Fintech

Some of us are old enough to remember Arthur Anderson and Enron, a mixture of two companies that created an accounting mess bigger than any seen before in corporate history. That was until Ernst & Young (EY) and Wirecard. Interestingly, there have been many auditing mess ups in the past few decades, but there are…

Another day and another headline about Wirecard: ‘The money’s gone’: Wirecard collapses owing $4 billion Wirecard’s Missing Billions Forces Out CEO, Panics Lenders Wirecard: Former boss arrested over €1.9bn scandal How Wirecard fooled most of the people all of the time Inside Wirecard EY failed to ask for Wirecard bank statements for 3 years Softbank…

I blog about so many things. Sure, most of the time it’s FinTech, banking and technology. Sure, most of the time it’s about the future, the outlook, the ideas. But quite often I find myself returning to topics that I’m passionate about: diversity, equality, inclusion, climate protection, the future, our children. So, when a newbie…

In any business, there are different movers and shakers. Some can create momentum; some can maintain momentum; some create ideas; some kill ideas; some run the business; some change the business; and so on and so on and so on. I’m an ideas guy. I could never run a business. I mean, I do run…

I’ve often questioned the valuations of unicorns in technology, whether it be Uber or Revolut. And here we are in lockdown world and the valuations of most unicorns are crashing overnight. Monzo’s value is down 40 percent, and FinTech funding is at a three year low. Some companies like Revolut were quite lucky. Raising $500…

I spent some time recently chatting with Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer, Global Processing Services (GPS). I spotted GPS a while ago, and blogged about how they worked with Monzo, Starling, Revolut and more last October. Anywho, Joanne wrote a brilliant piece on the Nasdaq website the other day, which she kindly has given me…

The chasm between start-ups and incumbents is massively exposed by coronavirus. I realised this early on, when I saw that FinTech firms who were born on the internet were far more ready for working from home than traditional banks who depend on branches, buildings, office and physicality. A good example is how traditional banks who…

Last October I wrote a piece on Revolut, questioning its valuation which, at that time, was estimated to be anything up to $10 billion: They claim to have 8M customers. Let’s assume *all* of them are active. If they are “valued” at $10Bn that’s a per customer lifetime value of $1,250 or £1,000. Their premium…

I’ve tracked Wirecard for some years, as they were the bank partner that allowed Ollie Purdue to drop out of university at 21 years old to launch a bank called Loot. Wirecard basically offer the platform of many other firms to offer full banking services across Europe. Based in Germany, their clients include many FinTech…

What if we make money truly global, stable and secure? That’s Libra’s ambition and I’ve got to hand it to the guys at Libra. Having announced their idea to create a global currency last summer, and then see it ripped to pieces by regulators, they’re back. Yes, it’s Libra 2.0. What’s the difference between 1.0 and…