Discover how fintech is transforming small business, from mobile payments and AI tools to why the next unicorn might be run from home. I’ve run a small, independent business for almost 25 years. It’s been fun and most of it has been rewarding, except for the accounting, banking and paperwork. No one enjoys that behind-the-scenes…
After recently attending conferences in Zurich and Paris, with most of the audience coming from the banking community, this week is Money2020 in Amsterdam and the discussions are very different. What’s the difference? Well, bankers debate regulations and fintechs discuss innovations. It constantly strikes me that, during the 2000s, I spent most of my time…
I hate criticising other people’s work, but I do read some complete claptrap about the future. For example, I just got a report about the future of payments in 2040, that starts with a term Order-to-Cash cycle and then paints a scenario of someone buying an automated car. That was the first few paragraphs and,…
I just ran across an item from 1994 written by Carmen Hermosillo talking about cyberspace, the internet and the future. It is quite something but TL:DR, so here are a few highlights: Introducing Humdog: Pandora’s Vox Redux (1994) “When I went into cyberspace I went into it thinking that it was a place like any…
After lots of discussions about how AI is transforming financial services as a new, foundational technology that has massive granularity of use cases, it doesn’t always work. In a very major public about face, Klarna says it doesn’t work. This is the company that saved millions by getting rid of two of five staff. Now,…
Just continuing the AI theme, it’s really interesting to see what Stripe – latest valuation over $90 billion – is doing with the technology. Effectively, it’s tried to create a GPT for payments. The reason they are pushing the envelope is after seeing great results in earlier developments using traditional machine learning models. These resulted…
It is notable that a few challenger neobanks are expanding footprint into telecoms, namely Revolut and N26. N26 joins Revolut in disrupting the telecommunications market The interesting thing here is that there have been many telco’s trying to move into banking – think Orange – and vice versa, but it rarely works. Orange checks out…
I just attended two events – one fintech and one regulatory. The contrast could not have been more different. The fintech event was buzzing with activity and youth; the regulatory event was very serious and full of suits. It reminded me of my old days dodging between Money2020 and Sibos. The thing about the regulatory…
