Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Digital Bank

That annoying auto-renewal you forgot to cancel

There’s nothing more annoying than when you get that note saying that you have just been charged $149 to renew your annual subscription to Youreanidiot.com. I subscribe to lots of different things and often forget that I subscribed. Then you suddenly find that $100s are leaving your account each year on things you no longer…

The multiverse of money

I find it hard to believe that some commentators are still talking about BaaS and the great unbundling of banking. The reason? Well that was the conversation we were having fifteen years ago. Today, the discussion is much more around embedded banking that is intelligent, ubiquitous, everywhere, anywhere, anytime … except that I was having…

AutoGPT gives a bank a brain on steroids

It’s interesting when we look at how AI is developing. First things first, AI is a large bucket of development. It’s not one thing. It’s so many things that are then applied to specific areas (I blogged about this the other day). So, it’s interesting reading various reports today about how AI is developing in…

The Future of Money: Unconscious Banking?

You may have seen my shameless plug of the new book Intelligent Money: When Money Thinks For You … well, here’s another one. After a podcast with my friends in Finland, who quite like my thinking, Pål Krogdahl wrote up his thoughts on our chat on LinkedIn. I really enjoyed his summary, so here it is. Meanwhile, you can…

Will Big Tech destroy Big Banks?

For years, I’ve said that Big Tech will crunch the periphery of finance – payments, cards, credit and such like – but will not try and dig into the core of deposit-taking banking because it’s too regulated and difficult. Instead, they are far more likely to partner with banks than do banking. That view still…

Licensed to trust

I’ve been talking about trust a lot lately, as that’s the basis of why you put money in a bank. You trust them. Why do you trust them? Well, it’s not because of their brand or their branch. It’s because they are licensed and promise to guarantee that they will not lose your money or,…

Do we need CBDCs?

Everyone seems to be talking about CBDCs: Central Bank Digital Currencies. They are being launched to stem the tide of cryptocurrencies, but it makes you ask: what’s the difference. A CBDC is backed by a government; a cryptocurrency is backed by decentralised democracy. Not much difference there then. The Bank of England defines CBDC as…

What are the hottest new tech trends … Digital Twins

I just got a whole new set of tech phrases from a Gartner report. Giving my interpretation, here we go: Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) is a proposed framework for Device Direct connectivity using satellite and cellular communication combination. The framework enables partnership between satellite (specifically low Earth orbit [LEO]) providers and terrestrial mobile operators…

Tony Blair wants everyone to have a Digital ID

The BBC just interviewed Tony Blair. Who? Oh yea, some politician from the last century. The interview is quite interesting, particularly the point that, when Mr Blair stood down, Britain had been led by just three people over 28 years. Now the country has just moved onto their sixth prime minister in eight years. Interestingly,…