It doesn’t sound quite as scary, but I was thinking about the cashless world and realised that: In case you cannot see the words: In space, no one can take your money Do you ever see anyohne paying for anything in the sci-fi world? We are reaching that point where money becomes meaningless, and it…
Read MoreI tweeted the other day how many places are now cashless. This is definitely true in most Northern European countries. In Poland, I haven’t used a banknote for two years or more. In the UK, I went to the theatre and they told me they wouldn’t take my banknote (by law, they have to, but…
Read MoreI just had an interesting and lengthy dialogue. After booking flights a while ago, the flight operator cancelled one leg of my flight. Instead of flying to Las Vegas for five nights via Frankfurt, I was now flying to Las Vegas for two nights and then back to my layover city Frankfurt for three nights….
Read MoreI’ve felt European for most of my life, as the UK joined the EU back in 1973. Free travel and movement across borders, that grew from nine states to twenty eight, introduced a glorious period of open integration. Integration of trade and commerce and then, latterly, money and finance. The grand plan of the euro…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Lloyds Bank completes UK’s first digital promissory note purchase Banks explore benefits of bank assured identity Data-driven experiences critical to bank success as the industry reaches ‘inflection point’ Asset managers on alert after ‘WhatsApp’ crackdown on banks GB Bank receives full banking licence UK bank customers to get £175…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Industry leaders doubt fintech’s profitability in next few years ECB steps in as banks dip toes in crypto pool Bank of America says overdraft fee revenue fell 90% since last year Poland’s central bank chief warns of German designs on Polish territory Top Fintech Events in Europe Social investment…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Federal Reserve: new guidelines to benefit crypto and fintech But do they benefit as they are more like political rails than payment rails Marcus by Goldman Sachs Review Meet the challenger bank that’s raked £10bn of savings in just eight years The 10 Biggest Banks in the US What…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Digital banks beat the high street on customer service Canary Wharf’s giants stand by idly as Brits flock en masse to challenger banks Monzo and Starling Bank UK’s best banks revealed: who’s helping customers amid cost of living crisis Not one major bank pays more for savings despite biggest…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Has blockchain found a use beyond crypto trading? Why is the Reserve Bank of Australia exploring digital currency options? Former Deutsche Bank CEO Anshu Jain dies, aged 59 Brits in EU slide into Brexit banking limbo as Barclays, Lloyd’s and Halifax shut their accounts Inside SocGen’s succession plan: why…
Read MoreThe main blog discussions this week include … Is Goldman Sachs letting Apple down? There’s a good old challenge in banking that, in recent years, has been growing. The challenge is to name the bad guy. Sometimes the bad guy is a hacker; other days, it’s a rogue trader; another event points the finger at…
Read MoreWelcome to The Finanser, the portal to the knowledge base of the Financial Services, chaired by Chris Skinner. To make an enquiry about a speaking engagement, just contact us and, if you are interested in Chris Skinner as a speaker, here’s an illustration of his keynote presentations … Chris Skinner is known as an independent commentator on…
Read MoreTalking of Brexit I found it amusing that, when I posted a tweet the other day, people interpreted it in ways I didn’t expect. The tweet just made clear that Brits are nine times more likely to be scammed by criminals than Germans, as we are a major card-based nation. Just in case you cannot…
Read MoreWe had a great discussion about Open Payments, Open Banking and Open Finance at FinTech Week London* this week. What was interesting is that nearly everyone opened with a mention of customer and customer journeys. Customer is the critical factor here, and customers don’t care whether they’re using Open Finance or not. What they care…
Read MoreI just had a nice interview with EFMA (now Qorus) about the new book Digital for Good (available here), and thought I would share the interview here. Hope you like it. Qorus- It is not always easy to distinguish genuine leaders from clever communicators. How did you select the different people you gave the floor…
Read MoreGood friend Ron Shevlin sparked off a great debate about neobanks with his snarky column on Forbes the other day. His basic argument is that neobanks are over. A few choice passages: The 10 leading neobanks in the US grew by a little more than 10 million accounts in 2021, from 23.3 million to 33.5 million, according to…
Read MoreI launched the new book Digital for Good in London the other day, and was joined by many friends in my network. The main highlight of the event was a panel discussion on where we are going with four panellists: Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion Gihan A.M. Hyde, Founder & CEO, CommUnique Tram Anh Nguyen,…
Read MoreWe had a great session in Oslo last week focused upon: what is money? The question comes up more and more in my thinking, especially when you look at cryptocurrencies, CBDCs, stablecoins and such like. We had many good presentations from MasterCard, the Norwegian Central Bank, Handelsbanken and even cameo Zoom appearances from Dave Birch…
Read MoreI am regularly asked: what’s the next big thing? Answer: there isn’t one. There are just all the things we can see today that are building to the next big thing. What’s out there today? Web3; the metaverse; cryptocurrencies, digital currencies and CBDCs; artificial intelligence plus; blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies in reality;…
Read MoreSome years ago, as an April Fool, a firm offered a free download of a game as long as, in the terms and conditions, you agreed that they could now own your soul. It was silly, but most people agreed to the download with that condition, because they don’t read the terms and conditions. Luckily…
Read MoreThere’s a regular debate about whether BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) is a good or bad thing. There’s a big call for it to be regulated and comparisons with payday loans are made often. Nevertheless, it makes sense as many companies are now grabbing a slice of this space. The latest one is Apple. It amused…
Read MoreI have house insurance for the contents and building. On top of that, I have a specialist insurance policy for my collection of rare things. I recently decided not to renew the latter. Why? Well, the house does have a few rare things inside … but no receipts. The things date back years and, in…
Read More2022 is proving to be a challenging year and, if my experience proves true, is harder than anything since we have seen since the pandemic began. After two years of lockdown, funding is still freely available but harder to find, and valuations are way down on previous years. Nevertheless, according to new data released by…
Read MoreA PR firm reached out to me the other day, saying: want to hear about a FinTech firm started on a farm? I said yes and, before I knew it, Stable became my new, favourite FinTech start-up. It meant that I soon hooked up in a conversation with the firm’s founder, Rich Counsell. Here’s our chat: Chris…
Read MoreI shared a post the other day: It inspired FinTech friend and colleague Efi Pylarinou to write a post about it. Efi has kindly allowed me to share the post with you here … Beware of powerful and ambitious Tigers amongst Big VCs We are in the 6th month of the Water Tiger Year and…
Read MoreBack in April, I shared a guest post by Rostyslav Dyuk, Chairman of the Board at the Ukrainian Association of FinTech and Innovation Companies (UAFIC), regarding the impact the conflict in Ukraine was having on the FinTech scene (followed a short time later by the view from Russia). Rostyslav kindly sent me an update to…
Read MoreI just had a nice interview with EFMA (now Qorus) about the new book Digital for Good (available here), and thought I would share the interview here. Hope you like it. Qorus- It is not always easy to distinguish genuine leaders from clever communicators. How did you select the different people you gave the floor…
Read MoreGood friend Ron Shevlin sparked off a great debate about neobanks with his snarky column on Forbes the other day. His basic argument is that neobanks are over. A few choice passages: The 10 leading neobanks in the US grew by a little more than 10 million accounts in 2021, from 23.3 million to 33.5 million, according to…
Read MoreSome years ago, as an April Fool, a firm offered a free download of a game as long as, in the terms and conditions, you agreed that they could now own your soul. It was silly, but most people agreed to the download with that condition, because they don’t read the terms and conditions. Luckily…
Read MoreSome FinTech firms are quite old. Depending on how you call it PayPal, Zopa and others have been around for a couple of decades. They saw a downturn in 2008 with the financial crisis, and survived. But we are now in a different situation. 2022 is seeing the toughest times for all. Interest rates rising,…
Read MoreBuilding on yesterday’s blog, it is very easy to portray the whole cryptocurrency marketplace as a scam, Ponzi scheme, Wild West and a place where you tread carefully as it is a minefield. In some ways, it is. There are plenty of things out there designed to just rip you off. There are also techie…
Read MoreI stumbled across a tweet about Nomad, a cross-chain bridge, that had just had almost $200 million of crypto assets hacked: The cross-chain token bridge Nomad was exploited, with attackers draining the protocol of virtually all of its funds. The total value of cryptocurrency lost to the attack totalled near $200 million. Nomad, like other…
Read MoreI blogged yesterday about the huge difficulty of proving I owned something, its history and provenance. This is actually something TV shows are made about and there is one on the BBC called Fake or Fortune, where our hosts and experts travel the world trying to prove if a rare item is real or fake….
Read MoreAfter all the turbulence of the crypto winter, things seem to have bottomed out and a mini-rally is underway. Keep that in mind as you can see from the comments and stats that a lot of people think that crypto is here to stay, regardless of the recent dip. Buy the dip? Maybe or maybe…
Read MoreI did a presentation in Helsinki the other day about the importance of owning my data. It made me realise as I prepared for this presentation that we have three data systems, and financial systems, developing. The first is centralised; the second is distributed; and the third is decentralised. The second and third are similar…
Read MoreThe belief in crypto has fallen through the floor in second quarter 2022, mainly due to factors from stablecoins that became unstable to exchanges that locked customers in (Celsius, Binance). So, I found it interesting when one cryptopunk asked the question on twitter: what do you believe in? I thought I’d pick out a few…
Read MoreSome years ago, as an April Fool, a firm offered a free download of a game as long as, in the terms and conditions, you agreed that they could now own your soul. It was silly, but most people agreed to the download with that condition, because they don’t read the terms and conditions. Luckily…
Read MoreAs a guy who has invested a little in cryptocurrencies, I sat back a year ago in a warm glow. The investment had risen phantasmagorically, and was now worth a good pension. Today? It’s worth almost nothing. Source: Daily Mail What’s gone wrong? Well, it started with Terra, and it’s led to Terror. The wobbles…
Read MoreThe year is 2030. I own something, have privacy on demand, and life has been better and worse. Back in 2016, Ida Auken (Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark) had an article published on Forbes: “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better”. It gained traction, as it…
Read MoreGail Bradbrook, Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion, joins her colleague Felix Barbour, to further address this challenge from an angry banker, who responded to her earlier blogs on this site. Maybe like HSBC’s Stuart Kirk, our angry banker is merely voicing what many of us silently think? The question then is, is he right? (Stuart Kirk…
Read MoreWe had quite a few discussions around FinTech Week London and the line that seemed to catch people’s attention is: we must remove legacy thinking. There was debate about examples of legacy thinking. We need branches for advice; customers will always need cash (and checks!); only regulated markets by governments work; banks can only do…
Read MoreI shared Gail Bradbrook’s and Andrew Cass’s ideas around ESG on Friday, the role of finance in this space, and how it isn’t working as it should. This elicited an interesting response from Jeff Scott, Chairman and Co-Founder of Rewired Earth, a group that promotes the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals to deliver actionable insight…
Read MoreAs usual, I take time out on the first of each month to give Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, a platform to talk. This month, Gail has made connections with a disgruntled investment professional who has worked extensively in the ESG field (Cass, Andrew!) who wants to tell some hard truths about the (un)reality…
Read MoreI just had a nice interview with EFMA (now Qorus) about the new book Digital for Good (available here), and thought I would share the interview here. Hope you like it. Qorus- It is not always easy to distinguish genuine leaders from clever communicators. How did you select the different people you gave the floor…
Read MoreI hadn’t heard of the campaign make my money matter, until the other day. It’s all about igniting consumers to consider what their pension fund is funding. Every $10 you put into a pension allows $2 to be invested in deforestation, destroying biodiversity and raping our planet … or that’s the way the argument plays…
Read MoreI launched the new book Digital for Good in London the other day, and was joined by many friends in my network. The main highlight of the event was a panel discussion on where we are going with four panellists: Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion Gihan A.M. Hyde, Founder & CEO, CommUnique Tram Anh Nguyen,…
Read MoreFor a few months now, I’ve given Gail Bradbrook, Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion, a voice on this blog. The idea was to get understanding through talking. There have been many negative reactions, particularly this challenge from an angry banker. Since then, he has sent me several more negative emails, which I haven’t shared, but decided the…
Read MoreI watched Stuart Kirk’s speech at the FT Moral Money conference last week … … and, frankly, was astounded. He is now being side-lined, suspended, maybe sacked and certainly a pariah with anyone who cares about the future of our world. Why? Well, let’s just take three comments thrown out during his presentation: “Who cares…
Read MoreThe exciting area for me is always our technological future. Reusable rockets, life on Mars, quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, blockchain, renewable energy and more are all going to transform the way we live over the next few years. What does this mean in reality? I could describe each one in depth, but…
Read MoreSociety is changing rapidly, every day. We don’t see it but, if you take a dip into the worlds of 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022, you can see the massive changes in how we live, work, relate, talk and transact. Back in the 1980s, no one had computers; we had rotary telephones; the main…
Read MoreOn reflecting the past decade of innovation in FinTech, it’s been interesting watching the struggles of regulators to keep up. The challenge is that the regulators haven’t been able to keep up. They allowed a lot of things to happen which, now, they’re trying to address. Let’s take a few examples. First, Peer-to-Peer Lending (P2PL)….
Read MoreI worry sometimes that my writing these days about how finance, technology and ESG combine will alienate many in finance and technology. It shouldn’t, as these two industries hold the keys to the solutions, but it has moved the agenda from where I came from to where I’m going to. When I reflect on the…
Read MoreI launched the new book Digital for Good in London the other day, and was joined by many friends in my network. The main highlight of the event was a panel discussion on where we are going with four panellists: Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion Gihan A.M. Hyde, Founder & CEO, CommUnique Tram Anh Nguyen,…
Read MoreBenju Shah, Head of the Nordic BIS Innovation Hub for the Bank of International Settlements, followed up Sveinn’s session with a discussion defining money. When defining money, Benju started by saying it is for the public good. Hmmm … not so sure about this although Digital for Good is all about making that a reality. Money…
Read MoreWe had a great session in Oslo last week focused upon: what is money? The question comes up more and more in my thinking, especially when you look at cryptocurrencies, CBDCs, stablecoins and such like. We had many good presentations from MasterCard, the Norwegian Central Bank, Handelsbanken and even cameo Zoom appearances from Dave Birch…
Read MoreI am regularly asked: what’s the next big thing? Answer: there isn’t one. There are just all the things we can see today that are building to the next big thing. What’s out there today? Web3; the metaverse; cryptocurrencies, digital currencies and CBDCs; artificial intelligence plus; blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies in reality;…
Read MoreSome years ago, as an April Fool, a firm offered a free download of a game as long as, in the terms and conditions, you agreed that they could now own your soul. It was silly, but most people agreed to the download with that condition, because they don’t read the terms and conditions. Luckily…
Read MoreThe main blog discussions this week include … Is Goldman Sachs letting Apple down? There’s a good old challenge in banking that, in recent years, has been growing. The challenge is to name the bad guy. Sometimes the bad guy is a hacker; other days, it’s a rogue trader; another event points the finger at…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Another day, another crash, another hack I stumbled across a tweet about Nomad, a cross-chain bridge, that had just had almost $200 million of crypto assets hacked: The cross-chain token bridge Nomad was exploited, with attackers draining the protocol of virtually all of its funds. The total But…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog headlines include … What’s your purpose? I find the world fascinating. Humans are amazing. We just launched the James Webb Telescope to see world’s formed billions of years ago and the Elizabeth Line. Both are engineering projects of immense challenge, and immense cost, as covered by many documentaries. Then I read…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … It’s not a stablecoin … it’s just Stable! A PR firm reached out to me the other day, saying: want to hear about a FinTech firm started on a farm? I said yes and, before I knew it, Stable became my new, favourite FinTech start-up. It meant that I soon…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … #HSBC’s two-face strikes again We had quite a few discussions around FinTech Week London and the line that seemed to catch people’s attention is: we must remove legacy thinking. There was debate about examples of legacy thinking. We need branches for advice; customers will always need cash (and…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … FinTech Forces of the Future, Part One: Economics and Finance I worry sometimes that my writing these days about how finance, technology and ESG combine will alienate many in finance and technology. It shouldn’t, as these two industries hold the keys to the solutions, but it has moved…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions included … The neobank era is just beginning Good friend Ron Shevlin sparked off a great debate about neobanks with his snarky column on Forbes the other day. His basic argument is that neobanks are over. A few choice passages: The 10 leading neobanks in the US grew by a little more than…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions include: Six years since #Brexit, where are we? I don’t talk about Brexit much. As a Remainer, I was gutted Britain voted to leave. That was six years ago. Today is the sixth anniversary of that 2016 vote. In 2018, I left Britain to live in Europe. My sympathies lie in…
Read MoreThe main blog discussions this week included … Welcome to (another) crypto meltdown As a guy who has invested a little in cryptocurrencies, I sat back a year ago in a warm glow. The investment had risen phantasmagorically, and was now worth a good pension. Today? It’s worth almost nothing. Source: Daily Mail What’s gone…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Is digital all it’s cracked up to be? I just sent a payment to a new company. They sent the details and it involved quite a lot of set-up. I then hit the button and bang! There goes $1,000. Thing is that, when you hit that button, you…
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Best CEO of the Year UK 2022
Best Digital Finance Provider of the Year UK 2022
Best Financial Markets Adviser of the Year UK 2022
Portal to the Knowledge Base of the Financial Services Club UK 2022
Financial Markets Advisor of the Year UK 2022
Best Financial Markets Adviser of the Year UK 2022
Portal to the Knowledge Base of the Financial Services Club UK 2022
Financial Markets Advisor of the Year UK 2022
Digital Bank, May 2014 from Chris Skinner
