I’ve a number of great friends in the industry, and enjoy their company and contribution. One of those friends is Gijs Boudewijn, Chair of the Payment Systems Committee at the European Banking Federation who kindly quoted me in his recent presentation on Open Banking. He has also kindly allowed me to share his presentation with y’all…
Last week I blogged about Chime’s issues with their third party partner Galileo going down, blocking payments and cards for their five million users for a short time. I made the comment: I would still claim that using cloud native third party partners in a technology ecosystem is far better than trying to do everything…
A few talking points last week, but two hit me in particular. The first is a McKinsey report that reckons half of the world’s banks are not viable. Their cost of equity is higher than their return on equity. Should another downturn hit … well, they’re gone. “Every bank is uniquely bound by both the…
Banks are control freaks. I’ve blogged about that often. I’ve also blogged often about how they need to move to be open and partnering. That’s not easy. It’s obviously easier to launch a brand new bank, fresh with no legacy and open to everything, isn’t it? Not necessarily so. The issue with launching a new…
You’ve got to love all these challenger banks (née neobanks née digital banks née mobile banks née whatever banks) appearing. There’s lots of chat about the British ones led by Monzo and closely followed by Starling, Atom and Tandem, but there are many more. In the UK there’s Revolut, Zopa, Aldermore, Oaknorth, OneSavings and more,…
Like quite a few big banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been messing about with doing digital by launching a number of new initiatives. The two of most note are Bó, a new retail bank, and Mettle, a service for small to medium enterprises (SMEs).* What fascinates me here, however, is the headline…
I had a few people haul me up over my critique of Nicholas Megaw’s article in the FT last week, including Nicholas himself. I realised post the post that the issue is definitions. In general, the term challenger banks has become accepted to be used in FinTech circles as banks that are challenging traditional banks…
I walked into a grocer’s store the other day. The store was resplendent with fruits of all colours and continents. There were red, yellow and green peppers; carrots, courgettes and cauliflowers; oranges, apples and bananas of both large and small; watermelons, honey melons and mangoes; green grapes, red grapes and grapefruits; and more and more…
