“Could Jersey go cashless?” – tech entrepreneur tells Island to aim high

Thursday 22 October 2015

Jersey has a unique opportunity to become a digitally-enabled community and should aim high with projects to move to cashless payments, create superfast broadband access across the whole Island, or prepare the infrastructure for driverless cars.

That’s the view of tech entrepreneur Simon Devonshire, who was in Jersey yesterday to speak at a Fintech conference organised by Digital Jersey.

Mr Devonshire – who has worked with O2 and co-founded Wayra – says that Jersey’s financial services industry, public-ownership of utilities, and presence of potential high net-worth investors, mean that the Island has a unique opportunity to embrace the digital future.

But he says that the Island must get over an attitude that can be defensive and risk-averse – and that we need to toughen up and stop paying so much attention to negativity.

But the key, according to Mr Devonshire, was being bold, and being able to demonstrate success to the wider community.

He said: “Can you move to a virtual currency? Contactless payment is the dominant payment of transaction in cafes, shops and restaurants in London at lunch-hour now – and that happened very quickly, over a very short period of time. Moving to a cashless society is fascinating – it may feel a very difficult thing to do but my 12-year-old has got it at her school.

“Or, how can the Island prepare itself for driverless cars? Or, you could say that to be in business you have to have superfast connectivity and you have to be online.

“Pick some big things and crack on. Get on and do that first. Don’t expect anything to result in millions of jobs or millions of pounds worth of GDP – it’s going to be about new talent and new investment and new business opportunities.”

Q&A with Simon Devonshire – digital entrepreneur

Q: “What makes you so convinced that Jersey has a bright digital future?”

A: “It seems to me to be a great place to live, and that’s not to be under-estimated. The climate is better than it is in London, and it’s a very engaged population – my sense is that it’s a lean-forward culture. That’s very compelling. There is a willingness and a motivation to succeed. There is a provenance and a legacy of financial services which is a very useful because it brings with it skills, capabilities and resources. There’s also an over-penetration of high net worth individuals and that’s hugely useful particularly in terms of investment and that, in my opinion, has not been fully leveraged. There’s also the potential of control of core assets and resources, and their development. Most places would kill for that degree of authority and enablement, not least of which is massive tax incentives. There is potentially a huge financial upside to businesses being located here if managed effectively, but there are some potential negatives to counter that.”

Q: “What are those potential negatives?”

A: “I would be fascinated to know the ratio of civil servants to population for Jersey, compared to other countries such as England. My gut feeling is that potentially, Jersey over-indexes in terms of the number of civil servants. You could legitimise that by saying ‘yes, but we don’t have economies of scale’, and I get that, but what I have heard consistently is the need for further cost reduction and austerity. Before you start cutting into infrastructure, might it be the case that you are carrying too much resource?”

Q: “You’ve also spoken about a risk-averse and defensive culture here. How does that change?”

A:  “The things to tackle the negativity in the culture are: resilience, toughen up and develop thicker skins and literally stop listening; demonstrable progress and action; proportional demographic diversity including the old and the young, and male-female proportionality in senior management. When you combine those things together, you start to give yourself permission to get on with things. You don’t just need to identify and select the most powerful actions, you need to empower a group of people to crack on. Sometimes you give people the most overwhelming responsibility and what’s surprising is how little they fail. 

Q: “What could we be aiming at? What does success look like for Jersey?”

A: “Does every business have superfast access? Do all the public spaces have superfast connectivity or not? And if not, what would have to happen to make that happen? How much investment would be needed, and where, and how? Is that something that the government can invest in or is it down to service providers? And if it is, what’s going to compel them? Or, can you move to a virtual currency? Contactless payment is the dominant payment of transaction in cafes, shops and restaurants in London at lunch-hour now – and that happened very quickly, over a very short period of time. Moving to a cashless society is fascinating – it may feel a very difficult thing to do but my 12-year-old has got it at her school. Or, how can the Island prepare itself for driverless cars? Or, you could say that to be in business you have to have superfast connectivity and you have to be online. Pick some big things and crack on. Get on and do that first. Don’t expect anything to result in millions of jobs or millions of pounds worth of GDP – it’s going to be about new talent and new investment and new business opportunities.”