Numbers

Some of you may know that I write a monthly column for The Banker magazine, and have been doing this for almost twenty years! But The Banker goes back way longer than my column. In fact, it began in January 1926 when the first issue was published and is now almost a century old. Interestingly, since 1970 they’ve been…

I just found that Deutsche Bank Research issued three in-depth reports in January looking at the future of payments: Part I: Cash: The Dinosaur Will Survive… For Now Cash will survive. But digital currencies’ potential could re-balance global economic power. Part II: Moving To Digital Wallets And The Extinction Of Plastic Cards As changes in…

I just received a report from Deloitte about credit and debit cards. It says the future is not so bright: “more payment choices, along with changing consumer preferences, are threatening the long-term viability of the credit card business model.” Damn. I said that fifteen years ago. It made me think about what I was presenting…

Another useful person in my online network is Steve McLaughlin of @FTPartners, who I spotted sent a tweet last week saying they had produced a challenger bank report. FT Partners’ in-depth report, “The Rise of Challenger Banks” now features an exclusive interview with Brandon Krieg, Co-Founder and CEO of @Stash – view the full report…

Varun Mittal, Associate Partner with EY, recently posted a couple of interesting slides about the launch of virtual banking licences to encourage challenger banks in Asia. If you’re not aware, there’s a great deal of digital banking activity across Asia. It’s not just in China, but there are notable things happening in Hong Kong, Malaysia,…

When The Financial Times does what they’re good at – covering financial markets and not technology – then they do produce some fascinating content. Case in point is the latest coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s (JPMC) 2019 results. The bank’s latest results are stunning, with the fourth-quarter profit soaring to $8.52 billion or $2.57 a share….

I have often written about how the developing world is leap-frogging the developed world. The reason is that the developing world had no infrastructure in place whilst the developed world implemented their infrastructure in the last century. The developed world has become a legacy world. The developing world is a world fit for today. First…

I’ve blogged many times that so called free banking is a fallacy.  It’s something I have blogged about for a decade, and the recurring theme is free banking should be banned by the regulator as it’s only free as long as you don’t go overdrawn. The result is that the most financially challenged group of…

Regular readers of the blog know that I’m a fanboy of Alibaba and their financial firm Ant Financial which operates Alipay, the major payments system of China. On November 11, they had their Singles Day jamboree. The equivalent in China of Black Friday, some say, but more than five times bigger*. The figures this year…

Interesting conversation about switching accounts. I’ve had a few people saying that banks don’t have loyal customers, but they have trapped customers. By way of example, an email from a friend: I am just exactly as loyal to my bank as they are to me, which is to say not even slightly. I swear to…