Monica Millares: [00:00:00] Hello, please. I am really looking forward to having this conversation to you. Welcome to the

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): show. Hi there. Thanks very much, Monica. Me too. Yes.

Monica Millares: It's exciting. So before, before we get into it, um, I think it's important that we get to know you, especially because you have a fascinating background and FinTech.

So I'll start with a bunch of like speed dating questions. That's how I call them. So let's start with. What is your favorite type of music?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Um, I'd have to go for indie rock. It, uh, memories back in the nineties as I was at uni. So, and sixth form, Oasis, Blur, that kind of stuff. That would be my go to.

Monica Millares: Cool. I like that.

And then, yeah, what's the best gift you've ever received? And a gift can be anything. It doesn't need to be material.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Okay. So I've got two and one is super [00:01:00] recent. So the first one was a secret picnic a couple of years ago. Um, and you are given clues a day before it happens. And the clue is to where to get to.

And I did it on my bike around the Surrey Hills. Oh, nice. Yeah. It's, it turns out it's quite hard work. It was meant for cars. Um, and you get to each destination and they give you a bit more of your picnic and they provide you with a picnic spot at the end. That was super brilliant fun. And I think it's from surprise me dot.

And then most recently a friend got me Poetry on Prescription, which is a little bottle of Poemcetamol, which I even have here. Here we are. Oh, that is cool. And every time you pick me up, I just pop one of these open and it gives me an [00:02:00] inspirational quote or part of a poem. I

Monica Millares: love it. That's a great present.

It is a great present. Cool. That is super cool. Okay. So what is your superpower then?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Um, my superpower is to take giant leaps without thinking about them too much and thinking about them later.

Monica Millares: So that makes you a very adventurous woman then. What's been

your most adventurous

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): adventure? Um, well, I've been to, traveling is always an adventure isn't it? I've been to China, which was my, pretty much my first holiday beyond a package holiday to Spain and, um, a university exchange to America. So to then go to a communist country first after that felt quite adventurous.

But what I mean by giant leaps without thinking about them is to go, and we'll probably get onto this, to go from being a [00:03:00] musician to then spending an entire annual musician salary on law school to be a lawyer without thinking much about that, and then probably my leap into fintech from being a lawyer too.

Monica Millares: Yes. And probably you and I have that in common, like, you know, like I left the UK to come and start to Fintech in Asia. I was like, yeah, I'll just figure it out. I'll just figure it out. Yeah. Yeah.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): I truly believe if, if I were to have thought about those decisions more, I wouldn't have done them. Me too. And that

Monica Millares: would be bad.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So this is one of my favorite questions to ask other Fintechers. What is your favorite fintech that is not yours? Aha.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Okay. Um, my favorite fintech that isn't mine, I really love, uh, what's it called? I call it lickety split, kitty split it's called. [00:04:00] It's not an app, unusually, but it's a web presence, and you don't have to sign up to join it for it to help you, and it's for group holidays, and as you're going along on your holiday, whoever buys dinner that night, for example, they put their entries into that app.

Uh, adventure you sign, you, you sign up your excursion with, uh, on the platform. And for example, a few weeks ago, I went to Paris with my friends for my birthday. So we signed up Paris trip, who's on there and you each input your expenses and it constantly calculates who has to pay back how much. To give you the equal amounts in the fewest number of transactions, and you can even tailor it with, well, I had steak and a glass of champagne, but my friend only had bread and water, so I ought to pay more of that bill and you can wait.

Oh, wow. At that level? Yes.

Monica Millares: It's really tailored. Yeah. That is cool because I was going to [00:05:00] say yes, of course. Like travel, traveling in a group. It's, it's like complicated when it comes to bills as such, and that is, I always have that issue because I'm a non drinker. So it's a, when it comes to like completing the bill, I'm like, guys, I'm paying for everyone's drinks now.

Yeah. So I like that, but it's like, Hey, you can customize it at that level. Oh, that is a, that's a cool fintech. I'll definitely check it out. Yeah. And it's solving a customer problem, a real one. That is cool. That is cool. So let's, I think this is a great way to get into, into our conversation. Um, because exactly they, they, they solve a customer problem.

So I guess like, I would like to start with what has been the role of purpose in your life and in Ordo's life?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): So you, you open with real questions with a real big meaty question. We could spend the whole podcast talking about this, but the [00:06:00] role of purpose in my life, uh, pops into my head multiple times a day.

Um, And I don't want to be cheesy about it, but what those thoughts and the little voice reminding me to think about these things boil down to are, how can I tackle X, Y, Z to make a difference to that situation? How can I deal with such and such to have the biggest impact? Um, I'm an avid Brené Brown follower, so that Erin Greatley concept where almost it doesn't matter if you fail, you probably are, you are going to fail sometimes, but.

The point is, and you'll get the greatest fulfillment out of life if you just try things and sometimes they'll work for sure. And it's about, and I think it's that mindset that turns just doing a job and taking off [00:07:00] tasks off a list that's just wearying into something meaningful that gives you energy rather than drains it.

I think

Monica Millares: that's key for me, I think it's about that, that purpose, the road of purpose in our lives. And I've thought about it many times. It's like I can do my job and it's just my job, right? And then you get tired of doing your job and every week becomes the same week because you wake up, you eat, you go to work, you come back, you eat, you sleep, and then you repeat.

And it's draining. Yeah. But the moment that you add purpose. to work. Yeah. Many of us, especially the people listening to this podcast, like we are very career oriented. The moment that you give purpose to work, then you have meaning and then it doesn't become a, uh, life in repeat. Yeah. It's just exciting and it gives you joy and then you're like, yeah, emotionally engaged and it makes a [00:08:00] massive

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): difference.

Yeah. And so, and what does that look like in my day to day life, which is sat at my living room table with my homemade blackboard, because I, we all work from home mostly. It means not shirking away from hard conversations, difficult decisions, taking the hard way, if that's the best way and demonstrating that bravery and, um, fearlessness in.

May be failing and making a mistake and it's okay to make a mistake and own up to it and deal with that mistake, demonstrating that and living that for the rest of the company and our employees so that they can trust you when you say, I don't want you to work long hours. I want you to take your annual leave and not check your emails.

We've got to tackle this difficult issue, and I know it's difficult and uncomfortable, but it will only get worse if you take it off. Yes. And just the one other thing which I've found really [00:09:00] useful over, uh, lately, over about the past year or so, is knowing what my, what, what sabotages me, what are my characteristics, my go tos, that are my weaknesses, and Being, just being aware of them helps you stop them in their tracks, take over your decision making part of your brain.

So for example, not having that victim mentality of, Oh, I've got so many emails. It's all all down to me and no one else is here to do this. You can turn, you can usually turn these sorts of things into, okay, so this is difficult and there are a lot of emails in my inbox. Yeah. But how can I make an impact on that, not, not just a task list and recognizing my victim brain is going to go to, Oh, poor me.

And then turning that around.

Monica Millares: Yes. And you know what? If, well, I, I don't know if I [00:10:00] consciously do that, but what I'm, I've been noticing that I do more of, and I'm a big fan of is celebrating. And I think the common thread between probably you and I, it's like impact. So when I am, let's say at work and I'm like, instead of saying, Oh, and now I need to do these, sorry, this meeting.

No, no, no. I kind of do it and then at the end of the day, even if it's just like a note in my head, it's like a millisecond thing that I was like, that meeting went well, I think I had impact. Yes. That conversation went well, I think it had impact. Oh, I'm very glad I had a conversation with so and so. I think it had impact.

Yeah. And it's, it's especially when, when you start moving from a very delivery role to more of a leading role. When you're like, it's the impact, sometimes it's very intangible. That is also very important because you're like, yeah, I'm stopping to recognize. Yeah. That little action had impact. Well, regardless of what role you have, actually, it's like, yeah, [00:11:00] that had impact.

That had impact. That had impact. And you celebrate it because you acknowledge it and you're like, ah, yeah, good job. And then you go on with your

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): day. Yeah, absolutely. And that, that goes to wellness and resilience, doesn't it? Because sometimes, especially if you're in a startup, it's roller coaster, sure. And some, it takes a long time for a big win to come along.

So if you, if you only celebrate and pat yourself on the back for the big wins, it's a real tough hill battle. So you need to be disciplined and recognize the little wins and not just sweep on to the next thing. Um. It helps you restore yourself, which enables you to keep going longer. And also your, your team and your staff and your employees need to see that too.

They need to see you in a good uplifting mood, knowing that what they're working and what they're doing, what they're working towards and what they're doing is good and building something and making a difference to the company. [00:12:00] So it's important for resilience and restoration as well.

Monica Millares: It is. I love it.

I'm loving this conversation and we're just getting started. I'm like, this is so cool. So tell us about like you, what's your journey? Because you have a fascinating journey talking about resilience and change and adventure. It's like you have a fascinating journey. So I would love to hear your journey, how you went like from being a musician to being a CEO and founder.

And then basically, yeah, like, how did org. com come about in that, in that journey?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah. Well, oddly, a sentence I never thought I'd say, maybe it all started when my teacher at primary school gave me a recorder. And we, we had one week of recorder group. I don't know why it was only ever one week, but I got this recorder and a recorder book and it was never asked for back.

So I remember sitting on my bed at home as about an eight year old, just going through my recorder book and teaching myself recorder and how to read [00:13:00] music. And then, um. I went to Sunday school at the nearby Salvation Army and I thought I want to be in the band. I want to play those bright, shiny, um, loud brass instruments.

And you just get given whatever's in the band cupboard at the time. And I just loved it. I loved playing and I got Cornet, which is like a squash trumpet. And I got a tenor horn and then I got this other funny instrument that's called a euphonium and I loved it. And I played all the time. So it didn't feel like this chore of, I had to practice.

And so I was adamant when I was from the age of 10, I was going to be a musician. No matter what everyone told me, there were no jobs. Um, it's really skilled. You won't make it. You're not good enough. Thousands of people try this. I thought, Nope, I'm, I'm going to play my trombone as it became for a living.

And I did do that for five to eight years, depending on whether you count through uni or not. And it was great. And I loved it. And I loved playing classical music in [00:14:00] orchestras. Awesome. And I really didn't love it so much.

But I got to a point where I thought I love this, but my, my forecast, financial forecast is literally a week ahead. Do I have a gig next Saturday or not with some teaching in between? And I thought, this is fine when I'm. 25. It's not going to be fine when I'm 65 and nothing might change here. There's no career structure program in place for freelance musicians.

And so my abiding thought was I want a job or I don't have to worry about money. That's it. I don't want to have to do this counting every week to see if things add up. And. I kind of thought if, if I'm going to give up something I love so much, it has to be really worth it. So I can't count, so I can't be an accountant.

I'm too squeamish to be a doctor. I know I'll be a lawyer. And that is about as much thought that went into it. [00:15:00] Um, and I then signed up to law school to go to law school in the evenings, part time, so that was. two two year courses, so four years. Um, and I remember having a sort of white hot panic moment as I was, I started law school once whilst I was still a musician.

And, uh, like I said earlier, total law school fees at the time. I mean, there'll be loads more now, but at my time. It was my entire musician's annual salary. Wow. And if you think about what would you spend your annual salary on now, you'd, you'd give that a lot of thought. It would have to be something very special.

Yeah. Um, but I mean, what is more precious than education? So, and I don't regret it and wouldn't look back, but I went from not knowing where I was going to be. Week by week and having a different place to work and different people I would see every [00:16:00] week and every gig to going into the same office to sit at the same desk to sit next to the same person to do very different work.

So, uh, yeah, I guess is very different. And then, so that was me becoming a lawyer and I worked in private practice city firms for several years. And then I... How

Monica Millares: was that? Like, how was the change? Because I cannot picture you like going from musician to lawyer. As you explain it, I'm like, that must have felt weird.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): It was quite nuts. Yeah. Yeah. So partway through being at law school, I thought I should probably belatedly thought I should check whether I like this or not. So I applied for roles as a paralegal. Um. Which is sort of assistant to lawyers, completely unqualified. And so that, that's when I went in and I worked for a firm called DLA, DLA Piper as they are now.

[00:17:00] And, uh, near St. Paul's, so full on in at the deep end. And that's where I thought. I did think you are, you're crazy. Why have you done this? You, you come into the same desk. How can you do this for the rest of your life? How do we, how does everyone else do this? But then gradually I learned that, or I realized that what.

I lose in variety and difference I gain in now having colleagues who I know about. Yeah. I knew my colleague next to me was trying to give up smoking and I knew my colleague behind me wa had an argument with her partner last night and that became the substitute for having such change and agility. Um, and I, and I gradually got used to it and, and I like having the same employees that I get to know and you can exchange stories with.

Yes,

Monica Millares: yes, yes, yes. And then how did you end up creating Ordo? [00:18:00] Hmm. Yeah. Because I'm a lawyer.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): I was in private practice. Yeah. Sorry, I talked over you. I was in private practice and we'd gone through the financial crisis and then I think other things, um, made working in corporate and property difficult in law firms.

And I thought I got into this to not worry about money and to enjoy my job. This is, this is not so fun anymore. I want to try a different angle to it. This time I won't completely up and change career entirely. So I decided to move in house and I went for a job interview, uh, where initially I thought I'm just going for, for interview practice here because I don't understand what this company does from its website.

Why can't it be clear it's miles away in Tower Bridge, which is not miles away, but it felt miles away. Um, [00:19:00] and the pay's rubbish. And I thought, I'm going anyway, interview, and I went and I was completely bowled over by the person that interviewed me and thought, damn, now I really want this job because it sounds really interesting.

And it's all documents and I still don't really understand it, but it sounds interesting. And you discover there's this whole deep, deep pool of stuff that you were. Absolutely not aware of, and you just go around and you pay for stuff, pay for stuff online, or you pay for stuff in a shop, but there's a whole industry, of course, that makes that happen.

And so I, I got that job and it was for a services company. Uh, giving legal advice to all the payment systems in the UK. So Faster Payments, Bax, Chex, Swift. And so I worked across all those payment systems, giving legal advice. [00:20:00] And after a couple of years there, the CEO of Faster Payments, which is the.

Payment system in the UK that handles all online and mobile payments said, would I come over, be interested in coming over and being the lawyer solely for faster payments and being part of their senior management team, which was a big step up for me at the time. And I thought you're a clever guy. And what you're doing in faster payments, which was to open up that payment system to non bank Um, participants and a different type of participation.

Yeah, that, that sounds interesting and exciting too. So I moved to Faster Payments and I was there for a few years and we did, when I started the participants in Faster Payments, there was about 10, it's now 40. Wow. Including non banks. So what that means is this instant payment mechanism that we have in [00:21:00] the UK is now available to the customers of 40 institutions rather than just the top eight, eight to 10 that it used to be.

So much more coverage, much wider, broader consumer benefits and breaking that dominance that the top banks have. That's impact. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the final development, I suppose, on top of that is, um, Once all of that had been completed after a couple of years, then the industry talks start is starting to talk about this new technology, new legislative and technology enabled, um, solutions called open banking, which I know.

In a bit, yeah, and that was going to be a competitive layer on top of the core infrastructure of faster payments. So we contributed to the blueprint for all of that in the form of the payment strategy forum, and [00:22:00] we could never have run. An open banking company at faster payments because open banking is a higher competitive level and faster payments is non competitive monopoly infrastructure.

And so a couple of things happened in parallel. All the payment systems in the UK were consolidated into one entity. It's now called paid. uk. And so if you've got that one entity, you don't need senior management teams in each of the payment systems. So we've kept ourselves redundant. And we thought, well, we know all about open banking technology and the underlying payment method, which is faster payments, so why don't we go and set up our own open banking fintech?

Hence, Odo was born on the 1st of May, 2018.

Monica Millares: Oh, wow. That's a fascinating story. Thank you. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, you, I had all these capabilities. I'm, [00:23:00] was made redundant. Let's go and build something. Yeah,

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): basically, let's do this together.

Monica Millares: Yeah, that is super cool. Yeah. Awesome. So can you tell us a little bit more about Ordo and your products?

Like what exactly did you guys

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): do? Yeah, so we built an open banking payments as a service platform. So let me tell you about open banking. There are two strands to open banking. One is, uh, account information services. And once another strand is payment initiation services, and this was all brought into being and enabled by PSD to the payment services directive legislation, the second one that came out of Europe and.

Um, implemented by the CMA, the competition and markets authority in the UK, them setting an order mandating this be put in place [00:24:00] on the top, the biggest nine banks in the UK and Ireland. So that includes Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds, the top nine of them. And so what that enabled is the legislation gave the capability.

Um, and the creation of these new types of Financial Conduct Authority regulated entities like Ordo, which is, and we're called Account Information Service Providers and Payment Initiation Service Providers. So we've got our, our, our structure and our status and standing set out in law, we're overseen and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and the CMA order made those top nine banks.

Put in place the APIs, the application programming interfaces that are, that are like a travel plug on the edge of their systems so that we can connect to them and provide data and services in our case payment services to our business and consumer customers. [00:25:00] And for payments, what that means is we can facilitate instant payments via a digitally joined up request from your biller.

So rather than you have some, so you, uh, have. You buy something online and you receive a bill for it and you're required to go into your banking app. Remember to go into your banking app and pay, go into your banking app, type in the account details and hopefully you don't get it wrong and hopefully the invoice you've been emailed hasn't been fraudulently intercepted and so the fraudsters put on their own account details and then you finally pay and hopefully it arrives in the right.

The correct account and it will probably be incorrectly referenced. What Open Banking Payments Initiation does is put that, put a secure wrapper around it all, a secure messaging service and enables that payment instantly within about three taps from the payer's phone and receiving notification of a payment [00:26:00] request.

Monica Millares: So having said all of these, who are your

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): customers? So we're a B2B service and there's an interest, there was a learning there in who our target audience is. So we built back in our, our young day, our young naive days of 2018, we thought you absolutely need that. You need an app. We'll build an Apple app, an iOS app first.

So we did that and it's brilliant and we all love it. Um, Probably far more functionality than it needed. So learning one, be strict with yourself on what an MVP is. Yes. It doesn't need to be all singing or dancing and all detail and do everything and more. An MVP, minimum viable product needs to just be small and slim and narrow and demonstrate.

The core of your proposition. Um, [00:27:00] and I've lost my thread. What was your question? Uh,

Monica Millares: clients. Who are your clients? I love the thread that you're going into. Great.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Unstructured brain at work. Great. Yeah. And then we looked at who's our target audience. So we thought, right. Consumers in the UK don't pay to make payments directly.

They pay within the bundle of services, but they don't pay every time they need to make a payment. So they're not going to pay for us. Why would they? So consumers aren't our target market. So businesses. Right, so what businesses? We looked at some data that came out of government departments at the time, which was really useful and showed us what size comp, who makes how many payments per year in what size company and in what sector.

And by over and above the Companies that made the most number of payments were those [00:28:00] 2 49ers, as they called them. Companies with 2 49 employees. We thought, great, we're going after them, Smeeze. And we thought, yeah, they'll love it because, and they'll adopt really quickly and that'll be brilliant for us.

Because Smeeze are run by the people that feel the pain of taking payment, trying to collect payment. And they're the people who own the company and some of the decision makers. And there's not got corporate processes, so they'll move really quickly. It turns out SMEs don't move really quickly. We're a substitutable service.

So at the moment, unless you're a payments geek like I am, you think you can take payments and the card costs, the extortionate card costs, and the chargeback costs that businesses suffer, you just think that's a cost of business. Yeah, exactly. And also Audo did some research and we discovered that I think it was a fifth of [00:29:00] businesses don't really know how much they're paying for their payment services.

So SMEs, they're not quick to move. They think they've already got a solution. They don't need anything better because they're also completely unaware of, unaware of fraud. And if you email out an invoice that, that could really easily be hacked into. And of course there's fewer of them and they're concentrating on running their business quite rightly, and they've not got time to think about this new tech.

and then when they do adopt, they're really small compared to what you could get if you were with a corporate. So we, we tried targeting SMEs at the beginning, in the beginning, and then pivoted. That was our one pivot we've done. We've now pivoted to target corporates. And those intermediary platforms.

So then there's probably a few platform, IT platforms, enterprise systems that provide services to the property [00:30:00] market. And so our targets now are those intermediaries because we integrate with three and we get all the business of all of those property companies. Interesting.

Monica Millares: So you're quite niche because in my mind, I was like, Hey, how, how do you differentiate from other platforms doing similar?

Right. But it's like, uh, yeah, there's even a way to differentiate. You know, well, in any business, like,

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): well, we were, we do differentiate ourselves. We do that by saying we've got the value add, we've got a full service. We we've designed our APIs to be really simple for a business to integrate with us.

We've, we've done most of the work. So if you integrate with us, basically a business just needs to give us the branding and logo. We drop that into the screens that we've already built and designed for the business. It's all white labeled and away they go. It's, it's like plug and play as we call it, [00:31:00] but basically if you're a platform that enables other businesses to collect payment.

We're useful.

Monica Millares: Awesome. Cool. So that leads me very nicely into one of my most curious questions. What are your thoughts about what makes great product? And I think you're getting into, into that conversation.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah. Well, what I've, I've been thinking about this and what I came up with was, remember you're a geek.

Everyone listening. Yes. Yes.

Monica Millares: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Remember you're a geek and what that means. You've, you've thought about your product and service and the environment and the target market and what you think with your. Nth degree knowledge of [00:32:00] details in that area. You think you know what's useful and what's going to be needed for people that aren't geeks

And so that, that comes with two disadvantages. There's a lot of advantages to being a geek and knowing the ins and outs of what you are building or supplying. Um, but remember, That your customers aren't going to come to your product with your level of knowledge. They are probably gonna come to it differently.

They'll want different details from it. Um, and so remember, try to envisage, imagine you don't know anything about your product, what, what would you do then when you pick up a phone or you log onto a website? What, what is it you need? I, if you are a uninformed, but digitally abled. Uninformed but digitally enabled as this is fintech, um, person and, and also it [00:33:00] leads to other blind spots where you just miss things because you're so in the weeds.

And I've got, uh, a couple of examples when we built our beautiful app that we so love, we, we did some. As I call it lab rat testing, not really on rats, no animals were harmed in the making of order. Got actual humans and we paid them. It was all very fair and kind and to test our app. And we did this through a independent commercial, customer experiences company.

So. we had got the people in and they had their, had a mobile phone with Ordo on it, and they had a little camera over the phone screen. They had a camera around their head so we could see what they were looking at. And they had a watch, a watch that measured their heart rate and sweat rate. I

Monica Millares: love that.

I love

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): that. When they're [00:34:00] moving through the different screens and like a registration journey, for example, we can tell if they're getting stressed or not. And, and minuscule counting, how long did it take them to work out the button to register is there and scroll up, and those sorts of things. People will want to

Monica Millares: know what's the name of this agency.

So we'll have to add that in the show notes.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's

Monica Millares: called Bigline. Yeah, I'm

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): like, that is cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was really good. And this told us two key things. One, I mean, in hindsight, you can say, how did you not think of that? But one thing that we didn't think of was having this, we call it a guest checkout function.

So we're, free for consumers to use. It's probably not consumers that are going to initiate an open banking transaction because open banking is a, it's a request for payment. So it's probably going to be your window cleaner, let's say your [00:35:00] window cleaner, who's cleaned your windows and then send you your bill.

and they can send that digitally either by text message, WhatsApp, email. they can now show you a QR code. We've built that latterly and the customer gets a secure link or a pay now button. And, we did. The payer did have to sign up with Ordo for that notification to reach them. And one woman quite rightly said, no, I don't, I don't want to sign up or download the app to be able to do this.

I might only do it once. If I like it, I'll sign up. And we thought, yeah, of course, can't believe we missed that. So we built this guest checkout function, which means anyone, who banks with. A bank who is in open banking Which is just about every high street bank you can think of, apart from metro and co-op boom, they need to get on the security

Monica Millares: themselves.

I know, [00:36:00] sorry. Still guys, if you're listening, but, uh, . Yeah. Come on.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yes. Uh, they're meant to have APIs in by the end of May, but that is not looking, um, that's not looking, uh, likely. So any bank, apart from Metro Co op, we can reach that payer and they can use our service to pay. So it's a good message for our business customers.

We can reach any payers, no sign up or download needed. Um, they just get a link, click three taps and they've paid their bill and the money goes directly from their bank account instantly into the bank account of the business.

So we built the guest checkout function and here was the other interesting thing we learned. Um, we, we had all that we had all this color coding throughout our app. Our colors are sort of teal as I've tried to emulate with chalk here. And we had the, [00:37:00] you can have the payments I've requested. List in our app and on our platform and you've, you've got your payments that are requested from you that you need to pay your bills and we have them as your bills are red or saffron, orange, as it's really called and your, what you've requested, what you're waiting for is teal, green, because we thought you've got to pay money, that's red, pay attention to it, alert, and what you're waiting for, that's green.

And we had such a diverse reaction to those screens and people. Paying money and paying bills and how long they would allow to pay a bill. We had one guy who was a tour guide. He was really funny. He said, Nah, I don't pay anything. I don't pay anything until I get a red demand. Nah, I just wait until then.

Not sneeze. If it's a small business, I'll pay them because they're a small business. [00:38:00] What if you're a big player? Yeah, gas bills. I wait until I get final demand. Oh my gosh. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I did that with my finance bills. But this guy, he was perfectly calm. He, he was going to pay.

I had every intention of paying, but not until he absolutely had to.

Monica Millares: Cause he's managing his money and that works for him. I didn't

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): even get the impression he was managing his money. That was just how he approached it. He thought, why should I give these big companies their money anytime before I absolutely needed to.

Okay. And he was perfectly calm about that. Contrast with another woman who said, no. I would never look at this. If this, if my bills were all here listed and they were in saffron orange or red, as she called it, um, I'd never look at it. This is terrible. I'd, it'd give me an anxiety attack and I, and it made us think, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, our, our [00:39:00] auto's purpose is to help people manage their finances and in the cost of living crisis, control their money and feel like they're in control of their money. Presenting someone with a red screen that makes them feel anxious to the point they're never going to look at it. That's terrible.

That's the opposite of what we were trying to achieve. So we just switched the colors. And so what you, your list of payments to pay now is in calming teal color, which is entirely why we set up Ordo. Awesome. So lab rat testing, preferably on humans that you do not mistreat and that you pay is crucial. Uh, remember you're a geek and that has advantages and disadvantages and build a product that seamlessly fits into someone's life.

Don't just build a product, build a product that seamlessly fits into someone's life and it solves [00:40:00] that life problem. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Monica Millares: Exactly. Because we are not here to build features. We're not here to build payment products. We're here to help customers with their lives.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah, exactly.

Monica Millares: Therefore we sometimes, I believe sometimes we get, like you say, we are geeks, we get excited about the payments and the APIs and these and the others.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): We

Monica Millares: do. And the, Oh, you could do this because the API allows you to. We imagine we could do that. Yeah. But then it's a, no, remember that we're dealing with humans and we're here to help people with their life. Not, we're not here to build more tech, more code, it's like life that we're helping

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): people with.

And even our colors. I mean, it's not super good there, but it's teal and saffron, orange and granny smith apple. Uh, green, they weren't our [00:41:00] original colors either. I can't remember what our original colors were, but then you put them through an accessibility filter and we saw that people, some people can't see half of this.

So you adjust the colors and the shade to then a level that you've. Everyone can see, everyone at an accessibility level can see everything. And we got the colors. We do that. That wasn't intentional either. And so it's about checking, checking your blind spots that you don't know you have. Um. To make sure your product is fit for purpose and for people that aren't like you and also being open to being surprised and being shown new solutions and new ways of doing things that you and your geek brain were never going to think of and they are better.

Yes.

Monica Millares: I love that. I love your whole thinking around products. Totally love it. Um, I'm very conscious of time. How [00:42:00] much extra time did you have? I have time. I'm good for time. Cool. Awesome. Okay. Then we'll just continue. I'm sorry to walk along. No, it's, um, it's amazing. It's a really good conversation. Okay. So talking about product and people's lives.

And now open banking. I love the whole concept, but there's one thing that makes me nervous. Okay, come on. Open banking, open finance, open data. And then. My product mind, like you say, as a geek, I'm like, Oh my God, just imagine all the use cases that you can use with all my data as soon as I connect everything.

This is amazing. And my other product geek mind goes like, Oh my God, this is so scary. What will people do with my data? Ooh.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah. Yeah.

Monica Millares: You are a lawyer as well. Yeah. Yeah. Which is awesome. [00:43:00] Yeah. How are we looking at protecting the customer and customer's data and how much we can do or cannot do or innovate, uh, privacy policy?

Like. All these can be used against me, like, because you have my data. What's the

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): thinking right now? Yeah. So whoever came up with the name of calling this open banking should have done some lab rat testing themselves and tested, what do people think about when you say open banking and open data? People think my bank account is open to everyone.

My data is. It's available everywhere. And in fact, what that actually means is the entire opposite of that. Open banking and open finance is more secure than alternative mechanisms that we had in the past and people like Metro and Co op are using today. So open banking means. More secure access and financial [00:44:00] information passed through APIs rather than the alternative, which is screen scraping, which is absolutely terrible, for example.

Yeah. And your data always remains your data. It never becomes ours. That's one thing. That's GDPR protections, which were transposed over into the UK. They're still there. And what's more for open banking companies. So as I was saying at the beginning, the account information provider types and the payment initiation provider types, we are required to have our customers consent for whatever data we have.

And we're only allowed to use the data for carrying out that service for you. Very important. Yeah, we're not allowed to harvest all this data. We're not allowed to just unscrupulously keep it and we're absolutely not allowed to do anything else with it or sell it on absolutely not. [00:45:00] Love that

Monica Millares: Follow up question.

Mm-hmm. I in the uk. Well, I love the work that the F C A and regulators are doing. So it's like, customers are protected. Yep. Is it the same across the world? Do you see that trend across regulators following many people, many people, many countries tend to follow, you know, the FCA, what they are doing that's leading standard, do you see the same principles applying in other geographies?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): So, for Europe, yes, and more widely, I think so. So, Bordeaux is in the UK, so I mostly know about the UK, and I'm broadly aware of Europe. And, so the enabling legislation that we exist under, Is European legislation, so yes, the fact that we need your consent to have your data and we are only allowed to do provide you with the service payment and account information service with [00:46:00] that data is in the legislation, the payment services directive to which applies to all of Europe and in the UK, it's the payment services regulations, 2017.

So that's the same for UK and Europe. What I should also say is, to provide these services, companies like Ordo and other fintechs need to be authorised and regulated by the FCA and are authorised and regulated by the FCA on an ongoing basis. So we have to file numerous reports quarterly. And that means our security systems, our business models, our complaints procedure, our GDPR procedures and policies and processes all needed to be submitted to the FCA.

They investigated all of that. They investigated us as people running such companies, and then that's ongoing. So there, there, there should be a high degree of trust in these Fintech companies, [00:47:00] and that will be the same for Europe. Amazing. More globally, I believe that the same models, broadly speaking, are being adopted.

Yes. And you're right, a lot of regulators tend to follow the FCA.

Monica Millares: Yes. Yes. So I'm thinking, let's say APAC is a little bit behind the UK or Europe when it comes to open banking as such. So, but it's just a matter of time. Before it starts like boom, boom, boom, catching up, what would be the advice, I guess, like for regulators in AIPAC when building the regulatory framework for the region, what would you tell

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): them?

What would I tell regulators just before that? I think other countries are catching up, if not overtaking on open banking, especially into open finance. Uh, UK's got to work hard to. Keep our, our wafer thin head, stuck [00:48:00] head, uh, time ahead. Brazil, I think is this great adoption. Um, Australia's got the makings, if not better, uh, the landscaping for open banking and open finance.

But what would I tell regulators? I'd plea for regulators to try to find an agile. Which is to say mostly quicker way of doing things and getting through their processes, our authorization, um, can't remember how many months now it took exactly, but many, and we went from having, um, zero submitting our application, zero questions and information and feedback, and then being authorized.

And I think it took us nine months. Um, and if you're a fintech and for example, if you have share. Uh, equity share investments. And if you have a change of control in your shareholders, you need prior authorization from a [00:49:00] regulator for that. The rate, the pace at which regulators run at is not the pace that FinTechs need when they're running on risk investment.

So my. My plea to regulators in the UK and abroad would be apply a proportionate oversight level to fintechs, especially for open banking and open finance, because we don't hold any client monies ever. So such a good. We've got no client monies that go missing. So it's, it's our systems that matter and the reliance on our systems that matter.

So given that, uh, regulators need to be able to be agile and act at pace in order to keep with the development and agility of fintechs.

Monica Millares: Yes, probably we'll need to do like, uh, how do we call this exchange of, uh, cultures? Regulators. Yeah. [00:50:00] Culture exchange. Yeah. I'm like regulators. This is how FinTechs really work.

Spend a day in a FinTech. You'll be impressed how crazy it gets in there. We go fast. Boom. Boom. Boom. We have stress. Boom. Boom. Boom. And then. And then, yeah, it's stressful not to know when we're going to get the approval or the feedback because we're running out of money

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): as well. And there's a balance. You don't want to be too callous with that and, and probably the regulators would think, well, if only you could spend a month with us and you Fintech.

Come and see how, how it's likely, how

Monica Millares: difficult it is. Yeah. That's why I said culture exchange. Like we as fintechs need to be more understanding of the regulators and it's like their job is to protect customers and Exactly. To do it to the property diligence and put the framework so that we have [00:51:00] like fair play across the industry.

So it's, uh, yeah, it's a tricky one. Mm-hmm. , but I'm sure we're getting there. I think. Yeah. Regulators across the world are doing a good job too. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So you touched the word diversity in the past few minutes. Can you expand? I think that that's a topic that I feel it's very relevant. Can you expand on your thoughts about diversity in FinTech?

And I'll leave it as open as that. Yeah.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Well, um, being a female founder, uh, there do, there does need to be. Greater diversity. I mean, that's the that the non surprising statement of the century. Um, I do have female counterparts in other companies and order is part of a. Uh, membership policy organization called the Open Finance Association.

And there are lots of talented women that [00:52:00] contribute to that. Um, so that does need, uh, improvement. And basically, it needs something that enables women to succeed. And, uh, I don't mean to be trite, but fulfill their potential. And that means basically giving women senior jobs, equal pay, um, and funding for the, the startups they've founded.

My marketing person said to me yesterday that, a stat which I did already know, there are more CEOs in the FTSE 100 called Dave than there are female CEOs. I mean, if it wasn't so awful, it would be funny. It's horrible. Yeah. Yeah. And so women need to be offered real opportunities and to take those opportunities and encouraged and nurtured and supported, not just be offered mentoring, which is my frustration [00:53:00] with programs, uh, it's, it's patronizing, but also over and above that, something that I hear less about is then.

Social mobility and a social diversity in fintech and in society, generally, I've been to so throughout my a levels. I went to university. I went to a music conservatory. I've been to law school for my whole adult working life. I've, I've met two other people who grew up on a council estate like I did.

Monica Millares: What's a council estate for anyone who's not in the

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): UK? Uh, yes, right. Okay. So a council estate, yes, it is sort of a general term. I mean, it refers to, um, properties that are owned by local, the local councils and boroughs. So for example, in London, there'd [00:54:00] be Haringey council and that covers the area of Tottenham.

And then, Wandsworth council that covers the area of Earlsfield and Battersea. So they're the entities that deal with, um, collecting your rubbish and, and funding state schools, which is where children go if you don't pay for their schooling and they ha they have housing and it's for lower income people who can't afford to buy their own properties in the UK.

Buying your own property is, um, an obsession. With UK people. And so if you, you, where those properties are owned by the council are put together, they're, they're often called estates. And so there is a real gap between if you're at the more, if you have an upbringing with people that are on the more affluent end of a spectrum.

Who usually, [00:55:00] not usually, who can often go to private schools in the UK, that's where you pay to send your kid to a school. And it is invariably people who, um, often unfortunately go to private school. Or there is some, there's a spectrum, it's not just one or the other. People who have grown up in... Richer areas, more affluence, and so tend to have better schools, smaller classrooms, not kids in the classroom where they don't speak English as if it's English at all, let alone as a first language, um.

And so, in all of my adult life, I've only ever met two other people who grew up on a council estate like I did. And largely speaking, a lot, if not most of the people I work with, and is in my, my life and social circle now, um, went to private school. And to... To [00:56:00] fall, to transpose over, and I can't remember whether it was the former Australian or New Zealand Prime Minister that said they were referring, they were referring to women, you either think that women are more stupid than men, or you have to look at society and ask what is it we're doing that means women are being held back because it is not 50 50.

It is not Women have half the senior positions in business and half the senior positions in politics, and that is true. And I would say the same thing. You either think unless you are born in an affluent area and it measures can often, but there's no right or wrong or or test. So measures can often be, did you go to private school?

Do you own your own property unless you're born in an affluent area? You are more stupid and you're therefore not fit or capable enough [00:57:00] to become senior in business or senior in politics. And I, I do not believe a person's capability is down to where they were born. Yeah. And so I have to ask, how can we get more people from a less affluent, less privileged upbringing, how can we nurture and assist that to get more people who, from the hard school of knocks, as you'd say in the UK, into more senior positions in business and politics.

And so that's, that's my. That, and I think that's even, that's got an even worse record than gender, ethnicity, diversity. Probably

Monica Millares: that's the first time that I have that conversation, right? Like, because people focus on diversity and it's gender, or, you know, like sexual orientation, or, Uh, social background, as in, ah, yeah, you'll bring like someone that comes from non fintech to fintech to build a fintech, [00:58:00] but we are not having the conversation about economic, socio economic background.

Yes. And what's the implication. Yeah. And like, I've seen it in the UK, I've seen it in Mexico, I've seen it in Asia. Many of the people at the top went to private schools. Many of the people, and I think there's many similarities between. Developing countries, in this case, Latin America and AIPAC, at least Southeast Asia.

And one of the things that I've seen in common is many of the people having senior roles in banks, let's say, at least that that's my industry. Many of them went to a private school, like you say, within their country. Many of them went abroad to study their [00:59:00] master's. Whether that's the US, the UK, Australia, of course, I'm one of them as well.

Right. But I did go on a scholarship. I went like to a private school since I was a young girl with a scholarship, because since I was a young girl, I was a geek. And then I got in debt to go to the UK. Right. So that was more like ambition. And smarts, but there is a lot of people who are like, yeah, they just happen to be born in a wealthy family and then they go abroad, they study, they've got the qualifications.

And then basically, that's how, because they've got that education and those opportunities, they end up having the roles where they are. And it's not just because of the opportunities. It's because they had the network.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah. Network is a big thing. And you have the

Monica Millares: network funding as well.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah, yeah, I mean, um, it.[01:00:00]

It would be pretty difficult for me to be a solo founder and be raising funds because I don't know, I don't know lots of rich people and I don't have a network of knowing investors or VCs. And if, if that were my role in order, then I'd go out and I'd learn that. And I'd try contacting lots of people and knocking on doors.

Absolutely. Um, but I think if, if you're. Within that higher affluent level, you're probably, your parents are probably going to be in higher paid jobs, who might know other people who are in higher paid jobs, who could give you valuable work experience. I mean, my work experience was looking after friends, kids, um, and the take your kid to work day, which we UK sometimes meant I went to work with my dad who would.

clean and polish marble floors [01:01:00] in hotels. So he'd do that overnight. So take your kid to work day might mean taking your child to your law firm or an engineering firm or something. It's probably boring for the child, but depending on how old they are, it looks better on your CV than, um, I, I went to the hotels with my dad and I had a go at the machine for cleaning the marble floors and making them buff up and shine.

And it was really great fun, but not good experience for on a law firm application. And so those sorts of differences, I think. There's no time, if you're in a lower income family, there's no spare time for, or less spare time for studying, I've always had multiple jobs. You can't just concentrate on one thing.

And it's not about saying that if you've got money you don't have to work. I'm not saying that people haven't worked hard enough or don't deserve what they have. [01:02:00] That's not it at all. What my plea would be is for people... To look at when they're interviewing potential candidates or they've got a promotion come up in their company, look at what has that person overcome to get where they are?

Is that more than someone of an equivalent role? If they were to be given the right support for them, could they fly so high? You, you could barely believe it because they've got scrappier skills to get where they were. Because they had to climb a mountain just to get to the start line. I love

Monica Millares: that because at some point I was like, Oh my God, I'll ask her, what do we need to do?

This is such a structural problem, but no, well, it is a structural problem, but at the same time, we can have a lot of impact by just. Doing that mindset shift and saying, Hey, this person doesn't come from the best [01:03:00] university in the country, which is usually a university with very high fees.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Yeah. Well, in the UK there's, there's a cap and everyone just charges the cap.

So it's, I mean, it's rubbish because I mean, even that is unfair because if you. If you're in a private school, you've got smaller classes, there's more dedicated teaching, you're probably going to get higher grades. So the likes of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham will probably want you and you pay nine grand a year.

Whereas if you've had to have a job for the whole time you're not in school and you didn't realise study guides existed and your parents weren't able to help you with your homework, for example, maybe you, your grades are lower, And you'll only be able to get into the non red brick universities, as we call it in the UK, like top seven or something.

and you still pay, you still pay nine grand a year, I think it [01:04:00] is, or something like that. So you still pay the same, but you, you get a university with a lower reputation. So this policy of... only having Oxbridge or the Redbrick Unis in, in the UK, I would abandon that if it were up to me. And imagine a person who's on their second career, they've not got great academics, they went to a first job for a company that you've never heard of, it's not not well established or famous.

what would you do? Would you, would you give a job to that person? That person was me. I don't have great academics because I didn't know what I was doing at school. I tried hard and my parents fought very hard for me to go to the best school within the area. But my academics aren't great. I was a lawyer a second time.

I trained at a firm that no one will have heard of. And yet. I find myself working in house for a company who [01:05:00] then the CEO of a company who saw me work said, will you come and work for me, which was very successful. And then he said, will you, should we go and do Ordo together? So I have to think with that evidence.

In me is just the same amount of capability as anyone else. And so actually, what does academic grades matter? Of course they matter a bit, but they're not everything. And what does it matter what university you went to and what does it matter if you went to a big consultancy that everyone's heard of or not, what matters is true capability and potential and what that person can achieve and is willing to try to achieve.

Yes. And that's a

Monica Millares: very tough decision at the same time. I totally get it. I, I myself, I was told at some point by my ex boss many, many years ago, I was asking something about recruitment, right? And he said like, well, [01:06:00] sometimes you just give to need to give people a chance. I mean, like you were a wild card, right?

I was like, was I a wild card? I'm seeing where you are now. And I was like, Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. But yes, it's about, but then it's like when you have the CVs or you're going, forget about the CVs, when you're interviewing people, you do see the difference on the performance and how people think and behave and portray and everything of someone that comes from the top uni in the UK versus someone who doesn't.

Yeah. So it is at the same time, like, how do we. Remove that bias, that just because right now you are not, let's say the other candidate, it has the potential, did not go to that uni, therefore it's not that polished in the interview process. And

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): that's a good way of putting it. Not that polished. You don't have the [01:07:00] right phrases.

You've not thought of the right examples because you've got no one around to help you think of those examples. Exactly.

Monica Millares: Exactly. And then it's more of a, the thing that I'm using in my brain when I'm meeting people now, it's like, yeah, he or she has potential compared to the person that does come from the top uni in the UK.

Someone who doesn't, I'm like, yeah, but here she's also doing all this stuff outside of work that shows that they've got a, b, c, d. Oh, look at that. Maybe the, she doesn't have, oh, that's another one here. She doesn't have, for example, in my case, product experience, if hiring for a junior role. But she's an amazing marketeer and she's worked a lot with data.

I'm like, Oh, that can be helpful. I can train her on product. She's not that polished. And maybe in her previous roles in her previous company, she hasn't had the exposure that she needs, but I see the, I see [01:08:00] the, how I can. Nurture her and train her and build her and, and basically, you know, like help her achieve her, her potential as such.

So it's a, it does take some mindset shift on us when we're interviewing such that we. Do that comparison the other one. It's the easy option. Oh, she comes from university name. They are the same age, roughly same experience, but, and she clearly went to this uni and then she went into all these competitions that of course she won first place with all these big brands.

Yeah. Versus the other one that doesn't have that because she was not in that unit. She was not in that environment.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Or, and was probably had a part time job whilst, um, not able to apply for those awards. It's not about, and those candidates that we're describing are probably [01:09:00] exceptionally good and I don't want to knock them.

It's about, but what else could you get if you've already got those candidates in your company? What else could you get? Because mine and your experience of life and everything that goes with it up, leading up to work, around work, we would have encountered, um, and experienced very differently, which means you think differently, which means you think of different things and come up with different, um, points.

I often do in meetings and that, and people say, uh, oh yeah, I didn't think of that. And I think, well, I don't see any other ways. So. How, how could we have thought differently, but we did. And that's a good thing to have, especially in product, you need people that are different to think of, Oh, well, I wouldn't pick up my phone and just do that.

I would do this and I wouldn't think to scroll down and I would. I wouldn't think to press the button up there, um, as a bit detailed, but you need people that have [01:10:00] got different experiences. You want to see how different people react and interpret to ensure your product is fit for not just geeks like you, but broadly speaking, the population, uh, and it makes for better business, business decisions, as well as being generally the right thing to do.

Monica Millares: Yes. And probably you and I can keep talking for an hour about this topic. Yes. So it's an amazing conversation. Let me wrap it up. If there was one thing that you would change in FinTech that would have the most impact for customers, staff, and shareholders. What could that be?

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): I would abandon acronyms. Oh, yes.

I'd abandon acronyms, which is such a simple thing to do. Because A, it's annoying. But B, all they do is [01:11:00] say, this is exclusive. You can't come in. You're not clever enough. It knocks people's confidence in meetings. It causes people to doubt themselves. And this is everyone. Because I came across a new acronym today.

Just read Horizon Scanning Competition Law. SMS What does SMS mean to you? Text.

Monica Millares: Yeah. And probably it's not the text. It's something else. Text

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): messages. Absolutely. Text messages. In competition law, I can't even remember, what does it mean? Um, can't find my very tiny notes. Um, Strategic, market, something beginning with S.

It means your company, your company has an impact in a market, and so you need to be directly regulated by the competition authority. It's stupid, because not only does it say this is an exclusive club, that if you can't remember the name of this acronym in this meeting, you're not in. [01:12:00] And... All it does is create confusion.

Yes. Why would you have, throughout your company, throughout your product, run your meetings, why would you do something that creates confusion? So the one thing is, I would abandon acronyms and that whole philosophy, because it only serves to exclude people and by breaking that down, Of course, I'm leading on to, we need to be a more inclusive society and give opportunities for people's talent and capability, um, not just those that we expect.

Yes.

Monica Millares: And the summary of the acronyms is language. Language matters. The how we communicate.

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): Matters a lot. Yeah. The wildcard. A wildcard. I know what that person [01:13:00] meant, but really what that person meant was, you don't come from the background we usually recruit from. And I was hoping you would fulfill a greater potential than you displayed in your interview.

Oh. That is cool. I know. The wildcard is much more catchy. Yes. I'm like,

Monica Millares: yeah. Awesome. Well, it's been an amazing conversation, please. Yes,

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): I've really enjoyed it, Monica. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

Monica Millares: so much. Where can people find you and Ordo if they want to

Fliss Berridge (Ordo): reach out? Oh wow. autopay.com or you can find me on LinkedIn.

I'm Fliss Barrage. Um, if you wanna just have a try on auto, it's my auto.com. It's free. Sign up, send a payment request to your friend for a penny. It's really great. So love, love to hear. Any questions or, [01:14:00] um, request for further information. Amazing.

Monica Millares: Thanks so much. Please. Thank you. Bye. Speak soon. Bye. Bye.

Bye.