the idea of an online checking account or virtual banking
And so it's not like virtual banking is dead
It's still quite alive and well
But the earliest pioneer in that is no longer in business
because it was successful enough to be bought out for a nice valuation
And the company that followed on from that, it stayed private for a while
The backend of that helped other banks to develop online banking systems
They got into the software side or the tools and infrastructure side
We've talked about crowd-funding and business financing
And businesses have been doing financing in alternative ways, or
creative ways, for a long time
So this isn't entirely new, but the scale of it, and
the scope of it, is astonishingly new
I can reach out to the world and find people to invest in my new business idea
or to lend me capital from all over the planet
This, we couldn't do before
This was hard
And so we've reached a point where you come up with a creative idea
You don't have to just go to a couple of VCs
You can go to the world and you can find angels out there willing to pony up some
cash or even small investors willing to fund your new movie or
your new creative game or your new idea or your art
So crowdfunding can be both large and small
And it opens up huge opportunity for
bundling ownership in a company with ownership of physical or
tangible products or services or social welfare and goods, as well
So crowdfunding is a big opportunity to do new things that we
couldn't have done before
Payments in retail transactions
Maybe you haven't noticed this in your life
Maybe your life has not turned upside down because of new payment systems
But if you live in China, and you have looked over the past five years
you will say, we went from a country of most people
using cash over a five-year period where any
kind of digital payment or including credit cards, debit cards were rare
They just weren't used that much, to where 63%
of the population are using electronic payments of some sort
And they're using their phone to pay for taxis
groceries, rent, utility bills, many other things
It's just the normal way to pay for things
just like we would think of a bank account as a normal way to pay for things
But you would rather have your WeBank
than to have a traditional bank and not have electronic payment systems
And so, these retail transactions are being facilitated by this, and
the cost is also declining a lot, these new digital wallets
Some of them are expensive and some people say
I don't like PayPal, a dominant payer because they're too expensive