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Regulation

Are Monzo’s growing pains, major pains?

Building on yesterday’s blog where I mentioned Monzo’s issues of client onboarding, I mentioned that, for the past few months, I’ve noticed many tweets from Monzo customers about accounts being closed suddenly, with no explanation. Each time, I’ve shared the information and copied Monzo and asked them to explain. Hey Chris 👋 Thanks for expressing…

What was that Brexit deal, again?

Britain has left the EU, but now I read headlines everywhere saying cross-border movements are impossible, Ireland is broken, the City was ignored, our fisherman cannot sell shellfish and so on and so forth. A disaster? Possibly but, on the other hand, everything that is wrong with the EU was illustrated by the Covid vaccine….

CBDCs, the Digital Euro and how it might work

I’m very aware that central banks are investigating the use of digital currencies, particularly as they can now see bitcoin gaining more and more traction (Tesla, Square and more committed – next is Apple?), but had not realised how extensive are those investigations. According to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) latest paper, 86% of the…

Singapore-on-the-Thames? Welcome to the new London … [Kalifa Review]

In the midst of Brexit plans and a Covid pandemic, the UK Government launched a FinTech review chaired by Ron Kalifa. I’ve met Ron at a few conferences, when he was CEO and then Chairman of WorldPay and will find it interesting to see what he finds. “The intention of this review is to establish…

UK regulator to crack down on Buy Now, Pay Later

It’s interesting that the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, came out with its review of the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) economy, and the media started comparing Klarna with Wonga. I’ve blogged in-depth about both in the past: Whatever you think, Wonga is doing well, July 2013 The Finanser Interviews: Niklas Adalberth, Co-Founder, Deputy…

Creating a level playing field for regulating FinTech

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) just released a paper on how governments and central banks should deal with FinTech upstarts. Here are the conclusions: Helping to achieve a level playing field in the provision of financial services is a desired outcome of the regulatory framework. This entails facilitating an orderly entry of new participants…

Breaking the stranglehold of banking

Someone asked me to elaborate on the links between banks, government, the economy and society, and this was well illustrated by the video I shared the other day of James Pierpont Morgan, who founded the JPMorgan empire (see end of this blog entry). That all began with learning the banking ropes in Europe; then enabling…

Regulation is meant to strangle innovation

I guess I’ll build on yesterday’s blog, about the python of regulation, by harking back to a comment I heard many years ago in Brussels. Talking with one of the key regulators, I asked why they had the regulation in place with so much interpretation. My point was that Italy was implementing the regulation in…

It’s beginning to look a lot like banking …

I wrote this the other day for Channel News Asia: FinTech firms may look like banks soon The gist of my thread is that, due to Ant Group offloading all of their risk to banks, the authorities are now stepping in to say that any innovator, even one as big as Ant, needs to be…

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