Five years ago, I interviewed Niklas Adalberth, Co-Founder, Deputy CEO and Board Member at Klarna. He left the company shortly after, and is now a venture capitalist at Norrsken. At the time, Klarna was relatively unheard of, but the interview intrigued me at the time. It was all about an …

Things we’re reading today include … Brexit talks: what are the ‘major unresolved topics’ UK and EU must agree on? Climate crisis: FTSE giants fail to disclose their carbon footprint The women inspiring others in a male-dominated industry Future of the City: Where did all the jobs go? Investors dump …

The main blog discussions this week include … The Omniaccess Future (Free Research Report) The new word of focus, as proven by research, is omniaccess. Forget omnichannel. We just performed a short survey about the views of banks and FinTechs regarding the pandemic, sponsored by Oracle. The results are out today …

Do you switch video on or not? 2020 has seen the big switch to video conferencing. Why didn’t we do it before? We’ve had video conferencing available on our phones and PC’s for years. Why is it we only switched this year? Because we are all distancing. Before March 2020, …

Things we’re reading today include … Bank of England moves to ‘unlock potential’ of cloud California jobless fraud likely tops $2 billion, Bank of America says The transaction that sums up 2020 UK bank payouts: happy Brexitmas Banks can re-start dividend payments, regulator says Black staff at Lloyds are paid …

I’ve talked a lot about GloLo – the integration of local with global. This is where physical and digital come together, and has clearly been demonstrated during the pandemic. I’m local – locked in and not going anywhere – but I’m global – I’m video-calling every day to everywhere in …

Things we’re reading today include … ECB set to increase its stimulus as Covid lockdowns blight the economic recovery Consumers are spending more in 2020 than they did in 2019, says Bank of America CEO UK economy will revive in 2021 but full recovery not likely until 2022, says CBI …

I guess that Facebook caused many central banks to realise that if they didn’t issue digital currencies then others would. Hence, why most central banks are issuing them. But it’s not an either-or scenario. “We will see in the not-too-distant future a sovereign digital currency coming out.” Michael Corbat, CEO …

Things we’re reading today include … Leading cybersecurity firm is hacked Economic cost of Covid crisis prompts call for one-off UK wealth tax Jamie Dimon signals strong end to year on Wall Street Commonwealth Bank of Australia to move European HQ out of London PayPal ‘reward’ email rapped for misleading …

The new word of focus, as proven by research, is omniaccess. Forget omnichannel. We just performed a short survey about the views of banks and FinTechs regarding the pandemic, sponsored by Oracle. The results are out today and here’s the summary: 48% believe the change from physical to digital is here …

Things we’re reading today include … Revolut on track for profits as regulators and investors switch focus David Bowie coin launched towards space by Royal Mint Covid forces Davos forum to move to Singapore Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank funded Wirecard’s India deal Brexit: Pound recovers ground as Johnson sets talks …

I hadn’t realised the significance of Stripe’s recent press release until I stumbled over the Stratechery write-up over the weekend. Stratechery points out that Stripe has gone from a simple merchant checkout API to a platform of platforms. The significance of that? Well, think of the Amazon of finance: that’s …

Things we’re reading today include … Bank of England economist Andy Haldane says Britons have saved bundles of cash during the pandemic Can the European Central Bank keep the surging euro in check? BBVA-Sabadell merger talks cap decade of forced consolidation for Spanish banks Ant, Grab Become First Tech Firms …

The main blog discussions this week include … It’s beginning to look a lot like banking … I wrote this the other day for Channel News Asia: FinTech firms may look like banks soon The gist of my thread is that, due to Ant Group offloading all of their risk …

This is the fifth in a series of blogs about the elephant, which represents the economy, and the bird, which represents the future. The elephant is still here. He’s too big for me to get rid of him. And he’s very difficult to deal with as he’s big and smelly. …