Payments

I got a very interesting heads-up yesterday to a campaign the European FinTech start-ups have kicked off to try and stop the big, nasty banks screwing them with their version of PSD2.  I’ve previously blogged that the banks will implement non-standard APIs to make it difficult to access their services without writing code to work with…

I have no academic papers or historical research view on what I’m about to post, although I will find some, but I was reflecting on my discussions of revolutions in humanity.  In particular, the second age of humankind, when we invented money as a control mechanism. Before this seismic change, money didn’t matter.  We shared beliefs…

I’ve just spent the last three weeks travelling around too many places to mention, including Germany, UAE, UK and three very different countries: Argentina, Colombia and Pakistan. Argentina is a huge and diverse country of over a million square miles, and a population of 40 million; Colombia is one of the world’s most ecologically diverse…

I blogged recently about American banks beating up the regulators to stop account access via APIs.  I heard this in various White House meetings in 2016, and assumed all banks and bank people felt the same way.  Well, they don’t.  Citi’s head of FinTech Policy, Andres Wolberg-Stok, got in touch to clarify the true situation….

I try to generally avoid making political commentary on the blog as it’s not appropriate. This is a blog about technology and finance, not the economy and politics.  Every now and again the two come together such as with Brexit and Donald Trump.  Equally sometimes they cannot be avoided as the politics impacts the financial…

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 large cash denominated amounts transferring…

I tweeted this the other day, and it got a lot of likes, so I thought I’d make it today’s blog title.  We seem to have lost a lot of buzz on blockchain this year, even thought it’s still buzzing away as much as ever before.  I recently was talking about how blockchain is great…

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 developing and changing.  This is…

You have an idea. Let’s say that it’s to make nice wooden caricatures of famous politicians.  Something that historically would have been a niche trade for the odd craft fare.  It still is, but when you go to a craft fare, the usual practice is cash only.  Not any more.  Just in a few short…

We talk a lot about bank branch closures and, to be sure, there are a lot bank branch closures.  The UK has seen 1 in 10 bank branches disappear over the last two years whilst the USA is seeing a similar trend, albeit at a slower pace.  That may be scary for some as we see…