Dave and Dharm DeMystify

The episode features a conversation with Mohammad Alblooshi, CEO of DIFC Innovation Hub and Fintech Hive, discussing the rapid growth of Dubai's FinTech ecosystem over the past seven years. The focus is on creating a supportive environment for FinTech startups with initiatives like regulatory sandboxes, access to capital, co-working spaces, and talent development. The hub aims to be a global leade...

In this episode, Jayesh Patel, the CEO of Wio Bank, shares insights on establishing a neobank in Dubai. He discusses the vision behind Wio Bank, focusing on serving tomorrow's businesses and customers through improved banking apps, embedded finance, and banking as a service. Wio's success lies in focusing on SMEs first, prioritising user experience over technology, and understanding the diverse ne...

Arcady is a veteran, serial fintech entrepreneur! Over twenty-four years ago, he was part of the founding and management of a challenger digital bank that grew to over $37bn in assets. The same group then launched the 1st generation of BaaS solutions, and with that, they grew to over $60bn in assets under custody. Now, he is the founder and CEO of Agora, a third-generation banking platform at the...

Riaz Syed is an experienced professional who has worked in the banking technology industry for over 30 years. He has witnessed the market evolve and change during this time, and his incredible experience has led him to establish Infinant. By sitting on top of existing cores, Infinant's powerful Banking Technology + platform Interlace empowers banks to embrace the digital revolution in a way that w...

Nelson Wootton, Founder and CEO, and Matthew Breadon, CCO of SaaScada, join us to discuss how frustrations with broken promises and the speed and agility of the Core Banking providers were the driving forces behind setting up a company with a new product that offered a modern alternative. The product is cloud-based, plug-and-play, multi-tenanted, and named after Pirates!

In this latest episode of the Demystify Podcast, Sam Everington, CEO of Engine by Starling and Carlton Hopper, UK Managing Director of GFT, discuss their partnership. Sam outlines their strategy to scale by having partnerships like GFT implement their platform so that his team at Engine can focus on being the best banking platform company. He highlights that this not only accelerates their geograp...

Charlie Platt is the Managing Director of Banking at SAP Fioneer. He talks about the history of the business and the advantages of it becoming a standalone business separate from SAP. He explains how the decision was made and the significant investment the company received. Charlie also discusses the continued strong partnership between SAP and Fioneer, with Fioneer utilising SAP's infrastructure...

In this enlightening episode, we talk with Lukky Ahmed, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Climate X, a trailblazing firm at the vanguard of highlighting climate risk through technological innovation. With a rich background in international banking and expertise in risk management, regulatory change, and consultancy, Lukky shares how his experiences perfectly positioned him to address the critica...

In this episode, we are very honoured to have Vaida Česnulevičiūtė Markevičienė, the Vice Minister for Finance for Lithuania, as our guest. The Vice Minister tells about why Lithuania embraced the fintech opportunity and how it put a plan in place to ensure success. She discusses the importance of Government and Enterprise collaboration and how they have created a centre of excellence for fintech...

The guests on this week's fascinating show are Adam Moulson, COO of Griffin Bank and Garrett Foxon, CEO of LettsPay. Lettspay provides client accounts for Landlords, which are underpinned by Griffin's banking licence. While the Lettspay solution sounds relatively niche, it plays in a massive market with over 4.5 million landlords in the UK and over 15000 real estate agents. Garrett talks about how...

David Jarvis is the CEO and co-founder of Griffin. Griffin is the UK's only full-stack Banking-as-a-service bank. It is a very young organisation, receiving its license in March 2023. David talks to us about his background working in development infrastructure for companies such as Airbnb in California, how he moved into the fintech space, and then how he jumped to founding a bank in the UK. David...

In this episode, our guest is Naif AbuSaida, the CEO and founder of Hakbah, a Saudi Arabian fintech focused on group savings. Naif talks us through his fascinating background, from being a media personality to working in utilities before moving into banking. Naif tells us about how it was whilst undergoing chemotherapy for stage 3 colon cancer that he re-assessed his life and decided he wanted to...

Dave and Dharm chat with Andy Ellis, CEO of NatWest Boxed, and Noah Sharp, CEO of Vodeno, about Banking As A Service. Boxed is a new BaaS provider from the banking heavyweight NatWest and European BaaS provider Vodeno. Rather than develop its core banking BaaS solution, NatWest partnered with Vodeno. In this episode, we learn why NatWest partnered rather than built or used its own platform. Andy a...

Herve Manceron is the founder and CEO of Skaleet, a French SaaS-based core banking provider. Herve started out in Telecoms, which many recognise as a vertical that is similar to banking. Herve clearly explains the similarities and what banking can still learn from an industry that has already gone through a technology transformation leveraging cloud technology. During his time in Telecoms, he was...

Chris Tremont is Chief Digital Officer of Grasshopper Bank and Chris Dean is CEO of Treasury Prime, the embedded banking platform that Grasshopper uses.

Zor Gorelov is the founder and CEO of Kasisto the conversational AI company focused on Financial Services. Zor has a long history with conversational interfaces, having worked on them at Bell Labs over 30 years ago. He talks to us about his views on how and where to deploy these interfaces. We discuss the success of Kasisto and how it is now deployed in over 50 financial services companies of all...

U-Zyn Chua is the CTO and co-founder of Cake Group, a company focused on simplifying decentralised finance (DeFi) for retail users. He has been deeply involved in the cryptocurrency sector since 2009, starting with Bitcoin. His entry into the crypto world was motivated by his interest in cybersecurity and cryptography. In the early days, he actively participated in Bitcoin forums, earning some Bit...

Prema is The President of Product and COO of Temenos. She has a long history with Temenos, having started in the business in 1999 as an engineer before working her way up to a leadership position. She has had a ringside seat on the changes that have happened in digital banking. In this exceptional podcast, Prema takes us straight to the heart of the matter and talks about that and how the core of...

Max Faldin is the founder of Silverbird, a fintech that serves exporters and importers around the globe. Max talks to us about how his frustrations with "the archaic, broken system" of cross-border payments led him to found Silverbird, an SME-focused fintech. Max talks us through the incredible scale of the opportunity and how by using technology, he has managed to bring the costs to customers dow...

In this special episode of Dave and Dharm Demystify, Dave is joined by producer Lou Carlozo in a sauna at Money 20/20 to chat with Monika Liikamaa, co-founder of the payments company Enfuce. Monika talks through her history and tells us more about Enfuce and her general views on the payment industry. She is incredibly open, honest and very straight-talking.

This week's guests are Santos Miguel and Dave Feuer from Galileo, a proven financial technology platform for fintechs, offering card issuing, payments and digital banking. Santos and Dave provide different a perspective on BaaS, one that is focused less on the technology and more on banks and their customers.

Nick Drewett is the CCO of Engine by Starling, Starlings BAAS proposition which is cloud-native, modular and entirely API-based. Nick talks about why Starling has launched Engine, the opportunity they see, and how they believe they are differentiated from competitors.

Andrew Sims is co-founder and CEO of nDigital, an integrated banking-as-a-service, card processing and payments group based out of Bahrain. Andrew talks to us about why the global centre of gravity for FinTech seems to be moving towards the Middle East and what nDigital offers through its portfolio of businesses.

Kelvin Tan is Managing Director and Head at SCB Nexus, which is the bank's white-label plug-and-play banking solution. We talked to Kelvin about the history of BAAS in SCB and how Nexus is positioned in the marketplace. We also discussed how the bank is spinning out the IP to create a new entity called Audax Financial Technologies.

Paul was, until recently, Head of Embedded Banking at HSBC. We discuss with him his views on the embedded banking market and its role in helping brands build loyalty with customers.