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I’ve been innundated with reports about stablecoins lately, and they all say the same thing … but in very different ways. So let me try and cut through the noise. Stablecoins are for wholesale commercial banking and trading today. They are not for the likes of you and me. But that will change. Let’s narrow…

Just got some interesting research from RedCompass Labs that states 44% of banks aren’t on track to meet ISO 20022’s structured address migration deadline in November 2026. It’s an important deadline as it marks a hard stop to the old SWIFT messaging standards. You could see this as ‘glass half full’, and calculate that it means more…

We love to throw phrases around to try to ground the next generation of banking. I was lucky enough to coin the phrase “digital bank” and “banking-as-a-service” years ago, and have now moved on to “intelligent bank” (coming out soon). For those who read my blog regularly, you will know that I see this as…

Short summary: Tokenization is not new, but dates back 10,000 years when early societies used clay tokens to record ownership of goods. These were not money, but data tools to track value. Modern digital tokens and blockchain systems are simply the latest evolution, but can now do more than just record transactions. We can now…

It’s quite strange when you think about money as a lot of money has disappeared or been recreated over the years. 250 years ago, there was no US dollar as such; the Chinese currency called the renminbi (RMB) was introduced on December 1, 1948, by the newly founded People’s Bank of China; and the euro…

I was recently watching Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank if you’re American), and spotted an interesting chap – Jinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive, a way of getting your mortgage paid down sooner through your spending. It’s an intriguing idea, so I reached out to him for a chat. Here’s what happened. Chris Skinner: Tell me a…

I was talking with a friend the other day who asked me to explain some basic questions around cryptocurrencies, as he was confused. It started with why everyone is talking about layers of blockchain? I explained that there are four layers, starting with level 0 and then 1, 2 and 3, and it is all…

A couple of things hit my radar late last week. The first was a prediction by Bain & Co that challenger banks would own a third of the UK banking market by 2030. This coincided with the news of Revolut finally getting their UK banking licence. It’s only taken five years. Let’s dive in. The…

The next era of payments: when money moves at internet speed I just found an interesting report by KPMG about a new payment standard called x402. Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, it’s built to ensure open, free, frictionless payments, and could be revolutionary for embedded, invisible finance. Built by Coinbase, the x402 protocol…

Innovation vs Illicit Finance: Why the Future of Crypto Compliance is Intelligent The US Treasury just produced an interesting document about digital assets, innovation and criminal activity. It’s well worht a read, so download the report here … but, if you can’t be bothered, here is my view. There is a familiar pattern whenever a new…