 I'm speaking at the ITU Studios in Geneva, and I'm here with Carol Benson. Carol Benson is the co-chair of the Ecosystem Working Group within the Digital Financial Services Focus Group. Carol, hello. And the first question for me is, well, what exactly is the Ecosystem Working Group? The idea of this group is to try to describe to all of the different participants in financial services sort of what the totality of the system needs to be in order to achieve the goals of financial inclusion. And so we're looking very broadly at everything from the enabling environment, law policy regulation, technical readiness, things like that, to the infrastructure issues of what kind of payment networks are there, what kind of telecommunications networks, et cetera. And then diving down a layer from that, we're looking at who the users are of the system, people, families, consumers, and merchants, businesses, governments, enterprises, anybody who is using the ecosystem. Software providers, so the traditional banks, the non-bank providers including MNOs and other non-banks that are directly providing services to those users. And then there's a whole other stack behind them of processors and technology companies, hardware and software providers that are making it possible for them to deliver those products. And then we take another cut. We look at the use cases. What it is that people want to do, they want to safely store their money, that's something a lot of us in the developed world never really think about, but a lot of people don't have access to that. So how do you store your money, how do you use it, make payments, receive payments, whether it's to a business or from a business or to a person or from a person. So those are the use cases, also obviously investing, borrowing, saving, things like that. So we're looking at where digital financial services fits within this larger world, this ecosystem. And where does it fit? Is it a big player? Is it a tiny cog in this whole machine? It's a huge piece. It's really, financial transactions are a key part of what all of our lives are. What got me personally very interested in this whole area about five or six years ago was when I read a book called Portfolios of the Poor, which was diary research in three or four countries, I can't remember three or four countries, that looked into the financial lives of the poor. And their financial lives are every bit as complicated as yours are or mine are. They do a lot of transactions, they save, they borrow, they invest. But they do it in a way that is unsafe frequently, predatory sometimes, you know, there's lots of problems with that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is financial services are a very big part of all of our lives. It's just that when we're well-served it kind of goes into the background and we're not as aware of it. So that's what we're trying to, our group is trying to describe all of that. And then the most important part is that we're trying to identify the key issues and barriers, what is preventing this world from going forward at the pace at which we'd like to see it go forward. So does that mean that your group in particular is more of a big picture group than the other groups? Absolutely. A big picture group, but then we are doing deep dives on a couple of topics that we think are key to this enablement of the ecosystem. And what can your group in particular deliver? What is your key deliverable? Well, a lot of it is helping with awareness and education and sort of creating a common vocabulary between groups, particularly regulators from financial services sector and from telco and sectors and competition authorities and such, not helping to create a common vocabulary so that they can work together. Is that an issue at the moment? Is there a lack of comprehension between those studies? Yes. I think there has been. I think that particularly those different groups often work quite well together on a country by country basis. But the global policy groups tend to be concentrated in telcom or finance. So one of the things we're trying to do is create a more common understanding. My best practice, things like that to help the world go forward. Tell me a bit more about the kind of organizations and people that you have within your group. Within our group we have a fair number of telcom regulators. We have a number of central bankers and just a few commercial bankers. We have several people from NGOs who are working and trying to get things done either on a country basis or a regional basis, sometimes global basis. And I think that is the bulk of it. We also have some commercial service providers. It's a pretty wide mix. Oh, very wide. And have you found even the short time year goes by very quickly? Absolutely. Have you managed to see any glimmers of progress, a common understanding that's developed as a result of these people working together? I think so. I think so. It's sort of two levels. One, we've worked at a very high level. We've created a one page picture of the ecosystem, or the DFS ecosystem, that more or less everybody agrees is descriptive. So that was a step ahead. We've done some work in sort of outlining what all the components of the ecosystem are. And then we are doing these deep dives into so far three particular areas that we've really focused on. One is the national identity systems. And at first glance, that may not seem to be an obvious, enable or important issue in financial services. But the fact is you can't open a financial account without identity. And so having this done in a cost effective, scalable way is very important. And so we did some research over the last year and have published that and are very encouraged by what's happening globally in the way of particularly biometric identity information because the biometrics introduces a fraud control aspect that's very important. So that was good work that was done and I think is going to be useful to our audiences. The other one that we're currently going deep on is merchant payments. Because one of the big problems with these mobile money products and services around the world is that people will receive electronic money into their digital wallet. So maybe it's a transfer from a relative or friend or maybe it's a government benefit of some sort or occasionally a salary or something like that. And they'll immediately cash it out and they will not keep their money in digital form. And so they don't have the benefits of safety and things like that that we're hoping to be able to deliver. And that's because there's not yet enough trust in these digital systems. Well trust is an important piece but what we think is even more important than trust is usability. Why would you keep your money in electronic form if you can't use it? And so what is the key to usability is getting merchants large and small to accept electronic payments. And there's a lot of actual there's a lot of economics and business issues around that that we're working on trying to tease apart make sure people understand and and maybe even set some common goals. Still over two billion people who are excluded from financial services completely. Are you confident that you can see a future where everyone has access to some financial services? Well I'm confident that we're going to continue to make pretty dramatic progress. I mean the most recent findings can't quote the numbers off hand but I show that there's been quite a bit of progress mate. I think that will continue. I don't know how far it will go hopefully all the way. Carol Benson thank you very much for being here and I do wish you all the best and I hope that your group does make as much progress as you would like. Okay thank you very much.