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I just spotted a new innovation in India from Paytm, who I consider friends of mine after interviewing their founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma for Digital Human a few years ago. What’s the innovation? Talking payments. The Paytm soundbox – which works both online and offline with QR codes – allows merchants and customers to hear their transactions…

In a long feature, Bloomberg describes how Donald Trump has become a crypto fan. Trump Bitcoin 2024: How NFTs Made Him a Crypto Cheerleader – Bloomberg My reading: it’s based on his vanity. The cryptoworld created a whole range of NFT trading cards of Trump a few years ago and, because it made a lot…

I recently read a book to my kids. It was Dr Seuss’ I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew which, if you don’t know the book, involves an arduous journey to Solla Sollew, “where they never have troubles! At least, very few”. Solla Sollew is believed to be a place of hope and wonder,…

There’s been a meme going around for a while now that America is great at invention and innovation; Asia is great at industrialising and maximising America’s inventions; and Europe is fantastic at blocking all of it through regulations. The Eurocrat regime rules. What’s the reality? Well, it certainly is true that America led the way with…

With great power, comes great responsibility. It’s a quote from Spiderman, but actually not. It’s from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben. Well, it’s not tbh. It’s from Voltaire … or is it? Wherever it is from, it’s a great phrase. So, here’s a new one. With great power, comes great threat, and that one is from me….

I blogged the other day about what’s hot and what’s not in fintech, but what about what’s hot and what’s not in AI? Equally, as I also blogged, AI is not one thing. It’s a million use cases which are all different. So, what are hot use cases for AI? Well, luckily, Allie Garfinle on Forbes, has surveyed…

I travel the world a lot and am amazed about the wave of changes technology has introduced into banking. In almost every country I visit, fintech has grown from an ember to a burner, and almost every country is being transformed. From Taiwan to Timbuktu, everything is changing. Therefore, just to give one more example…

I was quite amazed to see an item across my desk last week with the headline: Investors in cryptocurrency are more likely to be psychopaths Seriously? The headline is based on a report of a survey, published in the journal Plos One, who canvassed over 2,000 Americans of whom 30 per cent said they owned…

I remember ten years ago when fintech was emerging from under the hood and challenger banks become a new phrase. Most of the bankers I spoke to back then said they would never be really challenging. Ten years later, the situation is rather different. Revolut has over 40 million customers and is profitable; Monzo has…

I find it funny that we talk so much about onboarding, KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and yet the whole of that system is broken. Every day in every way, everyone is getting around the system. You may think that account opening is hard. You have to send identification documentation; you have…