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I was having a conversation with a friend about the issues at Monzo this week (among others).  Their third-party payments processor had an outage at the weekend so the cards couldn’t be used. Then they had crashes on Android and lost payments in the app.  It’s a challenge being a challenger.  However, the reason for…

I got a laugh the other day when I referred to Grade II Listed Banks, but I was serious.  For overseas readers, we have a system in Britain of listing heritage buildings.  They have various grades which restrict what you can do with them.  Grade I means you can’t really change the building at all, whilst Grade…

Seven years ago, the first new retail bank in almost a century got its licence to open: Metro Bank.  Now, there are so many new banks starting up in Britain (and across Europe) that it’s sometimes hard to keep up with it all.  There are app-only start-up banks (Atom, Monzo, Starling, Tandem); foreign exchange payment cards (Revolut, SuperCard); personal…

I’ve just been alerted by friend Gijs Boudewijn to the release of a fascinating white paper by BIS, the Bank for International Settlements (the guys who do Basel stuff and are big cohonez in banking circles).  Their Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures released Distributed ledger technology in payment, clearing and settlement: an analytical framework…

As referenced in my R3 fake news last week, there are various camps out there fighting for the cryptocurrency crown.  The lead runners are bitcoin and Ethereum, and both have serious backing.  However, it’s still early days.  I keep stressing that we need to remember we are experimenting here, and the end game is still…

This week’s main blog headlines are …. The FinTech Wave, Part One I wrote a blog the other day for The Next Web.  I thought it was ok, and it has gained a lot of traction socially. Apparently, people like it and here I’m going to expand upon the basic theme to give a detailed analysis…

I recently blogged about the lack of obvious return on investment for immediate (also called faster, instant or real-time) payments, and mentioned that I would be launching research about this.  Well that research survey is now live.  It will only take you ten minutes, so please join in by clicking this link. Just to put…

It made me laugh today.  I was chairing a panel where Romana Kumar, Head of Global Transaction Banking for the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), was discussing their trial of Ripple.  The background to this was announced in a press release on 1st February 2017: Ripple’s Distributed Financial Technology fits within NBAD’s existing infrastructure…

I was reflecting on a friend of mine who runs a FinTech start-up.  Their company was on a funding round, and struggling.  They struggled so much that they ended up having to lay off a load of staff, cut budgets and defer income.  In fact, they reached the point where they would only survive another…

I mentioned in my FinTech Wave that blockchain has entered the trough of disillusionment.  It’s certainly a lot quieter space this year than last.  In fact, when I say blockchain today, a lot of folks turn the other way.  What’s going on? A lot of it is to do with the hype cycle, and the…