Technology

You may have seen that Ticketmaster just announced that thousands of customers worldwide may have been affected by a hack. If you didn’t here’s the low-down (via ABC News) The company said its British business, Ticketmaster UK, identified malicious software on a customer support product which was hosted by a …

I bet you were wondering why I hadn’t written an Ant update recently. Well, I thought it was getting too much … but then I just arrived in Hong Kong and the hotel has kindly given me a copy of Fortune magazine with the headline cover page talking about the …

Last week, our good friend Dave Birch posted a great blog about the Amazonisation of Banking, most of which I agreed with. So I asked Dave if I could repost it here and he said “yes, of course”. Thanks Dave. Enjoy! The Amazonisation of Banking… …is very different from Amazon being …

I was listening to a group of CIOs talking about legacy systems change the other day. One said that it doesn’t matter how old the systems are; it’s all about whether they are maintainable and fit-for purpose. I kind of agreed with that, although I cannot think of any silo-based, …

I met a Washington insider this week. During the banter, I mentioned how much better the European authorities are at beating up the US tech giants than the Americans. This is illustrated well by the recent New York Times feature on Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition commissioner. Ms. Vestager, 50 and …

My second and last day at Money2020 Europe was packed with networking, meetings, panel discussions, private events and more. Throughout the day, the themes of the first day kept bubbling over. I guess it was typified with the comment that the CEO of TransferWise announced how happy they are to …

I’ve got caught in a few discussions recently with people who tell me Ant Financial are Chinese. They’re not. Neither is Alibaba and, if you think they’re just Chinese, you’re going to miss a huge change in the next decade. Ant Financial is an open marketplace of apps, APIs and …

I’ve used a statement for a while now about the competitive landscape of finance in the future. It goes something like: Banks have millions of customers, billions of capital and centuries of history, but are hampered by heritage; Start-ups have no customers, little capital and no history, but are driven …

For some years, I’ve been heavily involved in high frequency trading and quantitative trading, areas that are highly automated and pretty complex. I don’t blog about it much here, as it’s not appealing to the everyday person. It involves too much dialogue explaining acronyms used in investment markets and acronyms …

I just listened to a presentation by Nick Thompson, editor-in-chief at Wired, about all things in the future of tech. A lot of it was focused upon Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning towards the end, but the first half was interesting as it focused upon why there is a backlash against Silicon …

Today marks the day, finally, when Digital Human is available globally through Amazon, Google and all other online outlets. It was slightly delayed for release in Europe and America whilst the publishers were switched, but today it is finally online for all to order and receive within a day or two. …

I’ve been tempted for some time to write a book about how sex is at the heart of commerce, innovation and money. I’ve alluded to it a few times, and particularly noted that the right honourable Jeremy Clarkson sometimes says something intelligent. “Money and rumpy-pumpy (sex) are the twin engines …

I’ve been watching the rollercoaster ride of cryptocurrencies very carefully for the last year, and it only struck me today that these are not currencies … yet. Apart from a few novelty vendors and merchants who put bitcoin on their websites, I don’t see many others accepting ether or XRP, …

I was recently interviewed by the highly innovative German bank Wirecard the other day, for their blog. They kindly said I replicate it on the Finanser, so here you go … Chris Skinner in Interview: “Cash Is Not a Good Payment System – We Need to Get Rid of It, …

Banks are trusted guardians of our money. As long as our money is safe, then we trust them. It’s when our money is breached or lost that banks misbehave, which is why the 2008 financial crisis was so concerning. The run on Northern Rock and Bear Stearns were terrible moments …