Digital Bank

I just found a fascinating report from data.ai about the state of mobile usage today. Apparently we spend a third of the day, on average, playing with our phones. The mobile economy is now worth more than half a trillion dollars; with most of it generated through spending on mobile adverts; and almost 500,000 apps…

I’ve just been through a very strange process with my main personal bank account provider who, thanks to fear of FCA and crypto, noticed that I had regular payments in and out of my account to Coinbase. During 2023, they decided that Coinbase and crypto is no good, and so they rang me to discuss…

Banks are boring but necessary. Banks are stable, secure, reliant, resilient and shouldn’t innovate or do things that could increase risk to the system. As a result, banks have been here forever and, love or hate them, will never go away. According to a new report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), global banks could boost…

Seven years ago, I was citing the fact that 43% of the global financial system runs on a computer language no-one speaks anymore. Seven years later, PC Magazine (are PC’s still a thing?) picked up on this theme with the headline: The World Depends on 60-Year-Old Code No One Knows Anymore | PCMag … and sub-headline:…

Over the week, I got an update about Revolut and their business model. It was quite interesting although a little bit macro-level. My favourite part is where the Business Model Analyst listed the competitors to Revolut: Monzo: Monzo is a UK-based digital bank that offers features similar to Revolut, including budgeting tools, international money transfers, and fee-free spending…

HSBC has just launched a rival to Revolut and Wise for consumer foreign exchange transfers. Calling it Zing*, and currently available only in the UK, the idea is to offer a “worry-free
international money app”, even though they exist already. Why would HSBC’s be any different? You can find out the nuts and bolts of Zing…

Over the past decade+ we have seen thousands of fintechs arise. Many are challenging and disrupting, whilst many more are providing and supplying. What is the role of a fintech? My advice is that fintechs are there to fix the things that banks do badly and offer service to those who banks don’t serve. The…

In my head, I often have an argument and, unsurprisingly, I had one today. Today’s argument is around how technology is used in finance and whether it’s a good or a bad thing. Therefore, in the spirit of a good Oxford debate, we have the proposer and opposer. The debate would go as follows (in…

Building on yesterday’s blog, I just stumbled across a podcast called Tech Trends by JPMorgan Chase – everything to do with tech, digital, data and fintech, broadcast by a bank. Fantastic. The first show I downloaded is all about organising data to fuel growth. Interestingly, their Chief Data Officer defines data as the fuel for…

I just delivered a two-day immersive course in digital transformation for a bank and found myself regularly saying digital is the core, data is the asset. It did trip off the tongue nicely, but it also summarised the essence of what digital transformation is all about. You start with digital as the core. You build…