 Welcome to the Fiji Symposium 2019 in Cairo, Egypt, where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Jamie Zimmerman, who is a Senior Program Officer for Global Partnerships for Financial Services for the Poor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Jamie, welcome to the studio. Thanks for having me. Now, this symposium is all about financial inclusion. I wanted to ask you, what do you think it will take for the world's poorest people to prefer digital financial services over cash? And do you think that digital financial services will be enough for this to happen? Thanks for having me. It's so great to be here in Cairo for the second annual Fiji Symposium. And it's a really great question. I mean, here we are in Egypt, which is a robust and growing economy. And yet, there's only 33% financial inclusion in Egypt. Only 1% of Egyptians use mobile money. It's a much of a, it's a really cash-based economy. And so when we think about the question of what does it take for people to prefer digital financial services over cash, I mean, you can look right here in Egypt and really ponder that question. And I think what it really boils down to is that the other digital financial services needs to be better than cash for that poor person. It needs to provide an additional value to them that cash cannot bring. And I think for that to happen, it needs to be cheaper than cash, more accessible, and to link them to other types of opportunities within the digital economy that cash alone cannot provide them. And so, no, I don't believe that digital financial services alone is enough to make someone prefer it over cash, just to have the phone in the pocket isn't really that helpful if you're not able to take that phone to the local store or to the place where you're buying your groceries or into be able to purchase something with it or if you're not able to use that phone to send a payment to a relative in a rural area or vice versa. So there needs to be a system in place that is cheaper, more accessible, more convenient. And only then, when that system is really in place, I think will people start to prefer not having to have that cash in the pocket, but really trust that it's there on the phone and whenever they want to use it, wherever they want to use it for any type of purpose, it'll be there for them. And so that's what the Fiji program is about, is thinking about what are the elements of that system that need to be in place to make it really robust and also really resilient. So it's something that will always be there and be something that's trustworthy as knowing that cash is in your pocket. And so I think that that's critical. I was going to say, is it the technology or is it people's attitudes towards this particular way of transacting? Yeah, so that's a really great question and I think that the answer is that it's both the technology and it's the trust. And so the technology needs to be secure and it needs to be robust enough, as I was saying, for someone to know that when they want to use it, they can. And so there is great technology out there. We are able to build and do so many amazing things. But if the service is down when you go to use it, the best attitude in the world is going to change if it's inconvenient for them. And so it's really, it's a bit of both. I mean, it's a little bit of a balance there, chicken and egg, as we say, where you need to have one in order to have the other. And so when the system is in place and it's working, and that technology is something that you know that is always going to work for you and you can trust it, then you'll start to use it more. And the opposite is true if it doesn't. And so part of the intent of the Fiji program is to say, what is the infrastructure that's needed to have secure, trustworthy, ubiquitous financial services that you can, that you can access through your mobile phone? Now, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation here are obviously a partner of this event. I wanted to ask you, what are the main expectations for this edition of the Fiji Symposium? So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really excited to be partnering with the ITU, the World Bank, and the Committee for Payments and Market Infrastructure at the Bank for International Settlements. This is the triad that makes up the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative partners. It's a really powerful group of global bodies that are able to bring together experts, technologists, regulators from different sectors and from all over the world. And so these symposiums that we're doing, and this is our second symposium of this program here, and to be doing it here in Cairo is really exciting for us because it's a midway point in the Fiji program. And Fiji has this triad of partners, as I was saying, but it's also a very robust program that not only doing these symposia where we bring together these global experts, but also hosts three working groups, one that's looking at cybersecurity and infrastructure, trust in digital financial services, one that's looking at electronic payments and acceptance, and then a third on digital ID, all considered really core components for having those inclusive digital financial services that people want to use and will trust. And then beyond that, there's also implementations that are happening in three very critical markets, one here in Egypt. We have really strong partnerships with the Central Bank of Egypt, with the NTA, and we're really grateful, especially to the NTA for co-hosting this event with us, but also Mexico and China. So these symposia bring together the country implementations as well as all of the great work that's happening within the working groups to raise awareness of these best practices, lessons and insights that are coming out of the country implementations and what the technical experts are doing, and exposing to the world all of the interesting things that are happening that can be replicated in their markets. And what we hope at the foundation that happens by doing this is that other countries will start to replicate and that we will speed up the process of financial inclusion through these types of replications and through this global awareness. And so here we are in the midway point, and we're really excited to hear how things are going and start to look forward to all of the amazing progress that we hope is going to come from here. And you also encourage, of course, the germination with a hackathon here today. Yeah, so really excited to have a hackathon as part of the Fiji Symposium. More than 50 different technology start-ups and fintechs. I think we're down to the 14 finalists. We have eight technology providers from Orange, the GSMA, Payfort. There are many of them, and it's really exciting to be able to feature that as part of the symposium to have the actual start-ups and technologists who are working to build that infrastructure on the ground to come in and work with the APIs, work with the technology and come up with new solutions and new ideas that would work for their markets. And so it's a great feature to have, not just having the global institutions and experts, but also having those on the ground who are the experts in their home turf telling us how does this work here and how can we make it work better. And so really excited about the hackathon. And I believe that they're going to be announcing the winners of that during the symposium as well. And so really excited to see who comes out on top and what they've created. Finally, what do you hope the hundreds of people, the hundreds of delegates that are gathering here will take away with them from being at this year's symposium? I hope that the delegates who are either from here in Cairo and Egypt or have come from all over the world, what I hope that they take away is that there is a proliferation of activity in digital financial services that is really building momentum, that we are learning so many things now about how to make the systems work, not just make them robust but make them resilient and make them responsible. And that they will learn not only about what those different methodologies are, different insights from the countries, but they'll also connect with others from around the world who are asking the same questions in their markets and maybe be looking for the same types of answers or maybe be learning different types of lessons, but they can share that together and take that back home and that'll help to keep that momentum going in their markets as well. And finally, the global landscape, how do you see it now in the next five years or so? So the global landscape for digital financial services is evolving rapidly. Just in the last few years we've included more than a billion people into the financial system through digital financial services. Our hope at the foundation is that within the next three to five years we've included them all. And so this type of initiative, like the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative, is just one of our big partnerships that we've supported to make that a reality. But I think that when you look at all of the really exciting work that's happening that we're putting a spotlight on here at this symposium, that you are able to see all of that momentum moving forward and that we really are in a trajectory where we're accelerating towards that goal of universal financial access. Jamie Zimmer, thank you very much indeed. Yeah, thank you.