I was going to blog about something different, when I spotted this article in The Financial Times about Klarna gaining a banking license over the weekend (thanks to Pascal Bouvier). The commentary has two key sentences, which I’ve highlighted, that illustrate all the things I have been saying about Banking-as-a-Service and curated marketplaces brilliantly, namely: Banking becomes…
After my blog yesterday, about banks having to move from being control freaks in a proprietary operation building everything to becoming collaborative partners in an open marketplace curating everything, I was asked: “how do you make money out of curation?” It’s a good question, as marketplace curators make money very differently from proprietary product providers. …
I thought I’d wait until after the weekend to write a post about the implications of the UK election results. It’s not my place to write about the pros and cons of the election campaigns, although I will say that the alienation of the elderly and those who are parents by the Conservative’s campaign –…
Twenty years ago, I was working on re-engineering projects. Most of the time I was getting exasperated because the banks wouldn’t take on the big projects, like the mortgage process, as it went across too many divisions. That’s big risk in their view, as it meant disturbing the structure of the organisation. So, we would…
Someone made an interesting comment about Google this week: banks can attack Google’s soft underbelly. What? Google? Soft underbelly? And banks can attack it? You must be joking. The presenter (Conor McAleavey, Chief Innovatoin Officer with Leveris) went on to outline what he meant and, as he talked about it, I thought there may be…
I’m hearing murmurs of a financial crisis rising again. It’s just rumours and gossip, but sometimes there’s no smoke without fire. My forecast for another major global financial crisis was that it wouldn’t occur until the 2040s but, as James Dimon noted, a financial crisis generally appears around every seven years. Not a big one,…
Expanding on yesterday’s discussion of how MNOs are sweeping up business for the underbanked and unbanked, Igor Pesin of Life.SREDA posted a lovely update giving even more detail. Here is how he saw things … Fintech in Rwanda: the place where Telcos are surpassing Banks in the financial sector Telcos dominate in the financial sector…
During the discussions at Dot Finance Africa, there was a very interesting dialogue about the mobile network operators (MNOs), with panels featuring Airtel and M-PESA. It was interesting to hear them talking directly about how they focus upon the customer experience and their singular objective of convenience. Both MNOs talked about customer convenience. The convenience…
I’m being asked this a lot as the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have increased ten-fold in the past few weeks. Good for those who have some. Bemusing for those who don’t. There are a range of factors driving the rise in cryptocurrency prices, particularly the craze for Initial Coin Offering (ICOs). An ICO…
