Barefoot Innovation Podcast

The Swahili word for “one” is mojaloop, and it inspired the name of the organization that is led by today’s guests. They are Paula Hunter and Lesley-Ann Vaughan of the Mojaloop Foundation. The open-source Mojaloop software was first developed in 2017 to support the financial inclusion work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, premised on the realization that reaching financially underserved people with digital financial services will require the financial system to use open and interoperable solutions. Just four years later, more than 400 developers are collaborating to create Mojaloop software that is helping service providers open markets and accelerate progress in emerging markets.

April 08, 2021

My guests today are leaders in the drive to bring the world’s poor into the formal financial system. They are Sharmista Appaya, Financial Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group, and Ivo Jenik, Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP. CGAP stands for the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and sits within the World Bank as essentially a financial inclusion think tank. I first met Sharmista years ago in London when she headed the Bank of England’s Fintech Accelerator, and I’ve been running into Ivo in interesting places around the world for years, but they are now both based where I am, in Washington DC.

April 03, 2021

We are introducing some thematic series into Barefoot Innovation this year. One series will stretch our collective thinking out into the future and try to envision how technology will change financial services, not for the next few years, but over the next decade or two. My working title for this theme is, the Thinkers. And so we’re starting with Pindar Wong.

March 14, 2021

My guests today are Mike de Vere, CEO of Zest AI, and Teddy Flo, the company's general counsel. Zest is seeking to revolutionize credit underwriting by leveraging more information and analyzing it through machine learning. They started out as a lender, but have pivoted to selling tools to banks and other lenders, to equip them to make better lending decisions.

February 26, 2021

Everyone is going to love today’s show, but if you are a fintech or regtech startup trying to sell services to a big bank -- this is absolutely must listening. And the same is true if you’re a bank wanting to work with tech startups. My guest is Maria Gotsch, CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City. The fund’s goal is to make New York City a technology innovation hub like Silicon Valley but focused on finance, leveraging New York’s role as global financial capital.

February 18, 2021

Is the future of banking, open? And will open banking reshape the world of finance? My guest today has the answers. She is Susan French, head of Products at BBVA’s Open Platform. BBVA, the global bank headquartered in Spain, has long been ahead of the curve in technology innovation in general, and in open banking specifically.

February 04, 2021

A lot of people, including me, care about community banks. They are much more than providers of financial services. They are the backbone of their communities. That matters now more than ever, as many of these communities are struggling, especially in the pandemic. These banks know their markets deeply, which both inspires them, and enables them, to serve their consumers and businesses in unique ways.

January 29, 2021

My guests are Christopher Giancarlo, former Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Daniel Gorfine, who previously led the CFTC’s innovation program, LabCFTC. When they left the commission, they teamed up to found the Digital Dollar Project, advocating for why and how the United States needs to join the 80-plus other countries that are planning to issue Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC.

January 14, 2021