I used to feel a little bit exotic knowing a person born in Moldova, but since he left as a baby, that’s actually all I knew about Moldova. It turns out, I should have been paying attention because it may be a small country, but Moldova is standing on the threshold of significant change: on the one hand, a formal push is now underway to bring them into the EU but on the other, there’s also the still-present threat of Russian aggression.Moldova was once in the USSR, but arguably its historical and cultural links are stronger with its Western neighbour, Romania. In this episode, we explore those ties - and the broader state of the Moldovan banking landscape - with Bogdan Plesuvescu, CEO of Victoriabank.If you’d like to start a conversation with Bogdan, you can find him on LinkedIn like I did, and although we didn’t really talk about it, if it his sailing you’re more interested in, which has somehow become a recurring theme among my guests, you might also want to check out his Twitter You can read more about Victoriabank Moldova at https://www.victoriabank.md/en/ (including their VB24 Pay, Garmin Pay and Apple Pay offerings as mentioned)Bogdan also spoke about all the help the people of Moldova have been offering to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion. I can’t personally vouch for Refugee Support EU, but if you’re interested in helping they seem to be a good place to start your search.Finally, if it is me you're after, you can find me on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), my action-adventure novels on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ as well as on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24If you have any feedback or questions, if you would like to participate in the show, or if you'd like to find full written transcripts with timestamps head on over to HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.ShowRegards,Brendan Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.