Digital Bank

This is a guest post by Matthias Kroener, a Bavarian who created Fidor Bank and then disappeared into the depths of gaming. Banking on the game The difference between gaming and gamification in banking Back in 1994, when I founded Direkt Anlage Bank (the first European discount broker) with a number of colleagues, it was…

The core of money is risk. When someone pays you, can you trust that payment is true? If you let them take away your car or computer, can you be certain that the money they offered is real? More than this, in banking, most of what takes place is the bank providing credit. Can they…

When I wrote the Captain Cake series and pivoted to be a children’s author as well as a FinTech guy, a friend said that I should write a children’s book about FinTech, which I did. It’s not something aimed at publication as a book, but thought I would share with you what I came up…

I just saw someone talking to their challenger bank about paying in a cheque. The bank asked: what’s a cheque? I feel the same. In fact, these days, it’s kind of getting challenging to imagine: what’s cash? In fact, these days, it’s difficult to consider: what’s paper? You might say I’m being daft, but my…

In a conversation today, I started discussing digital transformation in depth and found we were talking about digital as though that was the point. It made me wake up, as digital is not the point. Business, connectivity, relationships is the point. When we discuss doing everything online, converting to open systems, transforming to be digital…

Talking about enforcing the system, I’m reading the Financial Reporting Council’s annual report about auditors of banks. Yes, I am that sad. The report notes that, across the UK’s seven biggest auditing firms, almost 30% of all bookkeeping was below par. It makes you wonder how they get away with it. What interests me here…

I guess, because we are in lockdown, that I find the Olympics quite surreal. Lots of sports and lots of commentary and lots of weird things going on in my head. For example, I started to think about what an Olympics of banking and fintech would look like. Oh, dear. No, I shouldn’t have. But…

I find so many similarities between what’s happening with COVID and what’s happening with cryptocurrencies. Why? It’s all to do with how they’re regulated. I don’t know about your country, but I’m in between two countries: the UK and Poland. After recently visiting the UK, where COVID rules are so confusing you have no idea…

That old expression that what goes up must come down applies to so many things. An umbrella goes up and down, dependent upon the weather. Company executives who are going up will come down, most times. And businesses that appear to be bullet-proof can stumble and fall. I’m thinking Blockbuster, Nokia, Kodak. Today, we look…

I’ve been isolating too much and watching too much TV. Binging on Netflix, Amazon Prime and such like, almost every film I watch seems to be the same. Good versus Evil and Order versus Chaos. Half of society seems determined to make everything sunny and bright; the other half seems determined to destroy, disrupt and…