Digital Bank

I noted that the FCA is holding the new UK banks to account for their mishaps over customer onboarding and, specifically, their lack of due diligence: Barclays’ fraud prevention team spotted a problem: some customers had handed over millions of pounds to a single, suspicious Monzo account in a matter of weeks.  As I said a…

For years now there has been a discussion of having chips inside humans. I was presenting this idea twenty years ago, and often used the example of the Baja Beach Club. The idea made sense: get a club chip inserted under the skin and you need no wallet or phone … just dance. It particularly…

I don’t know if you’ve noticed a new start-up called Column, but it’s worth watching as it’s a chartered bank in America created by the co-founder of Plaid, William Hockey, and his wife Anne. What’s Column all about? The problem the Hockeys are trying to solve is that fintechs and large tech companies often need…

Having spent the last decade saying that cryptocurrencies were rubbish (bankers) or the future (libertarians), I really enjoyed this new report from Thomson Reuters (which you can download for free here if you register). Therefore, thought I’d post the summary and tease you to clickthrough … SPECIAL REPORT: Cryptos on the rise 2022 — a…

New banks have great opportunities. They can fix all the things old banks do badly, using a clean sheet of paper. But sometimes they get it wrong. For example, many are fans of Monzo, one of the fastest growing UK challenger banks. I’m a fan, but have noticed one issue that keeps getting social media…

I had an interesting comment the other day from a friend who said that he had worked with incumbents and start-ups. The big difference is that the incumbent views digital as a cost-cutting exercise, whilst the start-up sees it as a customer-enhancing opportunity. It rang a bell with me. Having spent so long dealing with…

I saw an interesting letter in Metro the other day: A world where you can be financially cancelled A thought on what is described as ‘cancel culture’. Once all money is digital, the ability will exist to cancel people from buying or selling anything, just as they can be cancelled from social media today. Will…

I never used the Apple wallet until recently. Reason being that I didn’t need to. Then the pandemic hit, and I wanted to avoid using cash, so all of my cards that would work with Apple loaded into the phone. Interestingly some cards would not load but hey, contactless and cardless is the way. Then…

I stumbled across an interesting white paper from Citi the other day saying that the metaverse is an $8 to $13 TRILLION opportunity: “The total addressable market for the Metaverse could be between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, with total Metaverse users numbering around five billion. But getting to that market level is…