Numbers

I’ve written a lot about Ant and Alibaba, but not so much Tencent, even though QQ social networking in China was a hot, hot topic a few years ago.  It was the first social platform to launch its own currency and, with 300 million users, was quite interesting.  Things have …

I saw a really interesting presentation in Kigali at the Dot Finance Africa FinTech Summit from Yasaman Hadjibashi, Chief Creation Officer with Barclays Africa (soon to be something else). She began with a discussion of the make-up of Africa: By 2050, it is expected that the population will double from 1.2 …

Expanding on yesterday’s discussion of how MNOs are sweeping up business for the underbanked and unbanked, Igor Pesin of Life.SREDA posted a lovely update giving even more detail.  Here is how he saw things … Fintech in Rwanda: the place where Telcos are surpassing Banks in the financial sector Telcos …

During the discussions at Dot Finance Africa, there was a very interesting dialogue about the mobile network operators (MNOs), with panels featuring Airtel and M-PESA.  It was interesting to hear them talking directly about how they focus upon the customer experience and their singular objective of convenience.  Both MNOs talked …

I recently had exposure to two industry reports that are worth bringing to your attention.  The first is the Innovate Finance research into Industry Sandboxes. Commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK regulator, the aim was to identify how Industry Sandboxes, rather than Regulatory Sandboxes, can help to …

Larry Summers, former director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, writes a regular column in The Financial Times.  His latest piece is his take on FinTech, which has the main headline that FinTech is taking away frictions in finance.  Yep.  The frictions are illustrated by things like interchange …

There are different views of what constitutes a FinTech Unicorn.  For example, Techcrunch lists just 20 (+1) FinTech Unicorns today: ANT Financial                         $60B (Feb 2017) Lufax                           …

When you have your basic needs covered – food and shelter – what do you need then?  According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it’s our psychological needs – love, belonging, self-esteem. This is exactly where digital plays into our hearts.  Our love and belonging is in Facebook and Baidu, which …

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been hearing about a War on Cash.  The war, as illustrated by India’s recent demonetization, is not on cash itself but on the illegal use of cash and, by association, the fraudulent creation of cash.  Both fraudulent notes and coins along with …

I took part in a webinar the other day, focused upon the developments in digital banking in the Middle East.  Having visited Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai and Qatar recently, I can claim to know a little.  Equally, having been to the region regularly since 2002, I’ve seen how it is …

I recently was hauled up over saying that Western Union (WU) was being disrupted by FinTech.  The words that a reader took issue with are: The high fees of Western Union and other remittance providers were fairly punishing … until FinTech came along Western Union is being disrupted, to an …

I blogged a year ago about TechFin, the incumbents’ view of applying technology to existing banking services, versus FinTech which seeks to transform the financial system.  That has become one of the top search terms to find my blog, as it turns out, mainly because my blog entries are the first …

I blogged recently that there is around $1.6 trillion of money laundering globally and less than 2% is caught by the financial system.  That’s a stunning amount and makes you wonder why our system is so awful.  Much of it is down to the fact that account openings depend upon …

There was an interesting article in The Independent last week about the big banks becoming bigger since the financial crisis hit.  The article notes that the big American banks control 70% of all US assets, and that this figure has increased 40% since 2008. In the lead up to 2008, …

Building on my challenger bank discussions, there’s some interesting points coming out of a new report by Price Waterhouse Coopers (or Playing the Wrong Cards as they’re now called, after the Oscars) on challenger banking.  It’s well worth a read, especially as they found that having branches is more important than …