Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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Will AI destroy humanity?

Every day there appears to be another update about how AI will change our world. The latest one in my inbox is a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), who warn that AI is likely to have a “seismic impact” on the economy and society, particularly in roles reliant on computer-based tasks. That’s almost all of…

If you have no access to your bank, why would you use that bank?

There’s been a bunch of headlines in the last week of online banking failures whilst, at the same time, another group of headlines of bank branch closures because customers should use digital banking. Barclays hit by major IT outage on tax deadline day – BBC News Moment customers surge around Barclays’ cash machines for ‘free…

Five key impacts of #Brexit five years on

Five years ago, on 31 January 2020, the UK left the European Union. Not everyone is happy about this. The number of Britons saying the UK was right to vote to leave the EU has hit its lowest level since the referendum, ahead of the fifth anniversary of Brexit on Friday Right to vote to…

The future of cash

I had a nice conversation the other day with a research group about the future of cash. Here’s a quick summary of the conversation. The conversation explores the future of cash and digital currencies, highlighting different demographic preferences and the challenges in transitioning to a cashless society. Demographic Tiers: There are three main demographic groups: tech-savvy…

Fintechs are building global platforms: what can banks do about it?

It’s funny how things go around and come around again. For years, I’ve been bemused why banks cannot merge and be successful across borders. There have been almost zero European bank mergers of any size that are cross-border and the few that exist – Santander, Unicredit, Nordea to name a few – have all found…

How the digital bank model needs to change

For a long time, I’ve had this chart that shows how banks can become digital banks by moving from the distribution of paper through buildings with humans to the distribution of data through software and servers. It’s a stable of my presentations and the argument is that the front, middle and back office needs to move…

What’s happening with payments in 2025?

Continuing the theme of payments in 2025 I really liked the view of McKinsey, who produced a really nice report to coincide with SIBOS last year. What did they say? In short “simpler interfaces, complex reality”. What does that mean? It means that “payments are becoming disconnected from accounts, and the number of players is proliferating,…

The challenge is how to deliver freedom, security, control and privacy

A really interesting conversation popped up during a meeting with a fintech yesterday. The core of the discussion was around trust and identity – my favourite themes of the moment – and we got into a debate about the fact that most people want freedom and control of their lives. They want privacy and security…

Europe’s regulation strangulation

There’s a lot of debate about the big axis of power today: America and China (ed: what about India?). Both have massive tech giants  and both have super economies. Where does this leave Europe? It’s interesting for me in that most of the discussion is that Europe and Eurocrats strangle all innovation with regulation or,…

Bitcoin breaks $100,000 – so what?

As someone involved in cryptocurrencies early in the game, you would speculate that I’m now a billionaire. Yes, I did invest in bitcoin in 2013 when it was just $60. Now, it’s hovering around the $100,000 per bitcoin mark (and ETH just broke $4,000). Congrats if you made the investment ten years ago. Nevertheless, during…

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Fintech expert Chris Skinner: countries need digital transformation to remain competitive

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Kids creating the future bank | TEDxAthens

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