Fintech

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone. That’s 2017’s blogging over for me. Back on January 2, 2018, with more news about my new book coming out in March, Digital Human. A few comments: “Skinner presents a compelling vision of the future of financial services expertly set in ten-thousand years of historical context” Jesse McWaters, World…

The other forecasting I made at start of year concerned the big FinTech trends of 2017. Again, I thought it might be of interest to revisit them. Removing friction from the customer journey I guess this is a given, and wasn’t a big trend of 2017 … just a big trend of FinTech per se. Rise…

I was moderating a panel discussion about Open Banking and the panel’s opening was some research presented by Steve Ogborn and Benedict Ireland of the Unlimited Group. The guys said that only 9% of consumers had heard of Open Banking. That means 91% had no idea what it was. Even when it was explained to…

I often talk about faster horses and how banks think digital is doing banking cheaper and faster. It’s all about efficiency and effectiveness. So, I was asked the other day: where is the car? After all, it’s easy to call out banks for doing banking as usual but, if I cannot show them a car,…

Despite there being many capable women in banking, finance and technology, it is surprising how few are at the top of the companies I talk about. Most FinTech start-ups I refer to are run by young men, whilst most banks are run by old men. Where are all the women? Funnily enough, this is a…

Another presentation that was enlightening was delivered by Jean Claude Gaga, CEO of RSwitch Ltd, the national e-payment switch of Rwanda. Jean Claude gave an overview of how Rwanda is moving towards a cashless economy and I was particularly interested as I chair Dot Finance in Kigali each year, and so it gave me a…

I’ve recently noted a number of reports about Open Banking, with many published recently due to its imminent arrival on January 13, 2018. Source: IBM As can be seen, we have several different groups working on Open Banking. There’s the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) with Open APIs for payments, Open Banking regulations which are…

Innovate Finance has been working with the Department of International Trade (DIT) on a report on blockchain and the future of financial services. The report was developed with the help of the Economist Intelligence Unit and is now available here. The Executive Summary is as follows: From Concept to Reality: How Blockchain will Reshape the Financial…

For many years we have had discussions about bank branches and a branchless future. I personally don’t believe in a branchless future, but many do. And yes, there are many branches disappearing, much to the annoyance of those who lose that physical store. For example, America still has a large number of branches (32 per…

The world feels fairly surreal sometimes. I watch the relentless rise in price of bitcoin, ether, litecoin and brethren, and feel it’s just a truly weird moment we’re living in. I’ve never seen assets rising 1000% of, in ether’s case, 5000% in a year. It’s crazy. Alongside this, I see exchanges being hacked on a…