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WARNING: THIS BLOG IS POLITICAL I often talk about the tech billionaires who control our lives. Why blog about this today? Well, a few disturbing developments. One is Elon Musk – you probably already know about his issues – thinking of launching a new American political party; but the other, and more intriguing, is an…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Designing our next banknotes: Notey McNoteFace? The Bank of England launched a platform yesterday for anyone to suggest who should be on Britain’s next generation of banknotes. Here’s the verbatim: As we begin to design the next series of banknotes, we invite you to share your views on potential…

I just booked a hotel stay in London the other day, confirmed with PayPal but then, shortly after checking my PayPal account, it showed two transactions. Thinking I had paid for the booking twice, I raised a dispute with hotels.com and PayPal about two charges. Now, as regular users of PayPal would know, it’s not…

The Bank of England launched a platform yesterday for anyone to suggest who should be on Britain’s next generation of banknotes. Here’s the verbatim: As we begin to design the next series of banknotes, we invite you to share your views on potential themes. Our banknotes have celebrated notable historical figures since 1970, when William Shakespeare…

“All the work I’ve done in my life will be obsolete in a few years.”  Steve Jobs This statement is pretty fundamental to life as we know it. Everything you do is worth nothing tomorrow. It is only worth something today. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that’s why…

There are many fintechs I follow closely: Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, Nubank, Ant Group to name just a few. London and the UK in general has been at the centre of all of this, and is home to almost 30 fintech unicorns, with many more rising. The thing is that, as these firms mature, things change….

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about the balance between privacy and permission in banking. The fact is that we don’t want people having our account details and yet, on certain occasions, it is necessary. So, what to do? In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, the dichotomy between privacy and permission access has emerged as…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Is fintech young or old? I just received the latest World Economic Forum’s Future of Fintech report so, here’s a summary: The fintech industry is transitioning from rapid expansion into a phase of sustainable growth, increased collaboration and broader market reach. The fintech sector is experiencing a customer growth…

I just received the latest World Economic Forum’s Future of Fintech report so, here’s a summary: The fintech industry is transitioning from rapid expansion into a phase of sustainable growth, increased collaboration and broader market reach. The fintech sector is experiencing a customer growth rate of 37% from 2022-2023, down from 55% in 2020-2021 reflecting a…

Trust in the news services has dropped from 51% to 35% over the last decade, according to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report. The headline paragraph can be summarised as it’s 2025 and we live in a time of deep political and economic uncertainty, changing geo-political alliances, climate breakdown and many destructive conflicts around the…