Fintech

Jack Ma had a rant about the financial system ahead of Ant Group’s IPO. As reported in The Financial Times, he thinks the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) who issue the Basel Accords is like “an old people’s club” … “The Basel Accords are like an old people’s club . . . we can’t use …

I am having a debate on a regular basis about being cloud-native and digital at the core versus cloud-based and adding digital. The two are very different. Most big banks are moving to be cloud-based and adding digital, but that is not digital at the core and cloud-native. The latter …

I keep wondering about the future. Governments vs Libertarians? Centralised vs decentralised? DeFi vs CBDC? My conclusion is CBDCs will win, in the financial markets. Why? Because money is critical to our lives. It’s a key. You cannot ignore it. It’s what we created to make society orderly. I discussed …

Some time ago, I mentioned that code is art and, if code is art, how do you attract great artists? Banks are not really seen as a place for an artist. It is like bringing maths and art together. The two don’t mix. Like science and religion, certain academic disciplines should …

I’ve talked about Global Processing Services, GPS, a few times now. They’re the power behind payments processing at several major start-ups like Curve, Revolut and Starling Bank. Anyway, during this crisis, I decided to have a chat with them in more depth and interviewed Shaun Puckrin, Chief Product Officer. You …

This week I’m going to continue looking at mobile payments with a quick overview of where Square, Jack Dorsey’s card payments firm, is today. I’m sure you all saw this headline the other day but, just in case, Square is now worth more than Goldman Sachs. Square! Square. Squared. I …

I need to shut up about Ant Group, as I’ve blogged a lot about them lately. However, with an IPO coming up and news coming out daily almost, it’s hard to ignore some of their activities. One activity that really hit me when it was released in July was the …

I recently saw the announcement from Santander of a foreign exchange service called PagoFX. It’s a service that goes head-to-head with TransferWise and is an interesting example of fighting back. As a result, I asked Victoria Yasinetskaya, CMO at PagoFX to tell me a bit more about what’s happening and she …

A while ago, I wrote about the IPO and whether you should invest. It’s still coming, but the valuation of the company is now even bigger. 15 percent bigger to be exact. That will make Ant’s IPO the biggest ever in history! Not bad for a month’s work. Interestingly, I …

This week’s blogs are inspired by our global connector Marisol Menendez The final interview with our Nordic Connection Festival companies is with the winner, Meniga (I was not a judge!). I spoke with Bragi Fjalldal, CMO & VP Business Development, about what the company is doing these days, particularly with …

This week’s blogs are inspired by our global connector Marisol Menendez In the second of this week’s interviews with firms who were winners of our Nordic Connection Festival, I spoke with Siam Choudhury, Co-founder and CEO of Pliance, an anti-money laundering solution. To begin with Siam, tell me a bit …

This week’s blogs are inspired by our global connector Marisol Menendez As mentioned, this week is a little different and, in the first of three interviews with entries in our Nordic Connection Festival during the summer, I interviewed Davyde Wachell, founder and CEO of Responsive AI … Tell me about …

This week’s blogs are inspired by our global connector Marisol Menendez This week is a bit different on the blog as I’m going to introduce you to one of my other businesses: Nordic Future Innovation. Nordic Future Innovation (originally Nordic Finance Innovation) is a venture I  started almost ten years ago with …

After writing quite a lot challenging the challenger banks, one reached out to me asking for a slight correction of view. OakNorth. Now, this is a bank I like, as they’ve been doing so much under the radar, so I said that if they wanted to raise their head above …

I just presented to the Merchant Payments Ecosystem conference. I’ve presented there before, and this year was virtual … as are all 2020 conferences. 2020 is the virtual year. I sat and thought about what to present. I have 1,000 slides or more, but I don’t do slides on lockdown. …