The Finanser’s Week: 20th July – 26th July 2026

This week’s main blog discussions include …

Banks exist because trust doesn’t scale

Some days, the financial news seems to have nothing whatsoever in common but yesterday there were four stories where I saw a link. The first is a US senator demanding answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Then there are UK banks are facing political scrutiny for restricting customers from making crypto…

Russia is consuming itself

Building on my story about banks win wars, not soldiers, there have been two interesting headlines over the last week: Half a million Russians go bankrupt as Putin risks banking crisis Russians turn to cash putting more strain on slowing wartime economy The stories boil down to the fact that the Russian economy is bust….

The battle begins: Burnham versus Dimon

Andy Burnham’s first day in power started on Monday and, immediately, as the new Prime Minister of Britain, Jamie Dimon, CEO and Chair of JPMorgan Chase gives him an ultimatum: increase our taxes and we’re off. JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon warns of ‘consequences’ if Andy Burnham taxes banks Dimon casts doubt over JP Morgan’s London…

How will Agentic AI change payments and finance?

I was recently interviewed for a podcast about Agentic AI in payments and finance. Here’s how the interview went: You’ve been writing and speaking about agentic commerce for a while. When did it click for you that this wasn’t just another tech buzzword. What was the moment you thought, “this one is real”? The answer…

Agentic commerce is about to reinvent payments

There are moments in technology when something shifts so fundamentally that the existing infrastructure suddenly looks like it belongs to another era. We saw it with the internet, when pages became platforms. We saw it with smartphones, when every business suddenly needed an app. Now we’re seeing it again as artificial intelligence moves from answering…

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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...