Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Doing good … find out more (a final Earth Day update)

In closing this Earth Day week, I thought I’d rectify yesterday’s depressing news about banks funding the end of our planet to talk about the banks that are doing the opposite. In fact, there are many initiatives that are trying to create finance for good from community currencies to Long Finance. These are also themes…

Doing bad for society and the planet (an Earth Day banking update)

I’m not a particularly political person. Opinionated yes. A little bit right and little bit left, maybe. Not necessarily a centrist, true. And I try to avoid writing about politically motivated movements on this blog, except when they impact the banking industry. And today is one of those days. Continuing on the Earth Day theme…

Doing good for society and the planet (an Earth Day FinTech update)

It was Earth Day on Monday, and a national holiday in many nations as they observed what Christians call Easter. Whilst Sri Lankans mourned the fatal losses on the Easter Sunday church gatherings, many observed the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. One of the leading lights of the modern environmental…

The Finanser’s Week: 15th April – 21st April 2019

The main blog headlines are … Will a global platform connect all of our money? When I talk about FinTech, I often reflect on the first time I encountered what I would, today, call a truly FinTech firm. It was on March 30, 2005, and a newly formed firm presented at the Financial Services Club…

Will a global platform connect all of our money?

When I talk about FinTech, I often reflect on the first time I encountered what I would, today, call a truly FinTech firm. It was on March 30, 2005, and a newly formed firm presented at the Financial Services Club an idea. The idea was to connect people with money to people who needed money…

Why Chinese TechFin is the exception and not the rule

I picked up an interesting article from Reuters, about how Asian technology firms are moving into banking in a different way to Europe or America. The article says that Amazon and Alphabet / Google are far more interested in serving banks with cloud and advertising, rather than competing with them, whereas Alibaba and Tencent have…

Are these $1 billion start-ups Unicorns or Leprechauns?

Someone said to me recently that most tech Unicorns are more like Leprechauns. A Leprechaun is also mythical and magical but, rather than delivering riches, it just promises riches at the end of a rainbow you never reach. In other words, most Unicorns are offering riches that are as mythical and magical as the beast…

The Finanser’s Week: 8th April – 14th April 2019

The main blog headlines are … Leaving customers digitally high and dry … big mistake I’ve recently seen two blogs about issues with challenger banks N26 and Tandem. They both relate to the ways in which these new banks communicate, or not in these cases. Judith Bogner, a well-known and followed broadcaster, explains regarding N26…

Leaving customers digitally high and dry … big mistake

I’ve recently seen two blogs about issues with challenger banks N26 and Tandem. They both relate to the ways in which these new banks communicate, or not in these cases. Judith Bogner, a well-known and followed broadcaster, explains regarding N26 and the fact that her husband was locked out of his account and so he…

Today’s cool is tomorrow’s retro

I was once again reminded of the stupidity of passwords when locked out of yet another service that I use maybe once a year. When I decided to reset the password, once again my iPhone offered to set up a strong password that it would remember for me. Once again, I opted to not have…