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Everyone who knows me well, knows that I grew up with David Bowie as my real-life Hero. I saw him concert regularly, until he stopped touring in the 2000s, and loved the fact that not only did he produce unique music, but nearly every time it was performance and music. He was first to really…

I’ve been sitting and thinking. Not a bad thing, but a dangerous thing. I’ve been sitting and thinking about AI, Artificial Intelligence. How will AI change banking and finance? Specifically, how could we use AI to change banking and finance? When I think about this, I think about how banking has changed since the last…

I hate stepping into controversy, and I know that this column is going to be really unpopular, but the latest reporting of terrorist funding using cryptocurrencies is seriously biased. This specifically relates to Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon respectively. The latest violence taking place between Israel and Palestine is awful. No one can…

During the summer, there’s been a lot of news about cash. A new €500 banknote is coming whilst, on the converse, a lot of people have been discussing life using cash. Is cash still relevant? Do we need new banknotes? Well … here’s the lowdown. I am guessing that most of the cash discussions were…

Some years ago, I remember a Chinese lender, Jiedaibao by JDCapital, asking applicants to send them a nude photo to get the loan. The photo would be kept private unless the loan defaulted. If payments were missed, the photo would be shared online to all your friends and contacts. That’s a good way to ensure…

This is quite a complicated update, but it came to mind when I saw that JPMorgan analysts are predicting stablecoins could destabilise the traditional financial markets. This is because the Federal Reserve decided in April that money funds created for the sole purpose of accessing its overnight reverse repo facility, which is called ON RRP,…

When I was a lad – a good start for any commentary – we didn’t know nothing about money. I got pocket money from my dad but, if I begged hard enough and long enough, my dad would relent and buy me that Batman Corgi car I had been lusting after. At school, they taught…

I saw an interesting comment the other day that got lots of shares, likes and clicks: fintech founders MUST have some experience in banking or financial services background first before they are funded. Many fintech neophytes destroy so much value not out of deliberate actions but just pure ignorance. Funnily enough the person making this…

Every day I am finding security on my banking transactions more and more annoying. The reason? I have to confirm via a secondary approval the transaction; I then have to confirm the secondary approval with the vendor with a further secondary approval with the financial provider; I then have to process a further approval through…

KPMG’s recent Global Analysis of FinTech Funding Report shows a mixed landscape for fintech funding in H1 of 2023. The Americas, Asia Pacific (ASPAC), and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) saw different rsults when it came to investments in venture capital and private equity funding. The key takeaways from the report for H1’23 included…