FinTech LIVE Interview: Tom Burton, GoCardless

December 15, 2024

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Tom Burton, Director of External Affairs & Public Policy at GoCardless, at FinTech LIVE London 2024

FinTech Magazine recaps its exclusive interview with Tom Burton, Director of Public Policy & External Affairs at GoCardless

On 22 and 23 October 2024, FinTech LIVE London Global Summit made its debut appearance at 155 Bishopsgate for a two-day, hybrid conference that fostered innovation and collaboration between the world’s leading fintech executives.

Throughout the event, attendees had the exclusive opportunity to hear a range of panel discussions and keynote presentations from several internationally acclaimed organisations, such as Mangopay, Mastercard, SAP, Visa and Santander.

Our event this year also marked the launch of the inaugural Global FinTech Awards. This award ceremony celebrated the inspiring organisations, individuals and startups that consistently ensure that excellence and innovation lie at the heart of their work.

Across 18 categories, our prestigious award ceremony acted as a platform for executives to showcase their latest innovations in our industry and helped spark inspiration amongst those who wish to take their first steps in our dynamic field.

Here, we recap our exclusive FinTech LIVE London interview with Tom Burton, Director of Public Policy & External Affairs at GoCardless.

🎤At FinTech LIVE London Global Summit, Tom featured on our ‘Open Banking’ panel alongside Huw Davies, Co-founder and CEO of Ozone API, Henk Van Hulle, CEO of Open Banking and Nick Corrigan, President International of Global Payments Inc.

Tell us a little bit about GoCardless and what they do.

“GoCardless is a global banks payments company.

“We operate in over 30 countries and we process around $130 billion worth of payments every year.

“We’ve got around 100,000 customers and we’re growing at a rate of knots.

“We’ve just acquired a couple of businesses in the last couple of years - one of which is very focused on data, Nordigen - a Latvian based business and we also recently bought Nuapay as well.

“The reason we have done that (got the two businesses) is so that we can build out our end-to-end capability around account-to-account payments. We offer direct debits, instant payments, recurring payments and, in the not-so-distant future, we will be offering disbursement.”

'Open Banking' panel at FinTech LIVE London Global Summit 2024

Talk us through some of the key takeaways discussed on stage in your ‘Open Banking’ panel discussion.

“It was a great session on open banking.

“I think we are at a pivotal moment in the UK from an open banking perspective - we’re expecting to see some new developments, some new announcements coming out from the regulators and the government which will be really interesting to see and will help shape the future landscape and hopefully put it on a sustainable footing for the future.

“In the meantime, we are we’re having great conversations with customers as well who are excited about what open banking can offer their businesses.

“Some of the benefits that they are starting to see is, very notably, much cheaper payments - certainly compared to card payments - faster payments as well so they are receiving the money in their bank account immediately rather than having to wait several days for it and increased fraud protection.

“It is an exciting time for open banking in the UK.”

Tom Burton, Director of External Affairs & Public Policy at GoCardless