Charge

Hello listeners! We are back with the 22nd episode of Charge! In store for you today, we have a conversation with Tom Reay, CTO of Flux. Flux provide digital receipts, right in your banking app. They're currently available with Costa, Pod and Eat with more partners announced with increasing regularity. Tom explains that Flux face a challenge: their product will be able to operate at full capacity once it is ubiquitous, so how do they get there? The merchants will be happy to meet consumers on a platform used widely, whilst the consumers want to take advantage of a scheme all of the merchants are using. As Tom will explain, the key is in the structure of open banking ... Find out more about Flux on their website: https://www.tryflux.com/ Find Charge on The DVELP website: dvelp.co.uk/ Twitter: twitter.com/DVELP_team Contact the Charge team at charge@dvelp.co.uk #ChargePodcast Announcement: this is host Maria Christina's last episode! She's moved on from DVELP and we all wish her the best of luck. You may have noticed that the upload schedule of Charge has been a little varied of late: that's because we're going through a busy period with fewer available hands. We're working hard to make sure everything runs smoothly and to assist with that, we've decided to make Charge a monthly occurrence. We welcome any feedback you may have on this decision, as well as anything else related to Charge. Catch you next month!

Charge is back! This week we have an interview with girl boss Anisah Osman Britton of 23 Code Street, a coding school for women with a 1-for-1 programme in Mumbai. Anisah chatted to Louisa and Maria Christina about the challenges facing women in the tech industry and how 23 Code Street is helping them get ahead. In the second half of the interview, we spoke about sustainable social enterprise in her reciprocal programme working with NGOs based in Mumbai, India. Every time a student pays for their 23 Code Street course in London, they also pay for a disadvantaged woman in Mumbai to learn digital skills too. Thank you to our listeners for bearing with us whilst Charge was on a small break. Things have been full on at DVELP and your Charge team are happy to be back in the studio this week. Subscribe to make sure you don't miss future episodes! Check out 23 Code Street at their website: http://www.23codestreet.com/ Find Charge on: The DVELP website: dvelp.co.uk/ Twitter: twitter.com/DVELP_team Contact the Charge team at charge@dvelp.co.uk

Deja Vu is rethinking loyalty. Anjalee Sewpaul, CEO and founder of Deja Vu, believes that loyalty is worth more than a discount once you've collected 10 stamps. She wants to reinterpret loyalty rewards in an experiential way and to equip restaurant owners with better data about their loyal customers. We spoke to Anjalee about how she is trying to change our attitude to loyalty and how we can exchange it for rewards without reducing it to a financial transaction. What can business owners understand about what makes their customers loyal? To hear when Deja Vu launches, sign up at their website: https://www.dejavuapp.co.uk/about-1/ Find Charge on: The DVELP website: dvelp.co.uk/ Twitter: twitter.com/DVELP_team Contact the Charge team at charge@dvelp.co.uk

On Charge, we usually speak to people involved in startups. Speaking to Dom Sando from MMC Ventures, we got a new angle on Charge’s subject matter: the investor’s POV. MMC Ventures is a venture capital company investing in tech businesses and Dom is on the investment team. He has particular expertise in AI so in the first part of the interview we drilled down into the state of AI today and explored why the UK is a global leader in this sector. In the second half of the interview, we spoke more broadly about venture capital and its value offering to startups: why go to a VC instead of a bank? What would working with a VC company look like? What are the signals of future success that VCs look for when choosing startups to work with? How can businesses make themselves more attractive to VC investors? Find out all on this week’s episode of Charge! Find out more about MMC Ventures on their website: https://www.mmcventures.com/ Find Charge on The DVELP website: https://dvelp.co.uk/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DVELP_team Contact the Charge team at charge@dvelp.co.uk

Banking-as-a-marketplace is happening, folks! Starling just launched their Marketplace Platform, Monzo are rolling out their Marketplace Beta ... PSD2 is changing financial services! Riding the marketplace wave is newcomer Albert, the pocket CFO for freelancers. They automate and dramatically simplify daily finances including invoicing, expensing and taxes, all from one place on mobile. In this episode of Charge we spoke to the co-founder of Albert, Ivo Weevers. Ivo has over 15 years of experience in designing award-winning mobile products for companies such as Natwest, RBS, and Mercedes. We spoke to him about Albert's experience launching their service in Starling's Marketplace Platform, how open banking has opened doors for their business model and how PSD2 has changed the financial services playing field. Plug into an episode of Charge about plugging into banks! And may we suggest after you have, you go check out Albert themselves: Register your interest and download the app at www.getalbert.com ;)

It may be cold and snowy here in London but the #ChargePodcast team are cosied up in the podcast studio! Keeping warm with us this week is Peter Myatt, CEO and Founder of Bean. Bean finds, tracks and manages your bills and subscriptions. The average Bean user saves over £672 per year! Bean is using tech for good to help UK consumers identify and cancel unused services and find the best deal for the ones they do. In this episode of Charge, hosts Louisa and Maria Christina wanted to know about Bean's market and the state of subscription spending today, the tech behind Bean's spending analysis and how they plug into banking data. Stay warm and tune in! Check out Bean here: https://usebean.com/ Check out DVELP here: https://dvelp.co.uk/ Tweet about this episode with #ChargePodcast We're on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DVELP_team Catch you in a fortnight, and we hope you enjoy the snow as much as we did: https://twitter.com/DVELP_team/status/968814377171390464

What's that? A familiar voice? It's Ed Dowling from Transferwise! We didn't get enough out of him back in the webinar episode from December so we've reeled him back into the Rise studio for you. Ed is Product Manager for Account Security at Transferwise. Transferwise is an alternative to banks and brokers; it allows people to transfer money internationally at a low cost through their peer-to-peer platform. It is currently valued at $1.1bn and it has over a million customers; they are London's first unicorn startup! So, we wanted to know more about behind-the-scenes of account security at Transferwise. How have they scaled their security alongside massive growth? What challenges have they faced and how has their strategy developed? How can early stage fintechs learn from their experience? Pop those headphones in, folks!

We stole half an hour of time from Twilio's fantastic data privacy expert, Sheila Jambekar, to get to grips with GDPR. In this episode, we cover what GDPR is changing in the EU, what it means for businesses and consumers and why it's such a big deal. Twilio are actually doing something pretty surprising and wonderful: come the GDPR deadline on the 25th May 2018, they will be compliant across the board and across borders. That's right: GDPR is going international. Why did Twilio make that decision? How are they making it happen? Find out all by popping in your headphones and tuning in to Charge.

Happy New Year, Charge listeners! To kick off Charge in 2018, we have an interview with fresh-faced fintech Yoyster, a planning and payment app for groups. Yoyster hold a special place in our hearts because we at DVELP worked on the project ourselves! In the studio with our good friend and client, Yoyster CEO Joel Bygraves, is DVELP CEO Tom Mullen and lead developer Richard Brown. They discuss building the project from the ground up and the security/UX challenges involved. Editor's note: We made a mistake in including the line that the app is available on the app store; it is actually in beta. Instead of heading to the app store to find Yoyster, we encourage you to head to their website to register your interest for when Yoyster launches: http://www.yoyster.com/register-for-beta/

This week we have a special episode for you: the recording of a recent webinar we ran with Twilio and Transferwise! Our topic was cybersecurity around transactions, covering 2FA, international money transfers, bank fraud and blockchain. To find out more about implementing 2FA, get in touch with the DVELP team on our website: https://dvelp.co.uk/hire-us

In the Rise studio with Louisa and Maria Christina this week is Hessie Coleman, Head of People Operations at Starling Bank. Starling is a challenger bank whose mission is to bring clarity and control to banking customers. We invited Hessie in to talk about graduate career opportunities in fintech startups, a topic close to our own hearts. We looked at the ups and downs of early stage careers in an early stage bank, and discussed ways in which startups can attract the best talent. The topic of hiring tipped us over into culture, the concept of ‘culture add’ instead of ‘culture fit’ and how a startup can scale culture. Did you notice that crisper sound quality? We have Barclays Rise to thank. They invited us to use their own recording studio in Old Street and we are immensely grateful! You can check them out here: https://goo.gl/qUxVqh Applications for the **Starling Bank Summer Internship 2018** have just opened! If you or any of your friends or family want to learn more, follow this link: https://goo.gl/Jt8nxa

Kasko are the guys supercharging innovation in the insurance industry. They offer an API-powered product platform to insurance companies looking to act like a startup. This week, we spoke to Nick Suhr, CEO and co-founder of Kasko about the journey the company has been on and how they’re updating insurance products across the industry with technology.Nick has a background in traditional car insurance and now he’s working at the innovation forefront of the industry. We wanted to know about the journey that took him to creating Kasko and the challenges involved in dragging the insurance industry out of the 19th century.

Simudyne are a software company founded on the belief that “all decisions of consequence should be subject to computer simulation”. Inevitably, that means decisions in financial services should be informed by simulations of their possible outcomes. Simudyne are therefore marketing their product to banks and they recently acquired a MASSIVE customer: Barclays bank. Amazed that a company of 14 people pulled off such a big deal, we wanted to know all about how Simudyne approaches selling to Tier 1 banks.

We were absolutely thrilled to host Monzo in the Charge studio this week! Like pretty much every tech-head in London, we are massive fans of their product: a mobile-only bank with a banking licence still hot from the oven. We spoke to Monzo’s Head of Financial Crime Natasha Vernier, who is championing their machine learning anti-financial-crime strategy. We had so many questions about the fincrime they’ve experienced and the challenges posed by frauds when building a bank. Jump into the most exciting episode of Charge yet!

Behavioural finance is a relatively new field that seeks to explain people’s financial decisions and attitudes to risk with cognitive psychological theory. Tiffany Saltini is a PhD candidate in behavioural finance and the co-founder of Neuroprofiler, a client profiling tool for financial advisors. We talked to Tiffany about the fresh-faced behavioural finance field and its discoveries. We were also interested to hear how Neuroprofiler is capable of offering a service financial service providers cannot get the resources for themselves, and what that means as a startup opportunity.

You put your old car up for sale and someone gets in contact. He comes around to inspect the car and after you turn your back for one moment, he’s grabbed the keys and driven off. How can we protect the peer-to-peer market from frauds? Peter Janes from ShieldPay thinks he has the answer, and we loved every bit of it: a digital escrow. Pop in your earbuds and grab a cup of coffee - ShieldPay are going places and you can hear it first here.

Ever wondered how the London fintech scene compares to other startup hubs across the world? Mahoney Turnbull has lived across 8 countries, and has an intimate knowledge of global startup ecosystems. She brought us at Charge a fantastic sense of where London stands on the global scene. Now working in London, she’s developing partnerships for Crowdcube with accelerators and coworking spaces like WeWork, so we had plenty of questions about how our city startup scene looks from her international point of view.

Alberto Chierici is the co-founder and chief product officer of SPIXII, an insurtech offering chatbot functionality to insurance providers. We talked to Alberto all about AI and chatbots, the difference between them, the different levels of AI, and their progress to date. We also learnt some surprising facts and stats about the popularity of chatbots - including when people are more prepared to disclose personal information to a bot over a human!

This week we spoke to Joyeeta Das, the powerhouse founder and CEO of Gyana, a big data AI platform. We talked about data privacy and ownership - how data can be used to the benefit of both consumer and provider. We got drawn in by her passion about women in tech; Joyeeta’s absolute commitment to diversity in the workplace is driven by her belief in its value for overall team performance. The proof is in the data. As two young women just starting our careers in tech ourselves, it was fascinating and empowering to chat to Joyeeta.

Whilst the fintech party has been in full swing for a number of years, insurtech have only just left pre-drinks. The insurance industry is failing to take advantage of technology that could totally revolutionise it to the benefit of both consumers and providers - so why has insurtech been so slow coming? Erik Abrahamsson is the CEO and founder of Digital Fineprint, a startup bringing social media data to insurance. We got the inside scoop on the insurtech scene.

The second episode of Charge is here! In this episode, we’re picking the brains of mobile banking researcher Meaghan Johnson from 11:FS. We got an insightful bird's-eye view of the various traditional and challenger banks battling over customers, and the weapons they’re using to fight.

In the first episode of Charge we speak to Marc Boroditsky, Senior Vice President at Twilio, about two-factor authentication. We discuss Marc's predictions of the authentication of the future, and the way in which both cyber security and cyber attacks will evolve together.