Fintech

Building on the last two blogs all companies, not just in finance, have been transformed through the connected, network economy. That was the last decade’s worth of digital transformation and has led analogue companies hoping that they are now digital natives, although many are digital immigrants, still with a log of their old analogue systems…

I was thinking more about this third revolution of financial technologies. The first was very much focused upon automation administration using mainframe computing;  the second moved from pure cost reduction to the changing dynamics of how to leverage productivity and cost using the network effects of connectivity, and driven by cloud and mobile; the third…

We are in a third generation of change in finance. When I wrote Digital Bank over a decade ago, the focus was all about reinventing banking from being physical at the core to being digital at the core. Now we have to do it all again and reach the next level where the bank is intelligent…

It’s been really interesting watching the moves of Donald Trump to Make America Great Again by doubling down on the dollar being the reserve currency of the world forever more through the GENIUS Act. Well, that’s my take anyway. Add on to this that the Trump family made billions by launching World Liberty Financial, their very…

I clicked the other morning on Nicoo, the robot puppy, after seeing an ad on YouTube. I was going to order it for my wife’s birthday but thought, just before clicking, is this real? So, I go and Google Is Nicoo legit? and immediately realised it’s not. Later that morning, an email arrived saying that…

Everyone has become excited about A2A in the past year or so. A2A are Account-to-Account payments. These are direct transfers of funds from one payment account (bank or e-money service) to another, bypassing intermediaries like card networks and reducing transaction costs and complexity. A2A payments leverage Open Banking technologies and APIs to deliver fast, seamless, and…

I am always fascinated about the way in which people see what is of value and why. The exchange of beads, crystals, diamonds and gold; the use of barter to exchange sheep for goats for weddings; the emergence of digital exchange for tokens; and, of course, the issuance of cash backed by governments that are…

I’ve been talking a lot about stablecoins of late and, in a timely fashion, Jas Shah at Fintech: Under the Hood has just landed a great primer all about such things. A Stablecoin Primer: Money for the Digital Age TL;DR Quick Take Stablecoins have evolved from early crypto-pegged concepts to fiat-backed instruments like USDC and…

As blogged yesterday, the GENIUS Act can open the doors for closed-loop networks using stablecoins that circumvent the traditional four-pillar model of issuer, acquirer, merchant and processor. Yes, it could save billions in interchange fees, but there’s another movement in stablecoins trying to change the world. This one is trying to get rid of SWIFT,…

Is it just me or has the whole digital currency space become hot, hot, hot? Every five minutes, I see stuff about CBDCs – who needs them?; cryptocurrencies – who’s using them?; and stablecoins – what’s that all about? The last one is intriguing me the most at the moment, as I’ve said for years:…