The main blog headlines are …
Monzo and Marcus: American challengers or just noise?
My mate Ron Shevlin is on good form these days. He’s written quite a few columns on Forbes that are clickbait: Customers don’t want digital banking The FinTech fast follower fallacy (which I spotted just after writing this yesterday) His latest created quite a twitter …
Fast follower strategies = final failures
I was having dinner with a friend the other night, when he asked me: “what do you think about the fast follower strategy?” I said it was stupid and doesn’t work. He then added that the major bank he’s working with are proud that this …
Are legacy companies holding back the future?
In my presentations I regularly talk about legacy Europe and America and leapfrog countries from China to India to Kenya to Colombia. The reason the latter countries are leapfrogging Europe and America is that they didn’t have a large, ingrained existing infrastructure for payments and …
Slave to the machine or free for a dignified life?
Looking at the world of the future, we all wonder what will happen to work. Will we still have jobs? Will all the dumb jobs disappear so we no longer have call centres (replaced by chatbots and avatars); accountants and auditors (replaced by AI algorithms); …
So, Facebook launched a currency …
I’ve blogged a few times about Facebook planning to launch a currency … Will Facebook become the world’s central bank? If Facebook launch a cryptocurrency, will US government shut it down? … and the fact that most regulators won’t like it. In fact, there are …
And the top news headlines this week are …
MoneyGram shares more than double on Ripple deal - Financial Times
Blockchain group will invest up to $50m under cryptocurrency partnership
RBS picks Marieke Flament to head business-focused digital bank - Financial Times
Incoming Mettle chief gained fintech experience as head of cryptofinance group Circle
Facebook's Libra launch will extend its global domination - Guardian
Cryptocurrency could wipe out many businesses and further concentrate corporate power Every week, dozens of people walk into the Sunshine convenience store in Charlottesville, Virginia, to send money to relatives in other countries. They use a service called MoneyGram, one of the two largest firms (the other being Western Union)
Is Facebook's Libra currency a case of corporate megalomania? | Nils Pratley - Guardian
The planned cryptocurrency has big questions to answer, not least on transparency and trust What is Facebook’s new Libra digital currency ? A way to stop money-transfer companies exploiting the world’s poor by skimming off vast fees in cross-border transactions? Or an exercise in corporate megalomania that will involve persuading
Why the Dutch Hate Bankers - Bloomberg
The Netherlands is the cradle of capitalism—the home of the world’s first stock market and the dominant global financial center in the 17th and 18th centuries. So why do the Dutch hate bankers so much?
Challengers under fire from Bank - The Times
The Bank of England has sent a strongly worded letter to the heads of 20 of Britain’s challenger banks and fast-growing financial firms after finding several weaknesses in stress tests.
Bank of England says new lenders could be ill-prepared for downturns - Reuters
Many of Britain’s fast-growing fledgeling banks have little experience of downturns and could underestimate potential loan losses if markets turned sour, a Bank of England review of 20 lenders showed.
The Bank of England's biggest problem? The City of London - The Guardian
Governor Mark Carney should use his Mansion House speech to tell the Square Mile it must stay on a short leash When the Bank of England’s governor, Mark Carney, addresses City grandees this Thursday at Mansion House in London, he could step outside his usual comfort zone and make his
Crypto is coming: get ready to spend Facebook’s money - Guardian
The social network is likely to release details of its cryptocurrency this week: and it won’t be much like Bitcoin First it had your friends, then it had your pictures, then it had your diary. Now, in the latest effort to entwine its systems still further into the everyday lives
Major global firms accused of concealing their environmental impact - Guardian
More than 700 companies, including Amazon, Tesco and ExxonMobil, lack transparency, campaign group claims A $10tn (£7.9tn) investor alliance has accused more than 700 companies, including Amazon, Tesco and ExxonMobil, of failing to reveal the full extent of their impact on the climate crisis, water shortages and deforestation. The major
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
