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 … What’s really happening with Nubank? Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not…
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Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not require Nubank to be the bank. That sounds like a subtle distinction,…
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The interesting story is no longer simply whether bitcoin goes to $50,000, $100,000 or $500,000, but whether the technologies created around crypto are becoming the foundations of a new financial system. If that is right, it raises a much bigger question: what is the money in that system? For most of our lives, the answer…
Read More
I just did an interview with LVTX about the future of payments. Sharing it here, fyi: What is one of the biggest structural inefficiencies in the payments and financial services ecosystem that still hasn’t been solved? One of the biggest structural inefficiencies in financial services today isn’t payments or settlement. It’s digital trust. The fact…
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Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not require Nubank to be the bank. That sounds like a subtle distinction,…
Read MoreThe interesting story is no longer simply whether bitcoin goes to $50,000, $100,000 or $500,000, but whether the technologies created around crypto are becoming the foundations of a new financial system. If that is right, it raises a much bigger question: what is the money in that system? For most of our lives, the answer…
Read MoreI just did an interview with LVTX about the future of payments. Sharing it here, fyi: What is one of the biggest structural inefficiencies in the payments and financial services ecosystem that still hasn’t been solved? One of the biggest structural inefficiencies in financial services today isn’t payments or settlement. It’s digital trust. The fact…
Read MoreYou are reading this as your data is harvested. On average, your personal data is collected 271 times a day. I know who you are. I know what you are doing. I will look for you. I will find you. Most of us think surveillance involves CCTV cameras, governments, police databases and, perhaps, the slightly…
Read MoreThere are always two sides to a coin and, right now, the two sides of our technological future could hardly look more different. On the one side are the technologists who want us to build more, compute more, automate more and move faster. Artificial intelligence will transform everything, robots will do much of the work,…
Read More
I was playing around with some numbers the other day, comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms, when something struck me. We keep comparing them using all the obvious measures: customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. Who’s bigger? Who’s growing faster? Are the fintechs really disrupting the banks or are…
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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…
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MasterCard 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 MoreNubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not require Nubank to be the bank. That sounds like a subtle distinction,…
Read MoreI just did an interview with LVTX about the future of payments. Sharing it here, fyi: What is one of the biggest structural inefficiencies in the payments and financial services ecosystem that still hasn’t been solved? One of the biggest structural inefficiencies in financial services today isn’t payments or settlement. It’s digital trust. The fact…
Read MoreYou are reading this as your data is harvested. On average, your personal data is collected 271 times a day. I know who you are. I know what you are doing. I will look for you. I will find you. Most of us think surveillance involves CCTV cameras, governments, police databases and, perhaps, the slightly…
Read MoreThere are always two sides to a coin and, right now, the two sides of our technological future could hardly look more different. On the one side are the technologists who want us to build more, compute more, automate more and move faster. Artificial intelligence will transform everything, robots will do much of the work,…
Read MoreI was playing around with some numbers the other day, comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms, when something struck me. We keep comparing them using all the obvious measures: customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. Who’s bigger? Who’s growing faster? Are the fintechs really disrupting the banks or are…
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 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 MoreThe interesting story is no longer simply whether bitcoin goes to $50,000, $100,000 or $500,000, but whether the technologies created around crypto are becoming the foundations of a new financial system. If that is right, it raises a much bigger question: what is the money in that system? For most of our lives, the answer…
Read MoreThere are always two sides to a coin and, right now, the two sides of our technological future could hardly look more different. On the one side are the technologists who want us to build more, compute more, automate more and move faster. Artificial intelligence will transform everything, robots will do much of the work,…
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 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…
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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…
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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….
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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;…
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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…
Read MoreThe interesting story is no longer simply whether bitcoin goes to $50,000, $100,000 or $500,000, but whether the technologies created around crypto are becoming the foundations of a new financial system. If that is right, it raises a much bigger question: what is the money in that system? For most of our lives, the answer…
Read MoreYou are reading this as your data is harvested. On average, your personal data is collected 271 times a day. I know who you are. I know what you are doing. I will look for you. I will find you. Most of us think surveillance involves CCTV cameras, governments, police databases and, perhaps, the slightly…
Read MoreThere are always two sides to a coin and, right now, the two sides of our technological future could hardly look more different. On the one side are the technologists who want us to build more, compute more, automate more and move faster. Artificial intelligence will transform everything, robots will do much of the work,…
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
Apparently, 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 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….
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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…
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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 MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What’s really happening with Nubank? Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Bank shares lose £18bn after Healey summons bosses to meeting Monzo courts private equity after Nubank walks away Europeans back slower bank checks to cut fraud risk UK ‘missed the boat’ on AI but can lead in finance, says FCA’s Colin Payne AI boom could trigger market shocks, Bank…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Nubank denies active Monzo takeover talks after shares plunge King’s bank Coutts hit with new lawsuit after ‘debanking’ Fintech is entering its next phase. Here’s what will shape it in 2027 We need ‘right to intervene’ in AI amid growing threat, says Bank of England boss Regulating AI ‘not…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Searching for signposts − speech by Alan Taylor, Bank of England Bank of England sees growing risk that dangers from AI and debt will materialise Bank of England warns of looming debt crisis Choosing financial stability over dreams is ‘heart-breaking’ Study: UK banks emerge as Europe’s biggest coal financiers…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Tether USDT aids Iran funding, Senate report says | Reuters Former Atlanta banker arrested in $931K cryptocurrency fraud scheme Why family offices are leading institutional crypto Banks face $230bn payments hit as stablecoins scale New forms of intelligent money set to hit traditional bank B2B revenue streams Apollo raises…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Foreign banks have expressed UBS merger interest, Swiss newspaper reports Buyout firm Advent eyes Monzo stake amid £10bn Nubank bid talks | Sky News Revolut gets green light to buy Argentinian bank London’s investment bankers and lawyers make more than £1bn in takeover frenzy US seizes bank accounts of…
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 MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What’s really happening with Nubank? Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not…
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…
Read MoreThis 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…
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