Welcome to another exciting episode of Entrepreneur’s Enigma with your host, Seth Goldstein! Today, we have a truly remarkable guest joining us from the sunny shores of Spain—Kieron James. A seasoned entrepreneur with 30 years of experience, Kieron has made waves in the ICT sector and is now revolutionizing the world of payments and fundraising as the CEO and founder of Wonderful.co.uk.

His journey began with a philanthropic project, Wonderful.org, aimed at providing fee-free fundraising, and has evolved into a full-fledged fintech venture leveraging open banking.

Kieron will share insights into his entrepreneurial highs and lows, the concept of open banking, and the freedom and challenges that come with being an entrepreneur.

Tune in as we dive deep into how Kieron is changing the way we bank and raise money, and get inspired by his innovative approach and relentless drive!

Key Moments

[04:56] Progressive UK regulator stimulates innovation, benefits consumers.

[07:57] Open banking expanding globally, UK leads.

[09:25] Embracing technology and regulations to create opportunities.

Find Kieron Online

https://kieron.net < Blog

https://wonderful.co.uk < open banking payments website

https://wonderful.org < online giving platform

https://soul.academy < music profile (one of my hobbies is music production and djing)

https://linkedin.com/in/kieronjames

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Transcript Provided By CastMagic.io

Seth [00:00:00]:
Entrepreneur’s Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship to the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast.

Seth [00:00:34]:
I am your host as always Seth. Today, I have a consummate entrepreneur. He’s been an entrepreneur for 30 years. And that’s incredible. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 16. That seems like way too much as it is. But 30 years, Kieran James is here with me today straight from gorgeous, sunny Spain. But he isn’t Spanish.

Seth [00:00:57]:
He’s English. But he’s smart and gets away from all the dreariness that he is in England. He goes to Spain, so it’s been nice. Be though he has said, you know, that recently has been some rubbish, which is a very, British term, rubbish weather. So hey, Kieran. How’s it going, buddy? How are you doing?

Kieron [00:01:13]:
Very, very well. Thank you for having me, Seth. Good to be on board. 30 years here. I just wanted to point out I started at school, just in case.

Seth [00:01:21]:
Anyway Oh, that’s

Kieron [00:01:21]:
a joke. I’m joking. I’m joking. Yeah. And and and we split our time now between here and London, so I’m kinda 50% here and

Seth [00:01:29]:
Also, you get the best of both worlds. Yeah. Best best of both worlds, which is nice. Exactly. That’s kinda handy. So you have scaled to start businesses in the ICT sector, which is what? Was I ICT?

Kieron [00:01:41]:
Information communication technology. So broadly dealing in zeros and ones for the best part of those 30 years. I had one quick venture into selling physical product, but it didn’t work out very well for me. So I’ve I’ve always stuck.

Seth [00:01:53]:
Mostly most mostly binary. Right? Ones and zeros. Ones and zeros.

Kieron [00:01:57]:
Much easier.

Seth [00:01:58]:
Exactly. And now you are the CEO and founder of Wonderful.

Kieron [00:02:01]:
That’s right.

Seth [00:02:02]:
And it is at wonderful.co.uk. So you’ve actually got a really cool domain name, which is cool. And, and it provides simple, fast, secure payments, instant bank payment technology. Essentially, it’s not it’s non evil payment processing, which is the kind which is get it? Wonderful. And then you but this all started when you had a nonprofit. It’s a nonprofit. Yeah. Wonderful.org, where it’s essentially fundraising without the fee.

Kieron [00:02:33]:
That’s right. So, yeah, it’s been quite a Amazing. Quite a circuitous journey into what we’re doing today, but it started started life we we used to call a project back in 2016 when we started the side hustle without the hustle. So that was the the fundraising platform. 100% philanthropic. It was a great thing for the devs to be involved in, so they enjoyed giving up lunch breaks and coffee time to build a website that was completely about giving back.

Seth [00:03:00]:
That’s awesome.

Kieron [00:03:01]:
That created a bit of a success paradox because, obviously, the charities loved it, but as it grew Oh,

Seth [00:03:07]:
of course.

Kieron [00:03:07]:
All of the money that we got from our corporate sponsors just went to paying card processing fees. So we ended up in this, situation where we thought, well, we’ve got this really low ceiling now on our impact and reach. We need to remove it because, otherwise, we’re gonna be stuck serving this number of charities, and we can’t go any further. And so we found the solution in open banking and, consequently sold the day job business, which was telecoms at the time, and moved everybody from a side hustle without the hustle into a full time payments fintech business.

Seth [00:03:38]:
Yeah. So what is open banking? I mean, I versus closed banking. I mean, that’s a term that I don’t think a lot of people understand. So explain that.

Kieron [00:03:45]:
Absolutely. And so it’s a bit of an unfortunate name because if you’re, you know, a user of open banking, it’s probably the last thing you want is for your bank to be open from a security point of view. But actually Yeah. Open banking describes the open APIs. So back at around the time we kicked off the fundraising platform, the, competition and markets authority in the UK wanted to open up innovation in the financial sector. They basically told all the banks to make or all the bigger banks to make the APIs accessible for authorized Fintechs like us. That basically allows us with the consent of the consumer to move money directly from the consumer’s account to the retailer’s account with no other intermediaries. So, basically, taking probably about an ACH on steroids.

Kieron [00:04:32]:
So ACH on steroids? Exactly. So instant settlement, you know, and and incredibly cheap because you remove all of those people and you can settle anytime 247.

Seth [00:04:43]:
Oh, that’s that that won’t happen in America very soon. I know there is a push for open banking in America, but bureaucracy is what I was gonna say. I mean, England’s known for their bureaucracy too. I mean, come on. Have you ever seen parliament?

Kieron [00:04:54]:
They

Seth [00:04:55]:
they they throw stuff at you.

Kieron [00:04:56]:
With without a doubt without a doubt. But I think what we do have in in the UK, which has been great, is kind of a progressive regulator in this sector. So really keen to stimulate that kind of innovation. And it’s a great outcome for the you know the end users because we all use debit cards and credit cards. And when you’re you’re paying with one of those, you kinda think, well, that was pretty straightforward. But what you’re not understanding a lot of the time is just the costs involved in the settlement times for the merchant. And whilst the merchant’s picking up the tab for all of that, invariably, they’re gonna hand that back to you as the retail as the customer, sorry, in increased prices. That’s they’re not gonna just say, okay.

Kieron [00:05:31]:
That’s fine. That’s what it costs us.

Seth [00:05:33]:
Or there’s actually a growing trend in America where they charge they’re allowed to charge the 4% back. So if you pay with cash, it’s cheaper than if you pay with card, which I think is kind of a little rotten. And I’m on the I’m at I mean, I, I, people hate me by credit card. I eat the fee, you know, it might, I incorporate into the cost of doing business essentially. And, but then I also went to a rest of Greek restaurant in my town recently, and they said, if you pay with cash, we’ll give you 10% off your order. Instead of us instead of them saying, if you have to use credit card, you can use credit card. Fine. It’s gonna be this price.

Seth [00:06:06]:
But and but they did more positive spin on it saying, we’ll give you 10%, which is more than they would they’re losing more on that, but they’re getting cash Exactly. Than if they were just to charge you 4% more, which is more negative in my mind against And I

Kieron [00:06:20]:
think that’s I think that’s that’s a really good example of what you can do with those savings. You know, a lot of people go because 4 percent’s really that seems really steep. Here in the UK typically are about 1.4% and 20p. So there’d be a flat percent, you know, pence per transaction.

Seth [00:06:37]:
I might be wrong with 4 I might be wrong with the 4%. I think But it might be off in the 4%, but or they might be saying, like, it’s gonna be 4% because it’s re I don’t Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never seen 4%. I’m like, that’s a lot. But yeah.

Kieron [00:06:48]:
But the thing about that is everyone looks at that and goes, oh, well, it’s only 1.4%. It’s not that much. But when you take that, you see that’s the percentage of your revenue coming in. But if you take that as a percentage of your net profit, then by our calculations, you’re up to kind of 18, 20% of a small businesses net profit just to get paid, literally to get the money from the consumer into their account. It’s nuts.

Seth [00:07:10]:
Yeah. I think QuickBooks actually is 1.3. I think that’s the reason why I do it through QuickBooks. I don’t do it through another payment processor because QuickBooks, they’re getting you every which way. Yep. So they’re like, we can afford to We’re gonna take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show. Give you a lower rate on your credit card processing because we got you on everything else. You know? The the, you know, the whole QuickBooks online fee every month, you know, versus so they get you everywhere else so they can do a little bit

Kieron [00:07:36]:
more. Absolutely.

Seth [00:07:37]:
So how so you were doing the side hustle.

Kieron [00:07:40]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:07:41]:
You saw the benefit of making open banking a reality. So you’re doing it really on the cheap, which is good on the payment processing side of things because you’re able to because in the UK, open banking is a thing. Are you only in the UK? Are you international or not?

Kieron [00:07:57]:
Currently, we’re only in the UK. We’ve got about 5 and a half 1000000 small businesses in the UK to go at. Not using us yet. That’s the size and potential market for us, which is which is huge. And I think this you know, it doesn’t matter where and how you’re receiving money. If you’re getting paid, then it makes sense to use open banking. So we’ll focus very much on that. There’s a lot of there probably I mean, the UK plays the trail with this, and I think there are now 60 jurisdictions that have kind of emulated what we’re doing around the world.

Kieron [00:08:25]:
So there’s plenty of market to go at. I’m with you.

Seth [00:08:29]:
The UK to go at? Doesn’t it like, in the UK, it’s not a big country, but, you know, you think about it. Why did you say 5, 50,000,000?

Kieron [00:08:36]:
5a half 1000000. 5a half 1000000 FMEs.

Seth [00:08:38]:
5a half 1000000 on a small country, and that’s a good portion. That’s a good nut to crack.

Kieron [00:08:42]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Seth [00:08:44]:
That’s great.

Kieron [00:08:45]:
So we’ll kinda hit those by integrating with as many ecommerce platforms. So we’re currently live on WooCommerce, for example. You can just add us to the payment at checkout as one of those fast. Yeah. Options to pay. And then we’ll just roll out similarly with this with as many of those platforms as we can and then accountancy platforms, and then we’ll look at the international markets. So we’re kind of waiting a little bit for some of those countries to play catch up with the regulation, but we’re pretty confident that’s gonna happen.

Seth [00:09:12]:
That’s gonna be awesome. So you’ll grow with them. So you’ve been entrepreneur literally 30 years. What is the best thing that’s in your mind being an entrepreneur? Like, what’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Kieron [00:09:25]:
I love the freedom. You know, I love this kind of phase particularly right now where you’re doing all of the really exciting innovative things with technology. I love kind of exploring how regulatory changes create opportunity because a lot of people look at regulation when we were in telecoms and, you know, regulation right in the central of all of that. And they see that as being a blocker to innovation. And we’ve always just thought it’s the exact opposite because, you know, one business’s barrier to entry is another business’s opportunity. And that’s the way I’ve always looked at regulation. So we kinda always try to look at emerging trends and and see what’s on the horizon, whether, you know, you mentioned the domain name that was registered out of out of Nominet, our UK domain name registrar in 1998. We’d be kind of sitting there thinking, what can we do with that?

Seth [00:10:12]:
There you go.

Kieron [00:10:13]:
Wonderful.org was probably bought 18 months later. So, yeah, again, those domain names were back in the day when we were doing domain name registration. Then we moved into company formations online. We’ve done online telephony. We’ve done payments. We’ve done abandoned cart software.

Seth [00:10:30]:
You’re experienced in this realm. So it makes sense that this kind of is a it moved in a logical transition from one thing to the next to the next to the next.

Kieron [00:10:41]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Seth [00:10:41]:
That’s pretty wild. So what keeps you up at night as an entrepreneur or not much? I mean, are you at the point in your entrepreneur journey that you’re not stressing the small stuff? Or you’re

Kieron [00:10:50]:
No. No. For sure. I think I think one of the things that that struck me the other day was that you you know, you you’d never really get away even after all these years from that imposter syndrome. You still think there’s stuff that I’m pretending I’m doing here, and I’m not really qualified to do it. And, actually, there were there were 6 words said to me by one of my colleagues the other day, which really resonated because you do feel like you’ve got to be able to do the marketing, you’ve got to be able to do the finance, you’ve got to be to do the technicals that you’ve gotta be able to and my finance manager asked me a question. I didn’t know the answer and I went really. I’m really I should know I’m really embarrassed and she went Kieran, that’s what you pay me for.

Kieron [00:11:25]:
And those six words were just kind of gave me that imposter syndrome relief for a moment. I thought, you know what? You’re absolutely right. That is what I pay you for. Let me just relax and not have to stress about everything.

Seth [00:11:36]:
But that’s what it’s all about is you do what you’re good at and you hire for.

Kieron [00:11:39]:
Completely. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t remember who said it was a smart comment. You know, I fill my boardroom with smarter people than I am. That’s where I run the business. Probably Steve Jobs or someone like that, but it makes a lot of

Seth [00:11:49]:
Steve Jobs. Jobs. I don’t think Steve Jobs would have gone that far. Someone of that caliber would. You know, I think Steve Jobs is like, it’s

Kieron [00:11:56]:
all me. It’s

Seth [00:11:57]:
all me. Who knows? And then, so what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Kieron [00:12:03]:
What physical thing?

Seth [00:12:05]:
If you’re physical, you can go as woo woo as your

Kieron [00:12:07]:
last one. Definitely my phone. I don’t leave home without that who does these days because I think that’s that point of of connectivity. But also, I think just that notion in my head that it’s okay to turn it off as well. You know, that it is it is really important to take a break and step away from it all. So I I will there’ll be few times, but there are times when I do turn off my email. I say you’ve got my mobile number. Very rare that I’ll turn it off completely, but email, sometimes I turn off and just have a break.

Seth [00:12:34]:
You’ll try. You’ll try in the in this generation. So great. So people can find you at wonderful.organdwonderful.co.uk. Because and then I’m sure you’ll eventually get wonderful about everything else while you’re at it, you know, as you as you branch out into the world. But you’re also what what’s your favorite social media platform of choice?

Kieron [00:12:55]:
Probably LinkedIn. So I’m LinkedIn, Kieron James, kier0njames. Feel free to connect there. And if you’re remotely interested in any of the personal stuff, I’ve also got a blog at kieron.net, another domain name. There you go. Kier0n.net.

Seth [00:13:11]:
You’re also a big traveler. So isn’t that what isn’t that what your, whole kiran.net is all about, like your travels and stuff?

Kieron [00:13:18]:
Yeah. To an extent, what I think the focus now it used to be a little while ago. I did a little bit more on travel, but more recently, it’s more on running and a little bit on the yoga and also the podcast. So it’s the home for all those three things, really.

Seth [00:13:30]:
That’s awesome. That’s great. And we’ll have all these in the show notes. And, Kieran, thank you so much for being on.

Kieron [00:13:35]:
It’s been my pleasure. Thanks ever so much for the opportunity, Seth. I really appreciate it. You take care.

Seth [00:13:40]:
Awesome. And we’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the marketing podcast network@marketingpodcast.net. Gold steamingi. I hope you have enjoyed this episode.