 Let's sit down. Thank you very much for attending this session. Great, great honor to be here, and I'm so excited to lead this panel. My name is Yoko Kawai. I am the ex-head of the FinTech Center at the Bank of Japan, the central bank. And this panel is really, it's really phenomenal, I would say. I, the central bank, it's like a center of the incumbent, is sitting together with two great startup people. And this is how we're going to develop this world using the technology and changing the world. So that's what I'm looking forward to hearing to those two guys for what they can say to change the world. So today's topic of this panel is going to be FinTech. And well, it's not really secret at all that everybody knows that there is a great development in the neighborhood of Japan in China. That's the, in the big cities in China, you will never see cash anymore. Everybody is paying with their smartphones or with the plastic cards. So with this cashless society, on the hindsight of that, there is great thing going on. It's the accumulation of data. Like all the retail payments nowadays are transformed into data so that your data is accumulated somewhere on the platform, which is providing the whole range of services. And then based on the data, you can receive very customized services to your convenience. So it's a great change that we're observing in China. And what we can do in Japan is a great question, I think. We still are the cash loving country. Our cash outstanding ratio to GDP is 20%. It is very high, actually. In China, it should be around 10%. And in most countries, it's like 10%. Or in Sweden, it's less than 2%. So we are still cash countries. And that means that we are not really data-nized yet in the society. So I'm so excited to welcome these two panelists and try to listen to them, what they are doing, and then how they can change the world. So let me start. So the first question to these panelists is that, well, self-introduction. First of all, your name, your company, what you're doing. Why are you doing that? How you want to change the world? So please, go ahead, Tsuji-san. OK, so I'm Yosuke Tsuji, the CEO of Manifold. And for me, the big surprise is, like, Bank of Japan come to the slush. This is like a big surprise for me, so, please. Thank you for coming, Yuko. And let me introduce ourselves, Manifold. So Manifold, we founded Manifold six years ago, in 2012, in a very small room at Takata Nobaba with six guys. And Manifold's mission is, as you see, move your life forward through our services. So before I founded Manifold, I worked for Manix, which is one of the biggest online securities company. And we saw the people struggling about having a worry about money. So we thought we should have developed some new financial innovation services by technology. Now we have two main services. The main service is the PFM, Personal Financial Management Tools, for individual customers. Now we have the number of the users exceeds, like, six million users, and the number one PFM service in Japan. And the second service is for SMEs. We provide third services, cloud accounting, invoice, payroll, and expenses for SMEs. Now I think we have also top share in Japan. So in 2017, we went public. So Manifold became the first fintech company, fintech startup company in Japan. Now I think the market welcomed us very much. And now still keep going, developing, and expanding our business. So IPO has just started. Thank you very much. Okay, great. So Aoyaki-san, please. Hi, everyone. I'm Naoki at Merukari. I'm a CEO of Merupay. Merupay is a fintech business unit of Merukari. So I'd like to introduce a little bit about Merukali and Merupay, what we are doing. Yep. So Merukali, as you know, has been providing a marketplace where anyone can buy and sell. And I think we have been changing the people's way to buy and sell your goods. So now with Merupay, we would like to expand from the online digital services to offline experiences. So we'd like to change the way you live and also the experiences. Well, change the experiences around the payment. So yeah, well, and I just joined this fintech service sector. Actually, I joined Merukali at the end of last year. So I'm very new to this sector. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you. Great. Okay, so the next question is going to be that what are the challenges in your business? And well, first, I'd like to start with Suji-san, that what are the challenges in the six years time? There should have been like many hurdles you needed to overcome. And there should have been the things which were not going in the way you expected. And also you said that you went through IPO. So before and after IPO, maybe things have changed. So what are your challenges in the business? Actually, like, challenges like the changing, actually, after IPO and before IPO. So after IPO, so there is mainly two challenges we are facing. The first one is to create new innovative services, fintech services. And as Yuko-san said, so we have a lot of data, not only for individual customers, but also SMEs. So we have a big data. However, we don't create new innovative services based on these data. For example, we are trying to develop new lending services for SMEs by working with Japanese financial institutions. However, it doesn't work very well at this time. So we need to create new lending services based on our data, I mean customer's data. And fintech, even Google and Facebook don't have. So the creating algorithm of lending and its big challenge and also finding the right persons who try to create new service and, you know, not afraid of failing, they're like challenging. So the biggest challenge would be like finding the right person. So of course, we went public. So we do have the right people, the good persons. But still we are looking for, you know, like the people who are a deep thinker and who think outside of the box. So maybe these people come from another industry, not financial area. So these things like the creating new innovative service and also finding the right person. These things are a big challenge for us. I think it truly is a challenge for the legacy institution like ours that we really need to change the way we think and we really need to change... There have been so many traditional ways of doing the things and it's not very easy to change people's mindset. But if you don't do that, you can never make an innovation. So I mean like it's how to promote those type of innovative thinking and how to change the people should be a challenge. Are you doing anything to change your people in your company? That's a good question. So actually I don't have right answers. So that's why I'm looking for the good people. However, the key is to correct people have different background. So of course financial institutions and IT and big data and maybe retail. And also like UX, user experience is most important part for FinTech players and FinTech services. So when I play Pokemon, Pokemon is a great service actually. So I was thinking like we would like to create money for our service like Pokemon Go, like entertainment. So it should be the people from the game industry like Aoyagi-san. That's very interesting. Thank you very much. Aoyagi-san, how about like challenges for you or what are the challenges for you? Yeah, we face a lot of challenges but I agree with Yosuke. Well the biggest challenge is actually forming a great team with a scale. Because as you can see with Alipay or Richard Pay, the service is really complicated. Well not complicated, but the scale of the service is really big. It's not simple payment service. It's actually highly integrated the financial service platform. So now at Merupay we have 50 people but this year we plan to expand the size of the organization from 50 to 300. But it's still the year one. Well just compared to the global players like Chinese players also in Southeast Asia. Grab is doing Grab Pay, Tokopedia that's Toko Cash. So this is kind of the global big trend. We have to make a big bet on that. If it's too small it's going to be like really fragmented fintech companies. So that's the kind of the thing I'm thinking every day and so I'm actually every day meeting at least two or three people to do interview. Well to convince to actually make them believe the future that Merupay has been sending all the people and candidate to China to see what's going on. It's actually cashless. You don't have to and cash is actually useless in China. So without seeing that it's really hard to believe that's coming. But I believe that's coming. So that's the biggest challenge. Okay well Cash is my product actually in the Bank of Japan's product. Cash is your product right? Exactly. So if you see the cashless society you can hire me I think. Okay anyway so the fragmentation is the word you raise and which is really what's happening in Japan I think. Especially in the retail front we see so many services payment services, credit cards, debit cards so many contactless cards and you have Suika, Passmo and everything right? Well users are like confused I would say. It's just so fragmented and there are so many incumbents not only those cashless payment companies but also banks as well. So how do you want to deal with the incumbents like the big banks and also the succeeding the big companies who are doing the cashless payments and also offering some other financial services? Do you want to fight with them, kick them out or do you want to collaborate with them? So please do do some. I don't want to fight with banks they are too big but so I think this like story depend on like customer needs actually. So we often work with the Japanese Bank and I strongly believe that Japanese Bank especially local bank they know they need to change their way of doing and cost of structure you know like they don't need many branches in front of the stations. That's why very well known local bank such as Hizoka Bank or like Hokuyo Bank investing on earth and also to collaborate to provide a new fintech service to the customers. So Japanese banks are like trust and also loyal customer base which like the other countries banks doesn't have to work with. So I think it's a good way to work with the Japanese Bank and win-win based on win-win model. But the first things I strongly believe like the Japanese fintech is not it's different from that in China and in the United States I think. That's a very interesting point. I think in Japan there's a lot of data or the concern about the data privacy is very different in Japan from China and it's very different like in elsewhere in the world I think. So that we really need to think Japan's way to develop a fintech I think. So how about you? How do you deal with the incumbents? I think the point well of course there are many ways to achieve that but it has been really focusing user experiences. So that's one of the reasons why we've been really successful in marketplace side. So that part we are really focusing on. A lot of fragment services that you have to go to security branch so that should be changed. Well but the second thing I would like to say is we are still a small start-up. Even we are hiring a lot of people this year next year but we understand we have to focus on where we are good at. Also we have to collaborate with the companies they have a lot of knowledge in the past many decades. For example like we can be a branch of large incumbents and then we are actually helping especially on the user engagement side. We've got to be a kind of gateway to their services and then on the financial instrument side we haven't been doing like making financial products like insurance or the investment instruments. So those parts I think we can collaborate. Also to accelerate this change we actually have to have a scale and also we have to share the benefit and profit with other players. So at that point we have to be very wise and smart. That's very interesting to hear that. You said that you are bringing from online to offline that's like in Chinese way I'm saying it's O2O of online to offline and bringing the online user experience to offline is not a very easy job but you got to anyway do it and then like whether you can convince your consumers to go offline using your services will be a key to success I think. So that's really good to hear. So we have six minutes left that means like three minutes each for you to talk about your dream. Beyond your business if you have free hands in three years time five years time even ten years time what would you like to achieve? It doesn't need to be limited to the FinTech area. It can be like your personal life however but please tell me your dream. My dream yeah so we started just six years ago so we are still doing that so our mission is as I said move people right forward through our services and also like our mission our vision is to be number one money platform in Japan not only in Japan but also overseas. So actually we are expanding our business especially Asia for example we are investing in the number one Indonesian HL company and other main investors and also we are looking for the opportunity to enter the market in Asia as well so in terms of like PFM services and also cloud accounting services so our to achieve our mission our vision and to be number one platform in Asia and so I strongly believe technology brings technology improve people's life very much and so I believe technology so I really enjoying like developing new services and to create new world so that's so I hope my money forward become very how do you say like a company like Sony and Toyota because when I was university student I traveled overseas and everybody said like Sony's product is great or Toyota's car is great so I would like to create money for like Sony and Toyota's not like a product like a financial services that's great that's a good ambition how about you our Exxon we have a lot of dreams in three years, five years, ten years because five years ago medical market place didn't exist so anything can happen in five years, ten years time frame so in two years, three years we want to see the city where people can buy and sell offline without cash I mean papers and coins and to you know by seeing that I think Japanese people believe oh that's coming, that's happening the much better life is actually coming so without seeing that it's very difficult to change the people's mindset and behavior and the way they live but anything can happen if you look at Uber Airbnb they change the way of life but that's the first thing in short time we want to do at the I'm more interested in how other industry and services are changing after that especially with the cashless payment infrastructure in China there's a big wave called the new retail so for example like if you go to Lohson, family marathon or something like that in China you don't have to pay just you grab something you want and then you just go out and check out that's it so much better experience at hotels, you still have to check in and check out you don't have to do it you know we have kind of crazy schooling that supports your trust and credit so you can just go enjoy grab lunch without payment without any interaction with people so that's the change we want to see after cashless the payment and then as one of the Japanese I would like to create the industries after 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games it's talking about 2020 Olympic Games but I'm highly concerned about the economy and the society after the Tokyo Olympic Games we don't have a clear plan to grow so we have to actually complete the change of those fintech and those experiences before Olympic Games that's kind of my dream and also the kind of passion that's really great to hear because the last Olympic we had it's like 50 some years ago after that we went into serious recession because we really didn't have a clear vision to grow our economy after that but we really need to have that as you said we need to use Olympic as an excuse to develop ourselves and change ourselves and try to prepare for the future so that we can see the better world even after the Olympic we can just transform ourselves into the better world that's true and even though we are enjoying the great services from the incumbent financial institutions it is not enough at this moment and it will not be enough in the future for sure because we are observing the deteriorating demography with less people less services for sure so we really need to make ourselves improve to raise the efficiency to become more convenient that's true so the time is now and we need to change the world well this is the end of the panel thank you very much for the participation thank you very much