Welcome to Breaking Banks, the number one global fintech radio show and podcast. I’m Brett King. And I’m Jason Henricks.

Every week since 2013, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in financial services. From incumbents to unicorns, and from cutting edge technology to the people using it to help create a more innovative, inclusive, and healthy financial future. I’m J.P. Nichols, and this is Breaking Banks.

Welcome back to Breaking Banks. I am your host, Brett King. Well, we headed down to my hometown today of Bangkok, and we’re going to talk to someone plugged into the Thai tech scene there.

But we also want to get into what’s happening in fintech and sort of BC’s interesting economy. You know, it’s now, if you guys aren’t familiar with Thailand, it’s now one of the premier health tourism destinations in the world. Obviously, you’ve got a big lifestyle movement here.

Digital Nomad Visa has recently come out here. So a lot of people are looking to live and work in Thailand. So it’s an interesting destination.

You know, I think I’ve explained why I live here in Thailand, at least part time. But I thought today we’d dive into the Thai tech scene and get into a bit of what’s happening with, you know, the Thai economy and the success of prompt pay and some other things. So for that purpose, I’m inviting from Rise and CX Ventures, Kid Pacharianon from Rise and CX Ventures.

Kid, welcome to Breaking Banks. And I’m glad to have you here. Thank you, Brett.

Well, this is super exciting to be on your podcast for the first time. And yeah, definitely. There’s more things to share.

Perfect. Well, first of all, you know, where does, for those unfamiliar, where does Thailand sort of sit as an economy in Southeast Asia in comparison to, you know, other countries in the region? Yeah, I think that’s a great starting point, right? Because Thailand is just a small country. We have only 60 plus million people, right, in the 600 million economy in Southeast Asia.

Right. And I think we are in the very kind of like pivotal point for the country as well. Many of you might know that we just got the new prime minister a couple of weeks back.

Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise. And then also, like, our economy is kind of like slowly recovered. Probably we had the slowest one to recover from Covid, right, in terms of like the 1920s.

Right. So that’s because Thailand took a big hit for tourism particularly. Right.

Yeah. And tourism is already 17 percent of our GDP. Right.

So that’s kind of like a huge hit. Yeah. Which is why it’s kind of like slowly recovered.

Very interesting. And, you know, where does Thailand sit in terms of relationship to China in the region from a geopolitical perspective? I think we are in the best spot in this region. And also the region is also in the very good spot, right, because we come like tie with China.

We also tie with the US. Yeah. Even though for Thai economy, but in particular, like we have some trade deficit with China these days.

We export a lot more to the US, but then we have a trade deficit, a surplus in the US side, a deficit on the China side. So, yeah, so that’s why I mean, yeah, that’s what’s going on at the moment. But apart from that, I think if I were to share more about a kind of like Thai economy at the moment, right, it’s also very challenging because I think what we are facing right now is what we call demographic headwinds.

Right. Yeah. So we are one of the country that is entering aging society even faster than anyone else in Southeast Asia.

Yeah. And that demographic headwinds. Yeah.

When we compare ourselves to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to the Philippines, very challenging. And what is challenging is that in the next two or three years, before 2030, we have the dead people, I mean, like more than the new birth. Oh, the death rate.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The death rate is kind of like going down, right? I mean, it’s going up while the birth rate is going down and it’s crossed. Yeah. Right.

So it is not an uncommon problem, but the Thai economy is going to start. I mean, the Thai population is going to start to shrink just as China has recently. This is a common problem around the world.

In fact, people like Elon Musk and others are talking about this, the risk to humanity. It may not be from overpopulation. It may be that we burn out and we are not growing our population anymore and start to shrink.

And that, you know, that only ends one way. Right. So that’s a pretty interesting problem.

But why do you think birth rates are not catching up with the death rates? Is it less Thai people having kids these days? Is it economically more challenging? Yeah, I think, like, let me jump into one part of this. Yes, everybody, kind of like many countries facing the same problem, right? But Thailand, we have another problem, which is kind of like we we are getting old, but not getting rich enough. Like in other countries, when you compare us to China, the GDP per capita of China is even more than us, right? Or even countries like in Southeast Asia, like Singapore, also has probably almost tenfold than what we have today.

Right. So that’s the big challenge. And why people are aging so fast? Yeah, the first reason, as you said, is about fertility rate.

When we look at fertility rate before 1975, Thai women gave birth around six births per woman. Right. Yeah.

Now, less than two. Yeah. Yeah.

And it’s got to be, it’s got to be two point, the replacement rate is 2.4, I think, isn’t it? Yeah, I think it’s something like that. So, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s a common problem.

Right, right. But then I think Thailand, I think we are now, right now, we are already lower than two. Yeah, from six, already lower than two.

So that’s, so now that’s why it’s kind of like a big problem for us. And what about the, I mean, there’s a lot of youth, it’s a very youthful market, but fairly close to full employment, I understand, right? Yeah. If you look at the youth and their working age, right, when we talk about the working age, we say from age 15 to 60, if you use the year, count like 2015 as an index year.

So right now, in Southeast Asia, we break down the country into two groups, right? So the group that is still producing, kind of like the working population, is much more than 2015. There’s countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, right? Where Thailand, we are already in the same group with Singapore, China, right, South Korea, right, which is kind of like already that we have less people than 2015, right? And then if you project this into the future, into 2050. So Thailand, from 100 people today, Thailand and China are going to have around 77 people.

So that’s like almost 30% drop, right, in the working population. So that’s why I think we need to change something. Yeah, but I mean, to Thailand’s credit, they’re trying to attract a lot of new talent into the country.

I think that’s positive. You know, a lot of people want to come here because the quality of life is so good. It’s why I came to Thailand.

But what about the startup scene? What about the sort of innovation, you know, investments? Where are they going into? Is there a big venture capital community here? Is there a big startup community? Can you give us a bit of a lay of the land? Right, so I think Thailand is a very interesting kind of market in the sense that we have a lot more corporate venture capital than the venture capital. Yeah, so probably we have like five venture capital versus 50, like the corporate venture capital. Yeah, so that’s what we have.

I think if I’m telling the story about a startup scene, I think it kickstarted when we started the startup scene around 2012, right, probably 12 years ago. In these 12 years ago, I think we passed so many, like around four waves of the disruption or startup scene, right? So the first wave started when kind of like the company like Oogbee, I’m sure you have heard of, you know Moo, right, Natu Wood, right, so got two million investment from like the CBC arm of the largest telco in Thailand, right. And then after that, there’s become what we call app economy.

Everybody’s producing some app. Right now we have too many apps, right, so we just use like the top 10, right. And then this is the first wave.

The second wave, I think, is kind of like three, four years after that, right, so we start to have kind of like more e-commerce. So e-commerce is populating like Lazada, like Shopee. People start to shop online.

Then we have the fintech economy. Yeah, you’re familiar with the company like C2P, right, the payment gateway. So those businesses are growing up.

Not to mention the fintech stuff, but of course, we now have the QR-based PromptPay, which is a bank-to-bank and person-to-person initiative across Thailand, and it’s doing very, very well. Yeah, and that’s an example for a Singapore government launching POM now, right, or now Thai people will be able to transfer the money to Singapore people for free, right, and then vice versa. And then we do the same thing for the people in Hong Kong as well.

So that’s how this idea of QR code payment is so popular. Yeah, but then that’s kind of like the example of kind of like the second wave, right. The third wave, I think we call, we’re thinking about kind of like those super apps, right, Rai Hailing, right, the super app kind of like social commerce that’s popping up in the past five years, right, so that’s like the way that we are in right now.

But then if you ask me kind of like, and what is the next wave? What is the future of kind of like the Thai economy and also Southeast Asian economy? I think it’s going to be deep tech. Now, we are already experiencing AI that come into play, right. But then apart from that, I think right now we have all apps already.

But the next phase should be should be deep tech, AI, for sure, blockchain, biotech, robotics, right. So those are the things that I think is going to be the next wave that’s coming after these three waves. Fair enough.

So what are some of the notable Thai startups that have had some success, either locally or being able to go offshore that you can talk about? Right. I think when we talk about kind of like Thai startup, like the first one in Thailand going to be Flash Express, right, which is like logistic kind of like last mile delivery by motorbike, right. So that’s far by Kongsan Lee, which is a Thai Chinese, right.

So they’re doing they’re doing okay in the past few years, expanding to other countries like Philippines, Malaysia, right. So that’s our first kind of like Thai unicorn. The second one, which is now kind of like a bit like challenging.

Yeah, to be full disclosure, I’m also the investor as well. It’s a Bitcub, right? Yeah, which is the biggest exchange in Bitcoin exchange here too, right? Yeah. And we had a very famous deal that was going to go down with SCB.

But, you know, when the FTX thing exploded, it sort of got put on hold. But certainly Bitcub and we should get the founder of Bitcub on the show, actually. I’ve met him a couple of times.

Really, really interesting and very, you know, doing some great things, you know, clearly, like we have Binance in the region as well, but Bitcub is a really respected player in the region. Yeah, as they have kind of like 96% market share, right? So regulated. Yeah, 96% market share is huge.

Yeah. So that’s the kind of like the second one, you know, for Thailand, right? And then the third one, kind of like probably if you call that true money is a startup, you know, sometimes people call that the startup, right? But then that’s a claim to be a number two. It’s a startup like Vaser and MasterCard are startups.

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s probably, if you want to call it the third one, this is the third one.

And then, you know, we also have the one that is like Lion Man and Wong Nai, right? So another kind of like food delivery company, like the merge between Lion, which is the largest messaging platform in the country. Yeah. And Wong Nai, which is kind of like the restaurant review site.

Yeah, that is getting super popular, right? I use Foodpanda when I’m here. Why? Yeah. Why not? Like Grab or… Grab sometimes as well.

Yeah. Grab as well. And then the occasional Lion Man, you know, it’s really an interesting like Thailand was also quite advanced, you know, like obviously we see the mobile commerce businesses is really bedded in here.

QR is very popular. It’s doing well. You know, you have some great homegrown sort of delivery companies, things like that.

But Thailand was also one of the first countries in the world to really get into Facebook commerce. So how is social media impacting the Thai economy or how does that use these days? No, I think like if you look at the mobile penetration rate, right, like I think it’s kind of like 150 percent, which means everybody kind of like having more than one mobile phone. Me myself, I have two, right? And that’s kind of like starting from that, we have many apps in our phone, right? And then these apps in our phone be able to let us shopping easier.

So the kids and also kind of like university students nowadays, many people use Instagram, kind of like much more than Facebook. Right. So, yeah.

So then that’s an opportunity. And is there commerce built around Instagram here? Yeah, I think that the people shopping, like, for example, my wife, this is normal for Thai people, right? That’s OK, your wife shopping. But then she liked this browse, right? And then she captured the screen and send you, yeah, yeah.

Send you the, this browse is so beautiful, right? And then also send the bank account of the seller. And then you transfer using your mobile payment in Pompei and then capture the screen of the receipt. And then send it back to your wife, your wife then say, hey, send me the product to the seller.

This is, we’re living in the 21st century, brother. This is, that’s good. So tell me a bit about what you’re doing personally, what’s happening with CX and Rise? Yeah, so I think like, like just bridging, right? What we see from the big trend, right? The next wave going to be the deep tech, right? So I think that’s why six years ago, we embarked on a journey that we do, we want to help the Thai and Southeast Asian economy.

Our mission is always to help drive 1% of GDP for the entire Southeast Asia. And the only way to do that, right, is to kind of like bring the startup to working with the big corporate here in this region. Yeah, because here in this region, it’s so, I think it’s not easy because I bought and raised here.

I see like the many waves of like company that in the past that they tried to disrupt the big company. I thought, okay, it’s good to be better to kind of like collaborate, not compete, right? So that’s why, yeah. And, and, and because of the big company here, most of the time, they not be able to produce new innovation themselves, right? Yeah.

So if they’ll be able to reference startup from anywhere in the world, so this is a big market for them. In terms of ASTM, we decided, okay, now we will reach, we will set up our VC fund in the U.S. in Silicon Valley. At that time, I went to Stanford for my exec, kind of like MBA, right? But the goal is just to study, but the goal is to set up this VC fund.

We raised the capital from the listed, yeah, from the listed company here, right? Many big companies, Silicon Valley presence. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, and then we helping them scouting for the technology that they cannot be sought here. Right. And then after that, when they’re ready, we bring the tech company from the U.S. back to Thai and Southeast Asian economy to collaborate with our investor.

Yeah. So that’s what we’ve been doing kind of like in the past, like six years, and it’s doing well. So we have like some of the, I guess, study that already come here.

For example, like one company that we brought is called Quinn, Q-W-I-N. So Quinn is a Menlo Park based company. What they do, they produce menstrual pad for women.

And women, it doesn’t need to draw the blood from the hospital anymore. So they use the menstrual pad. Yeah.

They throw away every month, right? Yeah. That’s, that’s pretty interesting data point. Yeah.

Like I, why hasn’t someone thought of that sooner? That’s brilliant, actually. Yeah. And then you can use it as a regular testing.

You’re getting monthly testing or whatever. Yeah. That’s smart.

Yeah. Because when you develop a disease, right? Like, like diabetes is not going to develop in a day or two. No, no, exactly.

And bloods are the best data you can get on that stuff. In terms of the tech scene, you talked about AI a bit earlier, you alluded to it, but what’s the concentrational focus on artificial intelligence like at the, at the moment? Right. I think we spend around kind of like, invest around like 15%, like to 20% of our kind of like, like asset management to the AI company, right? Or at least AI component in the company.

And we’re looking at the industry that is like a fit with Southeast Asia. You think which industry is kind of like fit, right? So first, definitely, first and foremost is agri-tech. We love agri-tech because agri-tech is, is agriculture is a backbone for this region.

Yeah. I mean, Thai has a big agriculture business, right? 70% of our people are farmers, right? So, so that, that, that’s the backbone of the economy. Yeah.

Right. We’re looking at agri-tech. So that’s the first one.

The second one that I think is very interesting is the medical. I just, you mentioned we have good medical tourism, right? But then, yeah, because we, we could, we have the, the, the hospital, the lifestyle hotel. Yes.

And they’ve invested in, in the cutting edge technology. In fact, I saw a Thai startup at TechSource the other week, which is doing AI based breast cancer diagnosis with a 98% accuracy rate. That’s significantly better than, than doctors.

So that’s a, and that’s a homegrown tech company, but yeah, no, there’s some, some great stuff happening here. In the last lab, not least apart from the like agri-tech, med-tech, I think the last one is important for this region is, is tourism tech, right? Yeah. So, which means like we don’t want people to just rip off from the, from the taxi in the first lane, or they not get a diarrhea when they go to the street food, how to be able to improve experience end to end.

So that’s, so that’s something that I think like Thai and Southeast Asian economy needs that. That’s, it’s really interesting conversation. What do you, what do you think that, you know, I always like to do this on The Futurist, but let’s do this now, projecting out, you know, 20 years, what do you think Thailand’s going to be like, you know, compare it to today? What do you, what do you think will have changed? I think this is a, again, very inflection point, right? In many sense.

So first, if you’re looking at how the startup scene, so in these two to three years from now, if Thai startup going to go export, it needs to be, to have a lot of IPOs. So right now we see some company like startup that go IPO already in Thai stock exchange. Namely, for example, like the SKU lane, have you heard SKU lane? So it’s kind of like a learning platform, right? That people can learn anything just like Udacity or Coursera, right? But it’s, it’s kind of like B2B and B2C.

That’s one that is going IPO very soon, right? So that’s, and we expect more, right? If you see this, a lot more startup that could be able to go IPO, they don’t need to be a unicorn. They can go IPO here and an investor can exit, right? So that’s going to, going to build a new wave of investor that, that coming in. As, apart from the startup scene, if I’m looking at it broader, I think another, another thing that needs to change is education system, right? Yeah, because I think that’s the, I think that’s true of the world, especially with AI coming in, right? Right.

But Thailand, if you look at our PISA score, we need to improve it quite a lot. Right, right. We are, yeah, we’re deteriorating.

But you know, I mean, I think, I think there’s opportunity here to reinvent education, particularly, and if you, you know, one of the, the benefits of Thailand is, you know, you can, you have historical places and you, you know, there’s ways to educate kids on the ground, you know, at certain locations and things like that. And I think there’s, you know, I mean, I think Thailand is going to be an experienced economy in the future, personally, you know? Yeah, if we can, if we can turn our, like, tourism industry to become more sustainable, right? And then more value-added, not just destroying everything and burn it out, burn it down, like, with more tourists, right? So that’s something that I think the country need to adapt. Yeah, we need, and we need autonomous drivers to reduce the road fatalities.

That’s, that’s true. But, Kid, look, this has been a really interesting conversation. I thank you for giving us some of your time and your valuable insights.

I’m, I’m very happy to share my adopted home with the rest of the world. So, you know, we go out to 180 countries. So if you’re listening, you’ve learned a bit more about Thailand today.

That’s great. Where can people find out a bit more about what you’re doing, Kid? And, and, you know, if they’re interested in supporting, like, the fintech space or yourself, what would you suggest in terms of getting into the tech startup space here? Yeah, no, just reach out to me and then I’ll be the gateway, right? So, lead us to my LinkedIn, yeah. So, for RISE, for CXN, definitely in the next two weeks, you know, we have HopRed Innovation Summit coming up, right? Yeah, the Asia’s largest experiential conference, where people can just jump in and then do 60 workshops in two days.

So, yeah, so happy to have you, Brett, as well. Yeah, let me know if you’re around. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you. And that’s it for this segment. We’re going to take a quick break.

And, you know, hopefully we’ll get back to Thailand another time. But, Kid, thanks for joining us. You’re listening to Breaking Banks, and we’ll be right back.

You know what season it is? Well, it’s not just pumpkin spice season, it’s conference season. And there’s a new show to add to your list. The AI Native Banking and Fintech Conference is happening October 7th in Salt Lake City, and Breaking Banks is proud to be a media partner.

Our listeners get a 25% discount when they register at conferences.springlabs.com and use the code SPRINGLABSXBREAKINGBANKS. Yeah, I didn’t write that code. The link and the code are in the show notes, though.

And this is an outstanding conference with an outstanding set of speakers. It should not be missed. Well, I am in Saudi Arabia today for what I think is probably the largest Fintech conference in the Middle East right now, Fintech24.

And the talk of this event, obviously, there’s a lot of really interesting players here. We caught up with Lita Glifford, Gaila Boscovich, Simon Taylor was here from Brain Food. And we’re really sort of learning about what’s happening in the Saudi market.

Incredible growth in Fintech. The fact that you’ve got such a huge event here, my guess is there’s probably 10,000 people at this event. Sure.

But we are here today at the booth and the stand for Barak, which is the newest wallet and challenger bank in the Middle East, but certainly in Saudi, established by my good friend Ahmad al-Nazi, who was, of course, heavily involved in a previous iteration of a very successful wallet ecosystem here with STC Pay. But we have one of the team with us today to tell us about the progress. Barak just hit an amazing milestone of their first million customers in 21 days.

We’re now just in the second month of operation and looks like they’re going to get close to 2 million. So this is very exciting. Let me introduce you to Saad.

Saad, please, for our listeners, can you introduce yourself? Tell us about your role at Barak. Absolutely. So my name is Saad al-Muhanna.

I’m the chief business officer at Barak. It’s an exciting journey. We started four weeks ago, as you mentioned, we reached to over a million users.

As of now, we have moved over more than a billion Saudi Riyal. The progress is happening extremely super fast. And the appetite to our products in the kingdom is extremely high.

I think that the nature of what we do is basically helping the entire youth to do their and to deal with their financials in a quick manner, which is helping the entire ecosystem. So you’re really targeting the younger people? Well, in Saudi, younger people represent more than 70% of the entire population. So by nature, they represent the majority of our audience.

So yes, part of what we do is offering. And of course, mobile banking has been very successful here. Mobile penetration is off the charts across the Middle East.

You go to Dubai, Qatar, you know, you generally see people with two phones, you know, and using it all the time. But let’s go back a little bit. Tell me about how Barak came to be, you know, what’s the foundation story? And when did you start planning this? Obviously, the last four weeks, it’s been great, but for five, six weeks, you know, where did it all start? Well, we applied for our license a year and a half ago.

It was basically we submitted, we got our… And it’s a digital banking license and payments? It’s an EMI license, Electronic Money Institute license. We applied for it in the beginning of last year. We got the principal approval in Q1 last year.

It took us less than a year to materialize the license. As you know, you normally get the… Yeah, it normally takes years. Absolutely.

And you basically get the principal approval, then you work on the infrastructure, on building the team, on building the technology, integrating with the ecosystem. Then you basically get the final license once you’re done. We got that in February.

We start on the family and friend on April. On April, we start with the employees only, then we start in May with the family and friend. And in the beginning of August, we opened it together.

So yeah, so we’re just coming up on what, about six weeks now live? Six weeks, less than six weeks. 35 days. 35 days.

And what’s the customer count right now? So we have more than 1.5 million. So since the announcement, we have another 500,000. Yeah, that’s incredible.

That’s incredible. So this makes Brack the fastest growing private wallet and challenger bank in the world today, outside of China, at least. That’s exciting.

Very impressive. You know, we can compare Revolut or even Nubank, which is the poster child with 100 million customers now. Nubank didn’t have the sort of growth that you guys have.

So the potential is huge. Absolutely huge. So from a technology perspective, tell me a little bit about how your platform differentiates from a traditional mobile banking experience in Saudi.

Excellent. So first, as you mentioned, in Saudi, it’s definitely a tech-savvy country. The population is extremely tech-savvy.

Most of the population, they have access to the internet 24-7. They have smartphone, which helps in that front. And on the front, we have a very good infrastructure in terms of onboarding.

We as a financial sector enjoy a very robust infrastructure, which enables us to do the onboarding extremely fast. And you can get rich details about your customers on the go. So KYC and so forth, that infrastructure is quite developed here? Very, very well developed.

I would say we worked in different countries before. Is there a digital identity schema in Saudi? True, yes. We have multiple systems, which basically complement each other.

So you start with an AFAD system, which is basically the authentication layer provided by our partner, which basically gives you the ability to authenticate and to fetch whatever details related to the customer, of course, after their consent. And you can get up to the financial income details, the name and address. All of these details can happen within one click.

So this is in one part, the infrastructure is helping us a lot. On the other part, back to your question about what differentiates Berk to the other players in the ecosystem, I would say if you take it product by product, maybe the picture will be a bit clear. Now, if you take a product like International Remittance, where we have, in the beginning, while you’re trying to execute a transaction, we have integrated with multiple entities where we ensure the details that you’re providing are correct.

So basically, if the account is not dormant or it does not exist, we give you a notification on the go to avoid, because if you look at the rejection rate in remittance… So you have sort of like a progressive KYC model, which is sort of adaptive depending on behavior and things like that. Does that sound correct? That’s on the KYC front now in terms of… And behavioral as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. And even when you transact, we are validating whatever information that the customer use, because we want to reduce the possibility of rejection rate within those transactions.

So there’s a lot of foreign workers in Saudi, particularly with all of the infrastructure projects and so forth going on right now. So we’ve got workers from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, China and so forth here in the region. So remittance is a big part of the business? It is.

It is. It is one of the major parts of the business. And yes, we have almost 13 million expats living in Saudi, which is almost more than one third of the entire population in the country.

And we’re the third and sometimes second ranked as the sending countries around the globe. So we’re one of the biggest. So one of the features that we’re giving, we are providing customers with a service where we ensure the information that they’re providing is accurate to basically reduce the possibility of rejection rate.

Now, even when it comes to the transaction, we have built an orchestration layer where we route the transaction to the best route. The optimal remittance channel. So you’ve got MoneyGram, these different partnerships.

I know you’re also working with PhonePay in Nepal and things like this. So you can choose the right rail at the right time for remittance. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And it’s not only about pricing, but also about what is the quickest path to your transaction. About the price, it’s always about, definitely, we’re talking about a price sensitive segment.

So the price does matter. And it’s part of the orchestration layer. Especially if you’ve got a Filipino worker overseas or whatever.

If we deep dive to another product, like card. So we are providing customers with the possibility of issuing a card on the go. So they can simply issue a digital card and add it to their Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or whatever wallet on the go.

And they can even order a plastic card as well, which will be delivered to them in three days. And for the frequent travelers, we are providing a zero FX card that will give you always the best rate that you, if you compare it with other cards that you can see in the market, our card will provide you with an excellent rate. Even from user experience perspective as well.

We are providing the user with certain tools where you can manage your expenses. You can put some limitation around certain industries. You can put a limitation on a card, on a particular card.

So this means that you can sort of configure sharia compliance and all of that in your own environment if you want. Or even behavioral related. I don’t want to go out so much.

I don’t want to spend money on, and your app can remind you, you put a restriction on eating out. Absolutely. So some of it is related to behavior and some other related to whatever control that you want to build for your own card.

So we’re building it in a way where we put the customer in the center where he has a control over his spending. He can put whatever control to his cards or to his wallet. So from a user experience perspective, not only are you looking at sort of optimal money transmission and things like that, but you’re also looking at positive behavioral feedback so that people can be financially healthier over time.

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit more about the tech stack and the technology. You’re obviously on the cloud here. Can you talk about which cloud providers you work with? We’re working with multiple.

We’re working with OCI and we’re working with Google. So if you can hear this right now, we’re out in the desert in Saudi here. Well, actually not.

We’re in the city area, but the lights just went out in the entire conference hall. So that’s why people are clapping because they just came back on now. So anyway, that was fun.

So basically on the cloud, we’re working with three different providers. We’re working with OCI as well as Google. You know, Google just started.

Google is doing a very big Google cloud initiative here, but with a specific focus on artificial intelligence now in Saudi, right? Same with Microsoft Azure. So all the major players are coming in here. Even IBM is working on a quantum initiative in Saudi.

Which is to be honest, I think it will open opportunities even more for the industry. I think one of the obstacles that we used to have previously was the lack of international players in the cloud. So having them is definitely going to enable a lot of startups to thrive.

Good, good. Fantastic. All right.

So what are the plans for Barak moving forward? Obviously, you’ve got a lot of expansion happening here in Saudi. But tell us about your plans over the next six to 12 months. Your growth is incredible.

But where does it go from here? Well, today our focus is around the consumer, which is basically purely around the individuals for now. And we’re launching as well in a month time, we’re launching our corporate SME platform, which will help SMEs to open an account. They can issue a card to their employees.

Payroll is part of what we do with SMEs. And even managing some cash management tools like disbursements and cash collection. This is part of what we offer, especially when we’re focusing a bit with the shared economy platforms where we know some of the bans that they’re having as of now.

We’re solving for some of the issues that they have with their freelancers, with their delivery fleets. So we have a number of products on that anchor that we want to… So for people that are sort of listening here, you guys are a wallet, but you’re also a challenger bank, right? So you started off with the payments license and so forth. But are you moving into credit offerings and things like that as well? See, I think in the eye of the customer, it’s always about what is the offering that you have in your platform.

Customers at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether they’re dealing with an EMI or a bank. They just see you as a bank. Absolutely.

So I think yes, part of the evolution of any given fintech is basically to… We always have the dream of… And you have the option of upgrading the license to a full bank, right? Absolutely. Very cool. Well, Saad, it’s been a real pleasure.

I congratulate you and Ahmed and the team on tremendous success. It’s getting news all around the world now. We’ve seen people in the UK and the US and other places talking about this.

We’ve had some of those people here today at the event over the last few days. But congratulations on the continued success. Thank you so much, Brad.

It’s a pleasure. If people want to find out more about BRAC, where do they go? Yes, they can go to BRAC.com. You can see all the… B-A-R-Q, right? Yes, all the details about the platform. And if they are a Saudi citizen, they can download the app and they can enjoy the offering that we have.

Okay, so BARC.com, B-A-R-Q.com. And Saad, you’re the chief business officer, right? For the company. So thank you for spending some time with us and we wish you all the very best success. That’s it for another week of the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks.

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