Future

I find it interesting when I read perspectives on FinTech, money and banking. Going digital, getting rid of branches, becoming cashless seem to be the main themes, and yet this ignores that every part of the world is different. It’s hard to go digital if the country has little infrastructure; it doesn’t make sense to…

For those fooled by yesterday’s spoof news about Alipay and Visa, did you notice it was April 1? If not, you should have clicked the link in the blog. Talking about spoof news, I think my blog Blockchain is dead upset a few blockchain enthusiasts. Don’t get me wrong, as it’s not me saying blockchain is…

UPDATE: THIS BLOG POST WAS AN APRIL FOOL! We all got hugely excited about Apple launching a credit card with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard last week. Whoopy-doo! This was a major lift for Mastercard in particular. As Wedbush’s Moshe Katri noted payments on the card will be processed by Mastercard using “Mastercard’s token and M-chip…

For many years, banks have talked about moving away from transactions and towards advice. The branch is for advice. We will become trusted advisors. We see the value-add of banking is the information we can analyse around your data to offer advice. Complete rubbish. I’m sorry, but I’ve towed that line for a long time…

I was about to write a really nice piece about Apple’s announcement of the launch of a new credit card, in partnership with Goldman Sachs, when Brian Roemmele beat me to it. Who is Brian Roemmele you ask? And if you are asking that … WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Brian is a great speaker and prolific…

So, I blogged last week about women in FinTech and whether we care, and got lots of replies … from women … who said yes, we care. Interesting that there were not so many replies from the other gender, but hey what do you expect? One interesting insight is that the future of work will…

I got a large number of pings over the weekend to read and comment on an article on Medium by Lance Ng headlined: Facebook Plans to Become World’s Biggest Central Bank? It is a conjectured article that takes the story from The New York Times discussing Facebook creating its own cryptocurrency (Facebook and Telegram Are…

This is an old but true story of my very own. Back in the day, I worked for a computer firm that had a unique piece of hardware and software called the Contents Addressable File Store, or CAFS for short. I was the marketing manager for this remarkable piece of technology and, for the benefit…

We were having a debate about brand loyalty in a mobile world. The discussion began with talking about how it used to be complex with dealing via branch and call centre; then it was branch, call centre and online; now, it’s branch, call centre, online and mobile. How do you provide a consistent, omnichannel (vomiting…

I’m just reading a new book recommended by a banking friend AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee, and the opening got me thinking. Kai-Fu refers to the Google AI machine AlphaGo that beat Ke Jie, the world’s best Go player, as a sputnik moment. For those old enough,…