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I’ve pointed out many times that it’s easy to scam people online and defraud them. I even once got a phone call from an elderly gentleman asking me if he had really won £1 million on the Financial Services Club lotto. I had to let him down gently, even though he was convinced that the…

I always like to hear what bankers think about the future of banking – it’s probably more accurate than what janitors or futurists think – and so was pleased to see two items in my in-tray this week, one from HSBC and the other from Wells Fargo. According to the summary of HSBC’s report: In…

Just over a month away from Christmas and the festive season is off to a rock and roll start. This week sees the launch of the annual John Lewis schmaltzy advert (see every one since 2006 here) and after six on December 5 sees the lighting of the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree. Be there or…

Actually, it’s not just banking. It’s money. Money is about control – something I blog about regularly – and men control societies, economies and the world. Women are subjugated in that world, which is why there is a minority of female founders of FinTech firms and female executives in the leadership team of banks. But…

I’ve said for a while that the Big Tech giants will not become banks. Amazon and Alibaba will do a lot of bank-like activities, but they will never move into full-service banking, as in offering deposit accounts. Why won’t they? Because that’s full banking activity which has all of the audit and compliance overhead that…

The main blog headlines are … Seven Fin and Tech truisms we wish were myths (with thanks to Anne Boden) I attended the New Statesman’s FinTech Summit yesterday. I gave the opening speech and was followed by the indomitable Anne Boden, CEO and Founder of Starling Bank, who talked about the path to profitability. She…

I got a tweet the other day pointing me to a report from the Financial Stability Board about the use of decentralised technologies for financial services. Excellent report from the Financial Stability Board @fsb about the impact of decentralized #fintech#finserv #DeFi #DLT #payments #lending ➡️https://t.co/toIsNQ580a pic.twitter.com/LUfGxn9akl — Sebastien Meunier (@sbmeunier) November 7, 2019 Clicking through to…

I got an email the other day from TransferWise, a service I use frequently. Why do I use it? Because I moved to Poland. Poland’s currency is the Zloty and paying everything on my card in British Pounds with conversion rates seemed stupid. It really struck home when I was paying a postage import fee…

I attended the New Statesman’s FinTech Summit yesterday. I gave the opening speech and was followed by the indomitable Anne Boden, CEO and Founder of Starling Bank, who talked about the path to profitability. She asserts the bank will deliver profitability next year, but her presentation focused upon a number of what she sees as…

We hear a lot about how crypto and bitcoin encourages illegal activity, drugs, money laundering and such like. The reality is that such activity today is tiny when compared with the amount of illegal activity, drugs and money laundering going through the banking system. As of 2019, $829 million in bitcoin has been spent on…