Ben Milne of Dwolla participates in the “The Future of Money” panel at the Dublin Web Summit. Screenshot from livestream.com.
Less than a week after speaking at our conference, Thinc Iowa, Dwolla CEO Ben Milne flew across the pond to sit on a panel on Friday at the Dublin Web Summit, a two-day event featuring over 100 speakers (and I’d say, it’s a pretty awesome lineup).
Just before lunch, Milne participated in 20-minute panel titled “The Future of Money.” Moderated by Ben Rooney of the Wall Street Journal, the panel also featured Errol Damelin of Wonga, John Lunn of PayPal and Colm Lyon of Realex.
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Before taking audience Q&A, the four panelists introduced themselves and fielded a few questions from Rooney. One of the questions, ironically, brought PayPal’s Lunn to preach Milne’s gospel.
“Is this idea of [Square,] putting the ability of like you and me to be able to process card payments, is that disruptive?” Rooney asked the panel.
“That’s exactly what we did online, right? That’s how PayPal started,” Lunn said. “So, yes, 100 percent disruptive. It’s great, I don’t need to carry cash anymore.”
To that point, Rooney added: “What is it disrupting and how?”
Lunn replied: “One, it’s disrupting cash, and cash is a massive problem to everybody. Cash is over-expensive, costs more to make in many cases than it is actually worth, it’s bad for the environment, all kinds of things there. If you are able to use your card or something like PayPal or any of the other services to pay people face-to-face in the real world, that is going to disrupt this whole cash system and actually disrupt certain amount of whether we need a bank account or not.”
That comment, however, was followed with a rebuttal by Damelin of Wonga.
Take a listen to the whole panel yourself at livestream.com or click the image below.