Yesterday, there were a few headlines that caught my attention as they are all related. The first two were about stablecoins and whether you can trust them: Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority’s approach to joint regulation of systemic stablecoin issuers BIS report flags stablecoins’ flaws, dollarization risk For the past few years, the…
One of the more interesting articles I read over the weekend wasn’t about artificial intelligence, stablecoins or digital banks. It was about something far more uncomfortable: regret. Specifically, the financial regrets people reach in their sixties. At first glance, the list looks predictable: people wish they had saved more, invested earlier, worried less about spending on…
I was thinking about the companies I reference often as hot fintech start-ups and then realised that they are no longer start-ups. They are companies building the infrastructure, intelligence and operating systems that banks, businesses and consumers increasingly depend upon. Who are they? At the top of the league sits Stripe. Worth around $180 billion,…
For years, one of fintech’s favourite hobbies has been complaining about regulation. Every new rule is another obstacle. Another compliance cost. Another reason why innovation was supposedly impossible. Startups would proudly describe themselves as moving fast and breaking things, while regulators were portrayed as the people standing in the way of progress. Then something interesting…
I see a story about Revolut every day, several times a day. As one of the most remarkable success stories in modern banking, it’s not surprising. In just a decade, it has grown from a prepaid travel card into a financial super app serving tens of millions of customers across dozens of countries and a…
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. I’ve finally got there, although my friend Dave Birch will probably roll his eyes at the density of buzzwords. Still, both ideas – AI-native banking and quantum computing – are no longer fringe. They sit squarely at the centre of fintech’s next wave of disruption. The…
Almost every innovation is met by people who believe it will destroy our ability to earn a living. The Luddites feared mechanisation. Clerks feared computers. Bank managers feared the internet. Taxi drivers feared ride-sharing apps. Retailers feared ecommerce. And now everyone fears AI. The latest prediction is that artificial intelligence will eliminate millions of jobs,…
Thirty years ago, a journalist laughed when I predicted that someone would one day make a payment from the top of Mount Everest. In 2013, it came true. Why am I thinking about this today? Because I am going somewhere that has a hidden secret. Going where? Uzbekistan. The hidden secret? Payme. Payme is one…
For years, banks have been criticised for fraud. Today, a growing number of bankers are asking a different question: why are banks paying for fraud that originates elsewhere? Across the world, consumer groups, regulators, banks and campaigners are increasingly pointing to the same source of online scams: Meta’s platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram. This is…
Barclays Bank wrote an article with the core message that tokenisation is moving finance from a world of messaging and reconciliation to a world of programmable, instantly settled value, which will be the most significant change to money since the arrival of electronic banking. They argue that tokenisation is the next major stage in the…
