Opinion

I have waste in my life. I have a lot of things I could throw away. Old toys, broken computers, screens with cracks, lawnmowers that don’t work, Lego with bits missing, cables that I cannot remember what they’re for … the list goes on. This is my debt. My debt of waste. A house full…

We are all probably aware of the furore over Novax Djocavic and the Australian Open tennis championship. The issue is to vax or not to vax. Now, some people can’t get a vaccination due to their health conditions but, other than this, governments are telling us you must get vaccinated. France mandates “a vaccine pass that…

NatWest, formerly Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is a good example of a bank with rubbish IT. This was illustrated when I spotted the headline: NatWest fined $300 million for money laundering. They didn’t do the money laundering, but a number of accounts – specifically a jeweller, Fowler Oldfield – did. How did this happen?…

Focusing just on the payments space, there are many folks making forecasts for 2022. Here are the highlights. The Financial Brand lists seven major trends for 2022: The ‘P2P’ Wars Will Continue Unabated Despite All the New Stuff, Cards (and Cash) Roll On BNPL: The Payments Wild Card It’s A Wallet! It’s a Platform! It’s Super…

We teach our children to read and write. It’s a priority. Why don’t we teach them to understand money? Surely financial literacy is as important as basic literacy? Some people get this, and some people don’t, but I woke up to this big time reading a few recent articles. For example, Claer Barrett writes in…

I got a link to a bunch of Albert Einstein quotes the other day, one of which was: “Time does not exist. We invented it.” Some guy called Albert pic.twitter.com/JS9JMfEyJk — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) August 28, 2021 It made me think. Oh dear. Don’t make me think. Over the past year and a half, I…

I was watching Match of the Day the other day and realised how much football moves and changes. Teams of yesteryear are now champions of Europe, whilst teams that were my shining lights growing up are now shadows of their former selves. I wonder if that’s what we’re seeing today in banking and finance? In…

I see five major groups squeezing the financial markets these days. The first one is obvious: it’s the FinTech start-up community, which is now valued as a third of all banking value. The second is clear too: it’s the Big Tech firms like Facebook and Amazon, who are launching their own currencies and putting pressure…

I had a fascinating conversation the other day, and shouldn’t share it here but hey, it’s my blog. I was talking about my understanding of SWIFT and how Yawar Shah, Chair of the Association, is killing it. I must admit, it had not occurred to me re the politics of SWIFT, until that discussion, as…

Is it just me, or is the world a scary place at the moment? For most of my life, the world has been harmonising, working together to create global trade and destroy barriers. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening of China to world trade and the growth of the United Nations sustainability goals,…