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I’m winding people up with blockchain this week. As I was doing that, a song came back to me on regular occasion. A song about Blockheads. I went back to the song and re-read the lyrics. It’s about Essex Boys back in the 1970s. Not quite the world of today, is it? But there is…

There have been two major announcements of women as leaders of banks in the USA in the past month. First, Citibank announced that Jane Fraser would be the new CEO and then Goldman Sachs announced that Stephanie Cohen would head up their consumer and wealth management operations. I noted that a few friends – Theo…

It shows what a complex world we live in within our financial markets. We debate whether companies should get involved in politics, but banks cannot avoid politics. Banks are integral to governments and economies and, as such, are a political tool. Equally, banks choose to operate in markets that could be positive or negative to their…

The main blog discussions this week include …. Change the System (#FinCEN) I got this endorsement from the one and only Alice Cooper the other day … … it was sent by a friend to cheer me up and it surely did. A lot. Love Alice Cooper. But it made me reflect too on the…

There’s an interesting debate about the corporate world: should it be apolitical or take a stance? Actually, in the form of a formal Oxford debating society version of this debate, I should say that: This House believes that companies should avoid politics Our first speaker is Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. It has become common…

I bumped into this article on The Economist the other day, which postulates that the existing financial system could be replaced. SWIFT, VISA, MasterCard and other regional and national systems like BACS, CHAPS, CHIPS, Fedwire and such like, were all created in the 1970s or thereabouts. They’re fifty years old. Nothing wrong with being old…

I got this endorsement from the one and only Alice Cooper the other day …  … it was sent by a friend to cheer me up and it surely did. A lot. Love Alice Cooper. But it made me reflect too on the message: “change the system”. Change the system. Change The System. Change…

Someone rightly pointed out that I talk a lot about Ant Group but not enough about other major initiatives like YONO, the mobile wallet of India. India is also a hotbed of innovation, with Google and Amazon fighting out the financial payments space alongside other players like PayTM and SBI, the State Bank of India….

This week I’m going to continue looking at mobile payments with a quick overview of where Square, Jack Dorsey’s card payments firm, is today. I’m sure you all saw this headline the other day but, just in case, Square is now worth more than Goldman Sachs. Square! Square. Squared. I used to blog about Square…

The main blog discussions this week include …. The rise of the mobile wallet I first started blogging about smart mobile wallets in earnest in 2014. Back then, the mobile network operators were starting to get active and to try and bring the M-PESA and other experiences to the modern world. But no one wanted…