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A summary of the main blogs of the week … FiBD: The FinTech Bullshit Detector I’ve been wondering for a while how so many companies can be starting up something in the same space, and how are they surviving?  The reason for mentioning it is that we keep hearing these numbers around how many billions…

We had a fun session of the Financial Services Club this week, in light of the lack of clarity on Brexit from the UK Gov.  The discussion was our regular New Year kick-off meeting with special guest David Doyle, sage of all EU regulations affecting Financial Services.  David provided us with great insight into the…

So Theresa May made clear on Tuesday what the Brexit plan is … or did she?  Some say that her plan is Vague (in reference to her appearance on the cover of Vogue) whilst others gave it a big thumbs up. Mind you, he did write most of it.  The clear points that came out…

I’ve been wondering for a while how so many companies can be starting up something in the same space, and how are they surviving?  The reason for mentioning it is that we keep hearing these numbers around how many billions are being invested in FinTech, bitcoin, blockchain and such like, and yet I cannot see…

For those who weren’t looking, you might have missed the release of the Framework for FinTechh white paper released by the White House last Friday.  It’s the output of the work performed by the National Economic Council’s Adrienne Harris and her team, who I’ve been delighted to support. The paper represents the policy objectives for…

I realised the other day that financial markets are confused.  On the one hand, we spend all of our time criticising banks for being slow to change, inflexible, lacking customer focus and being greedy and, in some cases, fraudulent; on the other, many reckon that challenger banks are not that at all – they’re just…

A summary of the main blogs of the week … Could Trump and May be the new Reagan and Thatcher? I guess I’m an optimist and, in a world of pessimism, it’s an interesting place to be.  I say a world of pessimism as all I’ve seen since the Brexit vote and Donald Trump being…

In case you missed it, there was an important keynote speech by Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at a conference in France last Friday.  It has some key announcements in there, so I’m reproducing the speech here for those interested in immediate payments and what Europe is doing. Keynote speech…

So one of my 2017 forecasts is coming true already: it is the year that blockchain moves out of proofs of concept and work and into the mainstream.  Two great examples broke out this week from skunk works to media. The first I spotted was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group using bitcoin for various…

I’m just starting a project on real-time, immediate, faster payments or whatever you call it.  It’s basically making a payment that is either settled within seconds or the data is moved and settlement takes place at a later time, but it look immediate. There’s lots of reports out there about immediate payments, with my favourite…