>>Yeah. >>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 the 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 is the head of mobile financial services at Ericsson Ola. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. Dave, Thank you for having me here in the program and really excited to tell me. Tell us about the product that we have within Ericsson. >>Okay, well, let's get right into it. I mean, your firm has developed the Ericsson wallet platform. What is that? Yes, >>so? So the wallet platform is one of the product, but, I mean, you can say offer here by Ericsson and the platform is built on enabled financial services not for only the bank segment, but also for the unbanked. And we have, you know, the function that we are providing as such Here is, uh, both transfer the service provided payment. You have the cash in the cash out. You have a lot of other feature that we kind of a neighbor through the ecosystem as such. And, uh, I would really like you say, to emphasize on on the use, and they really I'll say, uh, connectivity that we have in this platform here because, uh, looking at you can say the pandemic as such here. Now, we really have made you can say tremendous Shane here through all the functions etcetera feature that we have here. >>Yeah, so, I mean, I'm surrounded by banks in Massachusetts, right? No problem. I'm Boston, right? So But there's a lot of places in the world that that aren't I take for granted some of the capabilities that are there, but so part of this is to enable people who don't have access to those types of services. So maybe you could talk about that and talk about some of the things that you're enabling with the platform, >>right? So So you just think of their You can say unbanked people here, But we have across the emerging market. I think we have one point, you know, seven billion unbanked people here, but we actually can, through wallet platform enabled through getting a bank account, etcetera, and so on here and what we're actually providing you can say in this, uh, this feature is here is that you can pay your electricity bill, for example, Here, you can pay your your bill and you you can go through merchants. You can do the cashed out. You can do multiple thing here, just like I mean to to enable the the question that financial inclusion as well. So I mean I mean from from my point of view, where we're sitting, as I said, we also sitting in Sweden, we have bank account. We have something called swish where we send you can say money back, back and forward between the family, etcetera. So, on this type of transaction, we can and have enabled for all you can say, the user that I come across the the platform here and the kind of growth that we have within this usage here and and we're seeing also. I mean, we leverage here to get with a speed today on a fantastic scale that we actually have here with our our both you can say feature performers going, I will say, Really in in in in a in the direction that we couldn't imagine here you can say a few years back here. So it is fantastic transformation that we undergo here through through the platform of the technology that we have. >>You know, it reminds me of sort of the early days of mobile people talked about being able to connect, you know, remote users in places like Africa or other parts of the world that that haven't been able to enjoy things like a landline. Uh, and so I presume you're seeing a lot of interest in in those types of regions. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >>Yeah. Yeah, correct. I mean, I mean, we we see all of this region here, but for for example, Uh uh. Now, we we, uh we were not only entering, you can say the the, uh, specifically the African region, but also you can say the Middle East and the the the A C a specific and also actually Latin America. I mean, a lot of this country here are 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 firm telecom provider, they would like to have an asset of different use case here, and we're seeing that transformation. But we have right now from just voice, you can say SMS and five year etcetera so on. This is the platform that we have to sort of enable the transaction for for a mobile financial system. But we would like also to see that the kind of operator or evolving the business with much more feature here. And this is another. You can say I was attraction to attract the user with the mobile transfer system. So we we we see this kind of expanding very heavily in this this kind of market. >>I think this is really transformative. I mean, in terms of people's lives. I mean, 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 business is getting started. I mean, there's a whole set of cultural and societal impacts that that you're having. How do you see that >>we we also providing you say I mean the world to such is also supporting, say microloans and need as an entrepreneur is to sort of start you can say any kind of company, but you need to kind of business around here. So we have seen that we have sort of enterprise services across function and the whole asset that we are that we are into today >>talking a little bit >>about >>partnerships and the ecosystems. I know you've got big partnerships with HPD. We're going to get to that. They're kind of a technology operator, but But what about, you know, other partnerships, like, I'm imagining that if I'm gonna pay my my my bill with this, you've got other providers that got to connect into your platform. So So how are those ecosystem partnerships evolving? >>Well, we are kind of the enabler, but 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 the kind of you can go directly to the bank. You can go directly to any court provider. You have these amongst the court, etcetera and so on. But these are all partners of the and you can stay connected through there. You can say operator assault today. So what we're doing actually, with our platform is to kind of make the enable them to kind of provide the food ecosystem as partnership to to operate as us today. Here, So that 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 has come to both the like, the card. As I said here, the merchant, the bank, any kind of type of you can say I will say service provider here, but that we can see could enable the ecosystem >>okay. And so I mean, I don't want to geek out here, but it sounds like it's an open system that my developers can plug into through a p i s They're not gonna throw cold water on that. They're going to embrace it. So yeah, this is actually easy for me to integrate with, Is that correct? >>Correct. Correct. And they open API that we're actually providing today. I think that you can say there are five thousands of you can say developer, just you can say connecting to our system. And actually, we're also providing both sandbox and and other application in order to support this developers in order to to kind of create this ecosystem here. So it's a multiple things that we we see through you can say, hear, hear the both the partners partnership the open API or you can say the development that is doing through through the channels. So I mean, it's a fascinating, amazing development that we see up front here right now. >>Now, what's H. P s role in all this? What are they providing? How are you partnering with them? >>So it's very good question, I would say. And we we look back, you can say and we we have evaluated a lot of you say that the provider fruit year here, And, uh, you can just imagine the the kind of, uh, stability that we need to provide when it comes to the financial inclusion system here because what we need to have a very strong uptake of, uh, making sure that we don't both go with the performance and the stability and what we have seen in our lab is that hypocrisy today is we have domestically evolved how you can say our stability assessed on the system. And right now we are leveraging the the dog is with the microservices here, together with HV on the platform that you're providing. So I will say that the transformation we have done in the stability that we have get through the food. You can say HP system is really fantastic at the moment. >>Well, and you know, I'm no security expert, but I talked to a lot of security experts and what I what I do know is they tell me that that you can't just bolt security on. It's got to be designed in from the start. I would imagine that that's part of the HPD partnership. But what about security? Can I fully trust this platform >>now? It's It's very, very valid question. I would say we we have one of the most you can say secure system here were also running multiple external. You can say, uh, system validation there is called The PNDs s certification is a certification, But we 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 all of you can say the documentation really in shape and seeing that we follow the procedure when we are both developing the code and and also when we're looking into all the a p I s that were actually exposed to to to our end users. So I would say that we haven't had any bridge on our system and we we really working tightly. I'll say both together with I'll say, H b and and of course, the the customer, such and? And every time we do a Lawrence, we also make you can say final security validation on the system here in order to sort of see that we have and and two and because the application that is completely secure, So so that that that that's a very, very important topic. For from our point of view, >>Yeah, because it's the usual. I don't even want to think about that. Like I set up front. It's It's got to be hidden from me, all that complexity. But there's sort of the same question around compliance and privacy. I mean, often security, privacy. There's sort of two sides of the same coin, but compliance privacy You've got to worry about K. Y. C Know your customer? Uh, there's a lot of complexity around that, and and so that's another key piece. >>Mhm Now. Like you said, the K Y C is an important part that we have fully support in our system and we validate. You can say all the uses We we also are running, You can say with our credit scoring companies that the you can say our operator or are partnering with. So this combined, you can say, with both the K Y C and then and the credit scoring. But there were performing that. Let's make us a very you can say unique, stable platform as such. >>Okay, last question is, is what about going forward? What's the road map 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? And that's a very interesting question, because what we what we see right now is how we we we kind of have changed the life for for so many. You can say unbanked people here and we would like to have You can say, uh, any kind of assets that going forward here, any kind of you can see that the digital currency is a bouldering through both government. You can see over top players like Google. You can say, What's up all of these things. Here we want to be the one, but also connecting. You can say this 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're aiming for. So I would say this This is kind of the role that we will play in the future here, depending on what kind of currency it would be. So it's very interesting future we see. With this, you can say abroad digital currency in the market and the trends that we are now right now, evolving on >>very exciting when we're talking about elevating, you know, potentially billions of people all, uh, 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 Valenti. >>Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Okay.