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Since records began, humans have tried to find a way around the rules. Drive slow, drink less, don’t fight, avoid drugs … there are always a few who want to get around the rules. I grew up in an era of massive football hooliganism. I saw someone stabbed with a knife at a match. My…

JPMorgan had their investors briefing on Monday. It was interesting, with lots of content (you can download all of the presentations here). I took a look at their briefing, and it is pretty mind-blowing tbh. A bank with 60 million active digital customers, processing USD$10 trillion a day with 40 billion security events a day….

I watched Stuart Kirk’s speech at the FT Moral Money conference last week … … and, frankly, was astounded. He is now being side-lined, suspended, maybe sacked and certainly a pariah with anyone who cares about the future of our world. Why? Well, let’s just take three comments thrown out during his presentation: “Who cares…

I was reflecting on the fact that I’ve been talking about digital banking for a decade and a half. That’s a long time. I’d claim to have fathered the phrase Banking-as-a-Service back in the 2000’s, and yet only a third of banks understand the concept of BaaS today. "Only a third of banks understand the concept"…

This week’s main blog discussions include … The rocky road of cryptocurrencies During May, the floor fell out of the cryptocurrency markets with many losing their life savings. You can question why they had their life savings invested in cryptocurrencies in the first place, but what made the price fall so far, so fast? The…

There are rules and regulations, and then there is leeway and dodges. It’s all down to how the rules are viewed and how they are regulated that counts. This is the big debate in the UK right now. Party animal Boris’s government has received many penalties for breaking the Covid restrictions they themselves created, whilst…

For most of my time working with banks, regulators were about clipping banks’ wings to suit the market. Today they are all about opening markets and enabling innovation. Jason Butcher, an entrepreneur and a friend, recently posted a picture of a tree on LinkedIn and likened it to today’s financial technology world. The diagram depicted the roots…

I just received an interesting report from Simon Kucher & Partners, a marketing strategy consulting firm, about Neobanks. It starts with some basic stats: There are 400 neobanks around the world with over a billion clients Over 50 neobanks launched in 2021 The main focus of Neobanking is UK, Sweden, USA, Brazil and South Korea The…

I’ve been looking at buying a small property using my crypto savings. Practically, this creates an interesting dilemma as the seller wants the money in his bank account, whereas I’m trying to persuade him to sell with a payment to a crypto wallet. He doesn’t trust crypto wallets, and has never used them. So, what’s…

During May, the floor fell out of the cryptocurrency markets with many losing their life savings. You can question why they had their life savings invested in cryptocurrencies in the first place, but what made the price fall so far, so fast? The answer is a combination of things, the core of which is a…