Fintech

I was reflecting on a friend of mine who runs a FinTech start-up.  Their company was on a funding round, and struggling.  They struggled so much that they ended up having to lay off a load of staff, cut budgets and defer income.  In fact, they reached the point where they would only survive another…

As mentioned in the first part of these two pieces, we talk a lot about FinTech.  We talk about it as though it is one thing when, in fact, it is many.  There are nuances to this market that is over a decade old today, that need to be fleshed out in more detail as,…

I wrote a blog the other day for The Next Web.  I thought it was ok, and it has gained a lot of traction socially. Apparently, people like it and here I’m going to expand upon the basic theme to give a detailed analysis of how FinTech wings are spreading. There’s been a lot of talk…

I heard a rumour the other day.  The rumour goes something like: are you not surprised that banks grow into big beasts, as it’s government supported?  Governments want banks to be big and regulated, because governments can then access the data the bank is keeping about their clients.  IT’s access to data for tracking financial…

We are already entering the fourth-generation internet, the internet of things, but it won’t really take off until the next decade, the 2020s.  Sure, we have self-driving Teslas and Nest home appliances, along with Samsung’s Smart Things, but it’s not mainstream yet.  For example, none of my friends has a self-driving car yet. This will…

Now we move onto the third-generation internet, web 3.0.  What is web 3.0?  It’s not been well defined or described.  Many would say it’s the internet of things, but I disagree.  The internet of things is emerging, but it cannot exist until a bridge between the mobile social network and the internet of things has…

The last chapter of ValueWeb talks about what comes after the third generation internet: the internet of value.  This is the internet being built today, based upon shared ledgers, cloud, apps, APIs and analytics.  Of course, the next generation is the internet of things.  But what comes after that? There is an answer, but you…

For ten years, my friends cover at Z/Yen have been producing the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), on behalf of the City of London.  It’s a research program where people can answer the survey questionnaire and, from those participating, the different cities of the world vying to be financial hubs are ranked.  Around 2,500 people respond…

Banks are scared.  They’ve seen the rise of the new world of open APIs, apps and analytics and know that their organisations are not yet ready or fit to change to that world.  What to do? Well, the easiest thing to do is to block access to the bank’s data.  If third party FinTech firms…