Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Fintech

Money Sandboxes Research

I recently had exposure to two industry reports that are worth bringing to your attention.  The first is the Innovate Finance research into Industry Sandboxes. Commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK regulator, the aim was to identify how Industry Sandboxes, rather than Regulatory Sandboxes, can help to create new services in finance….

This Town is coming like a Ghost Town

I grew up in an era of Ska music with the Specials, Madness and The Selector being regulars on the University circuit.  One song that brought back memories of this era played on the radio the other day: Ghost Town. The main line repeated throughout the song is This town … is coming like a…

The legacy clock is ticking

Further to my recent trip to Pakistan Business Recorder (their version of The Financial Times) interviewed me in depth about what is happening in FinTech.  Here’s what they published: ‘The clock is ticking for Pakistan’s legacy banks,’ Chris Skinner, global fintech expert An independent commentator on financial markets and fintech through his blog, the Finanser.com, Chris Skinner is one…

Bitcoin isn’t a currency; it’s a religion

I’ve regularly got into confrontations with digital currency people, especially those who are believers in bitcoin, by saying things they don’t like to hear.  First it was my comment that you can’t have money without government.  They believe the currency is beyond control because it exists on a global network.  My contention is that money…

Hong Kong’s FinTech Strategy

It shows how important FinTech is when major financial centres vie for focus.  London has been leading the charge to be the FinTech capital of the world, but many other cities are nipping at their toes.  So I was intrigued to see Hong Kong issue their FinTech strategy today.  Here’s the summary: Financial Technology, more…

FinTech versus Banks, Round One: PSD2

I got a very interesting heads-up yesterday to a campaign the European FinTech start-ups have kicked off to try and stop the big, nasty banks screwing them with their version of PSD2.  I’ve previously blogged that the banks will implement non-standard APIs to make it difficult to access their services without writing code to work with…

Frictionless Finance with FinTech

Larry Summers, former director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, writes a regular column in The Financial Times.  His latest piece is his take on FinTech, which has the main headline that FinTech is taking away frictions in finance.  Yep.  The frictions are illustrated by things like interchange fees, the length of time…

FinTech Unicorns: what’s the real number?

There are different views of what constitutes a FinTech Unicorn.  For example, Techcrunch lists just 20 (+1) FinTech Unicorns today: ANT Financial                         $60B (Feb 2017) Lufax                                    …

What a load of COBOLx

I was inspired to think more about the legacy challenge in the legacy economies when I saw this article by the inimitable Anna Irrera (she’s worth following if you’re on twitter).  She was lamenting the state of US bank systems and how they’re hiring retired programmers just to keep the lights on.  What really struck…

America’s troubled regulatory regime laid bare by the OCC

I’m regularly blogging and talking about the legacy economy known as America.  This will irritate my American colleagues, but come on, which country still issues more checks (cheques) than the rest of the world combined?  Which country took a decade longer to get Chip & PIN than most?  Which country is still struggling to work…