Fintech

I was interviewed by UBS’s wealth management team a month ago, when the bitcoin bubble was in full bloom. The price had exploded, tripling in a month. Now that it has burst, the interview seems quite prescient so, here it is … UBS interview with Chris Skinner Cryptocurrencies – digital currencies based on encryption –…

One company that is seeking global domination is Ant Financial. The company has an open stated intention to reach two billion users by 2025.  The way in which they’ll achieve that is through local partnerships, and many of those have been started already: Ant Financial invests in Thailand’s Ascend Money as part of global expansion…

I was reflecting on a question posed to me recently by a Turkish banker.  He asked me: “why is it that the Western banks are always talking about legacy?”  I knew exactly what he was getting at, as the banks I deal with in USA, UK, France, Germany and other European nations are always fretting…

I’m spending the week in China with Alibaba and ANT Financial. More details to follow, as this is all building towards a case study chapter in my new book Digital Human, and sat amongst 2,000 fans listening to Jack Ma yesterday and his vision of the future. Jack spoke in Chinese and I was listening…

I got to thinking about yesterday’s post on humanity in part due to a discussion of global banking.  Global, universal banking was the mantra of the 2000s and HSBC, Citi, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Deutsche and more were all jumping on the bandwagon.  After the global financial crisis, they all jumped off it again,…

Building on yesterday’s blog, Money2020 has an official Money Magazine to go with the European show, produced by Norfico.  I was picked as one of a few commentators to talk about what’s going on in the world and was featured in the magazine, which you can find and download here. Anywho, for blog purposes, I…

Last week was Money 2020 Europe week.  This year a gathering of 6,000 odd people – and I mean ODD – assembled in Copenhagen to talk all things FinTech and stuff.  That’s 50 percent up on last year’s first outing and, due to the numbers and a few brown envelopes from the Dutch, the whole…

The British Bankers’ Association released their The Way We Bank annual report last Thursday. It was interesting. Here are the key highlights: Over the past five years customers’ activity on banking apps rocketed by 354%, with apps now an increasingly popular way to access current accounts rising from 21% of access in 2012 to 61%…

I was going to blog about something different, when I spotted this article in The Financial Times about Klarna gaining a banking license over the weekend (thanks to Pascal Bouvier).  The commentary has two key sentences, which I’ve highlighted, that illustrate all the things I have been saying about Banking-as-a-Service and curated marketplaces brilliantly, namely: Banking becomes…

After my blog yesterday, about banks having to move from being control freaks in a proprietary operation building everything to becoming collaborative partners in an open marketplace curating everything, I was asked: “how do you make money out of curation?” It’s a good question, as marketplace curators make money very differently from proprietary product providers. …