Grid

There’s an interesting debate about the corporate world: should it be apolitical or take a stance? Actually, in the form of a formal Oxford debating society version of this debate, I should say that: This House believes that companies should avoid politics Our first speaker is Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. It has become common…

I bumped into this article on The Economist the other day, which postulates that the existing financial system could be replaced. SWIFT, VISA, MasterCard and other regional and national systems like BACS, CHAPS, CHIPS, Fedwire and such like, were all created in the 1970s or thereabouts. They’re fifty years old. Nothing wrong with being old…

I got this endorsement from the one and only Alice Cooper the other day …  … it was sent by a friend to cheer me up and it surely did. A lot. Love Alice Cooper. But it made me reflect too on the message: “change the system”. Change the system. Change The System. Change…

Someone rightly pointed out that I talk a lot about Ant Group but not enough about other major initiatives like YONO, the mobile wallet of India. India is also a hotbed of innovation, with Google and Amazon fighting out the financial payments space alongside other players like PayTM and SBI, the State Bank of India….

This week I’m going to continue looking at mobile payments with a quick overview of where Square, Jack Dorsey’s card payments firm, is today. I’m sure you all saw this headline the other day but, just in case, Square is now worth more than Goldman Sachs. Square! Square. Squared. I used to blog about Square…

The main blog discussions this week include …. The rise of the mobile wallet I first started blogging about smart mobile wallets in earnest in 2014. Back then, the mobile network operators were starting to get active and to try and bring the M-PESA and other experiences to the modern world. But no one wanted…

I need to shut up about Ant Group, as I’ve blogged a lot about them lately. However, with an IPO coming up and news coming out daily almost, it’s hard to ignore some of their activities. One activity that really hit me when it was released in July was the rebranding of all of their…

I recently saw the announcement from Santander of a foreign exchange service called PagoFX. It’s a service that goes head-to-head with TransferWise and is an interesting example of fighting back. As a result, I asked Victoria Yasinetskaya, CMO at PagoFX to tell me a bit more about what’s happening and she kindly wrote this piece for…

A while ago, I wrote about the IPO and whether you should invest. It’s still coming, but the valuation of the company is now even bigger. 15 percent bigger to be exact. That will make Ant’s IPO the biggest ever in history! Not bad for a month’s work. Interestingly, I was interviewed in the run…

I first started blogging about smart mobile wallets in earnest in 2014. Back then, the mobile network operators were starting to get active and to try and bring the M-PESA and other experiences to the modern world. But no one wanted them. Six years later, mobile wallets are still pretty dire in most of Europe…