Carl shares candid insights on the “glory days” of blockchain, the pitfalls and promise of industry collaboration, and why patience, focus, and timing are as critical as technology. He also discusses the future of trade, the inertia of market change, and where the next wave of opportunity may lie for the next generation.
Learn how Carl navigated his unconventional path—from learning Chinese as a teenager in the US, to a career spanning banking, technology, and the frontlines of trade digitisation across Asia. The conversation explores the challenges of digitising letters of credit, the complexities of consortium governance, and the lessons learned from scaling digital platforms in a world still dominated by paper.\
00:49 – Meet Carl Wegner
01:20 – The Unlikely Path to Major in Chinese in an US university in the 80s
03:25 – Moving to Taiwan with $500 in 1988
04:50 – How to Talk Your Way Into Banking
06:39 – The First Fintech: Beating Banks at Their Own Game in 2000
10:50 – The Cold Call That Led to a switch to a Blockchain Career
13:06 – The $200M FOMO: When Banks BEGGED to Join Blockchain
18:10 – From “Voltron” to Contour: Building the biggest bank-backed payment network
27:28 – 175 VC Meetings & Zero Offers: Why?
31:30 – What Would I Have Done Differently to Keep Contour Alive?
42:30 – The Day the Internet Literally Broke My Startup
43:48 – Inside the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
49:25 – Whoever Sold the First Fax Machine Knows How to Digitialise Trade
51:40 – Where would you build your Career Today?
GSBN CEO Bertrand Chen sits down with Carl Wegner, a trailblazer in digital trade finance and former CEO of Contour, to unpack the realities of digitising global trade and building industry-shaping consortia.