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Chana Schoenberger (00:11):
Okay. So what are you expecting for the next year? What's it going to look like in the future?
Elizabeth St. Onge (00:18):
I think two things, and I mentioned this earlier talking about our own tokenization projects, and I said pace is increasing. I do think the innovation is very, very rapid right now. I've been in this space working in corporate treasury and cash management and payments my whole career. I have never seen this pace of change and the pace of innovation as we have it now. And it's not just new products and capabilities, it's fundamentally transforming the underlying structure. So it is market structure, financial services, infrastructure fundamentally changing. I think that cycle of innovation is very rapid and will keep increasing. If the last year is anything to go by, it will keep increasing. What I think right now that we have a disconnect is the pace of innovation is very, very rapid.
(01:09):
The adoption rate amongst corporate clients is not fully there yet. A lot of our corporate clients are cautious. They're watching it, they're asking about it, they're doing some trials, they're trying things out, but rightly so, they're wanting to see how this all play out. They're trying to get educated. And a corporate also needs what I call a minimum viable ecosystem. They need their ERP platform, their treasury management systems, their trading partners, all of their banks, their buyers and suppliers. Everyone needs to be part of this new ecosystem for them to get the full benefit. So because of that, I think we're going to see a hockey stick for adoption. It'll be slow. It'll increase, but slow for a while. And once we get that minimum viable ecosystem where there's enough benefit and enough ability to have that streamlined programmatic real time transaction ecosystem, then I think we're going to see adoption increase very rapidly.
(02:11):
So I think the first phase is the providers, the banks and the other providers in the industry building out the capabilities and innovating at a very rapid pace. And then we will see that corporate adoption pick up. And how long do you think that's going to take? I don't know. We talk about that a lot internally in the organization. We do believe the two will live parallel, right? There's not going to be a flip the switch and suddenly we're all going to go from the legacy world to the digital world. But I do think we debate, like I said, is it five years, 10 years, 15 years? My personal view is I actually think it's on the lower end of that. I think it's five to eight years. We are likely to see some pretty significant changes in how corporates operate and manage their cash and their financial processes.
(03:02):
Some of my colleagues see it as being longer, more in the 15 year range. So we'll have to see which one of us will be right. But I do think the benefits are substantial. And once our corporate clients experience some of these benefits, there's no putting this genie back in the bottle. There's significant benefit to how they manage their payments, their transactions, their workflows, and the programmability elements of it will automate their back offices and make their financial lives much more effective and efficient. And I think that's when we're going to really start to see the adoption rate grow.
Chana Schoenberger (03:46):
Great. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming in. Thank you for having me.