Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Future

In love with Kiva

For those of you who haven't heard of Kiva, it's a P2P lending community with a difference.  It's the Grameen Bank of the Zopa world.  In other words, it facilitates microfinance, using the web as an enabler.  And it's wonderful. Why is it wonderful? OK.  It starts with that fact that it connects people with…

Kiva

What was it Reagan said?

Ronald Reagan is widely quoted as saying: “There are three kinds of people in the world – those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened”Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004 I have a new variation of this theme however. "There are three kinds of people who use technology – those…

Big Ben

The Mobile Financial Present

Yesterday, I presented the second in a series of webinars focusing upon Global Bank Trends. The first presentation looked at these trends generally.  You can watch and hear the hour-long webinar by clicking here or view and download the presentation: The second presentation focused upon trends in mobile financial services, and covers key developments in…

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The Mobile Financial Future

There are loads of discussions about mobile financial services right now, not least at the Financial Services Club. For example, I recently received this presentation from Len Pienaar, CEO for First National Bank’s (FNB) mobile solutions in South Africa: Add this to the many other mobile financial stories and case studies reported already: ABSA (Mobile…

RBS mobile

The Mobile Financial Future

There are loads of discussions about mobile financial services right now, not least at the Financial Services Club. For example, I recently received this presentation from Len Pienaar, CEO for First National Bank’s (FNB) mobile solutions in South Africa: Add this to the many other mobile financial stories and case studies reported already: ABSA (Mobile…

RBS mobile

The Mobile Financial Future

There are loads of discussions about mobile financial services right now, not least at the Financial Services Club. For example, I recently received this presentation from Len Pienaar, CEO for First National Bank’s (FNB) mobile solutions in South Africa: Add this to the many other mobile financial stories and case studies reported already: ABSA (Mobile…

RBS mobile

Social media has changed society

I recently posted about how social media is changing our world, and Bill Jones commented: "The question is whether they change behaviour temporarily or permanently. The evidence is that behaviour (individual or group) is changed temporarily." Well, here's some evidence that it is changing permanently. The Iranian elections are taking place today and CNN ran…

A Spanish first: Social Banking

There are a few countries / continents where innovation is rife. In Africa, mobile payments are transforming the continent. In Japan, mobile internet banking is changing their world. And in Spain, social finance is top of the agenda. Last year, I noted that BBVA had launched the first Web 2.0 banking application Tu Cuentas (You…

A Spanish first: Social Banking

There are a few countries / continents where innovation is rife. In Africa, mobile payments are transforming the continent. In Japan, mobile internet banking is changing their world. And in Spain, social finance is top of the agenda. Last year, I noted that BBVA had launched the first Web 2.0 banking application Tu Cuentas (You…

CEOs don’t like social media … because it’s social!

I heard this quote the other day and loved it, so I’m using it (nothing like plagiarism is there?). Equally, I’m stealing lots of other things these days, such as this animation sent to me courtesy of Simon Deane-Johns: If you are using a system that has a Firewall and can’t work this out, then…