For years, people have argued that you need branches to serve customers for more complex transactions: to serve people who are uncomfortable with digital access; to serve young people getting their first mortgage; to serve retailers and small businesses with their cash needs; and so on and so forth. Baloney. To be honest, I’ve advocated…
Some years ago, July 2015 to be exact, I interviewed Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Klarna. Niklas left the company shortly after but is still invested and, interestingly, is investing in other unicorns like Mollie. Not bad for a guy who was flipping burgers for a living in his 20s (he’s now 39). I quote from that…
I blogged the other day about the Finverse and $100 billion invested in FinTech firms in the first half of 2021. Wow! It made me think that I often talk about the fact that there are 1,000’s of FinTech start-ups launching around the world. My guess today is that there are over 15,000. Who knows? There…
The world is getting interesting. Circle announces plans to become a fully registered bank; Lending Club buys a credit union; Credijusto (Mexico) buys a bank; Raisin (Germany) acquires a bank … the list has, is and will go on. Meantime, JPMorgan snaps up OpenInvest; US Bank buys Bento; Lloyds (UK) acquire Embark Group; Visa eats…
Last year, I blogged about the view of Deutsche Bank regarding the future of payments. They produced three reports: Part I: Cash: The Dinosaur Will Survive… For Now Part II: Moving To Digital Wallets And The Extinction Of Plastic Cards Part III: Digital Currencies: The Ultimate Hard Power Tool … that were well worth a…
I just got a report from PwC and my heart sank. The headline is: Financial institutions to significantly increase use of gig economy workers to upskill workforce PwC report suggests up to a fifth of future workforces in financial services could be gig employees The detail is: Importing the digital and specialist skill sets of…
The new word of focus, as proven by research, is omniaccess. Forget omnichannel. We just performed a short survey about the views of banks and FinTechs regarding the pandemic, sponsored by Oracle. The results are out today and here’s the summary: 48% believe the change from physical to digital is here to stay 47% believe we’ll…
I hadn’t realised the significance of Stripe’s recent press release until I stumbled over the Stratechery write-up over the weekend. Stratechery points out that Stripe has gone from a simple merchant checkout API to a platform of platforms. The significance of that? Well, think of the Amazon of finance: that’s Stripe’s ambition. So, what was…
During this health crisis, everything has changed a lot. We are at home, home schooling, home learning, home entertaining, home working and more. Great. That’s all good. Yes and no. Mental health has become a big issue and is something everyone is talking about more as, after all, if you say at home for days,…
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 them. Six years later, mobile wallets are still pretty dire in most of Europe…
