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I often refer to Bernard Lietaer, my late friend, and his work on community currencies. You can read his book for free here. It got me into a whole load of other areas from the Long Now to time as a currency. Have you thought about time as a currency? Maybe my favourite example of…

Talking about time, I got a nudge from Bloomberg about an artist in time. The story is about Max Büsser who, with his band of revolutionaries, made products they wanted themselves and built a huge fandom on the way. What’s the product? A wristwatch. Max worked for luxury jeweller Harry Winston but was unhappy. He…

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak posted an update on LinkedIn the other day, saying how brilliant Britain is for foreign investments. That’s kind of no surprise, coming from the office of the person who wants foreign investment, but I did take note of one paragraph specifically: Despite challenging economic times, lots of sectors are flourishing. As…

I was just in London for two major events. One, the launch of Leda Glyptis’s new book Bankers Like US … Great night with @LedaGlyptis and friends yesterday for the launch of “Bankers like US” pic.twitter.com/LG4OhgVhCn — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) February 2, 2023 … and second for the Card & Payments Awards. Here we go ……

This week’s main blog discussions include … FinTech in Africa: the State of the Nations I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and…

Highlights and links This week’s Guest Judge (and numbers nerd) Wasim Mushtaq former Transformation Lead, Financial Markets at Standard Chartered Bank, provided full transparency of his bespoke scoring system he applied – find out how our participants fared while they spoke about Amazon, Swift, Stripe, The White Stripes, Monzo, Musk, Karaoke, Iran, Russia, Zopa and lots more…

I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and internet penetration continue to accelerate, financial services in many African markets are bypassing traditional banking…

I posted a quote the other day on social media, remembering the old bank robber in America, Willie Sutton. You may not have heard of him, as it is almost a century ago but, during his forty-year robbery career, he stole an estimated $2 million. Today that would be around $35 million. He then spent…

Last year I invited Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, to write a monthly column explaining her motivations and methods. You can read those, and other climate and ESG related blogs, here. One specific column she contributed was asking how they could justify breaking bank windows. Extinction Rebellion lobbied HSBC and Barclays Bank specifically in…