Payments

I still talk a lot about blockchain, distributed ledgers, cryptocurrencies and more, but often feel it’s falling on deaf ears. The price of bitcoin flies around in the $7,000 a coin bracket, having risen from a tenth of that amount a year ago; and many people talk about blockchain and distributed ledger interchangeably, as did…

We hosted ePassi at our recent launch of Nordic Finance Innovate (NFI) in Helsinki, Finland. ePassi are the partner firm of Alipay, bringing the app to Finland to allow Chinese tourists to pay easily when travelling via Finland to Europe. It’s been very successful as it was initially launched to allow tourists to come and…

As Sweden was the first European country to use cash for payments back in 1661, it’s unsurprising that it’s the first European country that wants to be cashless. This is why, for several years, I’ve been watching the regular speeches by Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, talking about eradicating…

Wrapping up thoughts on #Money2020, the Vegas show is by far the biggest of this monster event organising company. I’m guessing there were around 15,000 folks there this year, and everything but everything was being covered: AI, machine learning, mobile wallets, core banking, distributed ledger, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and just about every other aspect of making…

Continuing yesterday’s discussions about a big bank’s conference, I was intrigued at how often the subject of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin came up. But there again, it’s a topical thing at the moment with the price of bitcoins surging past the $4,000 mark and Goldman Sachs going against JP Morgan, and saying that they might even trade in…

I was at a large bank’s wealth management conference recently, where the CEO was being quizzed about various areas including a lot about technology and FinTech. He made several statements that I noted with interest: “Roboadvisory services improves our speed-to-market and human productivity, but does not replace humans. In particular, I can see that artificial…

It’s been an interesting few weeks, watching bitcoin’s rollercoaster ride as it rises to valuations over $4,000 and then dives to almost $2,000 before rising again to near $6,000. This is for an asset that just a year ago you could have purchased for a few hundred dollars. The rise of cryptocurrency valuations is confusing…

This quote If you’re getting something for free, you are the product has been floating around for a while, and normally is related to Facebook and Google. It’s all about the fact that these companies are selling you to advertisers as clickbait. Facebook, Google, Twitter and others are not free at all. You just think…

I’ve said continually that firms like Google and Amazon will never open a bank. I still believe that this will be the case – Facebook and Apple also fall into this view – and mainly hold this view because these companies would find full service banking a difficult and unprofitable space. In fact, I’ve blogged…