The payments and finance space is changing faster than most of us can manage to reckon with. In this kickoff episode of Fintalk, Fi911 CEO Gary Cardone and Emerging Payments Association Director General Tony Craddock tackled the defining question of our age: Where do we go now?

As discussed in this episode, the movement of money isn’t just an abstract phenomenon. It’s a process that really matters to people. Therefore, we need to be careful to manage the overall security of the system, and have a safe and predictable way to move money.

As it is, there is already too much friction involved in this process. This translates to unnecessary costs and inefficiencies we could eliminate. As Tony notes, “There is too much time and not enough accountability or access.”

Both Tony and Gary emphasized that the solution begins with economic education. People need to be shown how money works; starting with our children, education on the compounding of money, investing, mortgages, and the basics of money movement is essential.

The episode also runs through several other fascinating topics, including the importance of security, the wave of regulatory change hitting the industry, and friction. As Gary and Tony point out, all these factors are symptoms of the fragmentation of the industry.

The general consensus: we’ve come quite a long way, but there’s still work to be done.

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