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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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…
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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…
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This 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…
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I just came across a useful paper on the SUERF website: Tokenised deposits: old wine in new bottles? by Alistair Milne of Loughborough University The paper focuses upon whether tokenised bank deposits are actually doing anything new? His answer is sometimes, but nowhere near as much as the hype suggests. The starting point is the…
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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 MoreWarren 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 the innovators have proved there is money to be made and…
Read MoreI recently asked a simple question on LinkedIn. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, has X become less useful? The responses were fascinating, not because everyone agreed, but because almost nobody talked about the technology. Instead, they talked about how the platform made them feel. One person wrote that they had built their career on…
Read MoreYou’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies all wrong. Every few months someone declares that cryptocurrency is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to recording every one of those predictions. The latest panic is bitcoin’s price falling below $65,000 and Coinbase reporting weaker revenues. A few months earlier everyone was predicting Bitcoin would hit $200,000. Before…
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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 the opposite. PayPal still moves almost $2 trillion every year, serves around 440 million active…
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One person in seven has no access to formal financial services. One person in six lives with a disability. We normally think of these as two separate inclusion challenges. They are not. They are the same problem. Financial systems were designed around a single type of customer, leaving millions of others behind. For decades, financial…
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For centuries, we’ve designed the world for the able-bodied and called everyone else disabled. Today, technology is quietly rewriting those rules. It is making finance, communication, work and everyday life adapt to people, rather than forcing people to adapt to systems. Increasingly, I think disability tells us less about the individual than it does about…
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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…
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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…
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 MoreWarren 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 the innovators have proved there is money to be made and…
Read MoreYou’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies all wrong. Every few months someone declares that cryptocurrency is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to recording every one of those predictions. The latest panic is bitcoin’s price falling below $65,000 and Coinbase reporting weaker revenues. A few months earlier everyone was predicting Bitcoin would hit $200,000. Before…
Read MoreOne person in seven has no access to formal financial services. One person in six lives with a disability. We normally think of these as two separate inclusion challenges. They are not. They are the same problem. Financial systems were designed around a single type of customer, leaving millions of others behind. For decades, financial…
Read MoreFor centuries, we’ve designed the world for the able-bodied and called everyone else disabled. Today, technology is quietly rewriting those rules. It is making finance, communication, work and everyday life adapt to people, rather than forcing people to adapt to systems. Increasingly, I think disability tells us less about the individual than it does about…
Read More
For decades, we’ve treated poverty as an economic problem. Increasingly, I think it’s a technology problem. That sounds like a strange statement until you realise that the single biggest driver of financial inclusion over the past fifty years has not been governments, charities or banks. It has been technology. Governments, banks and charities have spent…
Read MoreI 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…
Read More
I blogged in February that Stripe might buy PayPal. That prediction is now coming true after a reported $53 billion bid by Stripe, backed by private equity firm Advent International, to acquire the OG, and this is far more than just another fintech acquisition. If it succeeds, it would probably be the most significant deal…
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We’ve been told that artificial intelligence is going to make banking faster, cheaper, safer and smarter. Now the people who regulate the financial system are starting to ask a different question. What if AI becomes the biggest systemic risk since the global financial crisis? That isn’t coming from technology sceptics. It’s coming from the Bank…
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 MoreYou’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies all wrong. Every few months someone declares that cryptocurrency is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to recording every one of those predictions. The latest panic is bitcoin’s price falling below $65,000 and Coinbase reporting weaker revenues. A few months earlier everyone was predicting Bitcoin would hit $200,000. Before…
Read More
Power used to be easy to understand. Kings inherited it; governments exercised it; central banks controlled money; banks allocated capital; corporations built wealth. The lines between politics, finance and business were reasonably clear. Each institution had its own role; each exercised power in different ways. Those lines have blurred almost beyond recognition. Today, political influence…
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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 politics and government, as I blogged the other day, and it’s now gone…
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I find it fascinating that one of the most interesting debates about the future of money in Britain is no longer being driven by the Bank of England, the Treasury or economists. Instead, it has become a political issue, largely thanks to Nigel Farage (the man who received £5 million from a crypto donor). What…
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For years, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) has sold itself as the future of finance: transparent, decentralised, unstoppable. Now one of the most respected security figures in crypto is saying: get out whilst you still can. Manuel Aráoz, co-founder of OpenZeppelin, believes AI has fundamentally changed the security equation in decentralised finance but his latest warning is…
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Barclays Bank wrote an article with the core message that tokenisation is moving finance from a world of messaging and reconciliation to a world of programmable, instantly settled value, which will be the most significant change to money since the arrival of electronic banking. They argue that tokenisation is the next major stage in the…
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I’ve just launched another new book! After the successful launch of Intelligent Bank with Huawei a few weeks ago I had, in the meantime, developed another book: Diary of a Ponzi Scheme. The scheme is all about Clint who creates a “Token Fund”. Investing in digital currencies and real world asset tokens, he suckers friends, contacts and his network…
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For the last twenty years, I have had many arguments with crypto advocates about Liberterian versus State governance. Now, the crypto guys are the government. During those years, people worried that politics would be captured by Wall Street, Big Oil or Big Tech, but the emerging power bloc is crypto money and artificial intelligence. These…
Read MoreI 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 MoreThere was a time when the biggest technology companies knew exactly what they were. Twitter was where the world talked. Facebook was where friends connected. YouTube was where anyone could broadcast themselves. Netflix was where you watched great television without adverts, schedules or interruptions. PayPal was the easiest way to pay online. Each company had…
Read MoreI recently asked a simple question on LinkedIn. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, has X become less useful? The responses were fascinating, not because everyone agreed, but because almost nobody talked about the technology. Instead, they talked about how the platform made them feel. One person wrote that they had built their career on…
Read MoreYou’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies all wrong. Every few months someone declares that cryptocurrency is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to recording every one of those predictions. The latest panic is bitcoin’s price falling below $65,000 and Coinbase reporting weaker revenues. A few months earlier everyone was predicting Bitcoin would hit $200,000. Before…
Read MoreBack 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 the opposite. PayPal still moves almost $2 trillion every year, serves around 440 million active…
Read MoreI 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…
Read More
Why are we still talking about branch or not to branch? The debate about bank branches has become oddly polarised. One side argues that branches are an expensive relic of the twentieth century. The other insists they remain the heart of community banking. The reality, as always, is more nuanced. The future probably belongs to…
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Whilst most of the world is still debating whether AI should sit inside an app, Tencent – the Chinese Tech Titan – has quietly embedded an intelligent assistant inside one of the largest digital ecosystems on the planet. To appreciate why this matters, you first need to understand the scale of the platform. WeChat, known…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … European Fintechs Enter US Banking Market Revolut secures French bank licence in Europe expansion OCC rejects Bunq’s bank charter application Robinhood brings zero-fee digital asset trading to UK FCA Scale-up Unit Welcomes ClearScore, Modulr, and Zilch to Boost UK Fintech Growth Banks’ refusal to take on crypto firms risks…
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 MoreThings we’re reading today include … New ‘digital money’ may not be the banking revolution many expect, says expert How De Novo Branch Expansion Is Reshaping Retail Banking Monzo Business Hits 1m Customers as One in Six UK Firms Bank With it Who stands behind tokenised money? Pleo in crisis: Exec exodus, unhappy staff and…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … FDIC Floats Standard-Setting Body for Banks’ Fintech Partners FBI Agent Charged Over Alleged $1 Million Cryptocurrency Theft Robinhood Secures FCA Registration to Offer Crypto Services in the UK Dubai Duty Free allows cryptocurrency payments for purchases Citi boss Fraser says a UK bank tax would damage London Major banks’ providing…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Revolut founder Nik Storonsky sued over £300m superyacht sale Andy Burnham faces mounting calls to hit big banks’ windfall tax as HSBC reports £14.5billion profit Bank battle: history suggests Burnham faces fight if he opts for windfall tax Why a decade-old legal saga is still haunting Deutsche Bank Bank…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include: HSBC unveils $1bn buyback as profits mushroom on Hong Kong growth HSBC resumes share buybacks as quarterly profit soars to $10.1bn Former Barclays chief Jenkins raises £40m for tech platform 10x Banking Metro Bank profit jumps as it bucks branch closure trend Visa beefs up cybersecurity offerings with $2.4 billion…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Lloyds Bank to cut £2bn in costs as part of AI-powered strategy Coldcard Bitcoin Wallets Compromised as Hackers Exploit Software Flaw $20B In Cryptocurrency Transfers During World Cup Examined In New Report The State of Digital Identity Verification in Fintech Firms Fintech leaders warn innovation outpaces cyber resilience UK…
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 … 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 More
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…
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…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Why are people scared of AI? Almost every innovation is met by people who believe it will destroy our ability to earn a living. The Luddites feared mechanisation. Clerks feared computers. Bank managers feared the internet. Taxi drivers feared ride-sharing apps. Retailers feared ecommerce. And now everyone fears…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Diary of a Ponzi Scheme and it’s all about tokenisation I’ve just launched another new book! After the successful launch of Intelligent Bank with Huawei a few weeks ago I had, in the meantime, developed another book: Diary of a Ponzi Scheme. The scheme is all about Clint who creates a “Token…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Monzo, Revolut and Starling: the quiet emergence of Britain’s Banking Champions For years, the conversation around digital banks focused on whether they could survive. Today, the question is very different: what are they becoming? The latest results from Monzo, Revolut and Starling reveal something remarkable. These institutions are…
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