduced dramatically almost to nothing. You know, there's really a bit of companies out there doing it now. There's one called Gold Money where essentially you transfer the money and the value of gold and there is gold sitting in both ends. There's a huge amount of innovation that's already gone on in this space. But if you can see a solution that is, that's right for your country and, you know, where you're sitting and see the opportunity, it could also be a good area for innovation. Thank you. Now, we've reached our final question. The Yonner Liberia viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia asks, how can a social entrepreneur integrate fintech in their venture? And Dale, I'd like to start with you. So a social entrepreneur, so, you know, that's actually where my heart is and how I started the company was, you know, just really wanting to do a huge amount of good. And I think, you know, there's, and so, you know, for me, and it was going to be a for-profit company. So for me, it was really important for social good and financial success to be woven right into the business model. And I think like one of the key things is really having that as your objective at the beginning. You know, as somebody who came from the non-profit foundation world, I wasn't really used to thinking about like, you know, driving revenue and that, you know, I was much more interested in going off and creating a better world. So I really had to like educate myself to bring myself up to speed on that part. And you know, some people might be with the impact. So the first thing is make sure it's like right at the heart of your business model. Because sometimes I think it's like if it's an add-on type of thing, that's one of the first things that can go when you're running under a financial crunch in your company as the social good aspect of it. And the second thing I think which is a real opportunity is that this area has been like largely overlooked for many years from the traditional financing world VCs in particular, because it wasn't thought that social impact was opportunities and social impact were able to make the same amount of revenue and, you know, capital gains as, you know, the kind of the more traditional world. But now, more recently, there's been a series of opportunities which have been identified as having both. So, you know, really going and looking at the types of things and there's so many different ways that we can think about impact, you know, and a lot of it is, you know, to deal with efficiencies in cities, like, you know, helping people with transportation, energy efficiency, you know, education, like all of these are kind of impact opportunities. So, you know, I would really encourage people to go and look at the funds that have been set up more recently that are investing in these areas and really learn from what's going on in the space. Thank you, Dale. Well, unfortunately, it looks like we are out of time, but I want to thank you both for joining us and a big thank you to Summer Youssef contributing in the chat space. I also want to thank everyone viewing today, especially to the hosts of the viewing groups around the globe for bringing entrepreneurs together to be a part of this conversation. We had audiences at American Corner, Christina Kosovo, American Center, Kigali Rwanda, American Cultural Center in Winhuk, Namibia, American Center, Abuja, Nigeria, American Corner, Kaminji, Burundi, American Corner, Gitinga, Burundi, the U.S. Embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, the U.S. Embassy in Lomay, Togo, Central Cultural, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Thomas Edison, American Corner in Paraguay, Esquina Franklin in Guadalajara, Mexico, the Bionational Center in Montevideo, Uruguay, Maker Lab of the Central Colomboamericano, Medellin, Colombia, the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince with at Banjo-Achete, Youth Network for Reform in Painesville, Liberia, American Corner, Cacata, Liberia, U.S. Embassy Port-Louis, Mauritius, Termine in Port-Louis, Mauritius, Botswana Innovation Hub, El Spas in Tunis, Tunisia, Barritec in Beirut, Lebanon. Please continue the conversation on Twitter at hashtag GISTechConnect. And check back here on gistnetwork.org for information about other upcoming GIST events, including programs like this. I hope you enjoyed our discussion today, and thanks again for joining us. Goodbye.