Monica Millares: [00:00:00] Hello, Tony. It is a pleasure to have you in the show. Really looking forward to our conversation.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) It's great to be here and thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to the

Monica Millares: chat. Thank you. Thank you. So before we go into your career and wisdom into the payments industry as such, I want to ask like a few questions to get to know you as Tony a little bit as a human.

So let's start with what is your definition of success?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) So to me, success is Doing the things you love to do and not doing the things that you don't. Simple. It is, it is as simple as that. And if you're smart enough to know what you're really, really good at and what you really love to do, and you can migrate your career to a place at which every morning you get up and go, this is a wonderful thing that I've got to do today because I'm good at it.

And I love it. Then, and also a chance to delegate or simply not get [00:01:00] involved with doing the things you don't like to do. Then what. No, that's heaven. To me, that's heaven.

Monica Millares: I love that. Yes. It's a good definition. Short and simple.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah. Yeah. You can go on and on and on about it, but it all, to me, that all, it all boils down to those two things.

Monica Millares: And then the other side of success is of course, life and work can be tough sometimes. So on the Jing and the Zhang. So how did you deal with the tough times when life gets difficult?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Again, we give this label tough times to stuff that is simply a mismatch between our expectations and the reality.

So I know it sounds really strange to say this, but the way in which I deal with the tough times is to redefine what Performance criteria is being satisfied by getting to where I am. So I talk about the gap that I'm in and, and a lot of people get really frustrated when the gap they're living in is between where they set out to get to and where they got [00:02:00] to what is a much healthier gap is to compare the gap.

between where you've got to and where most other people are. And it's pretty likely that if you live in the gap between where most other people are and where you've got to, and if you're an aspiring and hardworking, then pretty much most of the time you're going to be doing pretty darn fantastically well.

Often we set the bar so high in terms of achievement that we're going to be guaranteed to be dissatisfied. So to me, it's not so much, it's, I don't have, I know it sounds really cliched, but I don't. Have tough times. In my career, I've had some things that haven't worked. I've lost a lot of money with one, one company I've worked with.

I lost a lot of money. You know what? In the end, what I learned from that is don't try to do something that you can't do well. I tried to do something I couldn't do well, I won't do that again. What, wealth is there in that insight, in that learning? [00:03:00] And I suppose I'm lucky enough in that I've had enough good things happening, or what I might consider to be good things happening, to allow me to weather a few storms.

I think that's what helps. Does that, does that give you an okay answer? It's a bit of a cop out. But I'm a generally, I'm a compulsively optimistic person. My future is always going to be bigger than my past. It always is that way. And, and, and if something doesn't quite work that's all. It just doesn't quite work.

Monica Millares: I love what you just said. My future is going to be bigger than my past because I'm also very, very optimistic person, but I do have to accept many times. I'm like, Oh my God, the future. Ah, fear, fear, fear.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and if you have this underlying assumption that it will be and I think most entrepreneurs, most people running small businesses, even if they've done really well, they will have in their mind the sense that tomorrow's always going to be bigger.

And that's quite cool. I'm [00:04:00] interviewing somebody fairly soon myself and he's made money, more money than most people could ever dream of. And he's still out there making big investments, making big plays, taking risks, and in the process having a hugely satisfying life. Yes.

Monica Millares: So now I thought you were going to be a wise man, but by now in our five minutes, I'm like, yes, you have a lot of wisdom.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) No, no, no, I'm not wise. I've just been around a long time. Some of it's rubbed off. That's all.

Monica Millares: Yeah. Many people ask what's the best advice or what's the worst advice that somebody gave you when you were young? But what I like asking is the opposite which advice you wish somebody gave you when you were younger or when you started your career?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Again, I, I, I'm not sure whether I have a, an easy answer to that. One of the things, I always encourage my, I've got three kids, they're all in their twenties, and we've just been away [00:05:00] for an amazing holiday with them and some of their friends and us, and we head to this big house, and we, spent some of our time talking about life lessons, and, and there was a little bit of the, comments from one of the kids was dad, you can just get off it and have a nice holiday.

You don't have to teach us all the time. But one of the things I encourage is them to do is just to be curious, is always seek out, always find somebody who's somebody's whose coach tales you can, you can hang on to or somebody who you can. And that's why I'm hoping there might be one or two people listening to this that go and I'm hoping there's more than one or two people listening to this.

Of the people who are listening to this i'm hoping there's one or two who go you know What actually that's quite a it's a nice simple Message that I can pick pick up and use myself and that's I think what i've been lucky enough to do is Is be curious when faced with different circumstances that have taught me things that have helped me on the way, look at what it's going to take to, to satisfy sufficient measures of [00:06:00] success around innovation, creativity commercial profitability ma all the stuff that we have to do, learning how to enter a new market, decide deciding what resources to allocate.

And if you can, I've generally picked up a few things on my way and that's helped me but I still got a whole way to go. We feel sometimes I've only just started. We really, we have, we have only just started in terms of transforming the industry for the better through payments.

And I've been doing this, I've been doing it for 15 years.

Monica Millares: Yes. At that, I agree that it feels like exactly just the beginning like a new wave is coming.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah. No, I agree.

I agree. We're in a time of incredible change and uncertainty, but equally opportunity. Exactly.

Monica Millares: So building on that, on the uncertainty, the opportunity, the creativity, curiosity, innovation, There's another word that I like a lot, that it's purpose. What do you think we as [00:07:00] fintechs or we as an industry can do to build more purposeful fintechs payments industry products as such?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) So it's just such a great question. And the difficulty is that you can set up a fintech without purpose. You can do that. It's possible to say look actually here's a lending product or an asset finance product that I know I've done my research. I know somebody will buy this and if I can add this tweak in that tweak then actually underlying that I will be able to make enough money.

The difficulty is that nowadays customers The investors, the staff and your partners and your distributors and your wholesalers, they will expect more. And if it's about having somebody else who's got a similarly good product or you, and you can evangelize a little bit about the impact you make on the world around you, you know what?

people will choose you. [00:08:00] So it's perfectly possible to have a FinTech without purpose. I believe, and I'm going to use a strange word here, a word that isn't often used. I actually believe it's our duty to have purpose as part of why we do this. And we're incredibly privileged in terms of the eons of the millennia that the human beings have been around.

We have All the hygiene factors satisfied. Even the vulnerable socially and economically excluded people. It's still ain't too bad. So, we have a chance to bring them up with us and to ourselves overlay on what we do.

A sense of deeper purpose and to do that authentically, not cause you're branding people say you've got to do it, but because you believe it. And if you don't believe it, do something else. Yes.

Monica Millares: Yes. I totally agree with you. Like for me, purpose exactly has been the [00:09:00] different, it's not a differentiator, but it's it's the reason to stay.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) It can be a differentiator, but in the end, when you're expecting your staff to be working at midnight, and if you're expecting your customers to stay with you rather than switch, and if you're expecting your partners to come to you first, then you have to be doing it for a good reason.

And that's what I'm hoping part of what we're, we're, we're a purpose led business here. We're about helping make the world a better place through payments, which I can, I can talk a lot about. and what I hope that does is that gives people a hook that they themselves can translate into something that they can weave into their solutions and their messaging.

And it makes it exciting too. It gives us something to, something that's really gives, gives a return to the world around us.

Monica Millares: Exactly. And then I want to build on that because I think you've been a pioneer for the past 15 years. So let's say now the term community, community, community, community is everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you started the. Payments community, [00:10:00] you started Emerging Payments Awards and the community as such over 15 years ago. What made you start the company? What made you start the community as such? Because it is a community.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) So,, I was asking myself this question cause I, I thought you might ask this.

And I was asking myself this question this morning, so let me just tell you a story. So when I was 18 I left a very nice, comfortable public school and I had a good education, and I came out and had a year off. And I did a, I worked in a factory and I worked in an office, and then I had four months traveling time.

Nowadays that's quite popular, but in 1979, that was quite unusual. That's quite a rare thing to do. But so I set off, I flew to Los Angeles and I hitchhiked from Los Angeles to New York. It's a three and a half thousand mile hitchhike and it took me four months. But at the beginning of this, I, I took a bus on Highway 101 going up through Carmel and Monterey on the west coast of the U.

S. There I was, you can, you can imagine me, I had lots of blonde [00:11:00] hair and I was a t shirt with a Union Jack on it. And of course, this is not what you did and I did get quite a few, a few lifts, partly because of the Union Jack and, and the fact that people were thinking, who the hell is this guy?

But I got to, I got to San Francisco and I was invited to join a commune. Oh cool. So it's quite interesting what does the, I was looking this up, what does the word commune actually mean? Because it, I thought I didn't really know. I thought it was very, very odd.

And it's defined as a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities. And what they do is they commune by sharing communing is sharing one's intimate thoughts and feelings or to feel in close spiritual contact with someone. Anyway, I remember in those days, the best you could ever do was send a postcard or a letter to your mother and she'd get it a week or two later.

And of course this wasn't something I did very much of, so my parents would have, Pull their hair out if they'd known, but I went to join something called the Unification Church [00:12:00] and for three weeks, I hang out in their commune and I got a wonderful sense of what happened. What happens when you bring people together in a community?

This incredible psychological bond that happens. Looking back at it, that I can now only realize how formative that was because I trade association I've set up. I set up to purely as a volunteer and I set up this one because I discovered an industry, the payments industry that deeply needs connectivity.

Access and influence, and there wasn't a community that was providing that. Certainly not with any sort of spiritual or purposeful component. And I just did what all entrepreneurs do. I just started with the business model and I didn't get it right the first few times, but as time goes on, I've found myself with this commercial membership model and, and it's, it's working, which is wonderful.

Monica Millares: Yes. So now I love the [00:13:00] story because it seems like, yeah, it did have a lot of impact. You're a future you,

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) let's say. Yeah, absolutely. And who knows? When we look back at our own histories, what are the things, what are the kind of, what are those things that influence us? And for me, it was hitchhiking across America and joining what was called the Moonies and then, and then leaving.

And they didn't like the fact that I was leaving, of course but that's another story altogether.

Monica Millares: So now you have the Payments Association. Which impact do you want to create in the industry?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Again, that's also a good question, because if we're not doing this for impact, what are we doing it for?

We have a , different set of constituencies that we, affect. We affect people individually. So I'd like to think if you talk to the 150 people, 145 people who are members of our project teams that are doing, they're called stakeholder working groups and delivering particular outcomes I'd like to think they enjoy it, that they learn from it, that it helps their career.[00:14:00]

And they have fun. That's what I'd like to think. So we help people on an individual level. We help the companies they work for because the members of the Payment Association are going to do better. They're going to grow their businesses faster at lower cost and lower risk than if for non members. And that's our promise.

I believe that the industry you know, without a voice Without a voice of companies that believe that they're stronger together, then that industry doesn't have an identity, it doesn't have a presence and doesn't have a sense of belonging or, or coming back to your word, purpose, right? So that's the third level we help is we've helped to define the industry.

But the other thing is, and this is the key thing, is We genuinely, I genuinely think we've helped to, through bringing innovation, more competitive products and services delivered through more efficient channels at better prices and higher security. I think we've helped improve the world [00:15:00] around us and improve lives because the way in which we transact as human beings.

How many times a day do you have to pay or buy something? Every day. Corporations are buying and selling all the time. And the

lifeblood of commerce, the lifeblood of society, dare I say, and I don't think this is an unreasonable claim, is the payments movement. It's the movement of money. And that's what we represent. And I'm, I'm a total evangelist for our industry. I believe it has a strong role to play. I think it's undervalued, underappreciated, underrecognized.

My job is to get it more recognized, more appreciated, and more valued with the parties that matter.

Monica Millares: Probably that's what also the people working in the industry want, to be more appreciated, to be, not, not only Outside of the industry, but within the industry, and I think if we can do [00:16:00] it one by one, and that sense of belonging, what you, what you mentioned, it's like, it's that sense of connectedness and belonging.

That's what people crave.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) I, I agree with you. I think , it's especially true post COVID, where we were starved from connectivity with other people. It's a pleasure to meet you on Zoom, Monica, , and everything, but one day we'll be having a beer together. Or we'll be sitting across the table and having a laugh and, and creating something.

And, and that's where life happens, honestly. So we enable that, with a...

And actually we also enable it in a way that hits people's wallets, their pockets, both as individuals and as companies to be more successful and profitable. But no, I agree. I think in today's society, people yearn.

They yearn to be able to meet, [00:17:00] relate to share, and, and I think we're getting better at it as British people, particularly, we tend to be a little bit, a little bit Brits I couldn't possibly that sort of thing, that's what tends to be the British way. I think we're getting better at being more open.

And part of that is we need to be open in our example with other people, be more authentic.

Monica Millares: I think so. I think that was many years in the UK. Yeah. I think Brits have opened up a little bit as well.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Monica Millares: So you mentioned about having different projects. One of those projects, it's about AI and of course, that is the topic of the year.

Can you expand on your opinion on how AI is going to revolutionize how we do business payments, fintech? I, I

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) can have a go. Nobody really knows. And artificial [00:18:00] intelligence or the deployment of data in a smart way using continuous learning loops has been around for a little while now.

I think it's got popular because it's now available to the general public. I think understanding how it applies to our industry. And remember, I have two industries. I have the payments industry that we serve. And then I have the community industry, and I, I think as a community geek, I have to think about how to use it for our own service provision to our members.

I'm going to talk first largely about payments, because that's the area that I think is going to be most interesting to the audience. I think there's probably some short term, medium term, and long term ways in which AI will be adopted. I think in the very short term, and it's already being used for this, to do with fraud detection and prevention.

I think it's also going to be, it's being used at the moment to enable customer support, whether it's by chatbots or similar sorts of things, but it's also going to be used to help on an [00:19:00] ongoing basis, rather than using fixed rules to assess risk, using dynamic rules, continuously assessing risk in a way that means to say you get more of the right customers and fewer of the bad ones.

So if you're like, does that, does that sort 10 on short Do they resonate with you? Yes,

Monica Millares: definitely, because especially with fraud going to the roof and yes, we're already seeing rules based risk tools. So what this is going to do, it's just enhance them such that we can stop fraud at the right time, like you said, even before getting the customer.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when the customer comes to us, we know enough about them. And this is where things like open banking help enormously because there's a great amount of data that goes alongside the transaction that the right companies can use to create a picture. of the transactional history and the spending history of that person, therefore make better judgments about whether to be providing them with [00:20:00] new products and services or not.

I don't just mean new payments products and services or financial services, but better utilities, better travel services, better better entertainment packages, so I went to see Oppenheimer the other day. Did I get a message the next day saying that actually there's this really good Show on at the Curzon Street Cinema all about the history of of J.

F. Kennedy. No, I don't know if I'd known about that, but they, don't yet deploy these things, but they will do. And this is where, in the medium term, we're going to be looking at things like personalized services. Personalized package and services that are just for Monica. And you go, oh my goodness, Tony, have you not heard about this?

I go no, I haven't heard about this. That's because I'm not you. Exactly. And only, only Monica got Monica's stuff. Yes, and that's lovely. Yes, perfect, perfect for Monica, not very good for me, but, but, but I think, I think the, in the medium term, we're also going to see [00:21:00] things like robo, robo advisory, I think it's called, so avatars.

So it'll be it'll be me and I will be there'll be an avatar of a customer service person who will be talking eloquently. You'll see my hands. You'll see my face. I'll have all the information about you. And actually I won't need to speak to a real person because in fact the avatar is much better.

Monica Millares: Yes. And that's kind of like. I don't know. Uncomfortable. That's the right word. That's uncomfortable. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's uncomfortable.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) It is now. It is now. But I'll tell you what, the kids don't mind it. My, my kids in their 20s, they don't mind it. It's that's just, that's just better, isn't it?

Why would I bother waiting five minutes or 20 minutes on the phone for somebody when I can get somebody now? And they know all about me and they know what, what authorizations they've got. They don't need to keep on departing the phone call and referring to their boss about stuff because they know all the answers because they know everything because it's AI.

Monica Millares: It's a good point. [00:22:00] And they also sound human because right now, if you, let's say reach to chatting app or Phone or whatever, when you reach a bank, whomever has a system that it has some sorts of bot, it is very annoying. It's just annoying because it's not good enough.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) For this sort of situation, it would be really hard for, for, for us to do a robo Monica because Monica is very intuitive. You've got a world of experience and you'll, you'll check in on, you'll challenge the interviewee. You'll build on their questions and you'll use all that experience that you have.

But I, but if I want to get like I phoned the bank of Scotland yesterday and I said, I want to know what my mortgage balance is. And I don't want to knew this and the other. And she was very considerate. But I could have done that with a robo advisor just as easily, and I wouldn't have had to wait. Yes.

And the, the long term future for AI that I think is really exciting is, is when we start to adopt digital currencies, both [00:23:00] stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, we're going to find this new phenomenon that nobody quite's got their head around yet, but is the future of, of money, which is programmable money.

And the thought that we can attach a set of conditions to the sending of a token of value, a digital token of value, that will mean certain things happen under certain circumstances. For example I can send you a token of 50 as a as a gift that can only be used on your birthday. So the condition is when Monica's birthday arrives, she can use the 50 pounds.

Now that contract attached to that simple transaction, you want it now, don't

Monica Millares: you?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) want it now. No, I

Monica Millares: want it now. Still uncomfortable because it takes my freedom away of how I can use

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) it. Exactly. But if I, if I say, look, you can have 20 pounds now, or you can have 50 pounds on your birthday, what would you prefer?

You might go actually I'm going to have the 50 quid. And then you'd love the ability to program the [00:24:00] money. Yes. So this thought that we're going to have this tens of thousands , of different types of money and artificial intelligence will allow me to get a certain set of conditions attached to the sending of money to Monica, which will be.

Based on Monica and my preferences, circumstances, risk requirements. Now, just getting, if you've heard that idea for the first time, it's quite hard to get your head around it. But I'll tell you what, we're going to see all sorts of new innovations coming down the line. That AI is going to be helping us to produce the smart contracts in a way that is just right for you and me.

Monica Millares: I love it. It's the first time that I hear this idea where we're connecting AI and smart contracts. Yeah. Yeah. It's clever. It's clever. Which other use case? Because like now we use the very basic, Hey, just send me money. I cannot use it now. I can use it on my birthday. But which other use cases do you see?

So

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) I'll give you an example that I love, which I [00:25:00] think could be potentially very interesting. If you are a fan of sustainability and you want to only invest in green assets, then you can buy some green investment pounds and you can send them to the investment house that makes sure those green investment pounds can only be used on green investments.

Now, right now, the company you're sending it to, you've got no idea, really, what the hell they're using it for. They might be using it to, for, to, to, to make the tea. They might be using it to buy Shell or BP assets, because Shell and BP are actually investing a lot in green technologies. But if you've said no...

Or you've made your investment conditional upon this now. There are ways in which you can do this in the current world. But I'm talking about being able to make it absolutely mandated and [00:26:00] conditional that that money can only be used for green investments. So that's another way. So , here's another thought.

You're a customer in France. I'm a supplier in the UK. It could be that I will be willing to receive my products At my house and pay for them on receipt So what you do is you attach a gps tracker to the goods when the goods are at the person's house The value is instantly released subject to the customer authorizing the payment I'm probably now.

Yes, you now, yes you can. No, yes, you, yes, you can do that now. But the point is you can do it in a much smarter way that's much more efficient and much more track and traceable. And that's the other thing about programmable money is I know where the money came from and I know where it went to because it's [00:27:00] on a blockchain and every single transaction is attributed to a a node, and that node is attached to an individual.

If I have a digital identity, which by the time this stuff all comes out, we will all have, then I know where it's come from and I know where it's going to. So I might even be prepared to pay more for sending it to a good core, good source than I would otherwise. And that's where the money, that's, that's how you make a profit out of this.

So it's a, it's a source. It's, it is, it is the most exciting stage in our industry for the last, the most exciting stage since the credit and debit card 70 years ago.

Monica Millares: Yes. I'd like to see soap and soap. A set of use cases, just as we were talking, I was thinking you can support NGOs anywhere.

Across the world, because sometimes, let's say I am very confident, or I am confident that if I put my money in an NGO in the UK, it's going to be used in certain way because of how they just regulate it. But if I were to put my money [00:28:00] in another country, just without giving a name, I'm not that confident that they will use the money for the right thing.

But in this case. I can confidently say, here's my money, but you can use it for this. And, and,

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) and, and you can do it in a way that there's a key that has to be unlocked for the money to actually be usable in, say, I don't know, Kazakhstan or something. I'm saying this because I doubt there's many Kazakhstani listeners.

And if there are, I'm sorry. And, and so that that key can only be unlocked and then you may need some evidence. To confirm that you're happy and satisfied that that is sufficiently authentic a use for the money.

Monica Millares: I like it because another, Ooh, this is a good one. Another use case is for financial education.

We, we hear this narrative a lot that it's we don't have financial education in the system, like since we're kids across the world, but [00:29:00] what has existed since most of us are kids, it's your parents, your grandparents give you an allowance. But just like building on that use case, yes, we give you an allowance, but you can only use these for savings.

You can only use that for going out. You can, but you can only use these for suites and cinemas and helping kids learn since the

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) beginning. Yes, completely right. We had a we were told at the very beginning to give the children three pots. We gave them three jam jars, and one was called saving, one was called spending, and one was called giving.

Giving. And, and the irony is my 25 year old daughter still has those three pots in her bedroom because they symbolize for her how you can choose about how you spend money. And, okay, you, in those days you did it with coins and putting Notes in the various pots, but of course you can do this. Nowadays you can do it using this and programmable money.

Very [00:30:00] quite great idea. You've got an entrepreneurial brain. I can tell.

Monica Millares: We can do a FinTech just to do that. Because that's the product, right? Like you have a stash. Many fintechs have it like stashes, but now like stashes based on programmable money. Yeah,

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) it'll happen. You just got to be able to use the programmable money somewhere.

And at the moment you can't. That's the trouble.

Monica Millares: Okay. So an idea for in three to five years time.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Monica Millares: Okay. The other topic that I want to discuss with you, one of the projects that you have is around ESG, that that's also a big problem that we have, but I think it's not clear that we as an industry, how can we have impact?

What are

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) your thoughts? I completely agree with your, your concern here. How do we have impact? At a very tactical level we're producing six billion plastic cards a year and throwing them away. [00:31:00] They are not recyclable or compostable. So that's, that's got to change. And there are a number of movements to try and move people to other forms of either wearable technologies or or mobile phone based payments.

So I think that's, that's, that'll happen. That'll happen in time. I think the big, the big one for me is, is genuinely how can you have a more sustainable industry, a more responsible industry, one that actually takes its role as how would you say it? It's role as a kind of an agent of, agent of the right sort of change.

The difficulty is defining, defining sustainability is difficult and making sure that what we do is specific. So there's we're just about to launch the Payments Manifesto, which is a bringing together of all of these various projects into a single document, as to say to the government, these are the [00:32:00] policies we recommend you have around financial inclusion.

crime prevention, regulation digital currencies, cross border and in this case ESG. A number of things we want to try and do. We want to gather more information through the payment transactions that will allow us to encourage more sustainable and responsible spending. That's businesses in particular.

We want to provide education. To help people understand the impact of their decisions as a, in terms of supply chain. At a very simple level, I know this sounds completely counterintuitive for me championing the industry. But I would like to see a much smaller payment industry. What do you mean?

I would like to see a simpler, more track and traceable industry. Equally [00:33:00] secure, equally cheap, equally instant. But I'd like to see it with fewer players in it. Because at the moment, for me to send money to Cambodia I go through maybe 10 counterparties. Everybody takes a little wafer thin slice. When people say Bitcoin is an environmentally damaging technology, because every time you mint a Bitcoin, it uses this much electricity.

Think about how many people are employed in the payments industry, probably three or four hundred thousand in the UK alone. We provide services to other countries. But you look at the friction of the payments industry. We should be looking, it's not sustainable. 1, 2, 3, 4% maybe, in some cases up to 10% of the transaction value goes in the movement of the money.

That's not efficient. So I want to, I want to see a more efficient smaller payments industry. I'd, I'd like to think it's going to grow very [00:34:00] rapidly over the next 10 years. But I, I, I think it's, I would like to have a more sustainable one that's more efficient. So what other things? I, I think, I think the other thing I want to be able to do is, is demonstrate that if you can weave the purpose of having a sustainable country, a company into your planning, that you'll have better relationships with your customers.

You'll have. preferential access to early stage products and services from your suppliers and a more motivated and loyal staff. And we all know that if your staff are loyal and motivated, they'll correlate with loyal and motivated customers, which correlates with long term higher profitability and sustainable growth.

So it's a good thing for the investors, but the people are, we've got to educate people on that. And so those are the sorts of

Monica Millares: things we're doing. Yeah. And I, I love that last message that it's like employee engagement and loyalty and [00:35:00] happiness is so important. Not just because of our wellbeing, but it's as a result of our wellbeing and being happy and engaged, then profitability goes up.

It's not the other way. Scream, scream, scream. Ah, fear. No. Exactly. It's the

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) opposite. What happens, what happens when you do that is people chat and chat, chat, and they spend all their time chatting about how bloody horrible it is rather than focusing on how amazing it, this idea is. And we can, we, I love, I do love our staff.

We've got a wonderful team of people and, and remember, I'm lucky because I have lots of people who work for me that we pay for my, my, we've got 35, 40 employees who are all coming to my house on Friday afternoon for a barbecue. To to have a summer barbecue. So in London, so that'll be great fun. So I'm I'm we are quite a family in in our business But i've got a i've got 15 dedicated ambassadors who champion the payment association.

I have 16 Members of our advisory board who are volunteering executives to provide us with [00:36:00] regular input and guidance and advice 145

Members of my constituent, my members are involved with these, these groups of project, the project teams. We have the whole, we have lots of people working to help us achieve our mission. It's a, it's a lovely communal kind of. What, and they all, they and, and they pay us for the privilege. The, the, the bizarre thing is, and again, I don't feel bad about this at all because we've just lit, we've just created this catalyst and what it allows us to do is have more impact on the things, the four different levels I mentioned at the beginning in, in a way that I think.

I think it's, I think it's a model for future communities, to be honest with you. I think we'll be seeing this similar sort of commercial membership model deployed in other industries. And that's where I'm probably most proud is I think we've innovated in how communities are run.

Monica Millares: Amazing. [00:37:00] I think that makes sense.

Yes, you said so much in this past minute and a half. Yeah, because it is properly, it's going full circle, coming back to the community.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah, yeah, and, and, and, and what goes around comes around. That is very true. What goes around comes around. And that's probably something that you said earlier, what's the message I wish I'd been told?

I think I wish I'd been told that a little bit earlier. Hmm.

Monica Millares: And that's a very important message like many times I keep that in mind. Some people that are like, Oh, when are you monetizing the podcast? I'm like. I don't need to monetize a podcast. Like I'm just, I'm just putting the energy out there and then life, life will pay it back in different ways.

And it

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) does, doesn't it? It does. It does. How long, how long have you been doing the the podcast for?

Monica Millares: Two years started as a podcast, as a COVID project. And then I [00:38:00] I learned for two years, then I stopped the podcast and I relaunched 10 weeks ago. Cool. To make it a FinTech podcast. Yeah.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Very clever and very focused. If I can help you in any way then you must let me know. There may be people you want to interview from, from Mike and my membership and I've got some amazing, amazingly visionary. Guru like leaders who would I'm sure would be insightful for your audience And if we can promote your podcast in any way, I think we are going to aren't we we're going to support you in promoting it out there.

Thank you.

Monica Millares: Thank you. Delighted to do that. Thank you one more I know, Mike, there's no heroes in this, in this community. We are all amazing. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Thank you. One more question before we go. Usually I ask another question as the last question, but this one, I genuinely, I was like.

I was researching you, [00:39:00] obviously, and then you have like your personal philosophy and I love that you wrote, my personal role is to inspire, challenge, and enable people to go way further than they currently believe is possible. Yeah. That is really inspiring as such. Yeah. How do we bring that to life?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) You know what, I, I, I think, as a, and I, I often refer to that, and I put it down in writing because that's a statement of, of, of, of who I, who I am and what I stand for. I'd like to think that what I do is, and I think this is something anybody can do, is you have some. Open people's eyes in conversation and essentially give themselves permission because we stop [00:40:00] ourselves all the time.

We set obstacles. We I couldn't do that. I couldn't possibly, oh no. Oh, how will it look? What will people think of me? And, and sometimes how you've gotta have those conversations going in your on, in your head and act anyway. So part of, part of what, part of my mantra for business is, is, is to have two rules.

Number one employ the right people and the number two is let them get on with it. But part of the letting people get on with it is, is essentially opening the door and saying, you know what, you talk to me about what you think might be possible. Look at what you think might stop you and then step out regardless.

So to me, that, that to me is, is about giving people the space. To, to, to be their authentic, genuine selves and then they will go way further than they currently think is possible.

Monica Millares: Yes. That will

happen. Because otherwise we And we're [00:41:00] not opening a horizon.

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) Yeah, and, and it's a safe box. And it's comfortable because we know it very well. We made the box, for goodness sake. So we like it. And actually, it's still a box. So what's outside the box? First of all, you've got to recognize there is stuff.

There's anything. And then which, which, which area do you want to go in? And so that's what I think, I'd like to think I'm quite good at that bit.

Monica Millares: Awesome. Have you ever considered writing a book? Not about payment, but about like, life, wisdom and leadership, like when you teach

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) your children. I genuinely think those books are read largely by the family and friends of the person who writes them.

And there's lots of them who are much more qualified than me, I'm sure. No, I haven't. And Neera Jones is one of our ambassadors is about to publish a book on the payments industry. And it's, it's a wonderfully complicated and superbly well written book. And I'm a big advocate. No, I, I want to go and ride my bike.

I want to go ride my bike. Yeah. That's what I want to do. I don't want to write a book. [00:42:00]

Monica Millares: We were privileged to have you in the podcast, Tony. Thank

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) you. It's been wonderful. It's been a pleasure. It's been really lovely to chat.

Monica Millares: Likewise. It's been an absolute pleasure. Where can we find you?

Tony Craddock (The Payments Association) So, we run a business we run the payment association in the UK and across the EU and, and emerging payment association in Asia.

Depending upon where you are and depending on what you want to do, just look us up on the, on, on, online, thepaymentsassociation. org. That's it. And anybody can call me or ask me for help or advice or input, I'd be very happy to help.

Monica Millares: Thank you, Tony. It's been an absolute pleasure. I genuinely enjoyed the conversation a lot.

I hope our listeners also enjoy it too. Thank you everyone. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Bye bye.