Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Payments

Square: the Apple of finance

In case you didn’t see it, Wired magazine ran an article about Jack Dorsey and Square this month.  Throughout the article, they compare Jack Dorsey to Steve Jobs and Square with Apple. In a long opening – the first page is just about pouring tea! – they finally get to the crunch so here’s my shorter,…

Jack-dorsey-400x300

Waiting for the PayPal of mobile payments

I had an interesting dialogue over lunch yesterday. One of my colleagues had just got his iZettle dongle. iZettle is a Square for Europe, offering Chip & Signature payments on smartphones (Square reads the mag stripe). It was originally going to be Chip & PIN, but the PIN terminal detail is too costly to rollout…

Izettle

The only solution for the euro: full fiscal and financial union

I’m desperate to be positive about Europe, the European Union, the Eurozone and the European Community. I’ve been an advocate of Europe to a certain degree, as it’s been my main focal point for over a decade in finance: building the Eurozone, the Single Euro Payments Area, the implementation of MiFID and EMIR, the whole…

Manneken pis2

The only solution for the euro: full fiscal and financial union

I’m desperate to be positive about Europe, the European Union, the Eurozone and the European Community. I’ve been an advocate of Europe to a certain degree, as it’s been my main focal point for over a decade in finance: building the Eurozone, the Single Euro Payments Area, the implementation of MiFID and EMIR, the whole…

Manneken pis2

Case Study: Barclays Pingit for Consumers and Corporates

There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility. If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass fast. That’s true of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The more intuitive, accessible, easy…

Pingit4

SEPA will survive even if the Euro doesn’t, according to banking industry

We've just completed our annual survey on SEPA and the PSD, which will be released via a free webinar next week [to register, please visit:http://digbig.com/5bgayr]. The headlines of the survey were released today for EBADay, and so here's the full press release: SEPA will survive even if the Euro doesn't according to banking industry Strong…

Banks and corporates live in the twentieth century

I was surprised or not to have a long discussion with some bankers and corporates about personalisation last night. My contention was that a bank should know that they have an influential corporate treasurer decision maker as a business client, and be able to use that knowledge to deliver better service to that individual as…

CRD 4, Basel 3 – does that mean CRD wins?

I’ve been getting around a bit this week.  Having had long conversations with cybersecurity experts, I’ve also been having long conversations with treasurers. Many of them. Many of them, mainly with the world’s largest corporations. And it’s been interesting, as they all share one over-riding common concern. Regulations. Now I thought bankers were the only…

CRD 4, Basel 3 – does that mean CRD wins?

I’ve been getting around a bit this week.  Having had long conversations with cybersecurity experts, I’ve also been having long conversations with treasurers. Many of them. Many of them, mainly with the world’s largest corporations. And it’s been interesting, as they all share one over-riding common concern. Regulations. Now I thought bankers were the only…

Money in 2020: mobile and cashless … or not?

I just got a copy of the latest Pew Internet Project report which invited experts and other Internet stakeholders to offer their predictions on the future of mobile payments, and what people’s “wallets” might look like in 2020. Here’s a summary of what they found taken directly from the report, which you can download here (35…