Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Payments

More on remittances

After my scribble on remittances the other day, it is timely to talk about this as it relates to the G8 Summit taking place in Italy this week. During the buildup to this meeting campaigners have been reminding the leaders of their obligations to Africa, especially Italy and France who reneged on their pledges of…

Tesco

The paperless bank is coming

Nice email from NatWest today encouraging consumers to switch to paper-free banking: No real commentary on this … … except that isn’t it a bit weird that the benefit is that you’re protected against identity theft by having no paper around … … and yet you need the paper statements to prove your identity. Oh…

Natwest paperless

A mess of clearing …

This week has been spent in a debate about clearing and settlement systems. I’ll post something with more depth about this later in the week, but the most interesting dialogue has been about the US versus EU approaches. The American system exists with a few core clearing systems based around the major exchanges – the…

A remittance strategy scribble

As mentioned, last week was a Remittances week in Rome. Remittances continually intrigues me as a market, especially the major focus financial institutions are now placing on this area as an opportunity. This is contradictory as those who need remittance services the most are often those who do not use banks or have bank accounts. …

Remittances Strategy

A remittance strategy scribble

As mentioned, last week was a Remittances week in Rome. Remittances continually intrigues me as a market, especially the major focus financial institutions are now placing on this area as an opportunity. This is contradictory as those who need remittance services the most are often those who do not use banks or have bank accounts. …

Remittances Strategy

PSD and SEPA research

It’s July 1st and we are pleased to announce that, during the summer, the Financial Services Club is running an in-depth analysis and research project about the country-level plans for the transposition of the Payment Services Directive (PSD) on 1st November 2009 and the implementation of SEPA Direct Debits (SDD) on 2nd November. The research…

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PSD and SEPA research

It’s July 1st and we are pleased to announce that, during the summer, the Financial Services Club is running an in-depth analysis and research project about the country-level plans for the transposition of the Payment Services Directive (PSD) on 1st November 2009 and the implementation of SEPA Direct Debits (SDD) on 2nd November. The research…

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PSD and SEPA research

It’s July 1st and we are pleased to announce that, during the summer, the Financial Services Club is running an in-depth analysis and research project about the country-level plans for the transposition of the Payment Services Directive (PSD) on 1st November 2009 and the implementation of SEPA Direct Debits (SDD) on 2nd November. The research…

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Cracking ATMs the malware way

I get a lot of email feeds and news from financial websites, but often spot real banking news in more unlikely places … like New Scientist magazine. On the front cover of last week's mag was a story about Gaia's evil twin.   I thought that was going to be about the social networking world…

EAST ATM Fraud

SUN, IBM, SWIFT and more create a cloud crowd

I was asked twice yesterday about cloud computing. Firstly by a friend who wanted to know how it related to payments; and then by another mate in the investment world. The latter was inspired by a new report from IBM and SIFMA that states that cloud computing is ready for prime time: A survey of…

McKinsey Cloud