Our Vaccine Passports Already Being Deployed: TPT Med Tech

He's a CEO of TPT Global Tech, uh, and they are our tpt S med Tech is developing vaccine passport and COVID health technology that's currently operational in one of my favorite places in the world, Jamaica, mon in the International airport there in Montego Bay. Travelers can move about safely and freely. I guess if if, if this technology works out. So Stephen, what are you guys doing? Hey, thank you for having me on this morning. I appreciate being on the show. And we're excited. So we're doing

some great stuff. Man. You know we uh, we're a publicly traded company here in Sandy of California. You have to say we're a small company with big ideas and we have developed an end to end UH COVID management solution technology platform, you know, where we create mobile labs out of shipping containers where we actually do the testing

for COVID as well as vaccinations in our labs. And we've also developed a software technology platform called click pass where we're able to do the testing as well as the vaccination tracking, tracking, and deliver a digital passport system. And our system is up and running, you know, we launched this back in August, so we're the first company to actually put this out into the global marketplace where and we're really excited to uh be the first to

do something like this. And as you mentioned, you know, Jamaica, Safemond. We we are up and running in in Jamaica at the Montego Bay Airport, UH and some of the resorts like Scandals UH in the island. I think we've got a to the level about eighteen different testing locations on the island that we're in the process of onboarding. So it's a very exciting, you know time for our publicly traded company and what we're doing, you know out here in San Diego and throughout the United States as well.

All Right, Steven, give us a sense of kind of the deployment of your technology, because I know there's a lot of solutions out there, but there's also a lot of you know, frustration that the testing capabilities and the testing tracking in the United States much less the rest of the world, you know, hasn't really been as robust

as we would have liked. Give us a sense of kind of where you guys are, well, what what we what we like to speak of it kind of being one of the first to put this out is that we have the Indian solution. So what we're able to do is we're able to either tact on our own lab mobile labs, or we work with partner labs, right, and they take that information and that's delivered through our

QuickPath technology platform to the end customers, subscribers. So what happens is you go to one of our locations of one of our part of locations, you get tested or you get the vaccination. We tracked that information and we send you a digital report via either the Internet or to your phone, right and it's on a centralized platform.

So it's an amazing situation where you know, you're not bringing two or three different companies together to try to deliver the solution which could create, uh, you know, some types of technology issues when you're bringing multiple companies together. So we're an end in solution and I think it worked incredibly well and we're excited of the results that we're having in Jamaica. You know, when I was down there and we're onboarding at the first day, you know,

there was like two or three people in line. They had all the paper and there was the nurses and putting out all that information. And by the time we left, you know, it was just running so smooth. And there they would come to the airport, you know, download the quick pass app about the information intade of the app, show their QR code, the nurses would do their test, uh and then within you know, fifteen minutes, they would get the results, walk up to the Delta or American

Airlines show their test report digitally on their phone. You know. The the airlines know that it's secure because it's all Hippo compliance secured uh de identified information, except for if the person wants to actually show their i D. There is a function where they hit a button and the i D pops up on the screen so that that airlines or or cruise line or supporting advantage to actually verify that it's the actual person's phone and the person who actually have the cast results and be able to

verify that. So is it exciting? Uh? Scenario that we put together. I'm gonna tell you offline about the sweetest spot in Jamaica. I don't want other people to know. It's like a secret destination. But you mentioned Hippa and as someone who I like to travel a lot, I get in a lot of motorcycle accidents and I hate paperwork, Hippa is like the bane of my existence. What is

it like working with this kind of regulation? Well, you know what, we have a fantastic development team and we are actually part of the whole Google back in Hippa compliant engine, So we work very closely with Google and that's why we're Hippo Climate and so it makes it a lot easier for us to be able to do what we do. So it's it's it's been actually a good experience, a little little, little, some pain points, but we were able to work through it and we have

a secure technology platform. All right, Steve, where are you in terms of some maybe some other airports, some other airlines, some other you know clients that you might be signing up for your technology. Well, you know, there's other Caribbean islands that we're in the process right now of breaking up UH for example of the Bahamas, Turks and Keiko's. We're talking with Trinidad, we're talking with UH Puerto Rico, so we're pretty excited about that as well. You know,

it's really interesting. You know, we're in Miami. We have our mobile labs at the day Lin mall and one of the Walmart parking lots in Miami. We just entered into an agreement with a national parking lots company. Believe or not. They've got a little five thousand parking lots across the United States and they've offered those parking lots to US took to bring COVID testing and point of care testing to their communities. It's a very interesting concept

with with UH, with this parking lot company. I was very pleased that they reached out to us because I think it's gonna be a fantastic partnership for US to be able to be able to expand this technology across the United States. Because look, it's not just for the airline, it's also for restaurants, it's for concerts, it's for you know, schools, colleges to be able to act. To sporting events. You know,

you get tested. You show up to a stadium, you you show your pure code, and that stadium over that team or whatever away team would know that those fans coming into that game have all been tested in it's twenty four hour periods. So the idea is that everybody in that sporting event is COVID free. For example this summer and tune into the Mississippi we're working with the Chamber of Commisor and we're doing a concert on the

Mississippi River this summer. Fascinating stuff. Good luck to your company. Stephen Thomas, CEO of TPT Global, more banted Tin, president of s J Consulting, and talk a little bit about what's going on with this big ship in the Suez Canal SAT. I know it's huge, right, it's a quarter mile long and it's two thousand tons whatever that means. Um, why is it stuck in so hard? Can't they just get some boats in a rope and like pull it out. The boats will be We're getting pulled towards the ship

rather than pulling the ship away. It is a huge task. It is so heavy that the tugboats are not gonna make it. In my view, they will need to start getting some of the containers off the ship to reduce the weight on it and then they will have some success. It is not an easy task, alright. So the image that is in my mind is the one way we have all seen is literally this monster's container ship. It's abound buried into the uh, you know, the bank of this canal and this little teeny tiny bacco with a

couple of guys trying to dig it out. It just doesn't look like the canal was prepared for anything like this. Why was that? Well? There a couple of factors. One is the sizes of ships have gotten big over time and they've never had to experience it. The maximum ship that used to travel a few years ago would be eight thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand containers, and now they are up to eighteen and twenty thousand, So they are much bigger in size, and that means they're also heavier.

And when they are heavier, they tend to score further below the level of the water and they then are hitting the surface that they didn't imagine would be happening. And then maybe some eroision taking place that is causing that soil to further into the canal that has cost us to happen. So he Twitter is having a field day. The guy with a digger has an account on Twitter now. Perike Patel, probably my favorite twitterer, has uh published a bunch of schematics as to how they could deal with this.

Even I've in the case says this is bad um bad risk management. They should have had a backup canal. In seriousness, how big is this problem? Try and put it in a scale for us, but for one, there is no option to have a backup canal. Whoever thinks that the chipping okay, yeah, you know, China is trying to have a backup canal to the Panama on the other end, and it is going to be decades of okay, so this is not something they could have anticipated. It's

easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking on it. At this point, they need to look at getting the weight of the chip down from all the containers that are on it, and then they will have ability to push it such that at least it can not be blocking that tired and at least one lane can continue as opposed to them moving in both directions. All right, so what do you believe is is this simply unload the ship, get

some bigger tugs in there. If that's in fact the case, how many days slash weeks do you think we're looking at here? I think they should be able to within a week or ten days if they move quickly on it and and do what the professionals no needs to be done. Uh. But then and there is urgency because the people who manage the Swiss Canal are losing revenue that they get paid for every ship that goes through.

So there is incentive on everyone's part, including Evergreen, to get this thing fiasco off there seen and away from the media. Could the same thing happen in the Panama Panama Canal? You bring up one of the other key water ways in um in global logistics? What are the

what are the differences between the seas? And one difference between the two major one is that the two water bodies that Panama Canal connects are not at the same sea level that the thirty foot difference between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific at that place where the two openings of the canal connect and they use locks gates basically. I've seen it myself. I've been there where they fill the water to raise the ship up to connect with one side or to load it on the other side.

So if something like this was to happen in Panama, they would be better prepared to deal with it. SWEZ doesn't have that option. So it's interesting. Sets I mean, is there an argument made that ships have gotten too big park nows, not just for the canals, they've gotten too big for the ports, and they even gotten too big for the supply chain because when you have to load a ship eighteen thousand containers, it takes several days

or weeks. So the merchandise that was prepared and needed to be in the showrooms are stored and with consumers are sitting at a port for twelve fifteen days to be loaded on a ship and then traveling, and they travel at a slower pace because of the heavier weight. So you are extending the supply chain. Yes, you're absolutely right, and I may add that you know that there was

a similar thing happening in the airline. Air was three eighty double decker with passengers where that plane is had its day, It's going to die and there will be no more A three eight the same thing. I am absolutely glad that you're raising the topic. This the ship's approutant too big, Wow, fascinating, statiste. The Gindel, president of SG consulting me appreciate your thoughts. There we have the

os of Facebook, Alphabet and Twitter. They are testifying they will testify before Congress today, uh, talking about social privacy, data security, and the roles that they may have played in the Capital insurrection in January. Let's get a preview of what we might hear. Jim Anderson, CEO of Social Flow, based in New York City. In full disclosure, social Flow is a platform used by Bloomberg for social media purposes. Jim,

thanks so much for joining us here. Is this gonna be just another I guess, uh show by politicians or can anything substantive get done at these hearings? Do you think? I sure hope something substantificantly get done. I mean, the show is, of course part of it. Congressional hearings are are part spectacle by design. But I am really curious to see whether we can get past that angry shaking of this that text CEO phase of things and really

get into it. And I think what you're gonna see here is how much research the staffs of these representatives have done. Right. There's a lot of the work required to come up with really intelligent and thoughtful questions, and hopefully we'll get a signal that they're ready to move beyond just talking and shaking their fists and start to actually propose the solution. I often get the feeling that the staff knows a heck of a lot more than

the representatives for whom they work, Uh, absolutely right. I Mean sometimes I lose my faith in government when I watch these things, because it really doesn't seem like these elected officials are prepared at all to run a country, let alone a hearing um. What what do you think needs to be done about Facebook? About Google? I mean, these huge platforms certainly have uh some some real dominance,

you know, bordering on anti trust issues they do. And I think, you know, you can't you mentioned the exact right word. I think antitrust really is the foundational issue because if you look at what people object to is it's primarily around eyes. Right. You know, these big giant tech platforms, they're so huge, they're so hard to control. I mean, the size honestly is at the root of many and many of these complaints, and I think because of that, we tend to over emphasize the role of

the platform and under emphasize the overall political situation. I mean, if today's hearing is around misinformation, and obviously the the insurrection and the events of the capital on January six or are huge, But I mean, do you really think that big tech caused that problem? By I don't think most people believe tech caused it. They believe they contributed to it. They may not believe they responded, you know,

as effectively as they could have. But I think we we just tend to over emphasize what Facebook or Google or or Twitter should do because of their sign Yeah, it's interesting. I'm reading Jack Divine's new book. Jack Devine was a former senior UH person at the c i A back in the Cold War, and he's got a new book out talking about UH. You know, how these platforms have been used by the Russians to influence the election, and how it's a big, big issue. So there's a

national security aspect to this. Um. If I were in Congress, that would be where I would focus. Um, do you think that's gonna be? Race has a big issue here today? I tend to doubt it because it's such a partisan issue. Remember, you know it used to be just as is easy to paint Russia as a villain. Is anybody right and look at the political situation over the past three four years, though Russia was not, you know, the villain. In fact, a lot of people would say that Russia is not

an issue at all. It's all about China. So I there, I would agree with you that the national security is a huge issue and and any adversary foreign or domestic, if you will, is going to use the platforms and tools available to them. I think the other thing that we need to get into, you know, you've heard and talked about this section to thirty reform quite a bit, you know, the the idea that platforms are not liable for what happens, and that seems morally offensive to a

lot of people. I'm really really curious now that President former President Trump has said he's considering starting his own self on network. Section to thirty is the biggest friend you can imagine to a start up social network. So I'm interested to see whether the Republicans actually go very aggressively towards section two thirty. I would be willing to guess that we will see a lot less enthusiasm from the Republican side of things to talk about section two

thirty today. That so, I'm really lucky to see how that plays out. When you look at former President Trump's influence, Jim, has it grown since he left office? Has it subsided? What do you see? It has very much subsided. It's funny. We do it with something we call the Trump Index every single day, where we basically just go and look at, okay, what kind of media attention is former President Trump getting?

And you know, whereas during uh, you know, his presidency and be somewhere around a fifty out of a hundred, you know, now he's down around of five out of a hundred. And that makes sense. We have former presidents typically, um, you know, fade from public view. They don't you do things, and they they uh, you know, they sort of retire from public life. And we're seeing that. I think what everybody is thinking about, though, is is he going to make a comeback? And and have we heard the last

of them? And I certainly wouldn't predict it. We've heard the last of them, Jim iSER. I guess there's been some talk that he may consider starting up a online network or maybe a cable network. I mean, what are you hearing? Yeah, it's well, I think everybody is is speculating about that. I think he is floating trial balloons. Part of what's happening is these people are saying, Oh, he's going to start a media company, he's going to start a social network, He's going to do this, and

then let's see the reaction. You know that one of the things he really is quite effective at is controlling the narrative. You know, we always like to say, you know, to the degree he had a superpower, it was not the ability to tweet, it was the ability to get the media company to cover what he tweeted. So I think you're seeing a very carefully orchestrated floating of trial balloons about these things and then just sort of see what the how well they land with the marketplace, how

well they resonate. At first it was gonna be he's definitely going to create a social network, and then he himself said, well, I'm thinking about creating a social network. I think the media company. He's fall into the same category. So I don't know that he knows what he's going to do next, but I would expect to continue to see these trial balloons floated. Jim, thanks so much. Great to get some time with you. Really fascinating stuff you're doing.

They're over at Social Flow. Jim Anderson is the CEO. All right, let's revisit a story that was very much into headlines recently when Walmart said they were getting into the financial services business. Remember when they were gonna they are? They announced they were starting a thin tech startup in the US, and they hired the head of Goldman Sachs Consumer Bank to lead it. Let's revisit that story. See how it's going. We welcome Sarah Hall's actually covers all

things retail for Bloomberg Opinion. Sarah, this isn't the first time, as I recall, that a big retailer wanted to get into the financial services business Testco. I remember the big UK retailer tried this a while ago, maybe a decade ago.

Didn't go so well. What's walmart strategy? Yeah, so Tesco, you know, in the wake of the financial crisis, had this insight that you know, the trust in big banks was not super high, and that um, you know, perhaps the affinity and loyalty its customers had for its brands would create an opening for them to really disrupt the banking sector. And fast forward to today and you know, Tesco Banking arm is profitable, but it hasn't exactly let the world on fire, right, And so that's kind of

the cautionary tale for Walmart. Here is canna avoid some of those mistakes that Tesco made and can it um you know, as opposed to just having this sort of nice to have side business, can it really make these fintech offerings um really disruptive for the sector and an important part of its overall revenue and profit stream. My first move would be to higher a big wig banker

from Goldman Sachs. Did Tesco try that? They They did not, And look, I think that showed people how deadly serious Walmart is about the initiative, and perhaps people should have

bread between the lines. That was the case already. UM. The fact that when they initially announced the startup, they put their us CEO, John Furner and their CFO Brett Bigs on the board, clearly they would not devote the time of people that seen here in their operation to this startup if they didn't see it as utmost importance. And I think the gold been higher really announced to that in big bowl letters to the rest of the world. All right, Sarah. So again, Tesco and sainsbury and UK

tried this what what wrong? Or what maybe didn't go as right as they hoped? Yeah? So I think one of the big things was they tried to go it alone. Um. They after having in the nineties done joint ventures on things like credit cards and such, in this post financial crisis for a they tried to do it all by themselves. And the problem was they got distracted from their core grocery operations and all the and legal were able to kind of make their way in there and take some

market here. You can see the clear parallel there to Walmart situation. It's in this generational battle with Amazon right to defend the business that it's physical stores and play offense in e commerce, and if it gets distracted by this shiny object of the fintech, that could be problematic. I think one thing that's good about how Walmart has set this up UM is unlike Testco it's not going

it alone. It did do this as a joint venture with rivet Capital affirm that has extensive the experience backing fintech companies and UM. Walmart hasn't said where the new startup will be located, but I will wager it's not going to be located in Benjainville. It's not going to

be near the Walmart mother ship. I think it will be in New York or Silicon Valley UM, both because that will be better for recruiting tech talent, but also because I think it does draw this bright line UM that makes it harder for uh, you know, the main retail team to get distracted. So what's that kind of look like? I mean Tesco you pointed out offered credit cards and certain banking services to consumers. I know rivet um helps people like buy now, pay later or gives

these installment plans. What what are we going to get from Walmart as finance offering? So I would at what we're not going to see is physical bank branches. I think that's a pretty outmoded way of thinking about banking, even though Walmart clearly has such an ability to do so with you know, over four thousand stores in the US,

but I don't think that's where they're going to be focused. Um. You know Dufo Brett Bigs has said, I think more sophisticated, more digital, UM, and so I expect they'll be focused on things that you know, you can do on your smartphone. And look, you know Walmart's customer base UH is a low income consumer UM. Many of them are unbanked or underbanked. This is traditionally a segment that has not been well

served by the established banking industry. And I bet you can expect to see products or sort of focus on that customers that specific needs. Also, you know, Walmart employees over a million people UM, and I can see UH trying to make some products that appeals directly to its associates, maybe you know, ways to distribute their paychecks or that kind of thing. Sir. What's the sense of timing here for Walmart? Is this? If they laid out any any timing parameters here for rolling this out or when it

might reach scale, they have not. They've been pretty tight lipped about it. But look, I think Walmart is urgently trying to find our revenue streams and profit streams that are not its core retail business. We see this in other areas, right. They are trying to build up in advertising business as well, um, and they're doing more forays into health care services and they're doing that to uh they see the model that Amazon has had and they

they sort of want a piece of that. Amazon. You know, its retail business is what it's uh, perhaps most well known for, but it's cloud computing services have the a core way of boosting profitability, and now it has, through

its advertising business, yet another really profitable revenue stream. And I think Walmart knows that if it wants to continue to have rock bottom prices but subsidize free shipping to all of our doorsteps in a more e commerce centric world, it is going to have to figure out other ways to find unlock revenue and profit. And that's what the

spin tech star up is all about. It's pretty interesting that they have, don't They have like a hundred and fifty million people going into Walmart every year, like separate customers. That's half of the country every week. I think is actually that that figure globally UM And so yes, they have an extraordinary amount of data about no loyalty cards. There's no um you know, there's no like Starbucks card

for Walmart. You can't get your tenth coffee free or anything exactly exactly, so they don't have And look, that was something that UK supermarkets did have rights that traditional loyalty cards that you swipe at every purchase UM. So Walmart does not. That that's been kind of anesthema to their everyday low price model. UM. But they do have a tremendous amount of data about what you do in stores. They have a tremendous amount of data about what you

do on its website. And they're about to have a new uh it's sort of data bit to monetized in their Walmart Plus program UM. So this is a new thing they've rolled out. It's sort of their answer to Amazon Prime. It's a ninety eight dollar a year membership where you get free grocery delivery and other things, free shipping, no minimum, certain other perks UM. And that will be another way to sort of learn about its customers, especially

it's most loyal customers UM. And that should just be yet another bit of data that it can theoretically harnessed to figure out what kind of product makes sense for its consumer UM and what kind of products they're looking for, all right, very interesting stuff. Uh. Sarah wrote this opinion piece with Andrea Andrea Felstead. So Sarah hall'za and Andrea Felt can be found on Bloomberg Opinion. You just have opie. I am go. I wonder how much of Walmart's stuff

is sitting in the Suez Canal right now. They probably have a bunch of stuff. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews with Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller venty three. Pet On Fall Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio