Episode 11: Fintech Frontiers -How ASA Financial is Shaping the Future

Kevin Carney 00:12

Welcome to Kingsmen Software's beyond the build podcast at Kings when we pride ourselves on building enterprise quality software, and we have the privilege of meeting some pretty interesting people along the way. Come join us to meet the visionaries, the disruptors, the entrepreneurs, and the innovators that envision new technology solutions, and then bring them to life. Come join. And here's what happens beyond the build. Welcome to Kingsmen software with beyond the build podcast, I'm Kevin Carney one of the managing directors. Today I have with me, Landon Glenn, CEO of Asa financial ASA financial is and their product ASA vault is an embedded App Store that allows banks and credit unions to embed a custom app store, a FinTech solutions inside their mobile banking platform. We met landed a couple of years ago at a rough tech labs event where they were presenting during Demo Day, we thought their projects really interesting and neat. And so we wanted to get them on our podcast. We've been running around the country at different incubators and different presentations and conferences, and we finally were able to get him to talk to us. So Landon, welcome,

 

Landon Glenn 01:17

Kevin excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah,

 

Kevin Carney 01:20

so let's just catch people up on some of the stats, you know, your give us some details as to what when you guys are founded and how big you are. And I don't know, employees revenues, clients. funding awards, give us all the all the details of of Asa financial.

 

Landon Glenn 01:38

Yeah, you know, where we founded in 2019, in October, and then of course, COVID hit that kind of put a little bump in the road. And that was interesting to go through, you know, it was a bit of a roller coaster ride, seeing how things moved along through that period. But we had the privilege of interviewing over 150 bank and credit CEOs before starting to build any code. So we started raising money in 2021, and started building out the software. So we're just past the two and a half year mark that we've actually been writing, creating the infrastructure and building things out. And along the way, we've had a significant number of pivots, including some that we'll talk about today through our experience with the FIS FinTech accelerator. But we've raised almost five $5 million. So far in funding, we've brought on investment from a wide range of strategic partners, and industry executives and leaders that have helped propel isa forward. And we are just at the position now where we're going to start scaling our sales and our growth. And a lot of that's going to come through partnerships that are being established. And our recent pivot, as you mentioned, this is the first time publicly that we've announced and advertised as as an embedded App Store that allows the bank and credit union to have their own custom app store in their bank app.

 

Kevin Carney 03:06

You know, when we spoke last, right, we were talking about middleware and infrastructure between banks and fintechs. And now this is a little bit yeah. Is it? It is right? Or is it just changing how its message.

 

Landon Glenn 03:16

So it's the exact same product, it's changing slightly to the delivery mechanism. And through the FIS program, we've just been meeting with banks, and, you know, industry leaders on a regular basis, getting direct feedback, you know, I like this, or I don't like this, you know, fix that, or this would be better. And the consensus overwhelmingly was, we love the idea of having access to all these great fintechs. In this app store. We love the access, the scalability, the privacy component, the security component, your infrastructure, all these products you've built, is exactly what we want. The difference is when we advertise an app that can engage children, similar to you know, being able to pick parents pay their kids money or incentivize chores, we want them to go to our bank app to get that and to find it and control the data. And so that'll drive engagement to the bank or credit unions, actual app, drive additional signups for it. So we can increase the percentages, because a lot of institutions are sitting between maybe 60, or 70%, mobile app adoption. So we could be a use case that can actually push that percentage up and increase growth and revenue for the institution, the mobile banking provider, many times the core processor, so it's an additional way where everybody wins.

 

Kevin Carney 04:40

Gotcha. It does make more sense, right? I mean, I can relate to an app store. And if I go to my local credit union or local bank, I want to not just use their app but all these other apps as well and not have to go create new bank accounts and things along those lines. I just want to stay in my own banking ecosystem. And so that that that app store have apps that I know are going to directly connect to my banking without having to give any more information or open new accounts. I can see that is not easier to understand than to talk about middleware and infrastructure and technology and stuff like that.

 

Landon Glenn 05:17

Yeah, just aligns incentives a bit more. And it allows the banks and credit unions to have a simpler, crisper marketing message, because as soon as you start saying, okay, yeah, you've got to do XYZ, then the customer, the member says, Well, how, how do I get to that, and it sounds more difficult than it is. So I think the two key takeaways with this pivot or number one, embedded app store inside of your bank app. And then number two, revenue center, it's a profit generator for banks and credit unions to increase new revenue streams from these partnerships that are being established. And so we're really excited about these changes. And the feedback we've had from the initial partners has been just overwhelmingly positive. And you think about all of the exciting innovations out there in the industry, a lot of them have to do with embedding certain features and functions into the bank cap. And so what we're building, no one has ever allowed banks and credit unions to easily embed an entire app store infrastructure, where they can customize and manage and control the privacy component into their bank app. And what more exciting thing to drive affinity groups and you know, custom segments of their customer base and membership base back to their digital solution. And so I think we're going to be able to really drive, you know, increased engagement, retention, increased wallet share, as well as those additional revenue streams. So I'm really excited to talk with you about it today and how we came to that decision. And what that means for the industry is along with, you know, we've got a lot of great topics to cover today.

 

Kevin Carney 06:57

All right, well, toot your own horn a little bit for a second here. So talk about some of the incubator programs that you've been involved in. And some of the words you guys have one.

 

Landon Glenn 07:05

Yeah, yeah. I mean, last week, I was in New York at Finovate. And then I went from there to FIS headquarters in Jacksonville, and then flew out on a 4am flight to make it back to the MX conference up at Snowbird, Utah. And so just say that I'm, you know, traveling is an understatement. It's, you know, it's this, it's the startup life, and we're out there being evangelists of our message. And you know, a lot of what we've accomplished a lot of our achievements, it comes down to the vision, and why we're doing this. And, you know, it might be good that the name ASA is from ASA Whitney, the visionary proponent of the transcontinental railroad, that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. And we all know what that did for the quality of life, and the opportunity for everyone, the cities that were built, the industries that were shaped the efficiencies that were created, and we're building a new set of rails, it's an infrastructure platform to transform technology, and banking and how it works together and create opportunity for innovation at a scale that's never been possible, because of the privacy components because of the security components. And the things that we've done, where for the first time ever, you can connect your financial data to a FinTech without sharing your name, login credentials, account number, or any other personally identifiable information. And so, this framework, the vision has caught the attention of some exciting partners and leaders in the industry. And we also were issued our patent in November of last year. And we beat Apple by three months on filing that patent. So it's a pretty exciting accomplishment there, we're working on some additional IP as well. We are SOC two type one type two compliant with the pen testing out of 154,000 Penetration attacks. We've had zero exceptions of any kind. And that's the most secure platform our CTO has ever built. And so let's start with our CTO. So Troy moss built first data's payment gateway, Jack Henry's credit card platform. If for those of you that have used the Xbox, he's the reason your money keeps disappearing from your kids. He integrated payments into the Xbox, global payments for Walmart, McDonald's. He even integrated 2000 vendors for the B two bomber for Northrop Grumman. So he's done some major platforms in his time and in his career. And he's brought that brain trust and that experience in architecting, and creating platforms and highly scalable, efficient systems and he's brought that to the ASA team to help us create that future framework, that new set of rails for banking and So additionally, the C I O for four of the largest banks, Austin Adams, he was He oversaw the bank, one, JPMorgan Chase consolidation or merger, and was voted one of the 16 most influential technologists in the world. He's our chairman of the board and also a personal investor. Benson Porter, who was the CEO of Boeing, the third largest credit union, the actual largest community based Credit Union in the world. He's invested as well, and he's on our board. Some other great investors, you know, head architect of Zell CTO of sunguard, FIS through the FinTech accelerator that we're in revtech labs as an investor, we've got, you know, many others that you know, have have really helped us drive our vision forward, and they've caught what we're doing and help propel us forward. But for accelerators, we brought in the first one we participated in was plug and play FinTech batch 14 out of San Francisco. And then of course, with the ref tech lags labs program, some deep partnerships and involvement there. And then also, we won the Boeing employees credit union accelerator, and were able to go through that program for a year and get assistance and resources from their credit union. And that also led to the investment from their CEO Benson Porter, who is now retired in the credit union hall of fame, which is really nice. And we are currently in the FIS FinTech accelerator, which that is that program, I can't say enough for how, how much impact that's having. I feel like we've made 1824 months of business development in the last six weeks, it's been an absolute pleasure to be going through that program.

 

Kevin Carney 11:45

So right now you're connected to Jack Henry. And it sounds like being as part of the FiOS seller accelerator, you'll be connected to FiOS at some point in the future, right. These core bank?

 

Landon Glenn 11:53

Yeah, we're working on

 

Kevin Carney 11:54

that. Okay. So you must get so much exposure to banks and credit unions through the core platforms and these accelerators as well. I mean, that must help your growth immensely. Because when you go to these accelerators you're looking for you're an entrepreneur, you're looking for help and making your message crisper looking for investors, but being able to find the, like the end users and have them give feedback to your pitch and your in your offering. And also be greeting customers along the way or at least leads and prospects. That must be the real value of these accelerators for you.

 

Landon Glenn 12:33

Yeah, you know, the real value is exactly like you said, these, these institutions that are participating, they care about their industry, and they care about the fact that our mission, that what we live for, is to really serve their industry. That's why we're doing this. And we want to build a model with ASA, where the financial institution wins, where the FinTech can win alongside, together with the financial institution. And where the end user has a better experience and platforms. If you can create a way to remove friction, you know, look at Uber, they made it easier, more convenient to get a ride. And they 11. Next, the $5 billion taxi industry, they set out to disrupt within just a few years, they were doing 55 billion in revenue. And so you look at those platform plays, that's what we're doing between banking and fintech are trying to make it so that you don't have to deal with real authentic accounts constantly and connections breaking and then sharing usernames and passwords with all these players sharing routing and account numbers out in the open, having to give up privacy to other parties that you may not trust, the switching around and a lot of the friction that comes with these experiences, because you might want to try out a really innovative solution, but you don't want to pull your credit and open a bank account with them to be able to test it. And so he says that world we're now the bank and credit union that you trust powers all of the fintechs in your life. And the FinTech on the front end provides the UX the experience in the app that delivers that through the rails of the bank and credit union. So we found a way to align incentives and create an opportunity to what we expect, is 10x the industry to be able to bring more FinTech engagement, more FinTech adoption, because they can go to market 100 times faster and at a fraction of the cost. And so well, we can talk a little bit more about how that's possible throughout the program. But what that ultimately means is there's going to be solutions out there that people aren't doing today because of the barriers to entry. We're breaking down those barriers. Okay.

 

Kevin Carney 14:49

All right. So before we get into all those details, I do want an icebreaker to all we've kind of broken down a little bit but before we get in The icebreaker. Tell him about Travis.

 

Landon Glenn 15:02

Because Oh, wow. Yeah, so Travis olifant, the guy's a rock star. And, you know, he wrote NumPy. You know, the Python based matrix that is the foundation for machine learning and AI. I mean, anyone who's doing AI or machine learning, the very first import they're going to do is the Python library or the numpy libraries. And he wrote it and founded Anaconda. And so, you know, I think there's really two things that attracted a sun Travis together. And for those that don't know, I forgot to mention him and his fund, but they are investors in ESA. And what drew the group's together is the fact that we're creating an open innovation path in banking, that's going to allow, you know, what we talked about earlier, the 10 acts of the FinTech space. And then the other component to that is they have some of the brightest, you know, machine learning and AI architecture minds in the country with the things they've built. And they're looking at the data that ace is going to be bringing in and storing in your vault in your private, you know, personal wallet, within your bank to be able to use that data for your benefit and help you figure out insights and look at behaviors and say, you know, what, based on what's happening, we think, this app, this app, and this app could be interesting to you. Because when you go into the Apple App Store, there's a lot of apps in there, and how do you find the ones that are relevant to you? Well, that's where the data and the insights and the behavior starts to help influence that. And so we think there's going to be an opportunity for some high level architecture partnerships to help us bring some really exciting features to the industry.

 

Kevin Carney 16:48

Right, right. Yeah. More more than just investing their money. They're investing their, their experience and their their, their, their technology background into you as well. That's good. Okay, yeah,

 

Landon Glenn 17:01

they look for, you know, aligned companies, it's more than just check. Right.

 

Kevin Carney 17:06

Okay, so some interesting banking facts. Let's see how much you know, what the banking world, specifically currency, right, because you're, you're digitizing currency, right? You're not actually using cash or whatnot. But alright, first question. Which bill according to the US currency education for which Bill in the shortest lifespan? So like, you know, it gets printed and then it gets into the money system? And then the bill has to be retired because it's already in crinkly? What what? Which bill? Got

 

Landon Glenn 17:38

$20. Bill?

 

Kevin Carney 17:40

Well, thought of that to the one or the 20 is the 10.

 

Landon Glenn 17:43

The 1010

 

Kevin Carney 17:45

I never use a 10

 

Landon Glenn 17:46

Wow, maybe that's why.

 

Kevin Carney 17:50

What is the longest? The

 

Landon Glenn 17:53

longest, like longest lifespan?

 

Kevin Carney 17:55

The 100 Yeah, that's pretty easy. So that has like a license to 15 years, that 10 has less than five years. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And the one though is like 5.8 I would have thought those have been like a year or two. Yeah,

 

Landon Glenn 18:09

they're always well, they're always just stored safely and securely in the vending machines right? So protected from the elements.

 

Kevin Carney 18:17

So if any of these are wrong, in someone's back fact checking us I went to so fi.com so they can go yell at so far. I just pull these from Alright, so what is the highest denomination bill ever used in the US?

 

Landon Glenn 18:31

highest ever used? Well, I know it's at least 1000 But could there be a greater because it'd be a 10,000

 

Kevin Carney 18:38

there was 100,000

 

Landon Glenn 18:39

Oh, there was 100,000

 

Kevin Carney 18:41

in the 30s 1934 to 1945 but it was used for official transactions between the Federal Reserve Banks. Oh, gotcha. Okay, computers right. They had to find a way and once computers came in the 50s they didn't need you anymore.

 

Landon Glenn 18:57

Interesting so transaction so it's kind of like they wanted to do people were talking about that trillion dollar coin they wanted to make up or whatever

 

Kevin Carney 19:05

my guess is I think about it like in the in the 20s and the 30s. As you know, inflation occurred and money gets bigger the money's like the one money supply gets bigger and bigger. You can't just ship gold or so much cash in between Federal Reserves you use different way but

 

Landon Glenn 19:24

super interesting yeah.

 

Kevin Carney 19:26

All right. How much does it cost to make one penny

 

Landon Glenn 19:29

oh wow, you have more than one said 11 cents

 

Kevin Carney 19:34

to two cents two and a half cents

 

Landon Glenn 19:36

okay. 11 was way too high. Yeah.

 

Kevin Carney 19:39

It makes you wonder what even make pennies anymore or the heard that people in Illinois the Land of Lincoln like the penny because as Lincoln what purse this is interesting to me what percent of the world's currency is physical money? This is not just us world currency, world currency, digital, right. So you know you You take the $100 you put in the bank account, it's not well, I guess there's still cash there somewhere, but

 

Landon Glenn 20:05

20%? Yeah. 8% Oh, 8% Wow. Yeah. Interesting.

 

Kevin Carney 20:13

I thought that was really, really well, I would I was one of your lines. And then very fun. How many folds forward and back? That's called a double fold. How many folds? Does it take for $1? Bill to tear? So these are designed, right, this is the design specs from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. How many

 

Landon Glenn 20:37

1342? Oh, close.

 

Kevin Carney 20:39

4000? No. 4000? Anywhere. Okay. Now, you know, those are the facts. Okay, interesting. Let me, let me bring it back a little bit. Let me we've talked a lot about banks and credit unions and fintechs and core banking platforms and the end user or the account holder. Let's make this real for someone. So we've talked about the Hey, you can I can hire and fire my kids, I can I can pay them for chores. And so if I am a member at the local credit union, or the Boeing credit union, and I want to use that app, how am I going to use that app and connect to my Boeing account? So what walk me through how it works in the old world, how it works in the ASA world? And why that's so much better.

 

Landon Glenn 21:40

Yeah, so in the old world, you would go to the FinTech and give them your name and your email and register your account.

 

Kevin Carney 21:49

The next right, I mean, have to stumble across marketing,

 

Landon Glenn 21:52

you have to find the solution. So you may hear about it online. I mean, for every app, that's a household name, like an acorns, or Robin Hood, there's a dozen others that are have just as good tech, if not, sometimes better features that you don't know about, because they haven't had the timing or the luck, or the success, or whatever it is, that's giving these fintechs the ability to become, you know, unicorns, really big companies. So they find the app somehow. And then they get into it, and then they register giving them their personal information, email, everything else. And then from there, they have to connect their accounts. And to do that, it's typically using open banking. And that's going to be either screen scraping, or an OAuth connection. So either way, they have to put in the username and password to their bank account, and then connect it out. And then from there, it syncs up a connection. If the financial institution has a connection, sometimes it'll connect, sometimes it won't. You know, we've all used programs, like I was an early adopter of mint.com. But every time I got in there, half my connections were broken. I'd spent your money 3020 or 30 minutes fixing them. Yep. So throw in the towel on that. Yeah,

 

Kevin Carney 23:10

you're going as a as a as an account member. If I were to find this, this, this application is FinTech, this utility through the App Store, the Apple App Store. And I don't really know this company, and I want to try it out and see if it will work with my kids. All of a sudden, I'm taking an app, I don't know. And I'm putting my bank account information into that app. And I'm just trying it out. So I might not even want this. The app might not work for my purposes or whatnot. But all of a sudden, I'm giving a random application, my username and password.

 

Landon Glenn 23:44

Yeah, yeah. And you know, the ones with the big names, people hear about it from a friend. So they're getting that trusted intro. So they're more willing to give up all their private information and access to their that information. And then many of them also require you to open up a new bank account or a new card. And so that's often pulling your credit, giving up your social things like that, or whatever they need to set that up. And so now you're pulling funds from your old account into the new one. And that's the challenge that the industry has is these credit unions and banks want these features. They want the function that these amazing apps have acorns has 9 million users, you know, Greenlight is a $2 billion company that gamifies parents sending money to the kids. And you think about those experiences. Well, the problem is, they happen outside of the financial institution. So you send your account holders there. Well, they're going to be opening accounts and products and services outside and that's what the banking has a service. You know, method which is the most well known and popular methods for connecting through open banking to fintech. It's created a world where now I as a customer have to leave the institution I've been with for a decade or For however long that has all my money, all my accounts, all my loans are already there, I have to establish a new relationship to try out that FinTech,

 

Kevin Carney 25:09

right, and I've got money in different places not consolidated, I might forget about that accounts, I might, if I tried out that, that that FinTech application, and I ended up not liking it, I now have to remember to go back and close my account. Otherwise, they have access to my my bank account information. Put this under the new world of of, of now I go to my credit union. And I've already had my account. And they have an app store. For me, they have a store index that they've looked at that they've assessed that they've kind of certified or connected to their to their bank accounts. So what's my experience there?

 

Landon Glenn 25:51

Yeah, so I interestingly enough, I was talking to a younger person recently, that is a heavy user of fintechs. And, you know, in addition to everything we talked about their situation was such that they had to download a dozen different tax documents from a dozen different random apps and consolidate them for tax season. So not only do you have to remember, for other purposes, but you've got some liability on the tax, and that you've got to fish all these together, and it becomes a bit more work. So to your question of how do we consolidate that through the bank or credit union, we're allowing the user to power the FinTech experience using the existing rails at their bank or credit union partner and using the infrastructure already there. So that just simplifies everything. Those 12 tax documents go down to one that you have with your bank, or credit union, all those experiences that you would have to deal with separately from connections and managing and relationships. It all goes down to one central location that allows you to connect all of your data from all of your banks and credit unions, and to all of your experiences that you're using. So that's the it's removing a lot of friction. And it's removing a lot of time. There's no more registering these individual apps, there's no more sharing emails, we've built the infrastructure to use Open ID connect with Okta on the back end, but simplified Think of it like login with Facebook, to be able to log into all of your fintech. So now you have the same username and password to log into every app from any device that you have in your, you know, in your world of apps that you're using.

 

Kevin Carney 27:35

Right, right. Okay. Yeah, that login with Facebook makes a lot of sense, right. So I'm gonna I'm gonna get the the ASA vault app, which I did. And I can see there's lots of banks are connected there. So if I have, if I have, you know, some of my accounts at a credit unions of mine at a bank, I can connect both of those, and then all the fintechs that have connected to Ace of all I can now just leverage, I can just use them without having to give them all my bank account information. They haven't opened new bank accounts.

 

Landon Glenn 28:10

Yeah, and we use tokens and identifiers to be able to verify identity, and to manage the relationships. So we're able to connect everything to that FinTech without sharing your name, we use a virtual email. So we have a de identified email that forwards to the primary email address. So now each individual FinTech has a separate email connection linking you together. And we don't have to share account numbers, routing numbers, usernames and passwords. When we were rolling this out, when people tried to connect to their primary credit union, or bank, many of them didn't know the username and password to the account, and they had to go searching for it to find it. And so we built an algorithm that actually uses the core integration, that ace is established through the partner, and actually builds out the connection for them and establishes it without a password without a username. So we're able to use that algorithm to verify the KYC data and authenticate into the user without login credentials. And so that's a huge step forward in the speed of connecting those things. So the only thing I'll modify is with the pivot, we're actually embedding that ace app store into the mobile banking app. So the standalone app will be part of the bank app that you'll be able to launch from within. And now you go to your primary bank app or credit union app. And that's where you control all your connections. fintechs permissioning, data sharing things like that.

 

Kevin Carney 29:43

Okay, so let's talk about that. permissioning because I thought that was pretty unique when I downloaded the app couple of weeks ago, and I can turn things on or off right? I can I mean literally is a slider that says, I no longer want to use this fintech. I don't want that to have access to my bank. that information anymore. That's pretty powerful, right? Oh, yeah. Very powerful. I'm gonna go to the FinTech and try to close my account. Of course, it's never easy to close somewhat your account because they want to make hard on purpose, where you have to call someone to close your account and never quite sure if it's closed, or whether it's doorman and might come back. So I really liked that idea of being able to just flip that switch and say, I no longer want that FinTech that is just my banking information.

 

Landon Glenn 30:27

Yeah, and even beyond that, when you think of core processors and screen scraping, both of them typically, for the most part, have an all or nothing integration. So you give up your username and password to your bank account, the Screen Scraper gets in? Well, that company now is going to know all of your account information for everything that's in that login. I mean, essentially, they can see all of the data account numbers, everything. And then when you permission that to the FinTech, they're getting everything. So if you only wanted to share your credit card information with that app, doesn't matter, they're gonna get your retirement account, your savings, your checking your child's cosigned account, or whatever it is, all of that data is going to go into that app, despite you not wanting to share just that solution. And a lot of the cores are built the same way. When they integrate, you get all the information for those accounts for those users. So what aces infrastructure does is we sit in the middle as that access controller, we fully integrate the banking core system. And then we have that front end open API that connects to the fintechs that we can, our last FinTech integration, were able to fully complete in 36 hours, which is pretty incredible. And we control down to the individual account that goes to each individual fintech. So in addition to being able to turn it on or off simply and easily, we're getting a higher level of privacy to that where the individual accounts are what's being permissioned. And then in addition to that, we don't share account numbers, names or emails. So from the start, we've already reduced the vast amount of liability that comes from the banking regulations, because you're not sharing anything through the API that could put the consumer at risk. And that's how we work to solve that data provider risk for the banks and credit unions.

 

Kevin Carney 32:15

Yeah, yeah, as a individual as an account member, that makes a ton of sense. I also love the idea that, you know, I'm going to my bank website anyway. And yes, my bank has a mobile app, I guess, I would think that a lot of smaller banks and credit unions, they use the mobile app from their core banking provider. But being able to have additional features and functions functionality that I can use in these fintechs that I know are connected to my bank. And I know that they're been they've been vetted and not just kind of some fly by night person that is, you know, working in their dorm room creating a FinTech and Garret grabbing on my bank account information they've been they've gone through some sort of a process. So from an account member that makes a lot of sense. Talk about the credit union in the bank, like, what's the value for that you mentioned that you've got some stickiness for our customers, right? Both in that we are adding more value to our customers. And we're also decreasing their propensity to shift away to some other bank account. Right. But so there's there's definitely a lot of engagement, right as that they can offer very quickly. But there are things there's a revenue share model there as well. Right. Yeah. So talk a little about that.

 

Landon Glenn 33:31

Great. Yeah. So when you think of, you know, as you mentioned, the end user removing the friction. A lot of times removing the middleman, right, because your bank can do all of the things that a FinTech wants to do. Every Fintech is powered by a bank, just not your bank. So Asa allows is for your bank, to directly power the fintechs you're using. So that means that it's going to be faster, safer, we're removing the middleman, removing the need for a lot of pieces to you know, leave the bank. And that same benefit applies to the bank. So now instead of going to an app like a, an acorns, or a green light and having the money, leave your accounts, and go into a separate account, and have the experience go to a separate branded experience, and then having the fee income, go to another group, all of those things are happening. We're now that for the bank or credit union, many times they don't want to promote these other providers like mint.com. Do you really want to send all your customers to mint when Mint is advertising, credit cards, loans, checking accounts from your competitors, and there's not a single advertisement in there for your bank? Right. There's no reason for you to send anyone there ever. And so the challenge becomes how do I give these experiences that 88% of Americans are using fintech. 81% of consumers have connected their primary account to a FinTech, but only 14% of Americans trust the process. So there is this tremendous opportunity for the bank with their KYC, their compliance, their infrastructure to come in as the trusted source of connecting data out. And so they don't have to export that experience to a third party that don't have to give all the revenue to a third party. They don't have to give the relationships to third parties. I mean, you've seen it with personal loans. You know, banks and credit unions used to do the lion's share of personal loans. Now, fintechs are doing 38% of all personal loans, which is more than all banks combined, individually and more than the group of all credit unions combined individually as well. I think credit unions are 21%. And banks are 28%. So it shows that they're coming after these industries, whether it's interchange, whether it's relationships, other apps, now like Divi that has a card for businesses, they want that interchange, they want those relationships where traditionally, the commercial bank would hold it. So first and foremost, we're providing a way for the bank and credit union to increase wallet share, increase the number of accounts and lines that they have with each customer, and to increase the retention because they're able to get the solutions and the features they want, by going into the bank app and using the bank's cards, loans and accounts. And so that's one core benefit. But then you'd also asked about the fee income. But before we jump over to that any elaborations, or questions on the first half of the benefit?

 

Kevin Carney 36:38

No, I forgot about the interchange for because you mentioned green light, right? Where send money to your child and a car and they can spend that card. Of course, if if the bank did not have that product, then all of a sudden someone else's started to get interchange fees. And to a certain extent that might be net new interchange fees. Whereas if you had that product now, are you engaging, having better engaging with your customer and your parents typically, right? You're keeping them sticky. But all of a sudden, if they're if they do load up a debit card for their child, all of a sudden, the child will have a debit card now at your bank, and I have had another customer and you've got more interchange fee. So you are retaining but you are growing the accounts in the shared wallet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I

 

Landon Glenn 37:29

think that's the most exciting piece, because it's really, I mean, kids aren't spending that much money typically, right? That the interchange is very small. But really what you're looking at is the relationship, what are they seeing? What is the brand? And where are they going to go when they turn 18? You know, if they're going to current or green light or some other solution that enables kids to have those experiences, then you can guarantee they're not going to be a customer at your bank. And now they're, you know, everybody's wondering, Well, why is our demographic aging? What, while I have no hate, or maybe you're not offering any of the stuff that they want. And so many other people are taking that relationship Llanddwyn great

 

Kevin Carney 38:09

branches, and you've got balloons, and that's what the customer wants, right? Now they want to use it for whatever they want to use,

 

Landon Glenn 38:17

I'll tell you point blank, I've got a 12 year old, 10 year old and eight year old and a three year old. And I would be a huge customer of a primary bank powered experience where I could set the chores for my children and set the dollar amounts and have the app, remind them and give them a way where they're on the weekend. And they're motivated to buy something that they want, they actually have a means to go out and earn it and get things done. And everybody wins, and the money goes instantly, you know, instead of the money leaving to another entity, another bank or another bank account, the funds are gonna stay, they're gonna go from the parents account to the youth savings account, or the youth checking account if they're 13 and up at the same institution. And so you complete the chore. And instantly the funds will be in your account ready to go. And you'll see that happening on the app. And so it's it's faster. The money movement is instantaneous. It's all through the banking rails, it's with an institution, that card will be branded for the bank, the relationship grows, and now they can have an app when the when the child turns 18. Or now they can start building credit and get their first credit card in a safe compliant way with guardrails. And so the whole thing loops back around to how do we not only interact and engage our user base, our customers, our account holders, but then how do we use ways to bring more in and for most banks and credit unions? If you ask them? How many kids do your account holders have? What do you think their answer would be?

 

Kevin Carney 39:50

Most of their booster fan? Most of their clients probably have kids, right?

 

Landon Glenn 39:54

Yeah, but they have no idea how many kids there are because they've never asked I've never been asked Then I have multiple relationships and not a single one has said, Oh, hey, what? How many kids do you have? They're not even providing those services. And so you've got these affinity based fintechs, that are creating multibillion dollar companies stealing these segments that the banks and credit unions are ignoring many times.

 

Kevin Carney 40:18

Gotcha. So you mentioned early beginning that, you know, Ace of all, as a embedded App Store could be a revenue center or profit center. Yes. Elaborate on that.

 

Landon Glenn 40:31

Yeah, that's a really, really exciting conversation. Because not only do you have the ability to put proven solutions with features and functions that your customers want, and your account holders want. But now, you can generate revenue from sources that you've never been able to generate revenue before. And so in addition to the increased retention, and all the other benefits of increased wallet, share, interchange, etc. We're looking at ways to create fee income, referral income, subscription income, marketplace platform income. And the way we do that is ASA with the bank and credit union partners, gives 50% of all FinTech generated income back to the partner institution. So what better incentive to advertise this application now for children to be able to, you know, get paid for chores and gamify that experience or for, you know, sweep accounts and round ups and things like that, for people to be able to save their spare change and save as they they spend, then to have the ability to not only have the new accounts go to you the interchange go to you. But additionally, whatever fee income is there, you're now getting 50% of all of that revenue share of that of that profit. And so it becomes a profit center where we can actually turn it into a net net positive, where you're making more money than it's costing you to implement these, these solutions. And that's a huge shift for banks and credit unions. They're used to every person calling them and saying, hey, I want all this money from you, you pay for this for your customers, Oh, you want this, okay, it's gonna be blah, blah, blah, you know, X amount, and they're getting hit from every angle. And that's why most of them have zero FinTech features, or one or two, most of them have no apps that they can offer. But with the ASA App Store, embedded into your bank app, every single app that's adopted, we're looking for proven solutions that have valuable features that customers want and will pay for from Cornerstone advisors. I can't believe the exact I can't remember the exact number. But I believe Ron Shevlin had said it was something around $16 billion is now being spent in subscription fees to fintechs. And guess how much of that is going to banks and credit unions? 00 sorry, that's a better zero. And so how do we get that revenue in the hands of the banks and credit unions? Well, they have what the fintechs need, which is the compliance component, the trust component, and then also the distribution channel, they have all the customers. And so partnering, it's going to accelerate the industry in a big way. And it's going to make it safer, easier, more convenient, and just all around better to use fintech. And that's what we're built. That's what we've been building for the vision for the last four years. And that's what we're rolling out to the industry.

 

Kevin Carney 43:31

So that makes a lot of sense for the user. Right? We talked about that. We talked about the banks and credit unions. I'm a fintech. Now, so and I'm putting my FinTech persona on, and I just built this this, hire fire your kids. And now I need to go and connect to banks. Why would I come to Asa? I mean, I clearly a great question. Right. But let's, let's just let's just nail these? Because, yeah, I don't want to go bank, a bank to bank the bank?

 

Landon Glenn 43:59

Yes, exactly. So what the industry has been dead focused on is making it easier to connect. But connecting isn't the real problem. It's the privacy, the liability, the compliance side, because even if I could connect you to my bank, right now, how long would it take me to go through the liability of sharing account numbers, names, emails and PII data, and then to vet and due diligence, that solution? It's going to take me 18 months, updating months, so if I'm a smaller institution, I might be able to move quicker than the big ones. But the bottom line is that to even access the open banking API's that are established, these amazing connections to chase bank and Wells Fargo and everything else that are 98% plus you know uptime, typically, for those connections to be established, and even have access, you have to sign a contract that you're sock two type two, compliant.

 

Kevin Carney 44:56

I've seen Yeah.

 

Landon Glenn 44:59

How long does that take? You can't average, like, three, four months or something like that, right? Yeah, you have the audit period alone, you have to go through six months of your systems being fully compliant to go back and start the audit. So not only do you have to pay a significant amount of money, but you have to have a level of architecture that the vast majority of fintechs do not even understand how to do. And to have that level of security, that level of compliance. There's a reason why we're seeing so many fintechs that are breaking laws or making mistakes, and the CFPB is coming out or the, you know, the OCC sanctioning, you know, banks and fintechs and things like that. It's because, I mean, when you talk to a bank, the average compliance person, they say that you have to be a lifer at age even understand how all of the intricacies of banking compliance. I mean, it's a 20 year role for many of these leaders. And then they have a mentor sitting under that 20 year veteran for five years before the veteran retires. And that's how complicated the banking regulation and compliance is. And these fintechs I mean, they just started their company six months ago, and they don't even know what you know, KYC means they don't know what the Patriot Act or loan to deposit ratios or, you know, am like all these things, AML or whatever. And Reg Z they're like, what's reg? What, just like World War Z here? What's that?

 

Kevin Carney 46:23

You can't even spell KYC?

 

Landon Glenn 46:25

Yeah, they don't even know what it stands for. And, you know, the bottom line is that, that FinTech trying to go to market, they don't care about being a bank. And they keep getting this a lot of like, well, you want the interchange, you want it and like well, is Greenlight even profitable is, you know, time or money line, or how the, how many of these Neo banks are actually profitable. How many of these FinTech programs are actually profitable, very small percentage. And so that's where you start to realize, okay, there's not as much money when you deal with the fraud, because as soon as you become a FinTech, and open your doors for people to open accounts and cards and loans through a bank, that means that anybody that has someone's information off the dark web, can go fraudulently spoof, you know, Kevin, or Landon and try and create an account. And that means that you're gonna have to figure out is this real or not? And then, you know, I've talked to some, you know, startup, digital bank type solutions, and they're saying nine out of 10. Signups are fraudulent. And they they're having to figure out which one is the one out of 10. And so it varies. I mean, that's not always the case. But you can see how much work the fraudsters are willing to go through to try and steal $10 from a FinTech somewhere in another country. You know,

 

Kevin Carney 47:42

if you're a fin tech startup, there's no competitive advantage really to well, creating your own bank is just a royal pain. I was suspecting anything that we're not looking at most fintechs are not looking at that list. They're very well funded, and they've been in the industry a long time. But yeah, definitely bank can information, right, the higher fire your kids, they, they're not looking to be a bank, they're looking to leverage bank accounts. But actual moving of money is not their core competitive advantage. Right. It's it's the the features that they put on top of that, right interaction between the parent and the children, the the listing of the chores, the agreeing upon what the amount is, if you actually do the chore, the I accept, that you're moving the money, that moving the money is almost just the afterthought. And so, to an extent, you even, you just want that to be up and running in the right.

 

Landon Glenn 48:39

Yeah, because it's expensive to move the money. It's expensive tissue cards, it's expensive tissue accounts. And so they're paying money to do all of that through bass or through whatever they're doing it cost money. And so if they can eliminate all of that cost, and then just provide the front end user experience, and then charge a monthly fee, you know, they're five bucks a month, or 10 bucks a month, or whatever that is, then now they can have a pure profit center. Because we're using the bank's rails, the card is your primary bank card or credit union card. And the account is your primary bank or credit union account. And so now all of that fee income that they're charging through the through the solution for that user experience is going to go to them. And then we take a revenue share from each fintech. So we charge a percentage of revenue from each app for the platform access. And that helps them with getting the banking products and services, getting the off bank data, getting access to the Core Data, getting the KYC the authentication, because remember, we're bringing customers in, that we verified through the core. We know they're authentic, we know that they're real customers. So we're eliminating the fraud component for these fintechs when the users are coming through us, and then additionally, the final piece is that we're providing Adding the, you know, the ability to do all the things at the core that they need to do the sending of commands. So movement of money, paying for chores, issuing card, things like that. So if they don't have to pay anything for that, we're now the acquisition channel, where the distribution model where the data model where the authentication model, it's a full infrastructure platform that you can integrate through our open API, and turn it on, literally in less than seven days. So in less than seven days, you can be fully connected have the ability to move money, without knowing the customer's name, or their account number. That's never been possible before. So this this,

 

Kevin Carney 50:40

that's right as if our FinTech and I didn't have to have the burden of storing someone's name and, and routing and bank account number and passwords. That's wonderful, because I focus on my core strengths, which is this other features that I'm adding on the sock two route. And I don't have to connect to so many different banks, right, I just, I can pick one API set, and get really good at that on the back end, and then just focus all my attention on building on my product.

 

Landon Glenn 51:15

Exactly. I mean, these fintechs, they want to build beautiful user experiences. They're passionate, and they're looking at the industry and saying there's not very good tech out there. Well, why is that? Well, it's because of the regulatory compliance barriers, the one to one partnerships with each bank and credit union are so hard, you know, the issues with you know, bass and having to talk to your bass sponsor every single day. A lot of people don't know this, but I think it's a treasury prime. You know, one of the best companies, they don't have hundreds of providers, they've got, I don't know, if it's, I think it's less than a dozen, I don't even know how many they have. But it's not very many fintechs that are on that platform to build their their business model. It's not like we're 10 axing the number of fintechs available. And so we're taking a very different approach, instead of doing what the industry is done with, where they're headed, where we say, Okay, we've got these regulated banks and credit unions that can innovate, they're too slow, because of all the regulatory and then we've got these fintechs, that are highly innovative. Well, the way we're going to solve their problems, they need access to data and money and everything else. So the way we're going to give them the ability to move money and accounts and things like that, is we're going to drop their charter on top of them. So now they become the same compliance and regulatory liability as a bank, they've got to deal with all the headaches, the rules, quoting rates and all these things. And that's why you see some ultra successful fintechs that are worth billions of dollars, because they got in at the right time, they have the right name. But for startups that want to enter the space and create an affinity group solution for, you know, professionals, or athletes, or college kids or children or whatever it is, that piece that they have to try and deal with the banking compliance and infrastructure. It's crippling the industry and keeping them from innovating because they're having to deal with becoming bank. So by separating that, where they stay in their lane, the bank provides the compliance and the regulated products and services and data. The FinTech provides beautiful UX and customer acquisition and interface, both of them can go faster than together and share revenue share opportunities, and we're going to make it so that you could launch a FinTech build the solution and integrate and be live in production, moving money, facilitating experiences in less than seven days of work. And that's the comparison is much, much, much, much longer. And so we're, we are going to 10x the industry. And we're also going to launch forward a new level of privacy where you're never sharing your username and password to your bank account, ever. You're never sharing your routing and account numbers to make payments ever. And when that happens, imagine what that does for fraud, the customer is not even going to care what their routing and account number is, because they're never going to need it. And so that means that there's not going to be those places in the dark web where you can go by that data and use it to compromise somebody. And so it's gonna take us three to four years to hit critical mass on this, but you're gonna see a huge drop off in fraud and a huge spike up in innovation and opportunity where these apps are coming out faster than ever before. And they're gonna work seamlessly through the infrastructure of the United States, you know, banking and credit union industries and infrastructure.

 

Kevin Carney 54:37

It's pretty amazing. You gotta love the vision that you have, right? You're, you're thinking really big. You're focusing on small fintax and relatively small banks, but you're thinking big, because there's a lot of them and you bring them all together. You're kind of decoupling that FinTech from the bank and you want to FinTech to be a bank. You don't want a bank to be a fintech. So by decoupling he said stay in your lane specialized in what You do do what you do best, and you're really good at it. But connect them all together so they can help each other. Yeah, yes. That's cool. So what are you? What's in it for a core banking platform?

 

Landon Glenn 55:13

Oh, boy, that's that's a whole nother question. That's very exciting because these core banking platforms, you know, I think they've been conditioned over the last many years to he see all these, you know, new cores coming out saying we're gonna destroy the old antiquated cores, or they're highly they have, you know, they're kind of attacking the industry saying, it needs to go, we need to replace it, whether it's defy or crypto or the word, you know, what we've heard from just more innovation, we're seeing a lot of people that are coming after some of the antiquated components of these cores. And so, you know, in particular, looking at FIS, we were just out of their headquarters, and one of their banks said, point blank to the venture center that runs the accelerator with FIS in conjunction, they said, this cohort of companies is filling more gaps that are at the core level than any cohort we've ever seen. And this is very exciting. And so in particular, it was expressed that ASA is filling this monstrous gap, which is bank tech innovation and the ability to launch new services. And so for the cores, we've built a significant amount of infrastructure handling, you know, login with ASA. So you can log into fintechs, using your bank credentials, and handling virtual emails and registering fintechs and setting everything up. So essentially, by integrating and embedding Aisyah, many of these cores offer their own app. So they've got a banking app. So now, Asa could be embedded to become the App Store. And we should remember, we sit in the middle, and we're the access controller. So on the one end, we fully integrate to the core and the mobile banking. In the middle is where the user connects all of their accounts and controls their permissions and their data and their privacy and their identity. And then on the front end, the open API is how the fintechs turn on. And so those fintechs never touch the core, nor do they receive any personal identifiable information. So we could have a million apps in the ASA platform. And those million apps. Normally, it would be a million integrations that the core would have to deal with, they have access to all their regulated data, they have access to all the compliant information. You're you're in software, do you want a million people in your system? No,

 

Kevin Carney 57:35

and I couldn't do it in seven days, I'll tell you that.

 

Landon Glenn 57:38

Yeah. So what we've done is the infrastructure keeps them out. But it allows the front end user to use tokens and identifiers. And then in the middle, we're permissioning the commands. So for example, if we look at a sweep account, we have an app called gwoc. That's really exciting that allows you to tip yourself, and we think of tipping yourself, you're tipping everyone else all day long. And you may tip yourself for a change to help yourself, get ahead. So maybe it's 5%, or 10%, or whatever you want to tip. Well, when you swipe that bank issued debit card, that whatever rule set has been established in the access controller within the app store. That command happens at the core level, through the infrastructure. So it's controlled by the user gwoc doesn't know your account number for your key, they don't even know what bank or credit union you're with, they don't even have to know your name. And so using all these tokens and identifiers, we're able to verify with the customer, we have all that data, we have all that security, we're being audited by the bank, we're gonna we're we're going through the regulated process of partnership, the liability, the ongoing security and compliance. And we have the team to do it. Frankly, our CTO has built some of the largest platforms in the world. And so having done that, we sit in the middle, and the core gets all the benefit of the growth, the increased deposits the money movement, through their core the commands through their core. And so we use the intra Bank Transfer Network to actually move the money instantly through the back end core. So instead of taking the funds out to a bank account, we're now the funds are leaving the bank and they're leaving the core. They moved from your checking to your savings at the same bank. And now every time you swipe your card, you can instantly see the money changing accounts in real time. From within a 10th of a second that command happens. And now you see that your $5 closer or 75 cents closer, whatever your round up or tipping is to your Jamaica vacation, wherever you want to go. family vacation, and so you swipe and you see it happening in real time and we're conditioned with Amazon to see you know the trucks now driving up your street and other and other packages on your porch. Here's a picture and you see that happening in real time. And for what aces building is we're removing the middleman, it's not leaving account, it's not having to Ach, you're not having to pay fees. So we have a significant reduction in the cost of operating fintechs. Because we're using the established infrastructure. And so the profits increase for everyone. And the core processor, you know, we're looking for ways to build into their banking apps, and have reseller agreements where they can actually generate revenue off of our platform, and leverage our technology to increase engagement to help their banks and credit unions be happier and have more access to the tech data that their customers want. And so if their banks are making more money, and they're happier, why would they ever leave the core. And so there's many other benefits, just scalability, I mean, we can handle 1 million transactions per second on a continuous basis. That's all microservices, we use TerraForm, automated code deployment, we're in Azure. You know, we use Key Vault managed identities, a lot of different pieces for security. But essentially, we could have a million fintechs call our API's every second. And we only have to send one ping to the core to get all of the data for everything, and then we can distribute it out accordingly. So we could take a 40 year old core infrastructure, and instantly give it the scale to handle cloud capabilities. From that standpoint of the FinTech FinTech piece,

 

Kevin Carney 1:01:27

I have some experience working with some of the cores and the look. Yes, they're all decent. 40 years old, right? They're old. But it's usually because they're complicated. well beyond you would believe. Right? I mean, they're, they're, they're complicated legacy code. There's a little bit of no one's quite sure what exactly what it does in certain areas. Because people have had their career and they've left they've retired. But But there's so many interconnectivity in these core banking platforms. I mean, Jack, how many, how many customers did Jack Henry have?

 

Landon Glenn 1:02:00

I think they're around 2800, between all their cores, you know, they've got Silver Lake and 2020, and quarter, they've got a seminar on the credit union side, they've got a bunch of different cores. And so not only is each one complicated, but there's all these different flavors within the core, making the complication and the integration that much more challenging.

 

Kevin Carney 1:02:19

And we were talking to one of the core providers a couple years ago, and they were saying they're their biggest, their biggest challenge is they have to maintain the core, that is their business, right, making it stable. Making it you know, meet the banking regulations that are changing all the time, like, like they have the it's not sexy, but it's like the power company, right when the lights turn off, which is funny, my lights turned off my office, when when the power is out, you notice it when the power is on your don't. And that's the same thing with a core banking platform is that is that they have a low tolerance for risk because they have to be the foundation of these of these banks, and credit unions. And so while they would love to dabble all the new sort of fintechs and provide more value to their to their making clients. They can't invest a ton of money, because they're focusing on the nuts and bolts of the bank.

 

Landon Glenn 1:03:15

They're in the business of that trust.

 

Kevin Carney 1:03:17

Now they can they can acquire companies and things along those that try to try to bolt it on. But all of a sudden now they're like you said by staying in your lane, they're becoming something that's not so where they can, if they're if de novo bank is coming up, and they're trying to win that business by saying that we connect and have all these different FinTech apps, with all the data privacy been talking about, then all of a sudden, they can provide their bank clients with a broader solution that and there's not a lot of work on their side, right? It's really kind of introducing into the API's and vetting out that you guys are, are operating in a good manner. And that's all they kind of really need to do.

 

Landon Glenn 1:04:01

Yep. Yeah, they're able to resell a custom customizable App Store directly to their banks, and they're gonna get part of that revenue, we're gonna get revenue, the banks can increase revenue and wallet share. So what we're essentially doing is helping bring a lot of that lost revenue and experience back that fintechs have traditionally been able to offer because the banks don't have those solutions. But beyond that, it starts to get really, really exciting. When we can use your KYC bank credential, login with ASA out in the open market, you know, think of a you know, we're talking to a FinTech, I believe next week that has a marketplace for buying and selling tractors and farm equipment. And now you can log into that using your ASA login with ASA, you know, open ID connect with Okta. Now we are backing that authenticated user, where you don't have to share your name, your email, it's all private. But now we can verify our prove to a zero knowledge proof and verify that that user, that customer is authentic. And we can also prove that they have approval for $250,000 to buy the farm equipment, maybe they're looking for a big combine or a tractor to do something. And you know, in some areas, the tractors are bigger than the houses. And it's a huge industry, this is real opportunity. But now you're able to verify the user fund the loan. And now the bank's able to make money and participate and verify the authenticity of the user and the the the money is there. Because when you log in, you're not just verifying your identity, but you're bringing your bank accounts and the access to the money in the money movement with it. So in a way you think of how powerful Pay Pal is, and, you know, Apple Pay and some of these things. Well, he says removing the middleman, the money doesn't have to leave the bank and go to Pay Pal and then go out, you're just logging it straight into the platform enabled issue those funds and so we do have a step up service called ASA verify at the point of sale for moving the money or opening the account that verifies the liveness as well. And so the entire infrastructure becomes a password lists, bank authentication, to move money open accounts and connect your data to any fintech. Or, to that point to anything, you want to buy a car online. Well, why log into Facebook marketplace or Craigslist and deal with all the fraud? Is that a real car is this a real person? Am I getting ripped off half the messages you get or fake from people wanting to steal your money, when you can see on the other end only show me verified, you know, Asa integrated logins, meaning we now have an auditable proof that that user is who they say they are. And if that is the case, now, we're eliminating, eliminating a huge amount of fraud. So that becomes a platform play. So along the lines with the tractor zoom, you might have another type of app, and there's a bunch of them out there called chopped and others that we're trying to get meetings with and talking to, they have farm to porch. Now you bring the Ag bank brings the farmer, and then the retail bring bring bank brings the customers, and now they're all signing up to have local produce delivered on a regular basis to your porch. And it's all interconnecting the community. It's building commerce, it's verifying identity, it's bringing platform in. And for the end user, the or sorry, for the end application, the marketplace, it's just more customers, it's more revenue, and they don't have to do any marketing, they save marketing, they save their 20%, customer acquisition costs, all these things. And then we can even do the payments in the money movement through the bank for the subscriptions. And so allowing the user to sign up and pay for their application, or the marketplace subscription without disclosing their name, their email, their credit card number, or even their routing an account number. And so what we're building, it just creates efficiencies, and it allows scale, and it allows the bank and the core to participate in these revenue streams that they would never have access to otherwise, I mean, we're creating new ways for them to build and enable in E commerce and marketplaces.

 

Kevin Carney 1:08:13

It's exciting. I mean, this is it's a very interesting concept. And there's so many positives across the entire ecosystem of the FinTech, the user, the bank, the core and others. It's just it's, it's really neat. It's great idea. How long have you been noodling on this?

 

Landon Glenn 1:08:32

Oh, my goodness, the idea by itself was conjunction of, you know, multiple people and stakeholders thinking through this, but at my prior company, I scaled it up to 1000. bank and credit union customers without a penny in funding. We bootstrapped it. We got it in 50% of all schools in America, it's still around an amazing company, financial literacy software. And in that space, I experienced that we wanted real data from the core, we wanted to be able to integrate it into our tools to see enhance the experiences for like virtual coaches, kind of like aI type experiences, we were building that back in 2016 17, way before it became popular. And now if you can create a system where it pulls in your actual account information verifies everything, then the process is much more seamless. But in talking through it, it was impossible to be able to get the integrations to each core on a one to one basis and the juice was not worth the squeeze. And for each FinTech to be able to do that, the lift the time the cost for that infrastructure is it's a it's a deal killer for many of them. And so it all started from man, how do we get the data from the banks so that we can enable function, you know, and it was so hard to get data that you know, you've got screen scrapers, logging in as if they were the custom We're in scraping and crawling all this data. And that's been the industry standard for years, you know, 1000s of institutions still connect that way, because they have no way to get the data. So we said, well, we need a lot of what Dodd Frank 1033 is talking about, we need an API that the consumer can control that anyone can connect in less than 48 hours, that will give them access to all of the user's data directly to the core. And that idea is where we are today. But it started with I mean, we went through a bunch of iterations. Initially, it was going to be the concept of this open banking system direct connections to the cores combined with self sovereign identity, we were originally going to build it on a blockchain. And we pivoted away from that it just we didn't need it. It wasn't scalable enough, the chain was too slow having a public blockchain. So instead, we created a trusted closed private network with an access control framework that allows that permissioning. So the idea in it was probably early 2019, that was really formalized. And then we filed the patent in 2020. And then started building the actual architecture in 2021. And then it's been evolving from there. As we've talked to banks, credit unions and cores and fintechs and just said, What do you need, and what do you want, but for me, my heart and why we're in this as in creating opportunity for all and a way for consumers, to be able to have financial empowerment. And I was fortunate, I had an older brother that helps me learn how to build credit, and get my first card and guided me through that. Most people don't have that. And so we have so much great technology, Ace is going to allow that experience to be an automated system, through the rails of your bank and credit union in a safe, compliant private way to be able to guide you through your life and help you succeed. And I think it's, for me, it's it's bringing more technology and more opportunities directly to the hands of the user in a safe way

 

Kevin Carney 1:12:04

that the passion is evident, landed. It's just, it's amazing. Yeah, you you do this because you like to do it and you see a need, and you really want to fill that need. That's a great characteristic.

 

Landon Glenn 1:12:18

Well, a little bit about me, I might be a little crazy, because all right, well, I like to do. Thank you. Crazy. There is I think a lot of people that build companies are a bit crazy, because they believe so much in what they're doing. And they're so focused that nothing can stop them. And that's where you see, you know, people fight through all of the challenges, because there are so many challenges to building and creating, and innovating. But I guess the reason I say I might be a little bit crazy as everybody's motivated by different things. And my motivation internally comes from doing things that people think are impossible from doing things that no one else could do, from creating from building from doing things where you sometimes you start talking to some people say you're crazy, that's impossible, that can never be done. That's what drives me, I hear that. And I go harder. And I say, How can I start talking to smarter and smarter people. And you see the team, the investors, the group we've brought in. I mean, Lisa Goldshire, was the head of innovation for the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC for 20 years. And she was heading up innovation, looking for technology that could change, the industry changed the whole face of banking. And she found it, she quit her job and joined our team last year. And so it dropped the vision, the passion of what we're accomplishing, it brings in the talent because I could not do this, I could not accomplish this. But what I can do is drive that vision and never stop until we hit the end result. And for me, the harder it is to do, the more exciting. And the more fun, the more I wake up with a smile on my face and want to go to work. And so, you know, coming from a person that doesn't have to work, I did really well with the other things that I've done. And you know, a lot of people say I just want to go golfing or I just want to not have to do things. I want to do things, I drive to do things. And I prioritize my life in a way to meet those things. And so, I love my family, I love time doing things myself. But my happiest place, which sounds crazy is going to the office at eight 9am and staying till sometimes 10pm working and getting things done. And there's very few people that that makes them happy. But once you've solved the problem, and you've moved it forward, then I'll take time to rest and recalibrate. But that's that's a little bit about me personally.

 

Kevin Carney 1:14:51

All right. Well, well, we'll bleep that last part out where are you like going to work? And wait to hear that too much. But yeah, that's So, what what's on deck? You know, people here the podcasts are gonna want to reach out to you and understand more about it. Where can they what conference are going to be out of they can find you what other events are you going to what website are they going to go to like, like if you will give a little marketing Spiel here?

 

Landon Glenn 1:15:19

Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. Just give me an ad. And you can message me through there or you can email me directly my emails Landon dot Glenn ln, do n dot g l e n n at ASA AASA dot financial. And feel free to email or reach out through LinkedIn and then as far as where we'll be next. So we're actually going to be at a couple places. So I'll be in the lodge at Torrey Pines and La Jolla in San Diego, the eighth to the 11th at Castle Creek capital annual summit, our annual meeting. And then that same period, we'll have Lisa, out at the Kansas Bankers Association within price and interest bank in Wichita. From the I think the eighth to the 11th the exact same day she'll be out there. And so we're participating in we were selected for the next this or next stage FinTech accelerator program. And so that programs a, you know, fun opportunity to meet investors and banks and work on pilots and build relationships. So the Kansas Bankers Association in price and interest bank have done an incredible job there as well. So then after that, we'll be at the jack Henry connect conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, I believe that's from the 16th to the 19th. And then from there on the I think it's the 21st I'll be at the Commerce ventures UFC event down at the Octagon of UFC in Las Vegas. So I'm pretty excited to see what that entails. And then immediately following that is money 2020 that we'll be at. Okay, well, yeah. So that's just the next 30 days.

 

Kevin Carney 1:17:08

Free pines, I'd be happy to come help you out.

 

Landon Glenn 1:17:11

Yeah, that'd be great. We might need a golf partner. You know, come on corn balls. I'm not much of a golfer but I'm happy to try.

 

Kevin Carney 1:17:21

I'm sure it's beautiful, even if you're not golfing.

 

Landon Glenn 1:17:23

Oh, absolutely, yeah. And then from there, we'll be at the FIS demo day in November, in Florida. And so that's going to be another fun one. And then the same dates, we're going to have someone else presenting adventure 135 in Charlotte, North Carolina, I believe that's the 14th and the 15th. And I believe the FIS Demo Day is also the 14th and the 15th. So just funny enough, a lot of our event events are landing on the exact same days as other events, which makes for, you know, Division of, you know, delegation and getting divide and conquer. Really.

 

Kevin Carney 1:17:59

Dan Roselli about the venture 135 Make sure we can Yeah, definitely, definitely is Demo Day, which is on the same day days. That's in Florida, in Jacksonville.

 

Landon Glenn 1:18:11

That's in Jacksonville at FIS headquarters. And then the other event is going to be of course in Charlotte.

 

Kevin Carney 1:18:18

Gotcha. Okay, great. Well, Landon, this is an exciting. You've got you've come so far, in such a short period of time, you know, for being a young company, four years old, was COVID in the middle. We've come a long way. You've got great ideas. It sounds like you've got some really strong connections in the industry. And you're connected and all these events. It's going to be amazing love to watch the journey.

 

Landon Glenn 1:18:41

Thank you. Yeah, Kevin. appreciate the support and the conversation today. It was a lot of fun. And looking forward to connecting with you again soon.

 

Kevin Carney 1:18:49

Awesome. Thanks for joining us.