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I guess that Facebook caused many central banks to realise that if they didn’t issue digital currencies then others would. Hence, why most central banks are issuing them. But it’s not an either-or scenario. “We will see in the not-too-distant future a sovereign digital currency coming out.” Michael Corbat, CEO of Citi “There is absolutely…

The new word of focus, as proven by research, is omniaccess. Forget omnichannel. We just performed a short survey about the views of banks and FinTechs regarding the pandemic, sponsored by Oracle. The results are out today and here’s the summary: 48% believe the change from physical to digital is here to stay 47% believe we’ll…

I hadn’t realised the significance of Stripe’s recent press release until I stumbled over the Stratechery write-up over the weekend. Stratechery points out that Stripe has gone from a simple merchant checkout API to a platform of platforms. The significance of that? Well, think of the Amazon of finance: that’s Stripe’s ambition. So, what was…

The main blog discussions this week include … It’s beginning to look a lot like banking … I wrote this the other day for Channel News Asia: FinTech firms may look like banks soon The gist of my thread is that, due to Ant Group offloading all of their risk to banks, the authorities are…

This is the fifth in a series of blogs about the elephant, which represents the economy, and the bird, which represents the future. The elephant is still here. He’s too big for me to get rid of him. And he’s very difficult to deal with as he’s big and smelly. Nevertheless, I quite like the…

I was struck by a comment made on LinkedIn that most media miss what’s going on in the rest of the world. In this case, it was a comment about Starling Bank getting plaudits for being the first challenger to be profitable. What it should have said is the first challenger to be profitable in the…

I wrote the other day about machines becoming human, and said they would not be … but what if they were or, more importantly, what if machines stopped needing humans? This is the dystopian future of Terminator and more, where humans become redundant and we create our own destruction and replacement. I’ve always said that…

I wrote this the other day for Channel News Asia: FinTech firms may look like banks soon The gist of my thread is that, due to Ant Group offloading all of their risk to banks, the authorities are now stepping in to say that any innovator, even one as big as Ant, needs to be…

As bitcoin’s pricing goes up and down as usual – almost $18,000 today (who bought a few for a $1?) – it seems like the world is moving towards cryptocurrencies, as they are now respectable. They’re not respectable in the eyes of governments and banks … Bitcoin has no role in institutional or retail investors…

The main blog discussions this week include … Is Google going head-to-head with banks? We talk a lot about Big Tech moving into big banking … but then we have talked about that for years. Now, with the revamped strategy for Google towards payments and finance, is Big Tech finally making its move into big…