Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Payments

Get ready for Facebook banking

There’s a buzz that’s started about Facebook banking asCommonwealth Bank of Australia and ICICI Bank get into Facebook banking apps, with Citibank fast to follow. What’s going on? Originally, we all though Facebook would take over bank functions through stealth creep via Facebook credits. Facebook credits are in fact worth around $1.5 billon a year…

Citi tweet

Are payments infrastructures fit for purpose?

As per our regular research surveys, the Financial Services Club is repeating the survey started in 2011 reviewing the changing face of payments infrastructures. We would be delighted if you would join this year’s survey: click here to take part. By participating, you are guaranteed to receive a copy of the results when they are…

The Future Bank: Augmented, Social and Mobile

We had a great discussion at the Financial Services Club Central & Eastern Europe (FSClub CEE) this week.  Now in its fourth year of operation, the Club meets regularly at the residence of the British Ambassador in Vienna, Austria (see postnote if you want a laugh).  The theme of the meeting was: “the future of…

FSCLUB PIC 1

Social mobile will make financial inclusion a basic human right

More interesting dialogue about banking yesterday, and this time about financial inclusion. The fact that mobile phone ubiquity is creating a wirelessly connected planet, is a key part of changing our world for more inclusion. First, six billion people now have 1:1, P2P connections. You only need to look at mobile densities by continent to realise…

Mobile

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…