Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Revolut opens its new HQ and takes over the world?

I asked my friend Max, an early investor in Revolut, to provide an insight into the new headquarters the company opened this week in Canary Wharf, London. Revolut bought the building that was previously the HQ of Thomson Reuters, as a pretty bold move. Here are his thoughts … Revolut unveils its Global HQ, sets…

My data is my data

There are more and more arguments over data access and data sharing. Who is right and who is wrong? As far as I’m concerned, my data is my data but now JP Morgan Chase is selling it to Plaid – for access, not for keeps, an important difference – and Europe has told America’s big…

From data to knowledge to wisdom

We talk a lot about data analytics and the fact that you cannot be smart with dumb data is the start point. You have to be smart. Beyond smart, you have to be clever. You need to take data and use prediction modelling to think about what’s next? You need to predict the next move….

The Finanser’s Week: 15th September – 21st September 2025

This week’s main discussions include … It is time to level up We are in a third generation of change in finance. When I wrote Digital Bank over a decade ago, the focus was all about reinventing banking from being physical at the core to being digital at the core. Now we have to do it…

If digital is at the core, when do you need to be physical?

Building on the last two blogs all companies, not just in finance, have been transformed through the connected, network economy. That was the last decade’s worth of digital transformation and has led analogue companies hoping that they are now digital natives, although many are digital immigrants, still with a log of their old analogue systems…

Becoming intelligent: the next wave of disruption

I was thinking more about this third revolution of financial technologies. The first was very much focused upon automation administration using mainframe computing;  the second moved from pure cost reduction to the changing dynamics of how to leverage productivity and cost using the network effects of connectivity, and driven by cloud and mobile; the third…

It is time to level up

We are in a third generation of change in finance. When I wrote Digital Bank over a decade ago, the focus was all about reinventing banking from being physical at the core to being digital at the core. Now we have to do it all again and reach the next level where the bank is intelligent…

Wallets? Where we’re going, we don’t need wallets!

A few years ago I was running a book launch in a basement. On this occasion, people had to buy the books and so the promoter gave me a Square terminal to take card payments. So far, so good … except there was no signal in the basement. No Wi-Fi, no 5G, no nothing, no…

Money and currency is all about power and politics

It’s been really interesting watching the moves of Donald Trump to Make America Great Again by doubling down on the dollar being the reserve currency of the world forever more through the GENIUS Act. Well, that’s my take anyway. Add on to this that the Trump family made billions by launching World Liberty Financial, their very…

The Finanser’s Week: 9th September – 14th September 2025

This week’s main discussions include … Everything is a scam and why principles matter I clicked the other morning on Nicoo, the robot puppy, after seeing an ad on YouTube. I was going to order it for my wife’s birthday but thought, just before clicking, is this real? So, I go and Google Is Nicoo…