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It is the end of the year and so, to start with, we need a Christmas cracker joke. Me: I just met Father Christmas and told him to change his bank account or lose. My friend: Santa dare? Me: No, Lloyds. If that is not enough for you, here is a short poem: 2025: Yield…

Every year I visit the analytics engine to see which blogs got the most visits. This list is this year’s although, interestingly, the blog entry with the most clicks generally is the one I wrote about who invented WiFi. Regardless, the list this year is interesting as it is mainly about fintech firms like Klarna,…

I get regular emails with facts and stats, and one that I subscribe to regularly is from Fintech Global. Fintech Global provides research and, more importantly, connects senior decision-makers via industry-leading conferences. Enough of the advertising as what intrigues me more is facts and stats, and their research gives an interesting reflection of the world…

This week’s main discussions include … Did 2025 really happen? (the year of deep fake) 2025 has been the year of AI and AI hype from Agentic AI to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to Robots, chatbots and more but, for me, it has been the year of Deep Fake AI. It all started with the…

For many years, I’ve been among the fintech influencers arguing for a digital identity system. Most people reply that they don’t want one. Even an anonymous encrypted one. They fear that governments will find ways to track and trace them, and so it does not work. Their fears are slightly irrational as, if you use…

Every three months my accountant asks me to send them my bank statements to do the company’s VAT returns. It’s annoying but hey, no one can access my bank account except me. But then something happened recently. The company’s bank accounts are with Barclays, and they changed the interface or did something so that, when…

2025 has been the year of AI and AI hype from Agentic AI to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to Robots, chatbots and more but, for me, it has been the year of Deep Fake AI. It all started with the story of the French woman who got duped into a fake AI relationship with Brad Pitt…

You may know Wells Fargo, one of the largest American banks. I know them well, having worked with some of their key people over the years. Their brand is all based around the old Pony Express … Note: stamp is dated 1940 … but you may not know their real history, so here we go….

I was having an interesting debate the other day about how AI will impact banking longer-term. The most interesting angle was that AI will provide knowledge and blockchain (or distributed ledgers, if you prefer) will provide provenance, and that the two combined are a killer partnership. Thinking about it, this gets interesting. So AI can…

This week’s main discussions include … Little Britain: “A rainy island with a hostile tax system is a hard sell” Many years ago, I was presenting to a country suffering sanctions. No longer able to access the SWIFT network and pretty much excommunicated by most banks worldwide, they were suffering. Of course, they could do…