Grid

There are lots of headlines and articles talking about the end of the office. You think about it, and it kind of makes sense. In a digital age, why do we have to go to a physical office? Why do we all cram ourselves into buses, cars and trains every …

There’s lots of talk about civil unrest, an unjust society, the need for a universal basic income, a change in attitude towards everything from capitalism to socialism to democracy to inclusion. Good discussions but hard to know how it plays out. In many countries, people are suffering so much. They’re …

The main blog headlines are … Dealing with a crisis: FinTech versus Bank The chasm between start-ups and incumbents is massively exposed by coronavirus. I realised this early on, when I saw that FinTech firms who were born on the internet were far more ready for working from home than …

I just found three interesting management reports. One is a survey from Salt Edge on the lack of success of the use APIs and Open Banking, two years after the introduction of PSD2; the second is from the GSMA on the state of mobile financial services; and the third is …

When Digital Human came out, its subtitle was The Fourth Revolution of Humanity includes Everyone. The premise was based upon humanity entering a fourth phase where every human on Earth could connect with every other human on Earth by just having a mobile telephone. Not only could they connect, but they …

I spent some time recently chatting with Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer, Global Processing Services (GPS). I spotted GPS a while ago, and blogged about how they worked with Monzo, Starling, Revolut and more last October. Anywho, Joanne wrote a brilliant piece on the Nasdaq website the other day, which …

The chasm between start-ups and incumbents is massively exposed by coronavirus. I realised this early on, when I saw that FinTech firms who were born on the internet were far more ready for working from home than traditional banks who depend on branches, buildings, office and physicality. A good example …

The other day, I blogged about the failure of government in this crisis. Today, I’m blogging about the failure of banks. I am aware that in some countries – the Netherlands seems to be one – there has been great continuance of bank service. Unfortunately, the UK is proving to …

The main blog headlines are … Where was the digital backup to our physical structure? The coronavirus crisis has hit everyone sudden and hard. We originally thought it was a Chinese crisis and now it’s a global one. It’s shut down economies worldwide and the banking system has been asked …

The coronavirus crisis has hit everyone sudden and hard. We originally thought it was a Chinese crisis and now it’s a global one. It’s shut down economies worldwide and the banking system has been asked to step in fast and address the crisis. Governments worldwide have asked banks to give …

Last October I wrote a piece on Revolut, questioning its valuation which, at that time, was estimated to be anything up to $10 billion: They claim to have 8M customers. Let’s assume *all* of them are active. If they are “valued” at $10Bn that’s a per customer lifetime value of …

I was recently watching an online poll that asked the best way for a traditional bank to compete with the new digital banks. Should they build a new bank, buy a digital bank competitor, or transform the old bank? The vote was split fairly equally between all three choices after …

I’ve tracked Wirecard for some years, as they were the bank partner that allowed Ollie Purdue to drop out of university at 21 years old to launch a bank called Loot. Wirecard basically offer the platform of many other firms to offer full banking services across Europe. Based in Germany, …

In the latest example of a bank that couldn’t hack the digital bank market, RBS gave up on Bó last week. It surprised me as the bank only launched last November, to a fanfare of £100 million investment and the acquisition of the start-up they had been co-funding, Loot. The …

The main blog headlines are … What will the world be like when #coronavirus ends? (Part One) Most of the people around the world have savings that can last them less than a month. In the USA, 29% of households have less than $1,000 in savings; in the UK, 15% …