Combatting E-commerce Fraud in the Digital Age: Insights from Kount’s Carlos Osuna Zemelman

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

fraud, e commerce, carlos, solutions, data, latin america, customer, merchants, chargebacks, lending, operate, company, equifax, business, points, payments, tool, gds, model, world

SPEAKERS

Carlos Osuna, Rich Alterman

00:21
Welcome to the show everyone. I am your host Rich Alterman and today we're syncing up with counts Carlos Ozuna. Zemelman. Carlos is a Senior Director of International Business Development with Kount a provider of artificial intelligence driven fraud prevention and digital identity solutions, which was acquired by Equifax in February 2011. With 17 years combined experience working with global brands, Carlos has an extensive knowledge of Latin American markets and a proven ability to build and execute complex business strategies. Throughout his career, he has served as a trusted strategic adviser to executives, and has taken a variety of leadership roles within marketing, product management, fraud, strategy and business development. Carlos studied business engineering at the Adolfo AI Benyus University, where he also earned his master's in human resources with a specialization in management excellence. Carlos also served as external staff for the World Economic Forum participating in their annual Davos meeting. On this episode, Carlos and I are discussing a wide range of topics surrounding trends for Latin America, in 2023. What's happening in the world of E commerce, why companies in the fraud space are growing so rapidly and so much more. But before we dive into the interview, please head over to GDS Link's LinkedIn and Twitter pages at GDS Link and hit those like and follow buttons. If you have not done so already, please subscribe to the Lending Link on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. All right now let's get synced with GDS Link. Welcome, Carlos, I hope you've had a productive week. It certainly has been an interesting week for the financial markets. Where are you joining me from today?

01:55 
Hi Rich. Thanks for the invitation. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk and tap a little bit. I'm currently in Atlanta, Roswell, Atlanta. I was born in Chile, so I've got bad Latino blood in me.

02:10 
Well, thanks. And thanks for joining today. Carlos, you've been with Equifax for 10 years now, but only in your current role since January of this year. Can you please share a bit about your role more on your background before stepping into your current role as well as before starting with Equifax.

02:22 
I just changed into a new role. It's a global role focused on the business development of Kount internationally. For organization I part of the Equifax group, Kount  in the way we look at International is everything except the US though every single market except that the US. So yeah, so I'm overseeing that whole market since the beginning of this year. And yeah, it's a great opportunity. A little bit of Kount for us. It's like the startup of the company. It has that soul, that spirit soul. When you go to their offices, they've got that startup low call the employees, the hoodies, the T shirts, sneakers, I tend to feel old, when I thought I was young, I get there. And I like No, I'm not young anymore. But a lot of my background, I studied the business in Chile. One of the things that I learned when I was studying was that there was the need and be a Charter Business Chile is that skinny little country down in South America, that Sprint knowmad, the copper producer in the world. And obviously that's kind of what drives our economy. And a lot of people want to work there. But they had a lot of there was a lot of opportunities in the HR side. And that's why I decided to do a, a master degree.  I had a job. Two minutes after I got out of the university. It was a great opportunity to be learning the Lot had the most amazing events of my life, like I saw avalanche of snow avalanche  in the Andes I had sudden collapse the ground and some of the softer like underground mines that we operated. I mean, we had sad events to where we lost a lot of employees then I was on the HR side but not on the HR that hires people I was more on the contract and administration of the most of the mines have, you know operate with a house on the mind, right? So you have apartment buildings, you have to feed the employees, you have to move them into the mine etc. So I was responsible for all those contracts for a little while. I ended up moving into into Equifax. It's been 10 years, as you mentioned, it's been a fantastic journey have been in every single role that exists in the Latin American team from being a charm the first six months and then moving into PMO, roles, operations, roles, billing roles, strategy, product. And for the last two years, I've been working with the Kount team. And growing, you know, our business footprint outside of the US, we've always been global. But while we're taking it even more seriously, with the help of our Equifax, Branding, you know, Equifax knowlage, NPWT,

02:32 
quite impressive background. I understand that you're pretty avid mountain biker. And you've had some interesting experience can be a pretty intense sport, do you find it as a way to kind of relax from the day to day work going on account? Or do you actually find mountain biking, you're talking about mountain biking in the Alps once? It can be pretty hairy there. I guess.

07:31 
That's a good investigation about myself. So yeah, now I started to find it funny to say that I'm a mountain biker, because I'll give you an example. Every time I go to the headquarters of Kount in Boise. When I say I'm a mountain biker, and they know I live in Atlanta, they start laughing like they laugh in my face. Like, where do you go to the hills of Roswell. I've been biking for the last almost 25 years since I was young, I would be on my bike. So yeah, I would say it's so good way to break stress, have fun, sports, it can be dangerous. I've had multiple injuries, doing it. I've learned that the best type of biking especially when you're already getting close to the 40s, you already have a family and you have to be more careful what you do, because you're the provider Right? Or at least in my case, cross country biking is really fantastic. It has risk, like any type of sports, but it's not like going downhill. And it's great for your health, but also how a great for, you know, breaking stress that they stressed that we get on our daily jobs.

08:50 
But you could always take some of your co workers over to Stone Mountain and ride down Stone Mountain. That's a pretty intensive experience. Okay, well, let's get down to business. So thinking about Kount where you work, what's the history behind Kount? How'd you guys get started? And you know, what was the use case that Kount was initially built to address

09:07 
that's really interesting story. Kount has about 16 years in the business that really started in terms of helping the payment side Kounts, bread and butter has been always about payments on the online payments. So what we call right Card Not Present, card not present for years has been where most of the fraud occurs. If we look at the card present, you normally have a chip on the credit card right? Before we only had the band once they started putting the chip on the credit card. There's still a little bit of fraud but it's much less than in the past. In the in that case Kount was trying to solve how to add can I solve the kernel present where a bin can be stolen all the data around that then of the credit card can be stolen and could be done with part two right and how Can we prevent from what we call chargebacks? Right, which affect 1000s and millions of merchants today, when they do they so they initially deal is how do we protect them. Kount is the first company to build the ID, fingerprint of the device, device, IP fingerprint, sorry. What is fantastic is that they didn't start with the first patent, they have the first patent in the world, they started evolving. And we today have over 30 patents. Now that use case where they really struggled for a long while, but then all of those theta attributes that are being used to prevent the payment side are very similar to the ones we've seen other sides of the business. So when we're talking about account creation, for example, today in our D, the world, maybe 16 years ago wasn't that much. But today, nobody goes to the bank to open their first account, right? It's like we're doing it with a computer or even your iPhone, or iPad or your, whatever type of device you're using. So again, there's a lot of need in terms of what information you'd have around that device, and that the door persona, in order to move ahead. So Kount, though it's started on the payment started evolving and moving into other sides of the business. And today, we are the only company in the world that can prevent what we call that into and the transaction as an anti fraud tool. And we can create those Deedle personas and prevent the merchants or the customers of the back the back right, of being defrauded or being attacked by fraudsters. So we're in the creation, we cover all the space around logins or a site payments, different types of payments, because you could have credit card payments, you could have crypto payments, you could have one time payments or record payments, right? Which also have different types of fraud around that. And then what we call compliance but includes all this, how can you stop chargebacks? How can you dispute? And recently, we've also incorporated resentment. So how can you dispute which tool and the ultimate anti said from zero doubt having to do heavy lifting of data and billing and manual

12:30 
work? So Carlos, just for some of our audience, sometimes we have to appreciate that our listeners may not know what certain terms actually mean. So talk about quickly, what does it mean, when we talk about a chargeback? What does it mean when we talk about re presentment. And I understand that you bought a company last year called mitigator. So maybe talk about how mitigator helps in those areas, and why you acquired them.

12:52 
So the chargeback really is when a consumer is calling their issuing bank and saying this transaction is not my right. And what happens as basically, that transaction is already happened, right. And the merchant is tends to be liable for the money that is on that transaction. So what normally happens, says that the consumer calls the issuing bank, the issuing bank, stops this whole citizen transaction, so who's liable. And so being the merchant, what we do is we protect our merchants and help them prevent fraud that can come from that process

13:35 
is a part of that can be what we call friendly fraud, right? Where I actually did make the purchase, right? But then I turned around and I say I didn't make the purchase, or it could be where someone has stolen or taken over my account where they're actually shipping to a different address than my home address. And for listeners, right? We all see now, when we open up our credit card statements online, there's an opportunity to dispute right, any one of those charges, so it's actually become easier for some of that friendly fraud, right to occur today than it was maybe in the past.

14:07 
Yeah, exactly. And then the dispute part is it's the instance also that the merchant can have to represent against that chargeback. In order to do that, you need a lot of information. So you need that digital transaction information. You need information that you might have received, right so you did you send the goods, did you not send it the other picture of the good being picked up or not? etc, and you get file that and you have to send it to the brands, the great car brands, there is a process where they revise it and they take a decision. But Mitigator which is the company that we acquired, though recently incorporate the represent movement and also some additional tools that exist for merchants in order to deflect chargebacks so we incorporate in real time information towards the brand. So the American Express, a Visa, Discover, etc. When the issuing bank is receiving a claim from the consumer, there are some platforms they use, were able to connect in real time and provide the information of the transaction so that that agent or the bank and try to make that consumer remember about that purchase that happens in real time. So we basically acquired mitigator, to expand our footprint in the fraud space, the tranactional fraud space, and I was mainly the purpose,

15:36 
I was reading on www.statista.com that in 2023, the E commerce fraud is expected to be about $48 billion, which is a incredible number. And by 2025, the E commerce fraud detection and prevention market, which is where Kount plays is expected to reach over $69 billion. So it's certainly a growing area it right it's a threat that continues to increase, fraudsters get smarter every day. Certainly your type of tools and artificial intelligence and things like that help combat, you mentioned crypto, does crypto present any unique challenges from a fraud perspective, that may be different from using a card.

16:17 
No for us, it's more a transaction and similar to what it could be using a debit card, ACH or GAO. So we're basically just connecting the dots around what we see associated with that device, that email if it was incorrect, or we would see velocities right crypto, that would be the only thing about might be different, but there are some quotes that we can use toward it, and basically confirm it's not fraud.

16:44 
So at GDS, most of our clients, and hopefully a lot of them are going to be listened to his podcast are really more on the lending side, whether it's doing consumer lending, or small business lending. So when we think about fraud, and you talk about fraud on the E commerce side versus on the lending side, are there some nuances to think about? Or at the end of the day? Is it is it relatively ubiquitous,

17:06 
or what we see is that in terms of fraud is complimentary. So whatever you've earned in terms of knowledge in the Before looking at the payment side, you can also extrapolate on other areas. So let's talk about account takeover. If you out a consumer that is using a device that you've never seen before, why would you let them in into their into their account? Right? Why not send them a second obligation factor? If you're seeing high velocities with that device? For example? Why would you want to let them in same thing of the account creation, that the lending space from my vision is that the lending space, the highest risk is when you start that onboarding process, and you have this customer where maybe you already do a KYC, but you're not checking other lines, we have great examples in across Latin America that has high fraud in the lending space where we think that a customer comes in, does bad use of information starts transacting afterwards. And then they start combining other household members to use either introduce their credit cards, etc. And they come back another person in that household and open an account. If you're not protecting where your creation part and contributing the information you have on the transactional side, you will hide risks that you'll continue having fraud coming in back and forth. So basically, we're we tend to say, complement information. If you're like in a buy now pay later space, whatever is happening on your payment side, on those settlements, you need to incorporate it in the front door. And who's coming in, because it could be one of the members that committed fraud the last part of your process.

18:58
Yeah, that makes sense. So as in lending ecommerce, merchants want a solution that maximizes revenue, mitigate fraud provides a great customer experience and clearly trying to reduce friction and abandonment rates. So how does how does count really help satisfy all of those tenants? And are there any use cases that you might share? Where you helped, you know, company address those points?

19:22 
That's a great question. And I would say that that's where we've been shifting. Many companies have been talking about fraud and fraud was the problem. And we've been seeing that if you're not using correctly your fraud tools, you're not only generating a problem in the fraud space or just you're generating also a problem in your revenue lines. Right. We've done a great example on on one of the largest cinema in Peru, for example. They had a high percentage of decline rates on their e commerce to read, when was the last time you bought a ticket for the cinema? At the cinema?

20:06 
Well, unfortunately, with COVID, I haven't been in a cinema I don't like since since the pandemic started, although I might have seen Maverick, but typically, to your point, you're gonna go to fun Fandango or something like that and buy it online.

20:17 
This is worldwide people. And I would say that cinemas are part of those companies that have been way ahead the commerce world. Maybe at the beginning, you were calling on the phone, right? But why? Why were you doing this? Because you want to spot once you get into the cinema, right? Right. So cinemas have been in this e commerce world for four years. And this specific customer was very high declining rates. And they couldn't know why it was happening at the beginning, they did everything. And they got to a point that they thought this was the norm. And in their business cases, they had already provisioned that as okay 20% Or over that as decline rates. And the reality is that if the client rates are not because of funds in the credit card, or in the debit cards, they shouldn't be that level at all, there isn't a problem, what we addressed was that basically, there was a lot of improvement to be done on the rules. So today, we've been shifting our way of thinking as anti fraud tools can be a way of increasing your revenues, especially for those that are not using the correct or addressing correctly the policies around the rules that you're using. You mentioned before the increase in E commerce, right, and how fraudsters just like, create new ways of fraud every day, right. And so there's always a human element that you need to incorporate that these tools. But I would say the most important part is the second part is you can't be changing rules every day yourself, right? Or with a human person. So combining both worlds with AI and machine learning and the power of our human brains, that's where we're living today with Kount, and helping customers, you know, best in class tool best in class bonuses to avoid fraud, prevent them from having false positive, as we call in our industry around decline rates of as much sales as possible with the lowest amount of chargebacks and fraud possible.

22:25
I mean, the use of AI in a credit card authorization, right? It's been around for a very, very long time, HMC was the developer of Falcon, which was a neural net technology, I think we were dealing with them over 40 years ago. So it's really nothing new, right. But with the advances in technology, things get better and better and better and more data, right. And let's kind of talk about that one of the assets of Kount is what you call your identity trust global network, which is a, as I understand it a consortium. So kind of, can you kind of talk more about the trust global network and how that works. I assume that your clients really kind of operate under this, give to get model where if you're part of the network, you have to be not only using the data on the front end, but then potentially reporting back performance and other things on the back end. So could you give us more insight on on how that works?

23:16
Yeah, that's how we live. That's how we work and operate today not being an expert in data attributes, right. So I just want to make sure that we know how we operate in our consortium of data. And our identity trust data network is basically we combine different elements. So there is a first element of Detail identifier data that we cover, location, payments, and then what we call UF, which is unique customer data on the detail identifier data, what we're able to capture with our solution is a device ID, we are able to capture IP addresses, as you know, IP addresses are a very important element. If you're seeing that multiple users are posted on to the same IP, that's what we call hot might be but on the other hand has higher risk of fraud right then email. So we've got score over the emails, were able to analyze that email the the words contained on that email look created by a machine, or it's it's a normal human made email. How many times have we seen it in our network? How many associations have we see? So the detailed identifier data has any element that we can study around that device, email, etc. On the location, the does, especially if you're in the payment side? When you're buying anything you have to put an address, right? So if there's an address that's associated to multiple fraud, for example, schemes, obviously, that's a trigger for our network. We don't create blacklist in our network. Our network is wide open And basically, each customer creates their own lists inside, because a good customer, or you could be a very bad customer for us, right. But um, the location where by that point is we're able to capture almost everything around that location that either the devices, or the billing address that's being appointed payments, any type of payment type, or talk in bank information, etc, etc. And then on the UDF, and so user defined fields, what we do here is open the opportunity for our customers to send us in real time data. So give me an example. Coupon Codes, there has been a lot of bad use of promotional codes in the past, right, we're able to make sure that that coupon is used once and not multiple times, for example, a loyalty point, or when we're in the airline industry, there's a lot of information around that ticket that needs to be set to us, for example, where are you going? What's the name of the airport? There? You're loudly now, what's the time between if you have a stop, right? What's the time between you law and then you have to take the other plane, there's three rules around that because you can't be taking a flight that's five minutes after you're allowed to do probably going to miss Right, right. So there's things that could be for fraud, other things that just do operate correctly, you don't want customers buying tickets on the airline side let you basically are going to lose. So that's how more or less how we operate the information that we can capture. I would say the beauty of it is how we can combine it in order to create a score, and then provide a assessment for a customer to take a decision, right in real time. Our score is based on two layers, a supervised model, which basically is a statistical, statistical model, more data. And in more time, the more calibrated and the unsupervised machine model is basically a ring rational linkage of data in real time. So how many times have I seen this phone this address this email? In my consortium of data, the more I've seen it, for example, it could be more risky, depending on the use, it could be either more risk or less risk. Yeah, it's

27:26 
interesting. You mentioned the airlines, my wife had all of her points stolen from one of the airlines. And we were able to get it back. And I had all my points stolen from one of my hotel programs. And I don't think people think think about that, right? Those things have value. And fraudsters will find a way. So you got to protect yourself there. One of the things I was thinking about on the Global Network is that you deal with multiple geographies, and you deal with multiple industries. And this data is all in the same repository. Think about maybe someone visiting a casino, where they are transacting a lot with the same card because they keep unfortunately losing. So with all of this unique data in the in the repository, does that create any unique challenges? Or are you able to maybe buy si si code or Naxa code, going to able to set up strategies that would be unique to the different types of E commerce at any one merchants doing?

28:18 
I would say that that's what many of our competitors struggle with tailored, so strong on spot for us. We, as I mentioned before, we don't set black, white, or whatever type of lists insider data, because you just put the best examples where you're in the gambling space, just you're going to see a lot of velocity with that credit card. Right? There are some motions around that for sure. And if it let's say we had a a rule that setting, you know, if it's the velocities are X amount, because it's the average of the market, the gambling industry would would fail in that sense, right that in your pack them negatively. So our solution works based on over 250 models that can be used, turned on turned off, right, depending on the industry you are you're you will probably have high velocities as a trigger of fraud or you will have, right that's the element of humans that you need to incorporate in these solutions. And that's what we incorporate. So if we know that you're in the gambling industry, your rule sets gonna be very different from maybe an airline in the street on the loyalty point site or right now. We operate differently. We've got the based on the industries, you'll have best practices that we see in terms of the policies that we implement for our customers. The rules that are set on the models, for example that are impacting them, and how AI works, might shift or differ depending on who you are and what industry you play.

29:59 
Let's So hop on a plane and take a quick trip down to Latin America and leverage some of your experience there and get some frequent flyer points on delta. So you know, as preparing for this podcast started reading a lot up on Latin America, it's an interesting growing market, there's been a rapid increase in the use of mobile phones, there's a big problem down there banked and unbanked consumers. But I also read that last year, there were I think, 50 unicorns that came out of Latin America. So it's an impressive market for clients that are listening to this podcast, or companies that are either on the lending side, or maybe on the vendor side that are looking at Latin America as a potential opportunity, any insights you can share with us, given how much time you spent down there, and some of the opportunities for those companies as well as maybe some of the challenges working in Latin America.

30:50 
It's a fascinating market, I think Latin America for a while, while we had a in terms of technology, we were some some steps behind most of the countries, there are some exceptions to the rules, right. But I would say most of them were a little bit behind all the developed countries. And when you're behind the technology, what you'll see is that the way you operate on a database changes, so the E commerce world, though it was growing, it wasn't growing as fast as you would see it. And when you asked for another license, or the adoption of the of the E commerce has to be more more concrete, right? It was growing fast. But the adoption was still lagging, why you didn't have a lot of unbanked a population. So they didn't have access to a credit card for itself. And most of the services were physical, right. So if you wanted to open your bank account, go to the right, things completely shifted after the pandemic. So we've got up before and after I still remember I was in I was in Costa Rica the week, where everything got close and left one day before they close the airport of Costa Rica. But that week, I was with one of the largest financial institutions there, I was presenting another tool, which basically was enabling them to kind of assess credit scores in real time so that they could also use it on online world. I still remember the director of that of that institution saying, Hey, I love it. This is fantastic. But we're 10 years behind this. No, I would love to have it. It's not something that we need right now. Right? Lockdown comes in a safe, we got back home here in Atlanta. I can tell you three months later, we had a call like, we need this now. Right? Right now there was a rush the world changed the most rats in America, because you had no way there was you cannot get out of your house. So what did you do so most, most of the government's started in a neighbor of them, opening accounts, need accounts and accounts. So there is a ramp up in terms of access or cash less use in Latin America boss or during the pandemic that enabled them help the E commerce grow as it grew right now. So most of the companies were growing so fast in the E commerce world, right? Because the government has helped to enable what is needed to grow with the E commerce world, right? So you need cashless solutions, like a credit card, like a debit card, etc. That's one thing that happened. So I would say that if we look at Latin America today, though, there's still gap against the developed country unlocked got closed during the pandemic, thanks to you know, the need of having access to cashless solutions, the use of E commerce having population tested and seeing it at work, etc. What are the risks? I say? And I think most of the companies are seeing it today, many rushed into technologies that weren't adequate for them or weren't prepared for for them. And that's kind of what we're seeing today. A lot of fraud was not considered that risky at that time. Why? Because they were growing so fast that fraud was two points again, 20 points, like who cares, right for I fight? Now. Now people are going to restaurants to other places, right? So the ecommerce is slowing a little bit, right? Because your total portfolio of caches needs to split with other things, right? That that now, those two points, five points of fraud are now something that you're looking at and say hey, I want those points as revenue now, or I don't want that fraud because I'm either losing the product etc. So I'd say many are now revising what the decisions they took two three years ago, and how they change into who More modern, some shows they're investigating more. Remember, they have to shift to online and in less than than a month, who takes a great decision in less than a month.

35:09 
But like, there's no doubt it was a global accelerant to move to digital. We know there's a large population of unbanked or underbanked. And it's still a strong cash society is a lot of that cultural. I mean, we see it here in the US as well, right? Where the Mexican population, there seems to be almost a fear of banks in some regard. So it's some of that cultural and you have to kind of break through that barrier to get people more comfortable. To use online financial products,

35:38 
I have to share my point of view, not necessarily my company's point of view, or it's my my perspective. So I think it's a combination of predictions of having the TASH sleeping with the cash under your pillow, and something that normally happens. I think there's also a mix of there's a lot of taxation, that taxes right, if you're on cash, it's easier not to babysit taxes. So right, I think it's more a cultural thing, as you're saying that there's so so that tradition of having the cash, the trust is unusual, not in others, right? You don't know where it's going, you're not seeing it, you're not feeling it, smelling it. So yeah, I would say it's a little bit of that education, too. There's a part of education. And then there's a little bit of the experience of others that have had, we've had a lot of financial crisis in some countries. And I think that the fear of those happy again is part of the race that these people are feeling.

36:38 
Look what we went through this past weekend. I know it's had an impact in Latin America would happen this past weekend. And I understand that it's even more complicated for some of the fintechs down there, and what they're going to do next. And anyway, we're getting close to needing to wrap this up. We you and I could talk for a long time. So I'm going to ask this question, because I think it'd be really helpful to the audience, I'm going to hire you as a as a consultant. And I want you to put together an RFP for me, identifying and developing a fraud, or implementing, I should say, a fraud solution, what would be some of the key things that you would have me looking at from an RFP perspective, as I'm evaluating a company like count, or any one of your many competitors?

37:24 
That's a really good question. So I always start with strategy, though, I always try to have a company that has a complete study, if your company is only in one side of the business and not multiple, you're only getting attributes of data that are located in one side. So as I was saying, an end to end solution is critical, because you're getting more data entries or data attributes around fraud and fraud is changing every day. So if you're just looking at one side, you probably you're gonna get hit on the other two. So a complete strategy is fundamental. I would include that biller is the expertise that had surround that team. And then the model step the running at the at the back end. So models that have been trained and tested multiple times. There's a lot of startups solutions that are coming, but they're lacking on the data network. Their models be fantastic, but how are they modeled if they don't have the data, or the element of expertise in time? So that's the other area that I would for sure request on that RFP trusted large brands that have been operating on it. And then I'd say flexible technology. It's very fundamental, when you're looking in our space, since that the optics you have to invest in these type of solutions is reduced, right? You're in developer time is always in a fight against a huge backlog. So why do I put this first? Or do I not put it at the end, right? So you need to have a flexible technology that if you don't need the end to end solution, maybe you just hire one model, and you start small and you grow in time? What's the solutions proven that it's working working correctly? I would say those can be elements. And then when you go back into what has to be contained, that trusted data network is from the mental, new companies might have the best teams, right and best models build up. But if you don't have the data to test them, I don't know where you build AI and machine learning is really relevant. To think that just with human rules and policies, you're going to be going fine today no, in the past maybe today you need AI and machine learning any tool that is static and role based, I would immediately not move ahead with them. And the last part is what us as humans touch Write that platform. How does that platform interact? Is it user friendly? Do I have to create? Do I need to know code in order to create the new policy rule? Imagine the cost of hiring those employees, right? training them, we've got a big turnover, right? Or just think about the company make if tomorrow they need to be trained by a third party in order to set the rules, then you'd never want to, you can't. That person is like, so important that nothing can happen to them. Right. They try leave it to chance, take any other decision. So I would say that those elements are really important when you're building our RFP, that's how I would assess it.

40:43 
So with with the availability now of chat GPT, our listeners could apply chat GPT this podcast and say, please develop an RFP for me using the talking points that Carlos just laid out. Probably. Okay, so, one final question, more of a personal question. To wrap this up. You've lived across the Americas, Santiago, Caracas, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Atlanta, and even in Cairo. If you had to leave the states and move to back to one of those places, where would you go and why?

41:18 
I've got half of my family in Santiago. I got a huge love for my country.  I think it's a fantastic place to live. I would choose Santiago.

41:30 
Okay, great. This is Rich Altman, and we've been sinking up with Carlos Ozuna Zemelman, Senior Director of International Business Development with ount. Thank you, Carlos for joining me today. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcast. And be sure to leave us a review. Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on Twitter at GDS Link that's at GDSLINK have a question for the show or have a specific topic you want us to cover. Hit the link in the description to drop us a note. Thank you for letting us part of your day. Make it a great one.