I’ve been presenting a summary of Digital Bank and ValueWeb for a few months now. It is the story of the origins of moneykind and, as many have now heard the story, I thought it’s about time to share this on the blog. If you have half an hour free, then you can watch the presentation. It’s been filmed…
I was just sent a press pre-release copy of The Pulse of Fintech, the quarterly global report on Fintech VC trends published jointly by KPMG International and CB Insights. The findings are quite interesting this quarter and show that, after a significant pullback in funding in Q4 2015, mega funding rounds have lifted quarterly investment…
I’m often asked whether banks should be afraid of the threat of Fintech. My answer is that most Fintech is enhancing what banks do, rather than threatening their core business. I sum this up as wrappers, replacers and reformers, and that the only Fintech firms we should really fear are those that replace core bank…
There is a lot of talk about blockchain. A lot. Loads. But when you get past all the talk, what is actually happening with blockchain? Answer: not enough. I say this because there are some stand out firms out there – like R3, Digital Asset Holdings, Ripple – who have gained traction with the banks,…
One of the gating factors to financial inclusion is the mobile network itself. It sounds simple to say that all of Africa can have access to mobile money, and they can, but if each telco has different wallet structures, charges and fees, then the ease of usage falls sharply. This is why interoperability is a…
Last week I chaired the inaugural Dot Finance Live conference in Nairobi, Kenya. It is Africa’s premier FinTech event, drawing people from all over the countries of sub-Sahara Africa. What struck me as I listened to lots of keynotes about mobile innovation and mobile financial inclusion, is that Africa is actually leading the world in…
I got an interesting research report this week about consumer attitudes towards banks in Europe: More than a third of European consumers would move bank if they didn’t offer up-to-date technology to aid interaction Nearly a third are already embracing mobile payments, while a fifth are already using wearables and crypto-currency to pay Almost a…
So there are some clear lessons we can learn as base foundation principles when reimagining banking for the 21st century: Everything is peer-to-peer networked It’s all in real-time globally Commerce is not just person-to-person but more machine-to-machine We are looking at the exchange of value between machines and individuals, not just money Transactions are the…
As we start to reimagine the bank, it is obvious that focus on the platform design and user experience is key, as demonstrated by YouTube. A second key factor is recognising that the world has changed thanks to the mobile network. We probably go yea, yea, yea when we talk about mobile, as we’ve all…
I need a little time to think about my reimagined financial structure, but some of the basics are already in play such as the idea of thinking about value exchange rather than monetary exchange. Value exchange is based upon the ability to reach the world with a thought. I do that every day via social…
