The Future Is Now: Emmanuel Addy Of The Money Cloud On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Be prepared to be out of your comfort zone. Often you’re juggling several different plates, some of which you know and some of which are very new but you have to be able to adapt to the situation.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emmanuel Addy.

Emmanuel is the CEO and co-founder of The Money Cloud, he started the company in 2004, before starting his company with co-founder Huw Jenkins, he was a solicitor. Throughout his career, Emmanuel has gained versatile leadership experience in legal, publishing and financial technology sectors. Emmanuel has extensive experience and expertise in financial services and the payments space. He has been a commentator on Radio 4’s The Money Box program and is a guest lecturer at Warwick Business School and the IESEG School of Management, Lille.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started my career in Law, did a law degree, qualified as a solicitor. But I decided that I didn’t want to work in my professional life as a solicitor. I moved into the world of publishing which is where I met my cofounder. We worked on a project for the UK government’s Department for International Development to look at remittances from the UK to 3 African and 3 Asian countries. That’s how I got started in the world of cross-border payments.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

International payments have always resonated with me. Every person who has moved from one country to another to study or work or search for a better life has their own story of trying to look after the family in the country they have left and need to send money to them. I’ve seen it first-hand in my family from Ghana. Sending money for education or day-to-day living expenses can make a massive impact on their lives. Working hard for that money and ensuring you get the best deal and it’s sent safely and quickly is obviously hugely important.

Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

Managing finances in this well-connected and materialistic world can be a challenging task for so many of us, as we look further into the future, we can see AI helping us to manage our finances.

Our AI tool aims to help users make smart decisions about their international payments and when they make them. The idea behind the tool is very simple it just accumulates all the data from your search and transactional data across the platform and creates your personal graph.

How do you think this might change the world?

It will be the first currency analysis tool that can enable a much more accurate prediction of volatile exchange rates and trends globally.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

In today’s connected world, data is the new oil. How we keep people’s data safe and in the hands of people who will use it for good is critical. We’ve made sure that we have introduced safeguarding, but we cannot predict world events that affect the volatility of exchange rates, so whilst being the most accurate prediction tool, it will never be 100% correct.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Most FX brokers and currency market specialists provide information about factors that affect exchange rates retrospectively. We saw a gap that would be able to provide information in real-time that affect the market

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Money is essential. It will help us get us to market, we have a strategy and team ready to kick start. It will also help us continue with our tech development. We’re innovators and ensuring we stay ahead of the competition and top of our game is key.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

We are raising funds currently to do just that.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I owe my parents everything. They taught me the values of hard work, persistence, and treating people as you would like to be treated yourself.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I do think that if you can do good, then you should. That can be in small ways in local communities or charities or certainly as the pandemic has highlighted, being supportive to friends, family, and neighbors. The pandemic has certainly made us all think about how we live our lives and what is really important.

When it comes to technology, tech developments have massively changed the way in which we live our lives over the past 10–15 years. There is so much more development in the pipeline and hopefully, this will be used for good. We see our technology as part of that next generation that can bring goodness to the world.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

  1. Surround yourself with people you trust.
  2. Be prepared to be out of your comfort zone. Often you’re juggling several different plates, some of which you know and some of which are very new but you have to be able to adapt to the situation.
  3. Build a team with people who are great at other things. You don’t need to be good at everything.
  4. No one gives you anything, you have to hustle, meet people, listen to your customers, and work at it.
  5. Look after yourself. It’s a tough and sometimes lonely journey. Your mental and physical health is a priority — don’t lose sight of that.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Marrying the traditional retail banking infrastructure with mobile wallets in emerging markets to provide financial equality with the unbanked. We are already in the process of doing this pan-Africa

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Learn from yesterday

Live for Today

Hope for tomorrow.

The important thing is never to stop questioning.”

I’ve always loved this quote from Albert Einstein. Life experiences shape who we are today and it’s always been important for me to learn from my past and try to do better in the future. Having started my career in law and then as a fintech entrepreneur, there have been many experiences both good and bad that have shaped me. Building technology and developing something new is a difficult journey. You have to be resilient, hungry, and questioning if we are to leave a footprint in the sand and leave the world in a better place.

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

  • TMC first got involved in the world of money transfers whilst working for a publishing company that won a contract from the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) to study remittances to emerging markets and during the project created the world’s first money transfer comparison site.
  • TMC has created a truly global footprint, to simplify and level the playing field, to help anyone anywhere manage and move their money. Wherever you are in the world, wherever you are sending money to and from, TMC can match you with the best rates and enable you to register with multiple payment providers and execute trades on a single platform coupled with a bespoke FX management platform to help manage your overseas payments.

TMC is now a cross border payments marketplace for government, NGOs, business, and consumer segments that:

  • Aggregate multiple financial services and act as the backbone infrastructure serving up multiple services and payment types on one platform, offering choice and value to its users
  • Provides a money management platform, to which additional revenue-generating services can be added
  • Delivers transactional capabilities and services to other mobile/digital platforms through a single API
  • Generates business insights and market data utilizing UK Innovate award-winning AI/machine learning platform to provide currency trending and analysis in real-time
  • Empowers the unbanked in emerging markets by offering financial services on a digital platform.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://twitter.com/themoneycloud

https://facebook.com/themoneycloudltd

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-cloud-ltd

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.


The Future Is Now: Emmanuel Addy Of The Money Cloud On How Their Technological Innovation Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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