Digital Bank

We often talk about banking being plumbing, using smart pipes for delivery to the door. Some even comparing banking to sewage. I think I prefer plumbing. It sounds better. The thing is, how often do you think of changing your utility provider? Changing electricity, water and gas is not at the top of our agenda….

Talking of Brexit I found it amusing that, when I posted a tweet the other day, people interpreted it in ways I didn’t expect. The tweet just made clear that Brits are nine times more likely to be scammed by criminals than Germans, as we are a major card-based nation. Just in case you cannot…

We had a great discussion about Open Payments, Open Banking and Open Finance at FinTech Week London* this week. What was interesting is that nearly everyone opened with a mention of customer and customer journeys. Customer is the critical factor here, and customers don’t care whether they’re using Open Finance or not. What they care…

I just had a nice interview with EFMA (now Qorus) about the new book Digital for Good (available here), and thought I would share the interview here. Hope you like it. Qorus- It is not always easy to distinguish genuine leaders from clever communicators. How did you select the different people you gave the floor…

Good friend Ron Shevlin sparked off a great debate about neobanks with his snarky column on Forbes the other day. His basic argument is that neobanks are over. A few choice passages: The 10 leading neobanks in the US grew by a little more than 10 million accounts in 2021, from 23.3 million to 33.5 million, according to…

I launched the new book Digital for Good in London the other day, and was joined by many friends in my network. The main highlight of the event was a panel discussion on where we are going with four panellists: Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion Gihan A.M. Hyde, Founder & CEO, CommUnique Tram Anh Nguyen,…

We had a great session in Oslo last week focused upon: what is money? The question comes up more and more in my thinking, especially when you look at cryptocurrencies, CBDCs, stablecoins and such like. We had many good presentations from MasterCard, the Norwegian Central Bank, Handelsbanken and even cameo Zoom appearances from Dave Birch…

I am regularly asked: what’s the next big thing? Answer: there isn’t one. There are just all the things we can see today that are building to the next big thing. What’s out there today? Web3; the metaverse; cryptocurrencies, digital currencies and CBDCs; artificial intelligence plus; blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies in reality;…

Some years ago, as an April Fool, a firm offered a free download of a game as long as, in the terms and conditions, you agreed that they could now own your soul. It was silly, but most people agreed to the download with that condition, because they don’t read the terms and conditions. Luckily…

There’s a regular debate about whether BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) is a good or bad thing. There’s a big call for it to be regulated and comparisons with payday loans are made often. Nevertheless, it makes sense as many companies are now grabbing a slice of this space. The latest one is Apple. It amused…