Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Fintech

25 Fintech Unicorns stumble, but still stampeding

I’ve discovered lots of lists of Fintech unicorns.  The main list is from Jim Bruene; there's a nice list that is from a European's perspective by Bernard Lunn;  and a UK list published by me the other day.  In fact, in preparing some charts yesterday, I scraped the list of Unicorns and valuations as of last week…

Unicorn-Stampede_art

Does anyone really think banks aren’t aware of the Fintech challenge?

I find it interesting that so many bloggers on Fintech deride the banks for being slow, clueless or stupid.  So many blogs talk about how banks don’t do this, don’t do that; fail at this, fail at that; have no idea, cannot change; are stuck in the past or have their heads up their arse. …

Venmo

Do you believe in Unicorns?

It’s mid-summer and quiet, but there is some interesting stuff still happening, particularly when we talk about Unicorns.  Do you believe in Unicorns? Unicorns, in technology terms, are companies with valuations of more than $1 billion that have launched since 2000.  There are quite a few of them out there including Uber, Airbnb, Twitter, Whatsapp,…

Unicorn

Fintech innovation in Singapore: a hive of activity

I just attended a digital bank bootcamp in Singapore.  It wasn’t much of a bootcamp.  For example, I volunteered to play the Sergeant Major’s role and shout at the audience: “stand up, stand up, get your digital gear on and start delivering, you lazy lackadaisical wunch of bankers” … I was told that was not…

Fintech attacks whilst bank CxO’s snooze

Since asking a while ago who will be the Uber of banking, I’m fed up with everyone talking about the Uber of banking.  For example, two headlines caught my eye this morning: Visa Invests in Stripe to Prep for the 'Uberization' of Retail; and Will Uber be the Uber of banking? Both stories are interesting, and demonstrate the…

Bye bye banks

The One Chart you Need to Understand Fintech

One of my good connections via social media is Huy Nguyen Trieu.  Huy writes a regular blog at Disruptive Finance, as well as being a Managing Director for Macro Structuring at Citi.  He posted something in the last week that I felt was worth re-posting here as a guest blog.   The One Chart you Need to…

When everything is free, how do we make money?

I have this mantra in my presentations about payments.  Payments is being attacked by Fintech startups like Klarna, Square, Stripe, Alipay, PayPal (Venmo, Braintree) and more.  In fact, according to VentureScanner, it’s the second most active area for investors after lending (P2P and crowdfunding) … … and the most mature sector for new competition to traditional…

Venture-investing-in-fintech

Is Fintech really so special? Maybe … or maybe not

So everyone’s excited about Fintech, but Fintech is nothing new.  Fintech is actually pretty old.  I could claim that if Fintech is about providing technology platforms to exchange finance, then that’s been around since banks first implemented technology platforms in the 1960s.  In fact, I do claim that banks are Fintech companies.  They are the…

The Fintech march into investment banking

One of the readers of the Finanser saw my write-up on asset and wealth management, and asked if I could talk about what’s happening in investment banking.  Answer: yes, I can. It’s more difficult to see the Fintech stars and unicorns in the investment space however, as it’s more opaque having been disrupted by technology…