Trustnet Magazine 67 November 2020 | Page 16

Tom Slater , joint manager of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust , tells Jemima Kiss how companies that can take the pain out of online payments are reaping big benefits
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Tom Slater , joint manager of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust , tells Jemima Kiss how companies that can take the pain out of online payments are reaping big benefits

Paymasters of the Universe

The value of your investment and any income from it can go down as well as up and as a result your capital may be at risk .

When Tom Slater met Amazon 15 years ago , he wanted to know how the company was planning to improve the retail experience for its customers . The answer was in taking milliseconds off page-loading times . “ With payments technologies , what really matters is doing everything you can to drive velocity and volume of revenues for your customers . And there are huge gains to be made from that ,” he says . These kinds of incremental , friction-reducing improvements are key to the efficiency of payment transactions . Traditional banking and payment processors are being outpaced by Amazon , Apple and Google ’ s innovation in online payments . And now a new breed of dynamic technology companies are claiming their share of this market by offering faster and more consumerfriendly services . In a market worth nearly $ 2tn , you don ’ t need much market share to create a very significant business . Stripe , Affirm and TransferWise are all private companies in the Scottish Mortgage portfolio , and all founded

A new breed of dynamic technology companies are claiming their share of this market by offering faster and more consumerfriendly services

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