Digital Bank

I’ve known some companies around the fintech space for years, one of which is Backbase who have kindly invited me to speak at a couple of their events in Q4 (Amsterdam, Bangkok). The theme they are promoting is to dream big or, as Backbase’s CEO, Jouk Pleiter, puts it: “the idea is a big endorsement…

I bumped into an interesting online debate the other day, that started with Brian Armstrong, the CEO and founder of Coinbase, who always has something worthwhile to say. His opening line on a recent Coinbase blog is a good example: Coinbase is working to update the financial system that was built over 100 years ago by enabling…

For some time it has been clear that there are at least two camps in banking: those who get tech and those who don’t. This applies at the executive level just as much as it applies at the customer level. The manifestation of this in reality is a bank that thoroughly doubles down on digitalisation…

A few years ago, a bank CIO said to me that he was not that bothered about blockchain technologies, as these involved many externalities; he was far more interested in AI, as this could make breakthroughs with internalities. In case his words are lost in translation, what he meant is that blockchain would not deliver return…

Brazil’s FinTech giant Nubank just crushed its 2Q 2023 earnings. We have never seen growth like NU’s in any challenger bank. In fact, some would claim – including me – that this ten-year-old company is not only the strongest neobank in the world, but one of the best-run digital banks ever, maintaining solid profitability. Here…

As someone who has been writing most of his life, and specifically books for two decades, the singular focus on technology and finance has been an interesting journey. The breakthrough came in the early 2010s for me, when Digital Bank was released. Since then, I’ve travelled the world meeting visionaries in banking, finance and technology,…

Thinking about money being inside my head, it already is in many ways. When I go around paying for things, I’m not focused upon my balances but on living my life. In the back of my head is that awareness that debits are going down and credits up, but the actual numbers are generic and…

Building on yesterday’s idea of the future world, where our brains are connected 24*7 in real-time to the network, what would that mean for financial services? Well, I’ve blogged about this a few times already: Invisible banking is the place to be Nobody wants embedded finance Specifically, if we think of money as part of…

I was thinking about embedded, intelligent finance and imagining the future. There are many scenarios, but one that I kept returning to is when you have infi inside (intelligent finance inside). A chip in your brain, and you can run your life on automatic. It may seem phantasmagorical but there are several examples of where…

Although we can mock consulting houses, their research can prove incredibly useful. This is why I’ve just put McKinsey’s top 15 technology trends report at the top of my inbox. Here is the summary McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2023 After a tumultuous 2022 for technology investment and talent, the first half of 2023 has seen…