Wrapping Up Series 1: Why I Started Bitesize Payments — and What Comes Next

After more than 30 episodes, I wanted to take a moment to reflect.

This isn’t a deep dive into real-time payments, standards, or compliance. This episode is about why Bitesize Paymentsexists in the first place — and what I’ve learned from doing it.

I started the series to give back. To share what I’ve learned from years in payments — and from the many brilliant people I’ve worked alongside. The goal was always to make complex topics clearer, more human, and a little easier to navigate.

In this final episode of Series 1, I talk about:

• Why I launched Bitesize Payments
• What the industry sometimes misses when it doesn’t share or mentor
• What we’ve covered so far — from cheques to CBDCs, from compliance to sovereignty
• Who the key players really are — banks, merchants, citizens, regulators
• And what Series 2 might explore as we move into a truly digital era

Whether you listened to one episode or the whole series, thank you.

This podcast has been a joy to create — and I hope it’s helped connect a few dots along the way.

Payments Industry Insights

History of Payments

Payment System Explained

Corporate Payments Strategy

Payment Regulations Impact

ISO20022 Standard

Digital Payments Evolution

CBDC Advancements

Cryptocurrency in Payments

Financial Technology Education

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back, dear listeners, to Bite Size Payments, where we discuss the history, how they work, and of course, who does what. In this episode, which I think is the 32nd episode, I'm going to try and go backwards, if you like. Today, I'm really going to try and explain why I built Bite Size Payments, try and explain, if you will, what was my thinking around creating it in the first place. what's inside it, who's it for, and how best to use it. It's been a blast. Hopefully there'll be a series two, more on that later on. But for now, let's get going. So why did I start to create bite-sized payments? I guess the real reason is because I could. I'd stopped working full-time and had time to learn a new skill, podcasting. Perhaps more on that towards the end. But I started this series because I felt something was missing in our industry. The industry has always been kind to me and I've been very lucky to have worked across most of the payment industry silos. I was also very lucky to come to payments when there was perhaps more mentorship, more people willing to share and connect the dots, share what they knew and explain the bigger picture. And over time, I think that's become harder to find. On the other hand, it's probably been the most exciting period of payments there's ever been. It seems to be... that now folks come into the industry through a more narrow, specific channel, maybe technology, maybe through merchant services, crypto, or any of their niches, and they often go deep fast, but not very often wide. That's not their fault per se, but I do kind of think it's the industry's issue. Payments has always been siloed, but I think it's harder and harder to move between the areas of our business now. once you're in one of the silos, kind of seem to be stuck. And that wasn't always the case. And that means that we have super detailed experts in their fields, but often they don't understand how the broader silos of payments work, just their very specific areas. And while there's nothing wrong with that, it does mean that the broader context is often missed and that's hard to grow when you're looking at the rest of our industry as a whole. So I wanted to give back what I've learned and I've been taught over the years by so many kind people. I wanted to create a base of knowledge, something that sits between a 101 or a 201, not just in one sector, but across the industry as a whole. And not just how it works, but why it works. And of course, who are the actors that actually get it to work. To be able to do all of that, I needed to create some history as well, and I found that historical steps were extraordinarily useful. I personally believe that education and the context in the payment industry is really, really important. Payments has a long history, and we didn't start with APIs and QR codes or the answers, blockchain, now what's the question? We started with beads, coins, banknotes, ledgers, if you will. Not those ones. Every system we have today was once the cutting edge of a solution to the then industry problem. Checks were once radical. Card schemes were once descriptive. Can you imagine the conversation when we moved from using precious metal coins to just ordinary coins? Or when we agreed to use a cheque rather than move all that cash about? And yet, We still use many of our old tools because payments infrastructure tends to be layered and not replaced. We've built on top of what came before and sometimes that's made it horrendously complex. But if you deal back the layers, you can start to see why it was there in the first place. When I worked in the regulatory sphere, I saw people arguing for or against new rules, often with no idea why the old rules were there in the first place. They often didn't know what were the inherent risks in the already, by then, complex and probably old systems. What were they originally trying to mitigate? And what were the inherent trade-offs that the various actors in the industry had tried to work around to get them to where they were. So change became reactive or it became a political fight or left to whoever had the loudest lobbying voice. And let's be honest, that's no way to design a system that frankly is important and by and large is complex as payments. If we want to innovate well, If we want to challenge what exists, we really have to understand why it existed and what these new solutions will do better than the ones that are already there and the trade-offs because there are always trade-offs. So for me, the history and the context of these key parts of our industry is are really the base layers of what this series is about. And I think without that level of history, it's very hard to move forward with any certainty. If you're not sure what you're going to fix, well, it's not a good place to start, put it that way. So history and context, really important part of the podcast.

UNKNOWN: 6:23

So

SPEAKER_00: 6:31

So what's the podcast for? Well, I wanted to be able to get the podcast series recorded as a series of educational episodes that explain how our industry works. I wanted this series to be easy to consume, genuinely bite-size, anytime anybody wanted it. And it's, of course, free. There's no sort of white papers or webinars or panel debates in payments, and I love them, but they're often quite formal, dense, or aimed at the insiders. I wanted this to be slightly different. And perhaps to misquote Churchill, some of this content in our industry frankly defends itself from being read by the sheer size, or frankly, the acronyms that we create. I wanted each episode to feel like you were sitting down with someone who'd seen it from the inside and who was happy to explain it clearly, honestly, and without jargon. Not a lecture, not a sales pitch, no angles, just this is what it is. This is how it works. And frankly, this is why it matters. Of course, I didn't want to do it alone. Throughout the series, I've brought in people I genuinely respect. Many of them are friends. But they are experts all the same who've written policy, built systems, worked with the merchants, sat in central banks, been regulators, etc., etc. People who wanted to give something back as well. People who were willing to share what they know without showing off. just walking us through the subject in each episode. For me, it was less about being definitive and more about here are the really key things you need to know. Central banks, et cetera, et cetera. So this series is really for folks who are new to payments, just trying to understand it. And hey, we're all still trying to understand it. People who want to switch roles. maybe from a bank to a fintech or from the corporate side to the retail side or from product to policy, etc. And also with people with years of experience in one sector who've really never explored other areas and would love to be able to understand what their colleagues do or what other users are trying to do. So it's not payments 101, but it's certainly not 301 either. It's kind of the middle ground. Well, if you're curious and you just want somebody to explain other parts of the industry and, of course, how it all fits together, you can dive in and listen to that part of our industry. So what's inside of the podcast series? Well, this series, I think, covers all, I hope all, of the foundational pieces and parts. There are 32 episodes, including this one. Not in exhaustive detail, as I've explained, but enough to build a real sense of how the payments world works, who it affects, and where's it going. Of course, I started with a little bit of history because I think, frankly, that's essential. You know, why do we have payments? Why do we have money, et cetera? Before you can start to talk about real-time or ISO 20022, you have to understand what came before and why. So I and my guests have tried to cover the various types of payments, from cheques to cards, direct debits, real-time systems, etc., the various clearings and settlement layers, what it means, how it works, and why it's more than just plumbing. Of course, compliance, KYC, AML, sanctions checking, and the often invisible role of regulation, standards like ISO 2002, etc., and what that means for everyone. But It's more than just the systems. We need to explain the various stakeholders because payments quite literally is not one size fits all. In fact, we have so much complexity and so much diversity in payments. It's almost the other way around. Why have we got all this complexity? Why have we got so many different types? So to put that into context, We've talked about citizens, what they want, basically fast, safe, invisible payments. Merchants. They care about costs. They care about getting customers in and simply being able to buy their goods and services. Corporates who deal with all the liquidity problems, the reconciliation, and of course, the international complexity. Banks themselves. who operate the infrastructure and manage the various risks. Regulators and the central banks who try to keep it all safe and fair and set the rules. And of course we ask, who does what? Who sets the rules? Who owns the rails? Who takes the risks, quite frankly? Hopefully every episode is fairly standalone so you can jump in and get what you want without having to go through every episode in series. I've had a lot of people that have come and helped get this podcast out. I'd like to thank every single one of them and I will include all of their names in the notes. But I can tell you that they've been super kind with their time and lovely to work with. And of course, That's what payments really is. It's about people. So as I say at the beginning of every episode, Bite-sized Payments is about the history, how they work, and of course, who does what. And that tagline, I think, is really very important because they're the three real things that I think the industry is all about. And if you can understand them, then you can understand how payments work, or at least ways you can start to understand how the various aspects of payments work. Without the history, I think it's very difficult to get going in all honesty. But understanding the various aspects of the payment industry is also really important. What the other stakeholders need, why they do the things they do, et cetera, et cetera. So hopefully you'll find or have found that bite-sized payments has been interesting and hopefully useful to you and your career. So what next? I think there's a second series here, and I think this time the focus is really on what's coming and not just about where we've been. As we shift into a truly digital era with programmable money, embedded payments, CBDCs, AI-assisted finance, The rules are going to have to change. The players are going to have to change. The pace is accelerating. And to be honest with you, we're not 100% sure where it's going to end up. So in series two, I want to look at that landscape. What are the new products? What are embedded finance, wallets, networks? which are the rich data credit models, which new services, the identity layers, the cross-border platforms, request to pay and its consequence, who are the new actors, big tech, private stable coin providers, crypto ecosystems and the central banks, how they try and remain relevant in a digitally native world. I also want to explore how this affects people the various people and stakeholders that we talked about in series one, because being digital doesn't erase the old problems. It just reshapes them. But in all honesty, I haven't really got there yet. I've really got some ideas and I'm trying to work them out. So if you'd like to give me any suggestions, point me in any directions, all of that would be, as ever, greatly received. And I do love the emails that you send me. Thank you very much indeed. And I'd like to bring more voices into the room, more founders, more technologists, regulators, even critics, people building the future and people, quite frankly, questioning it. If series one was about the foundations and the structure and the history, series two will be about the possibilities and the various tension that is inevitably happening. on its way. If anyone says that they know the future of payments, just smile and go, thanks very much. Because the truth of the matter is we as an industry have barely got to be digital. We certainly haven't got to be digital natives yet, but becoming a digital native in the payments area is also a once in a lifetime opportunity. So hold on to your hats. I'll do my best in series two to explain the foundations of what it means to go digitally native in payments. At the beginning, I promised I'd reflect on some of the things that I've learned. Well, probably the foremost thing I want to say is that several of the of the people who listened to the series have told me that they are now advising their colleagues and new starters to listen to the podcast as an educational program so they can understand how payments work. I can't tell you how super pleased that I am that that's happened. That is really exactly what I was hoping might happen. So that's a big, big thing for me. I think the other thing, which may seem absolutely crazy, but I want to get it down, is that I had to learn to write and speak, which is much harder than you might think. I'm dyslexic and I have stuttered all my life. And when I look back on this, I just have to laugh at myself and go, you doing a podcast? having to write a podcast script. Well, I have, and it's worked, and I'm super pleased, and I've learned an awful lot about myself. Anyway, what I've learned probably most is something that, frankly, I already knew. People in our industry are genuinely lovely, kind, and, of course, super smart, but moreover, they're super willing to share. If I could implore you to do one thing, it was to ask questions of these people. Our payment industry needs people like you. Anyway, guys, see you in series two. Cheers for now.