Grid

I’ve recently shared a couple of quotes from years ago that gained a lot of social media traction. First, in 1953, Mark R. Sullivan of Pacific Telephone & Telegraph said: “In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It will require no dial…

I’ve been watching the headlines related to Joe Biden’s pick for the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). OCC is an interesting department, as it can issue national bank charters for US banks, and often runs into trouble. By way of example, under the previous Administration, the OCC tried to…

Talking of Open Banking, I hosted a dinner focused upon Open Banking and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) in London the other night. The conversation was with neobanks and challengers and was an interesting mix of old and young views. For example, someone opened by saying that BaaS and Open Banking has hardly delivered anything. It’s disappointing and clearly…

My mate Dave Birch wrote a Forbes piece the other day titled Unbank the Banked. I thought it was going to be a story about how banks are ejecting thousands of customers due to poor onboarding. Instead Dave wrote about the unbanked don’t necessarily need banks. It’s a good piece, but there is also the…

A year ago, Google announced a compelling new offer: “You’re lagging in technology. Your current vendors are years behind. Consumers think you’re irrelevant. We’re hip, we’re cool, we have all the latest technologies, Now, they’ve dumped it. Why? Most reports point to internal trouble and strife. For example, Ars Technica cited a report in Business Insider that the Google Pay…

This week’s main blog discussions included … The day the old bank died For many years I’ve enjoyed talking about the origins of banking with the Medici’s in the Renaissance era. Amazingly, one bank has survived since then and I use them to talk about the oldest bank in the world. Do you know which…

The financial marketplace is becoming incredibly diverse and niche. Instead of universal banks, we now have plug-and-play code. Some would call it an object-oriented market structure. The basics are that no one dominates this structure. Instead, there are boutique players at every level of the stratosphere. The universal provider is the one with the banking…

I was thinking about the day the old bank died, and thought the comment could be taken in a wider context: the day the old banks died. A lot of people want old banks to die, but they won’t. They’re the walking dead, in some cases, but there are also phoenix banks in other cases….

For many years I’ve enjoyed talking about the origins of banking with the Medici’s in the Renaissance era. Amazingly, one bank has survived since then and I use them to talk about the oldest bank in the world. Do you know which bank that is?         Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS)…

I’ve watched Marcus for a while and was not surprised to see its founder is leaving. There are those who are great at building companies and those who are great at running companies. They are rarely the same person. In fact, some of the greatest companies were created by builders and runners. Walt Disney is…