Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Digital Bank

The Digital Bank Debate Continues

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had a great twitter debate between Brett King and Michal Panowicz, with others joining like Jim Marous and myself. The debate is now being staged live at Next Bank New York tomorrow.  It’s not so much a rumble in the jungle but a wrinkle-in in Brooklyn. Anyways,…

Debate-poster-06-14

Banks question Fintech disruption … and ask the wrong question

I recently attended a conference in America, where the audience of mainly bankers could post questions to the speaker.  During the digital bank discussion, here are the questions that came in and, purely because they are fairly common in everyday dialogue, I thought I would post and answer the questions here.  Most are related to…

Building the new financial marketplace

I introduced the business model debate about banks yesterday, as the discussion always comes back to the new competition.  Who are the new competition?  Are they the upstart fintech startups or are they Google, Amazon and brethren? The answer is it’s both, but I wouldn’t worry about Google, Amazon and co as much, as they…

Marketplaces

Will banks be laid low by a killer blow from new competition and regulation?

I regularly talk about the business model of banking and how it’s changing.  The business model is based upon three things: Manufacturing, which runs the product and services innovation and administration centres in the back office; Processing, which focuses upon operational excellence in processing orders from front office through back office; and Retailing, where the…

Gorillaz of Banking

FIDO needs more vision for digital identities

The real way to crack the onboarding and criminal activity is to create strong and secure digital identities.  We are moving in that direction, but it’s a long slow process.  For ages now, I’ve written about getting rid of passwords and improving authentication using mobile technologies: Why is KYC so difficult? AML prevention lies in…

FIDO

The wifi payments world of the very near future

I was talking about the internet of things again today, and realised that I have a grand vision of the not too distant future where everything communicates with everything.  We have chips as tiny as nanodots inside every brick, pavement slab, tyre, wall, ceiling … you name it.  We have more intelligent chips inside car…

What do narrow banks mean for wide banks?

In this world of choice that emerges from the integration of new technology models and old financial models, we see hybrid systems emerging that bring together the best-of-the-best.  A great example was announced today, as Metro Bank and Zopa join forces.  The deal allows deposits from Metro Bank retail customers to use P2P lending as…

Funding Circle 200515

Moving from banks as money stores to value stores

I’m talking a lot about the ValueWeb – how the internet is changing the things we value in banking, trade and commerce as well as life, love and relationships – at the moment, as this is the subject of my new book. One of the most intriguing things about the ValueWeb is the latter –…

Why the blockchain will radically alter our futures

There’s an interesting debate about blockchains, sidechains and identity taking place that is emergent right now but, soon, will be mainstream.  For those who are unclear about these things, blockchain is the technology protocol invented by Satoshi Nakamoto with bitcoin, although it doesn’t have to be based upon bitcoin.  The blockchain allows you to create…