Redefining Value Alex Preece on Digital Rewards and the Future of Fintech

Episode Overview

Alex Preece is the co-founder and CEO of Tillo, a leading platform in the digital gift card and incentives market that connects global brands with businesses to offer innovative rewards solutions. Before diving into the fintech world, Alex had a distinguished military career, serving in the British Army’s Household Cavalry, one of the oldest and most prestigious regiments. As part of the forward reconnaissance airborne unit, Alex gained invaluable experience in strategic planning, leadership, and adaptability, skills that have seamlessly translated into his entrepreneurial ventures. His military background is marked by active service in Bosnia and Iraq, where he honed a disciplined and strategic approach to overcoming challenges, which has significantly influenced his approach to business.

After leaving the military, Alex transitioned to the corporate world, where he quickly made a name for himself as an innovative entrepreneur. He founded multiple companies across various sectors, including a luxury gift business and a mortgage advisory firm, gaining diverse experience in both success and failure. His journey as an entrepreneur was not always smooth; he faced bankruptcy and the hardships of starting over, yet these challenges only strengthened his resolve. Alex’s ability to adapt, learn from setbacks, and his unwavering commitment to innovation have been central to his growth as a leader in the fintech industry.

At Tillo, Alex Preece is driving innovation in the digital rewards space, transforming how businesses engage with their customers and employees. Under his leadership, Tillo has expanded its offerings to include cryptocurrency integration, providing a modern twist on traditional rewards programs. His vision for Tillo revolves around leveraging digital platforms to offer real-time, flexible reward solutions that enhance customer loyalty and engagement. With a deep understanding of market dynamics and a forward-thinking approach, Alex continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in fintech, positioning Tillo as a major disruptor in the industry. His story is a testament to the power of resilience, adaptability, and the relentless pursuit of innovation

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenqvist: Hey there, welcome to PayPal. Where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenqvist. Thanks for listening. Who doesn’t love a good rewards program? 3% cash back, 4% cash back. Bring it on. But maybe there’s a better way to provide people with even more value. That’s where Alex Preece comes in. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Tillo, a game changer in the digital gift card and incentive market. Their platform connects global brands with businesses looking to offer gift cards and incentives to their customers or employees, in addition to rewards. We chat about his time serving in one of the most prestigious regiments in the British Army. Crypto and how Neobanks are disrupting the banking industry. Joining me from a very hot Austin, Texas Alex Preece. So we’re going to go back a little bit. You served in one of the most prestigious regiments in the British Army, the Household Cavalry, in their forward reconnaissance airborne unit. So I had to look all this up and I was pretty fascinated. These units are tasked with gathering intelligence and conducting surveillance ahead of the main force, identifying enemy positions, clearing and marking safe routes for the advancing forces, oftentimes going in via parachute. This is like an action movie stuff. It’s like we’re in a Michael Bay movie. Why? Why did this role in the Army appeal to you?

Alex Preece : To be honest, the my grandfather served in it. So he was in the regiment. , there was an amalgamation of two. This regiment is one of the is one of the oldest regiments in the British Army., it isn’t the oldest, but I think it’s one of the oldest. You know, these are cavalrymen. These are people that used to go into battle on horseback with swords and all the rest of it, and they were. Now that is all ceremonial. So the people that stand outside Whitehall, a lot of my friends are there now, leading a lot of these squadrons. I didn’t want to do the ceremonial side, and I didn’t get a chance to do that, and I sort of would have loved to have done it to some extent, but I was I wanted to do much more of the the armored side, as they call it, the that’s the stuff that you were just talking about there. Have I ever jumped into battle on an airplane? No. The last time we jumped, I think the British jumped into battle was actually D-Day, I think. Okay. I don’t think there were any. I don’t think we’ve actually gone into. I don’t think the Parachute Regiment has, actually. Or the 16 Air Assault brigade that I belong to actually have jumped into an operational tour, but that, that, that that brigade, if you will, was something I was super keen to be part of, and for a few reasons one, we were based in Windsor. , that wasn’t too far from it was a few hours away from where I grew up.

Alex Preece : , and I love the idea of being in Windsor and not sort of being in the other garrisons around the country. Two I really like the idea of being a really active regiment. So the Household Cavalry, actually, for a lot of people that don’t know, is the regiment that Prince Harry and William served in. Harry, most predominantly because he went to Afghanistan with that regiment. And that regiment is actually the most one of the most deployed regiments or the most deployed regiments in the British Army. So we’re really active. We’re away all the time in Sierra Leone and in Bosnia and Kosovo, Ukraine, all over the shop. We’re in Ukraine far before Putin decided to invade the country. But, you know, we’re a very active. And I was quite keen to be very active when I was in the military. And long story short, I didn’t do that well at school, not something I’m proud of. I really tried hard to get into the army. My grandfather, who was still around today, really was a huge inspiration for me. And he helped me join and I wanted to join his regiment and I loved every minute of it. I did six and a half, seven years in that regiment. Did active duty in Bosnia to start off with. That was my sort of first active tour. And then I did Iraq not too long after that as well, when we invaded up in that country.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Wow. That’s a heck of a story. A heck of a start to your adult life. Yeah.

Alex Preece : Well, the interesting thing is, is like, not everyone wants to do ceremonial stuff. Like, there’s, like, there’s a big British Army has a big part of that. Royal Horse Guards, the bands, there’s all that sort of thing. I didn’t really want to do that. Now, if you want to get promoted in my regiment, you need to do both sides. And I got to that point where I probably would have needed to transition into that side of the military to in order to to gain a promotion. And you can bounce between the two, which is what my grandfather did, like he did. He was a blue, so he did all the armored stuff, and then he went as a three bars or as a sergeant in mounted, which is quite a nice way of doing it, because it means you have people around you to do all your cleaning kit cleaning. You don’t need to do it yourself, which is the right way round to do it, because there’s a lot of cleaning now when you’re in that side of the regiment an awful lot. , he’s gotta look perfect. Yeah, I loved it, I loved it, honestly. The discipline, the competitiveness. It brought the best side of me out, to be fair. Not something I showed or excelled in at school. But as soon as I joined the military, it was just. I just loved it. It brought the best out of me.

Kevin Rosenqvist: That’s really, really, really cool. And by my count, according to my looking at your LinkedIn, you founded five companies.

Alex Preece : Yeah, some that have not gone that well. I actually I always wanted to to be a British Army officer. , and when I went to Iraq, I changed my perspective quite a lot on the military and my time there. And I felt like actually, I wanted to do something in the business world. I wanted to sort of be in charge of my own destiny to some, to some extent. So I left. I started a business with my girlfriend wife. Now that was in fashion and sort of the luxury gift sector. I personally went bankrupt when I started that business. I sort of took out a big bank loan and pretended to the bank I was going to buy a car. I didn’t buy a car. I used it to set a business up. , I ended up selling the business, but just sort of wiped his mouth clean. But it was a huge eye opener. , and then I, I, I went sort of see what else was around at the time. And it was a really tough time. I really struggled outside the military and having that safety net because you’ve just got this, you know, a lot of cotton, although it’s hard mentally and it’s really uncertain, like you don’t know what you’re doing at the weekend if you’re going to be working the weekend, even on a Thursday evening. That’s a horrible way to live life. Yeah. It’s tough. It’s tough when you’re a girlfriend and you know, things to do and, you know, social things to want to see. You want to leave.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Your young life. I mean, yeah, absolutely.

Alex Preece : It’s tough. So I end up having to sign on the dole. So I don’t know what they call it in America. What is it in America? America. It’s called Social Security or something. Maybe he’s signing on. So you’re going to get your security checks like it’s helping you. Basic stuff. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Social Security is for after you retire.

Alex Preece : Oh, okay. Yeah. , but does the US have something where if you lose your job, you’re getting money from the effect of this unemployment? Yeah. So in the UK, it’s called, , Jobseeker’s allowance or,, the nickname is the Dole. So you go and sign on at this job center and you’re trying to find work. I ended up doing a few weird and wonderful jobs, and then I am an entrepreneur. I learned quite a bit from, but he helped me become a mortgage advisor, and he owned a mortgage advisory firm. And that’s where I met my business partner and very dear friend of mine, who we started to life with. I’m sort of shortcutting a bit there, but yeah, we were building. I was a mortgage advisor for a bit. Great time to do it to about late 2007-2008. So I did that. I did that for 6 or 7 months. I did enjoy it though. It was great learning to the exams and passing them all, and then also.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Learning at a time when like, maybe it’s not such a bad time to learn because you’re learning like the one of the hardest times in that industry. Exactly. So you’re able to kind of maybe it’s a little slower. Also, maybe you can see some of the rough patches and be more prepared too.

Alex Preece : Exactly. And it was really interesting talking to customers about, you know, the biggest financial decisions they’re making and helping them know about the market and pitfalls and, and whatever else it was. It was really interesting. I really enjoyed it, talking to people in a much more sophisticated cell than double glazing or, you know, quick sale stuff. , but we saw a company doing really well in America, in Chicago, as we were talking just beforehand. Oh, yeah. Where you’re from, Groupon. Yeah. You’re stopping at exactly., and the huge success story that was Groupon.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Of course.

Alex Preece : And we wanted to see this business. We knew someone that knew some senior people in the business in the UK, and they were telling us how amazing this company was. And it was, you know, at the time, it was this game changing monetary model to help small businesses drive new customers. And I love the idea of that. So me and my business partner started it in the first UK one and we were really lucky at timing and the amount of effort and time and money we put into it. I sort of maxed everything out from a credit card and financial resource perspective, and it just all worked out incredibly. Like us we had some really challenging times of raising money. We didn’t in the end, we just put our own money into it. We didn’t put a lot in, but, , I think, you know, probably 40,000 pounds between the two of us and some bank money and credit cards, maybe 50,000 or something. And within eight months, our company had gone into a trial with the world’s biggest comparison website, Moneysupermarket.com, who’s listed on the FTSE 250 at the moment valued at probably $5 billion or something. And it was just incredible. Like we’d started it. We had all the heartaches. We got live. We were handing fliers out at train stations and then this business was like, we want to take payment. We want to talk to our customers much more frequently than once a year with car insurance. This is great. We’ll buy your company in a transaction worth that was reported to the city for 11 million pounds. I mean, my guys were just like, what on earth? How has this happened? We didn’t get all that money. But , it was a real tale of, like, starting something from scratch, this technical platform to going live and scale it and outselling Groupon 10 to 1. Some of the cities that we were live in didn’t end out the way we thought it did, but it was this beautiful tale of start -up Crash course, if you will.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Well, Groupon didn’t end like they wanted it to either, I would imagine. No.

Alex Preece : Didn’t. No. You’re right. It was a bit of a fad.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, it was a bit of a fad. Yeah, yeah. And maybe I kind of heard maybe not beneficial enough to the businesses themselves. It wasn’t that they weren’t getting enough repeat business out of it. So it was. That’s what I had heard anyway. So it was that I agreed Groupon didn’t didn’t adjust their model and then it just wasn’t able to sustain.

Alex Preece : And there’s certain models today I feel are in that camp. I think card linking is one today that we see with certain brands that just want to use it maybe once a year to target new customers. They’re certainly not doing it every month. Right. And that and the Groupon model needs those big brands to come on all the time. And now they don’t want to do that because they, like you said, they can’t. It wasn’t driving new customer acquisition effectively. And actually it was probably cannibalizing a lot of their spend that was happening. And more importantly, I think the thing that we found was a there was a brand issue, I think, with degrading it by going on one of these platforms alongside teeth whitening kits or, or whatever it might be. So you had a certain type of brand that was on there. And I think we were one of the first to sort of create this hotel stay glass of prosecco on arrival. And we just sold so many of these in the UK. It was incredible. And their businesses on their own. Right. They did that specifically after us. I think Secret Escapes was one of them that did very well with that and some others. But it was great and it sort of led us to where I’m at today, but through a weird journey of, , of knowing that I wanted to help customers save money, I enjoy that sort of world.

Alex Preece : I enjoy working with brands.  I enjoy working with businesses, looking to help their customers save money and get more with their paycheck. At the time, it was the BlackBerry era. There was. We were sending thousands or millions of people with bits of paper into these businesses. We knew that that was not scalable. It was going to go into the phone. It’s going to become much more digital. So that’s where that transition happened. It didn’t happen for probably 2 or 3 years and we were helping a Swedish company get founded in the UK, and it was there that we had our first sort of touching of the peripheral outskirts of gift cards or closed loop cards, as they’re sometimes called. So we wanted to put gift cards in our payment application. That is where we understood and saw how fragmented this industry was and how lack the digital aspect of it lacked within the whole ecosystem. So I’ve sort of crash course to over ten minutes or so on, you know,, leaving the military to lots of different businesses and everything in between. But Teilo’s been by far the hardest business I’ve ever built because we’ve I think back in it we were inventing a pricing model using software.

Alex Preece : It wasn’t that the industry was not paying sort of SaaS sort of modeled fees. We didn’t know the affiliate space that well, so we didn’t understand how we were going to use this platform to help our brands on one side and our buyers on the other. It was so much learning and we got it wrong a lot of the times in the early days, and it came back to bite us. And I think where we’ve always been very true and honest, it’s helped us sort of stay in our market leading position that we’re in today. But certainly it was not an easy ride. Yeah. We’ve had to spend more money than we ever had in any other business. I’ve been involved. But actually this business, we have raised a little bit of money, not much, but we did raise some money six months into the journey. We’ve used quite a bit of our own cash to get going, and then we started to deal with some very large reward and incentive companies that were helping corporates, employees make their money go further by sending rewards and getting them access to exclusive discounts and things in their own little ecosystems. So if you’re an employee of a Procter and Gamble or or stripe.

Alex Preece : You would have access to a perk system and that would allow you to buy or get rewarded with gift cards. And that’s what we sought to change because we didn’t at the time you were these businesses buying vast quantities of very few brands up front, so they’d have all 20s and tens and and $100 gift cards, sat on servers or in physical safes. And they were posting them and sending them out over big, heavy sales weekends or promo weekends. They’d run out of stock and they only had a few brands. So we sought to sort of eliminate all that and make it just real time API purchasing , seamless transactions that happen. So it was a really interesting sort of time of just trying to help these businesses with a price on all of the work for them and our business. We started to deal with some very big companies, as I mentioned, and at that point we realized we needed a bit more help and Credibility. That’s what we raise some money from, Passion Capital. Who are the guys? The partners behind Monzo bank in the UK and the US. I think they’re here. And, , and Gocardless Marshmallow are a few notable unicorns that they’ve backed.

Kevin Rosenqvist: You guys do reward programs for businesses as well as for employees? Like for the consumers as well?

Alex Preece : Not really. I would say how is best to describe Tillo. We’re a platform play so we’re more like Visa, Mastercard, stripe if you will, a bit like stripe. So we’re the infrastructure play and then companies layer on top like reward gateway and read you know personal group next jp. You know Revolut. There are lots of businesses that layer on top of intermediaries that use our infrastructure to go and get the brand’s valued gift card Instantly to bring back to them to give to either their business or to. Their consumer. So we’re sort of b to b to b to C or B to B in some respect.

Kevin Rosenqvist: So it’s not. So I mean I feel like everybody has a rewards program now, whether it’s a grocery store or a marijuana dispensary. You know it’s just there. They all have rewards programs. Are you guys involved in that space as well?

Alex Preece : No, we predominantly work with the brands that people love. Amazon love them.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Instacart hates them, but we all use them.

Alex Preece : We all use them. Exactly. But the brands, you know, TJX, like Walmart, Kroger,, Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s, ball carrier floor. Like we work with all of the big brands and they’re there on our brand network side. And then on the other side we have our buyers, which are the software perk providers , incentive companies or corporates. Typically, our clients work with thousands of corporates or hundreds of corporates, which in turn have thousands or millions of employees. So we’re right underneath the stack there, and we’re helping them when they want to have, you know, an opportunity to move 19,000 points onto, you know, $190 worth of Kroger gift cards, we’re the ones that enable that to happen. Okay. Okay. And connection point. But we don’t work with the physical stores to create loyalty.

Kevin Rosenqvist: And create loyalty programs. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. I think what one of the kind of one of the cool things that I saw when I was looking at what you guys do is that you you actually are able to transform, help transform crypto into gift cards, to which is, which is very,, forward, I mean, forward thinking. Like, I mean, I feel like, you know, people are still not sure what to think about crypto. It’s funny how I interview people on this show. Sometimes they think crypto is a bunch of BS. Other people think it’s the bee’s knees. And it’s funny too, because these are people that are big time people in finance in the world of finance. What? How? Talk a little bit about how the crypto aspect of what Zillow does works, and why you guys felt it was a good idea to get involved.

Alex Preece : So it started in 2007 16 for us. When we started, we came across a great business, a really good friend of mine who was already doing actually with an incumbent in the UK, and their customers were all over Europe and we had a lot of digital content, so they only had probably 2 or 3 brands. We enabled them at the right time, and I think 2016 was an interesting time for crypto. Crypto started to really jump up in popularity. Coinbase was doing quite well. They were growing. They were doing their thing. It has become much more visible in terms of above the fold advertising that was happening and just the visibility of the subjects becoming bigger. The crypto three times, I think in that year in value, I think it went from like 8 or 9000 pound to five or something like that. It was it was it was a big, big jp. And we found ourselves at the epicenter of just doing a tiny bit of it and really at the at the heart of it, we don’t touch crypto, but we allow third party platforms to plug into our infrastructure and to allow these consumers that are holding any form of crypto at all, from Bitcoin and ether through to whatever it might be, to move that value onto a method of payment.

Alex Preece : The consumer just knows how to use it. So we’re allowing the consumer to have an uplift that the merchants are paying here a bonus, a commission, so they can move some of their crypto and they can earn three, 4% cash back on their gift card for doing that. And the customer’s getting a new customer and the brand’s getting a new customer. Sorry. Right. And we’re allowing that to happen in real time, so you no longer have to move the money into your bank account and then go and spend it however you want. You can actually just move on to a gift card, get more doing that. And in Europe it’s a lot more prevalent, I think, because, you know, the days of the credit card point schemes and loyalty schemes that you see in the US, you know, where I’m based, an incredible, you know, you always put your things on your credit card because you’re earning points. That’s what my wife and I did.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I put everything on our rewards card and just pay it off because we. Yeah, we get free. Free money.

Alex Preece : Exactly. Getting free money now in the UK and Europe, that doesn’t happen anymore because those points programs could not exist under the the scrutiny and the the sort of the regulatory  legislation that went through to drill visa Mastercard fees down interchange. So there’s no interchange to play up anymore there in that market, whereas the interchange here in the US is absolutely gargantuan and the merchants paying. So, you know, you use your credit card in a nice mom and pop store down here. They’re paying like 3%. You definitely don’t pay 3% in England, I can tell you that, or France or Germany. So that’s where it’s become quite nice because it’s allowing these, these applications that are allowing consumers to trade crypto, use crypto to pay, use it for buying a fridge or a TV or whatever it might be. We’re allowing them to do that. And the consumers are getting more. They’re making their crypto go further, the value go further, the brands getting a nice,, new customer in there to experience that experience that might do either in their on their online store in store and the buyer. The partner is earning revenue through that as well, because they’re shaving and using some of that margin that the merchant’s giving to fund their platform as well. So if you look at a triangle that’s it’s win win win for everyone in that from consumer to buyer to brand. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Do you? Which is nice. What do you how do you where do you land on crypto? Are you a fan overall?

Alex Preece : Uh, am I a fan? I am a huge fan because I so if I look at, do I use it as frequently as I maybe could do? No. Do I trade it? No. Do I hold crypto? Yes.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Me too. What’s left of it?

Alex Preece : Yeah, exactly. And it. Do you know what? Like you don’t, you can sometimes forget in your own little world, if you’re not trading it when you travel, you can sometimes forget in your own little world if you don’t travel that much, and if you don’t trade, why you’d ever use it. And then when you do travel and you do move around the world, or you’re now a remote worker, or you’re you’ve got friends and family and you decide to go and visit them, you then start to realize how antiquated the payment system is and how much it benefits the banks, not you. Yeah. And I think there in itself lies the opportunity. Like Kevin’s based in Chicago or in Colorado. And I decided to go back. And I owe you because I’ll come to your house for some drinks or whatever. And I want to get you a gift to say thank you. The fees involved in doing that are gargantuan, like they’re a lot of money. People are making a lot of money. Why is this business still making, you know, hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue, but billions? I think now they’re doing 10 billion a month. I don’t know how much. And they’re still all they’re doing is doing smart money movement at a lower cost. But the point here is, that that doesn’t need to be any cost. And that’s the thing with crypto is you could I could send money from the UK or Venezuela or wherever to the United States to you and there’s no fees. I just sent you some money, some value. I think that is where it’s really interesting, and I am a believer of it in that sort of sense, because the world is a small place. It’s only going to become easier and quicker to travel, and I think money movement is going to become much more supercharged, meaning it’s got to be more real time, it’s got to move quicker. The visa Mastercards can’t do it that well and it’s very expensive. It is. And and you’re.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Right about the merchants too. The merchants are paying for all that stuff with the crazy fees. I mean, yeah, you do some larger transactions with a credit card, you start to add up what you spend from a business on credit card fees. And it’s it can make you want to throw up and they.

Alex Preece : Can and I will. You move money like I had to move some money from the UK to here to buy a car, and I can’t. I don’t have any credit here, so I had to buy everything in cash. So I moved it and I’m like, I’ve had to pay hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of fees using wires to move this money backwards and forwards to buy our cars. And it annoys you, sir. It annoys you because you’re like, well, actually, that doesn’t need to happen if the things aren’t in play today, not just yet, to allow you to do that in the way you trust your bank. And I’m not saying that trust. I trust my bank, but I trust my bank more than I trust crypto.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, yeah. And I think most people feel that way, which is why it’s hard to, to get that kind of idea of decentralization going. But how, you know, neobanks are becoming more prominent as well. The entirely online banks, they have more benefits, it seems they have lower fees, you know, to to what we were just talking about. And they really care about the user experience, which of course in this day and age is so important. You know how in your experience, how much of a disrupter are neo banks to the traditional banking system?

Alex Preece : They’re huge. I mean, I bank with a neobank. I don’t have that in the US just yet, but I probably will when I become more established here. Like SoFi or maybe Chime, I don’t know, but in the UK I bank entirely with Monzo other than savings. And it’s interesting and I think my and Revolut I use as well. Now why do I do that? Now I use them for different things, but I feel like I’m part of the majority in the. The way you use your banking app with a neobank is just built much more beautifully and much easier.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Like I said, it’s I use that it’s built with the consumer in mind. Yeah.

Alex Preece : And I just feel that their product people just seem to really learn the data around their consumers. They know what their consumers are doing and how they’re doing it, and their messaging and their flow of release notes is really in tune to their consumers. They know their consumer. Yeah. Do I receive release notes from my main bank, HSBC? No. Like the bank doesn’t. The bank app doesn’t change that much at all. I can do the same things with it. I just don’t use it the same. But I trust that bank with my savings. I keep my Monzo account actually quite light, so I move money out of it very quickly. So it comes in, I use it. And the other thing that most people use it for, which is what I use it for, is when you travel because they don’t charge the crazy FX fees there, they just use the mid-market rate for you to, to use a transaction. And that’s really nice. I do think they’re a huge disruptor. I think we’re seeing that with value creation. The revolut’s done for its shareholders. It’s incredible what the business has done. It’s incredible what Monzo is doing and others are doing. They are changing the paradigm of where people are banking, and that when Revolut do get a banking, people in their droves will be using that application because they have 10,000 people in their business and they have this incredible ability, like Monzo, to release beautiful products, fast, efficiently and learn from, learn from what they’re throwing out into the market quickly and iterate off the back of it, which can’t be said for the incumbents. So we’ll see that, I think. I think over the next decade or so, I think it’ll be interesting to see where the different generations sit because, you know, do my parents in law use a neobank? Oh, yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: My parents ain’t using a neobank. There’s no way.

Alex Preece : No. And it’s going to be interesting to see what happens over the next ten years or so, ten, 20 years, how our generation as we get older and then our children, what they’re using, because my kids all have green light as their application to put their money on in here in the US, or their pocket money or whatever to go and spend. It’ll be interesting to see how they use money. But, you know, one thing is for sure, if a bank isn’t listening to its customers and it’s relying on, I don’t know, it’s it’s incumbent customers. They’re hiding nothing there. So I think that is a dangerous place for them to be if they’re not iterating and pushing the envelope in terms of great customer experience within their banking application, then I think there’s there’s there’s problems for that bank. And I think we’re seeing in the US anyway with the credit union. You know, I was actually just interested.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I was just having a conversation with another guest yesterday about how, like, I recently had to call up my, my bank and it’s a major hongos bank and just the, the voice, like the automated voice of trying to get through the menus, I kept putting the little please enter the last four of your credit card number. I do it, we do not recognize that account. Like I’ve been with you for ten years. You can’t. How is this? How is this possible? You know what I mean? So when you have experiences like that, the younger the person, the less patient I feel like they’re going to be for bad user experiences.

Alex Preece : Conversely, I think it’s neo banks have maybe gone a bit too far. So I’m going to, you know, shout out Monzo. Their customer chat thing that they have with it’s like WhatsApp is horrible. Oh really? I just want to talk to you. Yeah. It’s not you know, don’t get me wrong, I think some of these big banks have legacy call centers that can work quite nicely for you. Getting getting through with one call, 1 or 2 rings. They have like those metrics that they follow. Firstdirect in the UK is a bit like that. I think it’s like three rings and they pick up the phone and there’s some interesting stuff there. Now that form of customer service, because they don’t have branches is really interesting and it any works that you think the WhatsApp thing works in the app? It’s horrible. It’s really hard and it doesn’t. I don’t know if they’re using ChatGPT now, so I don’t know. I run the query for a while, but I’ve tried to use it before and it takes longer. Yeah, much longer. So sometimes it can go the other way. They try to remove the no branches. , they create this beautiful experience, but actually they don’t have the,, the resources to be able to actually speak to consumers. They do it through these, you know, Zendesk sort of through WhatsApp, and it just doesn’t work.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah. There’s been a lot of times that I can honestly say, you know, that I don’t feel like calling. So I’ll just do the chat and then you’ve just got it open in like the bottom of your screen and you’re doing other work because it’s like 2 or 3 minutes between responses, because they’re probably talking to five other people and you’re trying and you just you it does. You’re right. It probably took me twice as long to chat than it would have if I had just called up and gotten my whatever I needed taken care of.

Alex Preece : You know what ‘s interesting, I think, is they’re all on a hiding to nothing with the fees. So how much are you willing to pay for banking? I think that’s where we’reum trying to help move the paradigm somewhat, using the brands that people love and the merchant commission rebates that are inbuilt in our model so that that can be shared with the consumer, but also the neobank as well as a revenue stream. And I think that’s where we’re trying to change that paradigm of, you know, cash back. You know, it’s great. It gets paid, it gets put in your account and it gets lost by paying your energy bill, toll fees or whatever it might be. Whereas if you can look at your reward program or your loyalty, , offering to your consumer base in a different light that uses existing commissions that are already there and the brands that people love. It can become a much more rewarding experience. And I know that’s probably I’m sort of edging down to this, you know, what we’re providing. But my point here removed Tiller from the ecosystem completely for the minute. I think when you’re giving a $10 card or a $20 card that you can spend to treat yourself, you think very differently than you would do if you just jumped into your account, and it just gets spent along all the other existing spend that you do.

Alex Preece : It’s no different than being in a store and then giving you a $5 coupon or $5 gift card to come back. If you spend this much on it, you look at that differently because that’s real value there. It’s not cashback. Cashback, I think is great in certain circumstances that we’ve seen it work really well I think. Does it build Levity and loyalty there for the consumer. I think the jury is still out there on that one. I think for Neobanks to buy now, pay later, very competitive industries where the consumer is basically just looking for the best deal. Yep. Instantly it’s like Amazon really, isn’t it? It’s like Prime. They’ve rebuilt the delivery network infrastructure. They’ve rebuilt everything. The payment system in which they’ve had to go back to scratch and do it all again so that they can provide this superior set up that no one can compete with because they’ve done it from scratch. They’ve rebuilt the payment infrastructure, the delivery infrastructure, the, you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s like we were talking about it’s the it’s too good not to use for the consumer. It’s too easy, too convenient.

Kevin Rosenqvist: It’s too easy.

Alex Preece : Yeah. But I think cashback is boring.

Kevin Rosenqvist: It is boring.

Alex Preece : It’s boring. It’s dull. It’s sort of like we offer two or they offer Three. They offer four. It’s. I don’t know, I just feel that like a big reward incentive companies are talking to corporations about employee engagement. I think when you use real value to things that people really like or love or have an attachment to that brand, there is. There in itself is something much more interesting and tangible. It’s more personal.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Personal, I think. I think that’s the key word for it. Yeah. Because I think too, like if you’re like one of those super like, you know, I’ve known those people who are super thrifty and, , you know, just really in tune with, with saving every dollar they can. You know, those people might gravitate towards a cash back kind of reward program, but the majority of us are not as much like that. And what I think I think we’d like to see those, like you said, those treating yourself with something mentally. It changes everything. Like you get a it’s like how many times you get a gift card from somebody, like a $100 gift card for your birthday and grandma or mom or dad or whoever says, no, don’t spend this on stuff for the kids. Don’t spend it on groceries. This is for you. Buy something for you. And like, it’s all fine and good. But admittedly, a lot of times I end up spending it at the grocery store because it’s just there. So it’s like half of half, six of one, half dozen of the other, you know, right when it comes down to your overall money. But when you feel like you are, you have like a fun gift card to something that you love. You cannot spend it on anything practical. And, you know, in a sense, or groceries or like you said, energy bills or things like that. You can only spend that at that one place, which is a fun, cool thing, and changes your whole perspective.

Alex Preece : It does. And it creates a memory potentially.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, that’s a good point too.

Alex Preece : I know my son, you know, he’s ten, he’s my daughter. I’ve got three. But Isabelle is eight. And I think, you know, at their birthdays recently, they got I mean, the gifting set up in America is far more generous. I think, just in general, like people do gift. They do, you know, they’re tipping. They’re they’re giving back a lot. I just saw Michael Bloomberg being given $1 billion. I saw that.

Kevin Rosenqvist: John Hopkins was a John Hopkins or I can’t remember. Yeah.

Alex Preece : Isn’t that it’s absolutely incredible. There’s not as much of that happening in the UK. I think obviously there’s more money here in the US, just more people making more money. So there’s more gifting that goes along. But I just think looking at my children and their birthdays and things that they’ve happened, they’re getting cards that their friends know that their friends love. And that creates an experience in itself. Like they want to go to the store. But I think there in itself is just the the interesting viewpoint of the neobank thinking about those experiences it could create by having their consers go into a store with their kids and they can use, you know, these gift cards in the store that they know they’re going to enjoy having an experience of buying whatever they might do.

Alex Preece: Well, shopping fun means shopping.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Dopamine, whether you’re doing it on Amazon or you’re doing it in a in a physical store. And but but yeah, I think there’s you’re right. There’s an experience to going in there. And it is funny that Neo banks encouraging people to go out into the world so that they’re not all digital all the time. Right.

Alex Preece : Exactly. Exactly right. We’ll see how this all pans out though. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, yeah. Well, Alex, I really appreciate you being here. The company’s great to have you on the show. I really appreciate all your time and all your information.
Alex Preece : I really appreciate that. Thank you for having me, Kevin. Thank you