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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This week’s main blog discussions include … How many employees does it take to create $1 billion of value? I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers,…
Read More
I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. We argue about whether fintech is really disrupting banking, whether the challengers will…
Read More
There is something wonderfully contradictory happening in banking right now illustrated by the main news headlines I picked out yesterday. Banks are racing to put artificial intelligence into the heart of their operations because it makes them faster, cheaper and more productive, while at the same time warning their customers that artificial intelligence creates new…
Read More
I asked AI to summarise the latest edition of Huawei’s financial magazine called Transform, and this is what it came back with. I think AI is not objective … Transform Issue 27: Banking’s Butterfly Moment The most striking contribution in Huawei’s Transform Issue 27 comes from Chris Skinner, who argues that banking is moving beyond…
Read More
I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. We argue about whether fintech is really disrupting banking, whether the challengers will…
Read MoreI asked AI to summarise the latest edition of Huawei’s financial magazine called Transform, and this is what it came back with. I think AI is not objective … Transform Issue 27: Banking’s Butterfly Moment The most striking contribution in Huawei’s Transform Issue 27 comes from Chris Skinner, who argues that banking is moving beyond…
Read MoreMasterCard just produced an interesting range of views about the future of shopping and money using visionaries like my friend Theo Lau, who alerted me to the report. Download the report here. A quick summary. We have spent the last years talking about artificial intelligence as though the big change is that we will have…
Read More
I have spent this week looking at the systemic implications of AI, cloud and digital currencies, but there is an obvious question left hanging over all of this. If you are the CEO of a bank or fintech, what are you supposed to do about it? The answer is not to become an expert in…
Read More
Digital money doesn’t have a passport. For millenia, money has been organised around geography. The dollar belongs to America, sterling to Britain, the euro to Europe and the yen to Japan. Banks are licensed nationally, central banks provide national monetary anchors, governments guarantee deposits nationally and regulators supervise institutions largely through national legal frameworks. Digital…
Read More
Over the past two days, I have looked separately at two uncomfortable developments in banking. The first is that banks are moving more and more of their critical infrastructure onto a handful of global cloud platforms, while the second is that artificial intelligence is moving from helping humans make decisions towards making those decisions itself….
Read More
We spent the years after the financial crisis worrying about banks that were too big to fail. We forced them to hold more capital, more liquidity, write living wills, run stress tests and prove that governments would never again have to rescue the financial system because one enormous institution collapsed. Meanwhile, almost unnoticed outside technology…
Read More
There is a problem with the way we talk about cryptocurrency. Every time there is a major fraud, hack, Ponzi scheme or spectacular collapse involving crypto, the headlines quickly become another indictment of cryptocurrency itself: crypto is a scam; bitcoin is for criminals; digital currencies are dangerous … the whole thing should be shut down….
Read More
Three months ago, I wrote a short piece about Revolut but, since then, there has been an extraordinary amount of Revolut news: a banking licence in France; full banking status in Britain; conditional approval for a US national bank; a banking licence in Australia; banking operations in Mexico; expansion into Finland; licences in the UAE;…
Read MoreI was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. We argue about whether fintech is really disrupting banking, whether the challengers will…
Read MoreThere is something wonderfully contradictory happening in banking right now illustrated by the main news headlines I picked out yesterday. Banks are racing to put artificial intelligence into the heart of their operations because it makes them faster, cheaper and more productive, while at the same time warning their customers that artificial intelligence creates new…
Read MoreI asked AI to summarise the latest edition of Huawei’s financial magazine called Transform, and this is what it came back with. I think AI is not objective … Transform Issue 27: Banking’s Butterfly Moment The most striking contribution in Huawei’s Transform Issue 27 comes from Chris Skinner, who argues that banking is moving beyond…
Read MoreMasterCard just produced an interesting range of views about the future of shopping and money using visionaries like my friend Theo Lau, who alerted me to the report. Download the report here. A quick summary. We have spent the last years talking about artificial intelligence as though the big change is that we will have…
Read More
The FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them biased. All views are their own and independent and objective. The reviewers are leading fintech experts…
Read MoreI have spent this week looking at the systemic implications of AI, cloud and digital currencies, but there is an obvious question left hanging over all of this. If you are the CEO of a bank or fintech, what are you supposed to do about it? The answer is not to become an expert in…
Read MoreDigital money doesn’t have a passport. For millenia, money has been organised around geography. The dollar belongs to America, sterling to Britain, the euro to Europe and the yen to Japan. Banks are licensed nationally, central banks provide national monetary anchors, governments guarantee deposits nationally and regulators supervise institutions largely through national legal frameworks. Digital…
Read MoreOver the past two days, I have looked separately at two uncomfortable developments in banking. The first is that banks are moving more and more of their critical infrastructure onto a handful of global cloud platforms, while the second is that artificial intelligence is moving from helping humans make decisions towards making those decisions itself….
Read MoreWe spent the years after the financial crisis worrying about banks that were too big to fail. We forced them to hold more capital, more liquidity, write living wills, run stress tests and prove that governments would never again have to rescue the financial system because one enormous institution collapsed. Meanwhile, almost unnoticed outside technology…
Read MoreI have spent this week looking at the systemic implications of AI, cloud and digital currencies, but there is an obvious question left hanging over all of this. If you are the CEO of a bank or fintech, what are you supposed to do about it? The answer is not to become an expert in…
Read MoreDigital money doesn’t have a passport. For millenia, money has been organised around geography. The dollar belongs to America, sterling to Britain, the euro to Europe and the yen to Japan. Banks are licensed nationally, central banks provide national monetary anchors, governments guarantee deposits nationally and regulators supervise institutions largely through national legal frameworks. Digital…
Read More
I’ve recently written quite a bit about the GENIUS Act, the GRANITE Act and the CLARITY Act in the United States. Well, yesterday was the crucial day as the CLARITY Act moved through the Senate or, rather, it didn’t. The USA has spent years arguing that cryptocurrency needs regulatory clarity and the Digital Asset Market…
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I’ve written a lot about the Crypto President and the friction between the Trump administration’s legislation ranging from the GENIUS Act to GRANITE to CLARITY and you really could not make this stuff up. Will Donald Trump be the Crypto President? America is creating a war with Europe over digital money Donald Trump, the President…
Read MoreThere is a problem with the way we talk about cryptocurrency. Every time there is a major fraud, hack, Ponzi scheme or spectacular collapse involving crypto, the headlines quickly become another indictment of cryptocurrency itself: crypto is a scam; bitcoin is for criminals; digital currencies are dangerous … the whole thing should be shut down….
Read MoreThree months ago, I wrote a short piece about Revolut but, since then, there has been an extraordinary amount of Revolut news: a banking licence in France; full banking status in Britain; conditional approval for a US national bank; a banking licence in Australia; banking operations in Mexico; expansion into Finland; licences in the UAE;…
Read More
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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The 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 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 MoreMasterCard just produced an interesting range of views about the future of shopping and money using visionaries like my friend Theo Lau, who alerted me to the report. Download the report here. A quick summary. We have spent the last years talking about artificial intelligence as though the big change is that we will have…
Read MoreApparently, artificial intelligence is going to kill us all. Well, maybe, because this is no longer just a warning coming from science-fiction writers or people standing outside Silicon Valley carrying placards. Some of the people building the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence systems are openly discussing the possibility that the technology they are creating could…
Read MoreI have spent this week looking at the systemic implications of AI, cloud and digital currencies, but there is an obvious question left hanging over all of this. If you are the CEO of a bank or fintech, what are you supposed to do about it? The answer is not to become an expert in…
Read MoreOver the past two days, I have looked separately at two uncomfortable developments in banking. The first is that banks are moving more and more of their critical infrastructure onto a handful of global cloud platforms, while the second is that artificial intelligence is moving from helping humans make decisions towards making those decisions itself….
Read More
The last global banking crisis was driven by mortgages, leverage and institutions that all believed the same thing at the same time. The next one will be driven by machines doing exactly the same thing, except they will do it in milliseconds. For the last few years, everyone has talked about artificial intelligence (AI) as…
Read MoreWe spent the years after the financial crisis worrying about banks that were too big to fail. We forced them to hold more capital, more liquidity, write living wills, run stress tests and prove that governments would never again have to rescue the financial system because one enormous institution collapsed. Meanwhile, almost unnoticed outside technology…
Read MoreThere is a problem with the way we talk about cryptocurrency. Every time there is a major fraud, hack, Ponzi scheme or spectacular collapse involving crypto, the headlines quickly become another indictment of cryptocurrency itself: crypto is a scam; bitcoin is for criminals; digital currencies are dangerous … the whole thing should be shut down….
Read MoreThree months ago, I wrote a short piece about Revolut but, since then, there has been an extraordinary amount of Revolut news: a banking licence in France; full banking status in Britain; conditional approval for a US national bank; a banking licence in Australia; banking operations in Mexico; expansion into Finland; licences in the UAE;…
Read More
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 MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … How many employees does it take to create $1 billion of value? I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers,…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Revolut Wins Central Bank Approval to Acquire Argentine Bank Big Brother Watch comment on digital bank Revolut rolling out ‘pay by face’ technology Eurozone Bank Loans to Businesses Halved in August After ECB Interest Rate Hikes MPs to consider whether Bank of England’s remit is ‘fit for purpose’ UK…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … AI regulation must be grounded in human rights CADA, DORA, AI Act: Can EU Banking Rules Simplify? Connecting payment systems, linking economies ECB brings Central Bank money to tokenised market Connecting payment systems, linking economies (by the ECB) Fintech Wants the Keys to the Bank AI won’t save us…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Deutsche Bank estimates 30% uplift in client onboarding by deploying KYC AI Danske Bank expects further job cuts in AI push Invesco launches behavioural intelligence platform technology Banks issue urgent warning using AI to shop online raises scam and fraud risks Panic as advanced AI systems develop a chilling…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Kremlin-backed forgery scheme moved $6.9bn through global banks Russian fintech A7 exploited Swift controls to funnel billion of dollars in sanctioned payments ECB launches ‘Pontes’ to settle tokenised assets in central bank money Deutsche Bank’s Hong Kong Wealth Boom Fed by Chinese Flows Scammers busted buying real Rolex watches…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Nik Storonsky’s plan for Revolut: a global bank with ‘effectively zero risk’ Making it easy to pay for your meal with crypto U.S. seeks crypto, saying it’s from Iran oil sales to Chinese buyers How Poland lost $230mn trying to buy Venezuelan oil with crypto OCC Opens Three Bank Doors…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What the FinTech Book Club thinks of “Intelligent Bank” The FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them…
Read MoreThe FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them biased. All views are their own and independent and objective. The reviewers are leading fintech experts…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … How many employees does it take to create $1 billion of value? I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers,…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What the FinTech Book Club thinks of “Intelligent Bank” The FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … 25 years after 9/11: An attack on America, capitalism or the world? On Tuesday, 11th September 2001, I was flying back from Nice, France, after a conference. We arrived home and switched on the television. What we saw was horrific. At 8:46 that morning in New York, 13:46…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … The true cost of AI (Part One) 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…
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 MoreThis 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…
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