This week the Finanser talks with Gottfried Leibbrandt, CEO of SWIFT about cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, Ripple and all things blockchain. How do you see value exchange on the internet changing the game for banks and for infrastructures like SWIFT? Let’s take a step back so that I can give you my overall perspective. I always like to…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with Guga Stocco, Head of Strategy and Innovation, Banco Original, Brazil, and Co-Founder of Koolen&Partners Venture Capital. A pure digital bank in Brazil, Banco Original is launched by the largest meat processing firm in the world, J&F. Guga Stocco was brought into the business as an…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with Kosta Peric, Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. What is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doing with mobile money and the objective of raising people out of poverty by 2030? Our vision is that every life has…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with co-founder and CEO of Zopa, Giles Andrews. How did Zopa start? Well firstly, it wasn't my idea. I joined a team of three people who had an idea, about four slides of PowerPoint. They weren't quite sure where to take the idea and how…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with recently elected Chairman of The Bitcoin Foundation, Brock Pierce. Photo from Business Rockstars Brock Pierce is an American entrepreneur and former child actor. As a child actor, he was in Disney films The Mighty Ducks (1992), D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) and First Kid (1996). Brock has been involved in the establishment…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with one of Europe’s fastest growing unicorns, Klarna, in conversation with co-founder and Deputy CEO Niklas Adalberth, To begin with, perhaps you can tell me how you and your colleagues came up with the idea of Klarna. Sure. When we started this company, the entire…
I was recently talking with a few payments folks, and a hot debate began between two folks about banks having the wrong focus. The banker disagreed, of course, but the debate went something like this: “You make things too difficult and complex”, said the protagonist. “We have to do that, as we are a regulated…
Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with leading commentator on all things to do with digital money and digital identity: David G.W. Birch. Dave is well known as one of the leading voices in the field of developments in new forms of payment and money. He is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital…
I just visited with Roberto Ferrari at CheBanca! in Italy. For those who don’t know CheBanca!, it is the digital first bank launched in 2008 by Mediobanca. Mediobanca provides merchant bank services in Italy and had never had a retail bank before. Therefore, it made sense in the post-meltdown digital age to implement a fintech…
