For our cover story this month , Paul Stoddart , President at GoCardless , shares insights from his nearly 30-year career in FinTech , payments and financial services . In this interview , he discusses key milestones that have shaped his journey , the recent acquisition of Nuapay by GoCardless , and his vision for the future of bank payments and FinTech innovation .

“ As a company that has specialised in bank payments for 10 years , GoCardless is in a prime position to drive this oncein-a-generation transformation . We ’ ve spent a decade moving money directly from one bank account to another and making bank debit fit for the digital age . We ’ re also in the process of building the world ’ s bank payment network , so adding open banking and other forms of A2A real-time payments to sit alongside our bank debit capabilities is a natural next step ,” said Stoddart . part of their platforms , this is sadly not the case .” Read more on page 17 .

In this month ’ s Editor ’ s Question , I ask experts : How is the rapid growth of DeFi protocols impacting traditional finance , and what regulatory challenges and opportunities does it pose ?

Sonia Shaw , President at CoinW , David Ben Kay , President at Function X Foundation and Nicole Valentine , FinTech Director at the Milken Institute offer their thoughts on page 25 .

Why do decision-makers turn away from outsourcing ? Ian McAlister , General Manager at CRS Technologies , debunks common myths about payroll and HR outsourcing , highlighting its benefits such as increased efficiency , risk mitigation , access to specialist expertise and the latest technology for businesses of all sizes . Read more on page 32 .

For firms operating in the insurance industry , transactional volumes and associated data are growing year-on-year . However , managing this growth with spreadsheets presents an operational inefficiency as the industry continues to expand . This is worrying , with more than one-third of firms still relying on spreadsheets for their data matching and reconciliations . Piers Williams , Global Insurance Manager at AutoRek , explores this further on page 39 .

We also have a range of ‘ Intelligent ’ pages , which feature the latest strides in the cloud , security , mobile , software , Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence space .

I hope you enjoy this issue and if you would like to contribute to any future editions then please do not hesitate to contact me .

Ellen Flannery , Editor

Read the full interview on page 48 .

Mark Jow , EMEA Technical Evangelist , Gigamon , asks if the financial sector is prepared for the invisible threats lurking in the cloud . He warns : “ While it may be reasonable to assume that cloud providers provide security by design as

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