(upbeat music playing) >> Okay, now we're going to look deeper into the intersection of technology and money and actually a force for good mobile and the infrastructure around it has made sending money as easy as sending a text. But the capabilities that enable this to happen are quite amazing, especially because as users we don't see the underlying complexity of the transactions. We just enjoy the benefits and there's many parts of the world that historically have not been able to enjoy these benefits. And the ecosystems that are developing around these new platforms are truly transformative. And with me to explain the business impacts of these innovations is all a person who was the head of mobile financial services at Ericsson Allah. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, Dave. Thank you for having me here in the program. And they're really excited to tell me tell us about the product that we have within Ericsson. >> Well, let's get right into it. I mean your firm has developed the Ericsson wallet platform. What is that plan? >> Yes. The wallet platform is one of the product but being, you can say offer here by Erickson and the platform is built on enabled financial services not for only the bank segment, but also for the unbanked. And we have, the function that we are providing a such here is both transfer the service provider payment. You have the cash in the cash out you have a lots of other features that we kind of enable through the ecosystem as such. And I would really like you say to emphasize on the use. And they're the really, I would say connectivity that we have in these platform here, because looking at you can say the pandemic assaults here. Now we really have made, you can say tremendous Shane here through all the function, et cetera feature that we have here. >> Yeah. And I mean, I I'm surrounded by banks in Massachusetts. No problem. I'm in Boston, right? So, but there's a lot of places in the world that aren't I take for granted some of the capabilities that are there, but part of this is to enable people who don't have access to those types of services. Maybe you could talk about that and talk about some of the things that you're enabling with the platform >> Right? You just think of there you can say unbanked people here but we have across the emerging market. I think we have 1.7 billion unbanked people here but we actually can through one of the path from enable proof getting a bank account, et cetera, and so on here. And what we actually providing, you can say in, in this in this feature rates here is that you you can pay your electricity bill. For example, here, you can pay your bill and you can go through merchant, you can do the cash out. You can do multiple thing here, just like, I mean, to enable the, the departure that financial inclusion that we have. So, I mean, from my point of view, where we see things, as I said we also sit in Sweden, we have bank account we have something called swish where we send you can say money back and back and forth between the family, et cetera. On these type of transaction, we can have enable for all. You can say the user better come across the platform here and the, the kind of growth that we have within this usage here. And we seeing also, I mean we leverage here to get with a speed today on a fantastic scale that we actually have here with I would say are both, you can say feature performance going I will say re really in the direction. But we couldn't imagine here. You can say a few years back here. It is fantastic transformation but we undergo here through the platform of the technology that we have. >> No, it reminds me of sort of the early days of mobile people talked about being able to connect remote users in places like Africa or other parts of the world that haven't been able to enjoy things like a land line. And I presume you're seeing a lot of interest in those types of regions. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah. Correct. I mean we see all of these region here about, for example, now we not only entering, you can say the specifically the Africa region but also you can say the middle East and the Asia Pacific and also actually Latin America. I mean, a lot of these country here, all looking into you can say the expansion, how they can evolve you can say the financial inclusion from what they have today, when they are, and you can say from telco provider, they would like to have an asset of different use cases here. And we're seeing that transformation, but we have right now from just voice, you can say SMS and 5G, et cetera. This is the platform that we have to sort of enable the transaction for a mobile financial system. But we would like also to see about the kind of operator or bond being the business with much more features here. And this is another, you can say, I was attraction to attract the user where the the mobile transfer system. We see these kind of expanding very heavily in these, these kind of market. >> I think this is really transformative, not, I mean in terms of people's lives. I mean, your first of all, you're talking about the convenience of being able to move money as bits as opposed to paper, but as well I would think supporting entrepreneurship and businesses getting started, I mean, there's a whole set of cultural and societal impacts that you're having. How do you see that? >> Yeah. We also provide the, you say, I mean is also supporting, say micro loans and need as an entrepreneurial sort of stock. You can say any kind of company. You need to get off these, this around here. We have seen that we have a of enterprise. Those is a cross functional, the whole asset that we are, that we are oriented today. >> Talk a little bit about partnerships and ecosystems. I know you've got big partnerships with, with HPE. We're going to get to that. They're kind of as a technology provider, but what about, other partnerships like I'm imagining that if I'm going to pay my bill with this you've got other providers that got to connect into your platform. How are those ecosystem partnerships evolving? >> Well, are kind of enabler about we are providing to the operator. The partnerships is then going through the operator. It could be any kind of you can say external instrument that we have today and they can know if you can go directly to that to the bank, you can go directly to any core provider. You have these most et cetera, so on but these are all partners would be in. You could say connected through there. You can say, operate through a subsidy. What we doing actually with our platform is to kind of make the navel and to kind of provide the food ecosystem as partnership to operate a SAS today here. That's kind of the baseline that we see how you can say. We are sort of supporting of building the full ecosystem around the platform in order to connect here. Wells come to both the light, the cord as I said, here, the merchant, the bank, any kind of, type of, you can say I would say service provider here but that we can see could enable the ecosystem. >> Okay. And I don't want to geek out here but it sounds like it's an open system that my developers can plug into through APIs. They're not going to throw cold water on it. They're going to embrace it and say, Oh yeah this is actually easy for me to integrate with. Is that correct? >> Correct. Correct. And the open API that we actually are providing today I think that you can say there are thousands of you can say developer, just you can say connecting to our system. And actually we also providing both sandbox and Ann Arbor. You can see the application in order to support this to developers in order to kind of create this ecosystem here. It's a multiple things that we see through what you can say here, they're both the partners partnership, the open API, or you can say that the development that is doing for prudent channels. So, I mean, it's an fascinating amazing development that we'll see our frontier right now. >> Now what's HP's role in all this, what are they providing? How are you partnering with them? >> It's very good question. I will say. And we look back, you can say, and we have evaluate a lot of you say that the provide the fruit year here and you can just imagine the kind of stability that we need to provide when come to the financial inclusion system here because what we need to have a very strong uptake of making sure that we don't both go with the performance and the stability. And what we have seen in our lab is that the partnership with HP have domestically evolve. Our, you can say our stability assessed on the system. And right now we are leveraging the Dockers with the microservices here to get with HB on the platform that you're providing. I would say that the transformation we have done in disability, but we have get through the food. You can say HP system is, is really fantastic at the moment. >> I'm no security expert, but I talked to a lot of security experts in what I do know is they tell me that, that you can't just bolt security on. It's going to be designed in from the start. I would imagine that that's part of the HPP partnership but what about security? Can I fully trust this platform? >> No, it's very valid question. I will say we have one of the most you can say secure system here we also running multiple external. You can say a system validation data it's called the PRD assess certification is a certification but we have external auditor. You can say trying to breach the system look at the process that we are developing making sure that we have, you can say, or off you can say the documentation really in shape. And seeing that we follow the procedure when we are both developing the code. And also when we look into all the API that we actually exposed to our end users. I would say that we haven't had any breach on our system. And we really work in tightly. I would say both to get with, I would say HP and the of course the customers out and every time we do a low once, we also make you can say final security validation on the system here in order to sort of see that we have an end to end because the application, but it's completely secure. That's a very important topic from our point of view. >> There's a usual, I don't even want to think about that. Like I said, up front it's going to be hidden from me all that complexity, but it's sort of same question around compliance and privacy. I an often, security, privacy there's sort of two sides of the same coin, but compliance privacy you've got to worry about KYC, know your customer. There's a lot of complexity around that. And that's another key piece. >> Now, like you said, the KYC is an important part that we have food support in our system. And then we validate you can say all the users, we also are running you can say without credit scoring companies, the you can say operator or partnering with, his combined you can say with both the KYC and the credit scoring that we are performing, that's make us a very you can say unique, stable platform and such. >> Last question is, what about going forward? What's the roadmap look like? What can you share? What should we expect going forward in terms of the impact that this will have on society and how the technology will evolve? >> Well, what is he going forward? That's very interesting question because what we see right now is how we kind of have changed the life for so many. You can say unbanked people here, and we would like to have you can say any kind of assets that going forward here, any kind of you can see that the digital currency is evolving through both government. You can see over the top players like Google you can say WhatsApp, all of these things here. We want to be the one that also connecting. You can say these type of platform together and see that we could be the heart of the ecosystem going forward here, independent in what kind of, you can say customer we aiming for. I will say this is kind of the role that we will play in the future here, depending on what kind of currency it would be. It's a very interesting future. We see with this you can say overall digital currency, the market and the trends that we are now right now evolving on. >> Very exciting. And we were talking about elevating, potentially billions of people, all... Thanks very much for sharing this innovation with the audience and best of luck with this incredible platform. Congratulations. >> Thank you so much, Dave. And once again, thank you for having me here. And I'll talk to you soon again. Thank you. >> Thank you. It's been our pleasure and thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante. (upbeat music playing)