Mark started his career in financial services in 1989 at Forward Trust Group, the finance house and leasing subsidiary of Midland Bank plc, where he spent a decade working in a number of businesses including personal finance, vehicle finance, asset finance and corporate strategy.

In 2000, he joined HSBC in London to help develop and launch its business internet banking platform, and in 2004, Mark moved to HSBC’s UK headquarters to lead marketing communications for the UK bank. He took over as Head of Marketing at first direct at the end of 2006, and between 2009 and 2011 he was the Regional Head of Marketing, MENA for HSBC Bank Middle East, working out of Dubai.

In 2011, Mark took over as Chief Executive of first direct, and his role enlarged to include leadership of the HSBC UK Contact Centres in 2013. In March 2014, Mark resigned from the HSBC Group to co-found Atom as CEO.

How do you define innovation and what does it mean to you?

Innovations are ideas that improve life. That improvement can take many forms. It covers everything from fun to efficiency to cleaner, faster, more beautiful, more informative, more sustainable. Atom believes we have a license to innovate everywhere and being a bank offers no more impediment to innovation than being a pharmaceutical business, a car or plane manufacturer or a public body like Transport for London.

What industry needs to embrace innovation and take more risks?

Banking; retail banking has spent more than two decades being lazy and taking the market and customers for granted.

What is the best piece of advice that you have been given and received?

Don’t bark at passing cars and don’t ever, ever send an e-mail in anger.

What is your greatest achievement and why?

I really have no idea.

Newspapers and Books: Digital or Physical?

Both. I gather most of my news on-line but I still like paper books.

What were your greatest takeaways as CEO of First Direct Bank and how did you apply those takeaways to co-founding Atom Bank?

People matter most. All ideas, all businesses, digital or physical are the expression of the people who create them. Get the people right and you have a much higher chance of achieving success.

As a digital-only bank, how will you use design and wearable technologies to stand-out from the crowd and appeal to the underbanked establishment?

We will stand-out if we are original and unique and it makes no difference whether this is about wearables or anything else. Doing something that’s ‘me too’ is a waste of time and money and it is not why we started this.

The British Bankers’ Association recently published research showing that UK-based customers conducted almost 40m mobile and internet banking transactions each week in 2014. With the formal introduction of Atom Bank, what is the bank currently forecasting in terms of the mobile transactions number per week?

I don’t know but I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

What role will cryptocurrency play in a digital-only bank if any?

None for the foreseeable future. We are seeing right now that currencies are only as strong as the commitment central banks are willing to provide to them.

What is the future of a digital-only bank and how will you position Atom Bank for that future?

I firmly believe that the future of banking is ‘digital first’ not ‘digital only’. I can’t see why banks will employ people to do your banking for you when you can do it better yourself. I really do believe that the Atom model of digital first with a highly trained team on the phone to help you sort out problems is a better model than the ‘multi-channel mess’ that exists today.

As a born-again fintech evangelist, Aaron manages Final’s relationships with banking partners and investors, and explores the effects of new technology on personal payments. As a former IBM’er and employee #1 at Simple Energy, Aaron built the engineering team and architecture to deliver utility data to millions of users around the country. He holds BAs from University of Maryland in Math and Physics.

How do you define innovation and what does it mean to you?

Innovation is the ability to rethink the goal, not just what it is, but why it exists, and then find a better way to execute. It’s that last part that people tend to forget about, but it matters the most. If two companies come up with a similar design for a better battery, but company A builds the supply chain faster, scales faster, and gets to market in a more impactful way, you likely won’t refer to company B as the innovator. That same thing is playing out now with all the consumer hardware options designed to get rid of your fat wallet by aggregating cards – lots of similar takes on the same problem, but it’ll be the one that executes and achieves real traction that wins.

What industry needs to embrace innovation and take more risks?

Those most heavily bogged down by regulation – healthcare, agtech, the funding of commercial solar projects, and absolutely payments. Also, have you ever tried buying a house? Having to dig up your 1099 from 7 years ago…that process needs a fair amount of disruption.

What is the best piece of advice that you have been given and received?

Listen, be humble, lead by example, and surround myself with people smarter than myself. Good business is good business.

What is your greatest achievement and why?

I built out the engineering team at my last startup- it was a group of folks I was extremely proud of and proud to work with. I’d say hiking the John Muir Trail is also up there.

Newspapers and Books: Digital or Physical?

Digital newspapers, paper books.

What is the future of payments and how will you position Final to benefit from the ever changing habits of consumers?

That’s a tough question – how far out into the future? Physical cards aren’t going anywhere in the next 15 years, but there’s bound to be massive improvements around security and the position of the user. Too many companies have built products for banks, not for the users of those banks.

Now, the largest generation ever only wants to use well-designed products with beautiful interfaces. It’s forcing executives to rethink where the user sits in their model. It is going to be an extremely important differentiator to watch for and B2C fintech continues the current updraft.

How did you approach underwriting the credit card debt with the issuing bank and who is the bank issuing the lines of credit?

We’re not yet divulging that partnership, but that’s exactly what it is – a partnership. We’re working together to underwrite the debt and create a risk model that sits well with everyone involved.

What has the response from executives at American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa been? Have they offered any helpful insight?

We have some great contacts at many of those companies, and they offer feedback all the time. As far as user experience goes, what we’re trying to do is a bit different than anything the networks have seen, so we’re pioneers in that sense.

Since each transaction uses a different credit card number, how will users sign up for recurring payments to service providers?

Thanks for asking, because It’s an important distinction to make. Users have the option of creating either a one-time use card number or a multi-use card number for all subscriptions and card-on-file relationships (think things like Netflix and Amazon). When a user goes to check out, the ability to generate a card instantly can be done either through the mobile app or browser extension.

We’re aiming to make that process seamless while keeping the actual card numbers behind the curtain. Unless you’re reading your card number over the phone, you, as a consumer, should never have to know your card number – just that you have a relationship with a merchant. We keep track of that information for you, so you’re never managing multiple card numbers. It might be more secure, but it wouldn’t be an improvement in the user experience if people had to know and manage dozens of numbers.

Is Final going to leverage existing payment networks, or is the plan to scale out “Final is Accepted Here” payment network?

There’s elegance in building a product that can provide a new experience, but doesn’t have to rebuild the wheel in the sense of infrastructure. Merchants don’t need to sign on because we’re partnering with the networks that are accepted at 99% of all merchants, online and in-person retail.