Digital Bank

I was talking to an insider friend in the Revolut empire yesterday and he implied that Revolut is in talks to acquire a major Asian bank in its expansion across the region. I asked him which bank? but he kept schtum. So, I was thinking about it and wondered if it could be DBS? DBS operates…

Short summary: Tokenization is not new, but dates back 10,000 years when early societies used clay tokens to record ownership of goods. These were not money, but data tools to track value. Modern digital tokens and blockchain systems are simply the latest evolution, but can now do more than just record transactions. We can now…

I had a great chat the other day – the first in a series of three – with Quant’s Chief Product Officer Martin Hargreaves about programmable liquidity. What’s that? Read on … Programmable liquidity: five foundations reshaping modern treasury How is programmable money reshaping treasury operations and financial infrastructure? This conversation moved beyond theoretical frameworks…

I was recently watching Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank if you’re American), and spotted an interesting chap – Jinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive, a way of getting your mortgage paid down sooner through your spending. It’s an intriguing idea, so I reached out to him for a chat. Here’s what happened. Chris Skinner: Tell me a…

I was just having a chat with an AI engine asking about the most common questions people ask about cryptocurrencies. Really interesting answer so, I thought I would share it here (with my edits), as I’d be really interested in your views and answers. Equally, I’m tempted to say that this should be a test…

I was reading a fascinating case study about Ikano Bank, which is the bank of IKEA. The bank is headquartered in Malmö, Sweden, serves customers across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the UK, Poland, Germany and Austria, offering savings and loan products for consumers, sales support services for retailers, and leasing and factoring solutions for businesses….

A couple of things hit my radar late last week. The first was a prediction by Bain & Co that challenger banks would own a third of the UK banking market by 2030. This coincided with the news of Revolut finally getting their UK banking licence. It’s only taken five years. Let’s dive in. The…

The next era of payments: when money moves at internet speed I just found an interesting report by KPMG about a new payment standard called x402. Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, it’s built to ensure open, free, frictionless payments, and could be revolutionary for embedded, invisible finance. Built by Coinbase, the x402 protocol…

I was just reading Amazon Web Services’ report about Banking on the Cloud. It’s biased – everything has to be in the cloud of course – but it’s interesting. It also struck me that I was talking about banking on the cloud in 2008. It has taken a long time, and is still developing. Here is…

Innovation vs Illicit Finance: Why the Future of Crypto Compliance is Intelligent The US Treasury just produced an interesting document about digital assets, innovation and criminal activity. It’s well worht a read, so download the report here … but, if you can’t be bothered, here is my view. There is a familiar pattern whenever a new…