Fintech

The USA is a little bit confusing. On the one hand, they have some of the fittest people in the world; on the other, they have some of the fattest. On the one hand, they’ve championed the banning of cigarettes far more than any other nation and were the first to do it; on the…

I’m off to Chile next week and thought, in preparation, I’d look at the state of FinTech in Latin America. So far, I’ve spent fair time in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, and see these as the three major centres of activity along with Mexico. Equally, I meet a lot of the LatAm companies in Miami at…

KPMG’s Pulse of FinTech report came out this week. It makes for interesting reading, especially as investment in FinTech has raced ahead to levels unseen before. Globally, $57.9 billion was invested in FinTech firms in the first half of the year. These figures were slightly inflated by the $14 billion funding round by Ant Financial…

After my recent blog about challenger banks, I received an interesting email from David Parker challenging the idea that a start-up is actually a challenger. Chris I continually argue that Revolut is not a challenger bank – it does not today have a banking licence. If you want to say any prepaid card is a challenger bank…

A few years ago Jamie Dimon was renowned for saying that bitcoin developers “are going to try and eat our lunch” and that silicon valley was coming to get the banks. Three years later, it’s not quite the case. The big banks are getting bigger, and the FinTech community is nibbling at the ankles and not…

I find it quite surprising to see statistics around ICOs, such as the fact that $13.7 billion has been raised by ICOs so far this year alone. $13.7 billion! In what? Well, the 10 biggest ICOs this year are: Telegram: $1.7 billion Dragon: $320 million Huobi: $300 million Bankera: $150.9 million Orbs: $118 million Envion:…

I haven’t blogged about cryptocurrencies and blockchain for a while, as it’s been a bit too much for a while. There’s massive coverage everywhere, but what’s the reality? The reality is that a lot of this is nascent change. There are young tycoons making millions, whilst naïve bandwagoners are losing millions. From a $20,000 end…

Whilst in New Zealand, I had an interview with the country’s most respected business paper: National Business Review. The subsequent article is behind a paywall but, as they sent it across to me, I feel it’s worth sharing here. The battles for the future of fintech The future of financial services will be decided in…

I found an interesting article about Open Banking the other day (via FinTech Insider News). Its title is: Open Banking in the UK; a disaster in the making? no wonder it intrigued me. However, I clicked the article open and the first paragraph read: When the CMA Order went live on 13/1/18, aside from the…

I often relate the story that the first FinTech firm I ever met was Zopa. Zopa launched in April 2005 and presented at the Financial Services Club on March 30 that year. They talked about an eBay for Money and connecting savers and borrowers. No one got what they were talking about, although everyone does…