Welcome to The Finanser by Chris Skinner. The Finanser discusses all things fintech, finance, banking, technology and, most importantly, the future. Chris Skinner has been voted the most influential technologist in Britain and received a lifetime achievement award for his visionary approach to the future of money from the Payments Association. He has advised the…
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Yes. The mistake is believing that the business case for AI is simply replacing people. If a bank employs 100 people costing £10 million and replaces them with AI costing £12 million, then viewed through the traditional cost-reduction spreadsheet AI has failed. Yet that calculation ignores what happens if those AI systems perform ten times…
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There is a rather awkward conversation beginning in boardrooms about artificial intelligence. For the last few years, the question has been what AI can do, how quickly companies can deploy it and how many people it might replace, but the question now landing on the CFO’s desk is much simpler: how much is this stuff…
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Over the past year, I’ve been doing something slightly different. I’ve been writing fiction. Not just fiction, but Pulp Finction. The idea behind Pulp Finction is simple: Fun. Fact. Finance. Fiction. Keep track of the full series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6DP7C4 and here: https://pulpfinction.com/ I’ve spent most of my life writing and talking about banking, money, technology…
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For years, I have argued with executives at banks about digital transformation and technical debt, so I finally decided to write down why and the whole issue really boils down to leadership and laggardship. Here are my thoughts: Technical Debt: The Hidden Balance Sheet of Banking Banks understand debt. They understand principal, interest, refinancing, maturity…
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Yes. The mistake is believing that the business case for AI is simply replacing people. If a bank employs 100 people costing £10 million and replaces them with AI costing £12 million, then viewed through the traditional cost-reduction spreadsheet AI has failed. Yet that calculation ignores what happens if those AI systems perform ten times…
Read MoreThere is a rather awkward conversation beginning in boardrooms about artificial intelligence. For the last few years, the question has been what AI can do, how quickly companies can deploy it and how many people it might replace, but the question now landing on the CFO’s desk is much simpler: how much is this stuff…
Read MoreOver the past year, I’ve been doing something slightly different. I’ve been writing fiction. Not just fiction, but Pulp Finction. The idea behind Pulp Finction is simple: Fun. Fact. Finance. Fiction. Keep track of the full series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6DP7C4 and here: https://pulpfinction.com/ I’ve spent most of my life writing and talking about banking, money, technology…
Read MoreFor years, I have argued with executives at banks about digital transformation and technical debt, so I finally decided to write down why and the whole issue really boils down to leadership and laggardship. Here are my thoughts: Technical Debt: The Hidden Balance Sheet of Banking Banks understand debt. They understand principal, interest, refinancing, maturity…
Read MoreThe European Central Bank is moving the digital euro from policy discussion towards implementation. Its latest Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook goes deep into how the system would work, covering everything from customer journeys and APIs to merchant acceptance, fraud, disputes, settlement, security and certification. What is emerging looks less like another CBDC experiment and more…
Read MoreEvery week another bank announces another branch closure but they forget that trust is built eye-to-eye, not on AI. The justification is always the same. Customers have gone digital. Mobile banking has replaced the high street. Artificial intelligence can answer questions twenty-four hours a day. Why pay for buildings when software is cheaper? On paper,…
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I was sitting this morning and thinking about how fantastic Agentic AI, autonomous commerce and programmable money is. It is the focus of my next Pulp Finction book Birth of a Unicorn being released in December. The thing is that there is a wonderful problem with artificial intelligence in banking: almost everyone agrees it is…
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Ten years ago on twitter, I kept getting messages from a guy called Preston Byrne about marmots. Marmots are basically the biggest squirrel in the world. Americans also call them woodchucks, although a woodchuck is a specific type of marmot, meaning all woodchucks are marmots, but not all marmots are woodchucks. They are most populous…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…
Read MoreYes. The mistake is believing that the business case for AI is simply replacing people. If a bank employs 100 people costing £10 million and replaces them with AI costing £12 million, then viewed through the traditional cost-reduction spreadsheet AI has failed. Yet that calculation ignores what happens if those AI systems perform ten times…
Read MoreThere is a rather awkward conversation beginning in boardrooms about artificial intelligence. For the last few years, the question has been what AI can do, how quickly companies can deploy it and how many people it might replace, but the question now landing on the CFO’s desk is much simpler: how much is this stuff…
Read MoreOver the past year, I’ve been doing something slightly different. I’ve been writing fiction. Not just fiction, but Pulp Finction. The idea behind Pulp Finction is simple: Fun. Fact. Finance. Fiction. Keep track of the full series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6DP7C4 and here: https://pulpfinction.com/ I’ve spent most of my life writing and talking about banking, money, technology…
Read MoreFor years, I have argued with executives at banks about digital transformation and technical debt, so I finally decided to write down why and the whole issue really boils down to leadership and laggardship. Here are my thoughts: Technical Debt: The Hidden Balance Sheet of Banking Banks understand debt. They understand principal, interest, refinancing, maturity…
Read MoreThe European Central Bank is moving the digital euro from policy discussion towards implementation. Its latest Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook goes deep into how the system would work, covering everything from customer journeys and APIs to merchant acceptance, fraud, disputes, settlement, security and certification. What is emerging looks less like another CBDC experiment and more…
Read MoreEvery week another bank announces another branch closure but they forget that trust is built eye-to-eye, not on AI. The justification is always the same. Customers have gone digital. Mobile banking has replaced the high street. Artificial intelligence can answer questions twenty-four hours a day. Why pay for buildings when software is cheaper? On paper,…
Read MoreI was sitting this morning and thinking about how fantastic Agentic AI, autonomous commerce and programmable money is. It is the focus of my next Pulp Finction book Birth of a Unicorn being released in December. The thing is that there is a wonderful problem with artificial intelligence in banking: almost everyone agrees it is…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…
Read More
Something interesting is happening in fintech, and I think we may need to stop talking about fintech as though it is an industry sitting somewhere alongside banking. For most of the past twenty years, that distinction made sense because there were banks and there were fintech companies trying to disrupt particular parts of what banks…
Read MoreOver the past year, I’ve been doing something slightly different. I’ve been writing fiction. Not just fiction, but Pulp Finction. The idea behind Pulp Finction is simple: Fun. Fact. Finance. Fiction. Keep track of the full series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6DP7C4 and here: https://pulpfinction.com/ I’ve spent most of my life writing and talking about banking, money, technology…
Read MoreThe European Central Bank is moving the digital euro from policy discussion towards implementation. Its latest Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook goes deep into how the system would work, covering everything from customer journeys and APIs to merchant acceptance, fraud, disputes, settlement, security and certification. What is emerging looks less like another CBDC experiment and more…
Read More
There was a time when Donald Trump was not particularly keen on cryptocurrencies. In 2019, he declared that he was “not a fan” of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, arguing that they were highly volatile, based on thin air and potentially useful for unlawful activity. How things change. Today, President Trump is arguably the most important…
Read MoreTen years ago on twitter, I kept getting messages from a guy called Preston Byrne about marmots. Marmots are basically the biggest squirrel in the world. Americans also call them woodchucks, although a woodchuck is a specific type of marmot, meaning all woodchucks are marmots, but not all marmots are woodchucks. They are most populous…
Read More
Crypto has turbo-charged the Ponzi scheme There is something wonderfully predictable about a Ponzi scheme. It invariably begins with an extraordinary opportunity, usually involving a market, technology or investment strategy that is sufficiently complicated to discourage too many questions. It offers returns that make conventional investing look painfully dull, attracts a charismatic promoter who explains…
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Something quite important is happening in cryptocurrency, and it is easy to miss if you spend too much time watching the price of bitcoin. For most of crypto’s relatively short history, the discussion has been dominated by price. Bitcoin goes up. Bitcoin crashes. Ethereum rallies. Ethereum collapses. Somebody launches another token. Somebody loses a fortune….
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…
Read More
When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea of bitcoin is that money can move from person to person, ownership could be established cryptographically and the…
Read More
For decades, the architecture of money was reasonably easy to understand. Banks held the money, central banks sat at the heart of national monetary systems, card networks connected merchants and consumers, and SWIFT connected banks across borders. It was complicated behind the scenes, but the basic structure had been remarkably stable for years. Then the…
Read MoreYes. The mistake is believing that the business case for AI is simply replacing people. If a bank employs 100 people costing £10 million and replaces them with AI costing £12 million, then viewed through the traditional cost-reduction spreadsheet AI has failed. Yet that calculation ignores what happens if those AI systems perform ten times…
Read MoreOver the past year, I’ve been doing something slightly different. I’ve been writing fiction. Not just fiction, but Pulp Finction. The idea behind Pulp Finction is simple: Fun. Fact. Finance. Fiction. Keep track of the full series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6DP7C4 and here: https://pulpfinction.com/ I’ve spent most of my life writing and talking about banking, money, technology…
Read MoreUBS versus Switzerland: when a bank becomes too big for its country There is a delicious irony developing in Switzerland. The country that spent generations building its reputation around the strength, discretion and stability of its banks now finds itself arguing with its largest bank over whether making that bank safer will make it weaker….
Read MoreThere was a time when Donald Trump was not particularly keen on cryptocurrencies. In 2019, he declared that he was “not a fan” of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, arguing that they were highly volatile, based on thin air and potentially useful for unlawful activity. How things change. Today, President Trump is arguably the most important…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…
Read MoreWhen Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea of bitcoin is that money can move from person to person, ownership could be established cryptographically and the…
Read More
For years, banks have worried about technology companies eating their lunch. Fintech would destroy banking. BigTech would become banking. Digital wallets would disintermediate banks. Cryptocurrencies would replace banks. Stablecoins would replace deposits. Decentralised finance would replace everything. None of that quite happened. Now we have artificial intelligence and, this time, there may be a very…
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I love this chart. Source: Avinash Kumar on LinkedIn Not because it is perfect. It isn’t. No ecosystem chart ever is, and this one shows the companies as examples rather than an exhaustive list. I love it because it takes something I have been writing about for years and makes it visible. We keep talking…
Read MoreFor decades, the architecture of money was reasonably easy to understand. Banks held the money, central banks sat at the heart of national monetary systems, card networks connected merchants and consumers, and SWIFT connected banks across borders. It was complicated behind the scenes, but the basic structure had been remarkably stable for years. Then the…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Netherlands bank moves billions in gold to London in ‘crisis preparedness’ move FSB Chair’s letter to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors: August 2026 European banks and private markets: Mapping the linkages Taxing the banks: what Europe’s windfall levies brought in as Burnham eyes his next move HMRC…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Judo Bank a ‘victim’ of bot trading, says CEO Russia enters the era of cryptocurrency regulation with a new law Ethereum Whale Moves 109,806 ETH to Exchanges in Three Days, Raising Sell-Off Concerns Tokenized Real-World Assets Reach Monthly High As Collateral Demand Grows Mollie completes GoCardless acquisition to expand…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … AI Software’s Real Bottleneck is Payments Infrastructure New AI models pose risk to global financial system, Bank of England chief warns Bank of England issues same chilling warning as man who predicted Covid and 2008 financial crash Central bank independence is facing its biggest stress test of this century…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … WhatsApp group chat used to send millions in cash, funding crime and extremism Central banks on-chain speech by Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB The battle to build a global defence bank Treasury ‘tells Healey’ to consider tax on banks and oil UAE, Egyptian central…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The SWOT of AI in banking I was sitting this morning and thinking about how fantastic Agentic AI, autonomous commerce and programmable money is. It is the focus of my next Pulp Finction book Birth of a Unicorn being released in December. The thing is that there is…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Polish prosecutors investigate crypto firm’s links to conservative opposition politicians and organisations Trump Family’s New Crypto Bank Is Backed by Abu Dhabi Sheikh Polish Olympic chief arrested in spreading crypto scandal PayPal Deal Talks End as Advent, Stripe Group Abandons Acquisition Effort – Bloomberg Deutsche Bank Taps Thought Machine…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … US fintech investment tops $80bn in H1 2026, driven by mega-deals UK fintech funding drops to a decade low, with AI bucking the trend Fintech Funding Trends Research ‘challenges assumption’ that older generation is less confident with fintech Britain plans new Bank of England objective to support payments innovation…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include: UK fintech investment plummets over past six months Tokenized deposits could affect bank liquidity, maturity transformation Responsible Fintech Institute debuts quantum pilot Four Years Ago, a Crypto Boss Went Missing. Now His Successor Has Bitcoin rises above $80,000 as soft dollar, debasement fears boost momentum Bank chief says Monte dei…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The SWOT of AI in banking I was sitting this morning and thinking about how fantastic Agentic AI, autonomous commerce and programmable money is. It is the focus of my next Pulp Finction book Birth of a Unicorn being released in December. The thing is that there is…
Read More
This week’s main blog discussions include … The TrustWeb: Revisiting the Origins of Moneykind Ten years ago, I wrote a series of blogs called The Origins of Moneykind. They accompanied the launch of Digital Human and explored a simple question: where does money come from? Looking back a decade later, I’m surprised how little I…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Innovators, Imitators and Idiots Warren Buffett observed years ago that every market eventually sorts itself into three groups: innovators, imitators and idiots. It is deliberately unfair but, like most good aphorisms, it contains more than a grain of truth. The innovators invent something genuinely new. The imitators wait until…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … PayPal, Stripe and Adyen: three companies, three futures Back in 2021, PayPal was worth around $360 billion. Today it is worth closer to $50 billion. That’s one of the biggest destructions of market value we’ve seen in fintech, and yet it isn’t because the company stopped growing. Quite…
Read MoreThis 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…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Pulp Finction arrives … and the reviews are in One of the things I have always struggled with is that most books about finance are either informative or entertaining. Very few manage to be both. That was the motivation behind writing Diary of a Ponzi Scheme. Rather than…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto and Politico: One Step Beyond For years I thought cryptocurrency was a fascinating financial experiment. It challenged banks, questioned governments and forced regulators to think differently about money. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was that it wasn’t just disrupting finance. It was quietly becoming a force in…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Who are the top fintech firms of 2026? 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….
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … How technology has integrated politics and power There are moments when an unexpected event reveals more about the world than years of official speeches and carefully crafted reports. The recent leak of Peter Thiel’s invitation-only network, Dialog, feels like one of those moments. This is not because it…
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