Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: SurgePays CEO Brian Cox (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the gating items on the education side? What are the needs of this community on education?

Brian Cox: It’s funny you ask that, but that thought had crossed my mind. I have two sons in high school. I was thinking about education and how boring school is sometimes but how interesting learning is. We were talking this morning about how I took three years of a language. I got an app now where I’ve learned more Spanish than I ever learned in school because it’s fun. Fun is functional.

If we’re one of the companies out there that are making sure that folks have access to the internet whether it’s on their smartphone prepaid wireless or whether it’s a device in their home, education, healthcare, and employment are key components that can be funneled through that.

Sramana Mitra: Who’s selling the device?

Brian Cox: There’s always going to be the A++ wireless type of stores. There are a lot of independent retailers out there. I was just at the largest prepaid wireless convention two days ago. I got to see some of the new things that are coming out. There are lots of distributors. These are mostly Android-based phones. They are actually decent phones. Most of the world uses these phones. We put out devices ourselves.

Sramana Mitra: And the learning apps are maturing. If I were to put your thinking cap on, I would start looking at which apps need to go on those phones. You were talking about Duolingo. I use Duolingo as well. In these low-income categories, the language they need to learn is English. Duolingo can teach English. There are certain apps that would make a dramatic difference in those lives.

Brian Cox: That is definitely something that we’re exploring. It’s no different than computer sales back in the day. We’ve been so focused. We’ve been in hypergrowth mode. We’ve all had to have our hands on the wheel just to keep the car on the road. We haven’t gotten to cruise control.

By the end of the third quarter, we’ll have a couple of other things. One of them that is closely related to education is healthcare. You can’t Facetime your doctor without Facetime. You can’t Facetime if the only apps out there are apps that only accept you if you load a credit card. One of the things that we’re working with right now is trying to find the right partner.

Think about this. A third of the country has no access to go talk to a doctor. If you or I go to an emergency room right now, it’s going to be packed not from emergencies. It’s from people with basic healthcare needs. They just need a prescription. It’s basic healthcare. They have the cash, but they don’t have the credit card. What if we can package data and telehealth? Now they just go to that convenience store, pay that, and their family gets access to telehealth.

For 20 years, I feel like we’ve made a really large impact in the low-income neighborhood. This is a great way for us to make an impact on the entire segment of society. People go to emergency rooms for the most basic healthcare.

Sramana Mitra: It’s terribly unproductive.

Brian Cox: At the end of the day, all society pays. One way or another, you’re paying taxes and time. As we talk about facilitating, that will probably be the next big thing.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: SurgePays CEO Brian Cox
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