Q&A with Greg McCormick, Chief Strategic Business Development Officer
As one of the Mojaloop Foundation’s newest Promoter Members, we recently interviewed Greg McCormick, Chief Strategic Business Development Officer at Sybrin, on how they will support the Mojaloop Foundation’s vision and mission. Promoter member Sybrin will continue to contribute at multiple levels to the growth of Mojaloop and support the Mojaloop Foundation.
Please introduce yourself and your company.
GM: Sybrin has been involved in the banking and payments sector in Africa for 30 years. We have experienced the need for financial inclusion first hand and support improving access for all by providing affordable software and solutions for banks and government. Our software proudly runs several African countries’ clearing houses, and now we are thrilled to be partnering with the Mojaloop Foundation. This partnership will expand our offerings and improve the cost of providing inclusive finance.
How will your background support the development of the organization?
GM: Sybrin understands emerging markets; we live in emerging markets. With more than 1,000 projects completed over more than 100 customer organizations, we have the broad experience to understand what is needed. With 4 central clearing houses, 22 of the 44 banks in Kenya, 10 of the 15 banks in Tanzania, and 7 of the 11 banks in Rwanda as customers, as well as country level ISO20022 conversion delivered, we also have the specific experience and expertise required to make a difference.
Why is Mojaloop Foundation’s mission of financial inclusion important to your organization?
GM: Financial inclusion is a key enabler in reducing poverty and enabling equality, and as an organization established on the African continent with its largely unbanked population, this is a mission that is close to our hearts. We are fortunate to be able to use our three decades of experience working in this arena to provide solutions that enable and develop the unbanked and underbanked, thereby helping drive economic growth. We hope to play a key role in the empowerment and upliftment of the society within which we operate.
What excites you about most about the Mojaloop Foundation? What are you looking forward to most?
GM: Despite digital financial services emerging in more than 100 countries, more than 1.7 billion people in the world are unbanked. Yet two-thirds of the underserved own a mobile phone. Poverty cannot be adequately addressed without access to the required financial tools. The Mojaloop Foundation has rightly targeted ways to bring down the costs of providing those financial tools via open source software and is proving to be a magnet for like-minded organizations. Joining this community, working together to solve these problems is both exciting and rewarding. We are humbled to be doing so.
What other types of companies do you think might benefit from joining the Mojaloop Foundation?
GM: We need to build a community of innovation. Entrepreneurial organizations providing low cost, easy to implement and easy to manage solutions that drive integration, interoperability, collaboration, and information sharing will be key to bringing down the costs in the ecosystem. The required solutions have to be easy to build, manage, and maintain. Doing so makes it affordable. Safe information sharing reduces the cost of duplication and improves risk management, therefore reducing the costs associated with fraud and compliance.
