Welcome to The Finanser by Chris Skinner. The Finanser discusses all things fintech, finance, banking, technology and, most importantly, the future. To make an enquiry about having Chris write or speak for you, here’s an illustration of his presentations … … Chris Skinner has regularly forecast the changes in finance driven by technology. He is…
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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,…
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I got a whole load of payments predictions for 2025 … just a shame that it was no one paying me! Seriously though, a lot of people shared a McKinsey report that focuses upon this area, released around Sibos 2024, that opens with: “The tantalizing vision for global payments has long been that they’d be safe,…
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I wanted to make this a short blog update on tech changes in 2025, but it’s incredibly long and, unsurprisingly, nearly all about AI. If 2023 was the year of ChatGPT and 2024 AI, this is the year of Agentic AI. What’s the difference? Well AI has so far been pretty much a pull technology. You…
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I was tempted to include this in the economics section, but the focus is different. The focus here is on your company, its staff and work. Economics is focused upon countries, markets and investments. The two are different. Nevertheless, it is hard not to cover the same things, as almost all business predictions seem to…
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I got a whole load of payments predictions for 2025 … just a shame that it was no one paying me! Seriously though, a lot of people shared a McKinsey report that focuses upon this area, released around Sibos 2024, that opens with: “The tantalizing vision for global payments has long been that they’d be safe,…
Read More
It’s interesting to see AI appearing more and more in financial conversations. A few examples just this week: AI’s Role in Banking: A Game Changer or Just Another Fad? How Artificial Intelligence is changing banking How AI is helping banks support sustainability transformation. The ability to quickly process large amounts of data makes AI models…
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This was an interesting headline in The Wall Street Journal which made me open my eyes: Why the Coolest Job in Tech Might Actually Be in a Bank For tech and AI talent, jobs at financial services companies are more desirable than they have ever been. Banks have been working hard to make it happen….
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I talked a bit about Amazon and Apple teaming up to develop AI strategies to compete and beat Alphabet/Google and Microsoft the other day. It got me thinking: why are we talking the American Big Tech giants when there are several Big Tech Asian giants namely Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and NVIDIA themselves. What are their AI…
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I’ve talked about how the financial system can either aid or abet the challenge of climate change – so much so that I even wrote a book about it called Digital for Good. This means that there is a future where someone has to work to protect our environment who I call the Environmental Defender….
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Back in 2012 I argued that there would soon be mobile wallet wars. In 2014, I speculated that there would be mobile wallet wars but that it was early days. In 2020, I still noted that mobile wallets were pretty awful. Today, it is clear that the mobile wallet is the core of the customer relationship and competitive…
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I wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent reason. You cannot get it reopened and often find it difficult to…
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I’ve been surprised recently by non-stop news updates about how well Revolut is doing. From getting its UK banking license, which was suspect for a while, to achieving the milestone of 50 million customers, 2024 has been a pretty phenomenal year for the company. Then they announce next years plans which include AI-driven finance, super…
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Last week, a report was released by the UK’s Parliamentary committee saying that the UK regulatory body for financial conduct – the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) – is “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst” and that it has a “toxic culture”. This is based upon an investigation of the FCA which took almost three years…
Read MoreI got a whole load of payments predictions for 2025 … just a shame that it was no one paying me! Seriously though, a lot of people shared a McKinsey report that focuses upon this area, released around Sibos 2024, that opens with: “The tantalizing vision for global payments has long been that they’d be safe,…
Read MoreIt’s interesting to see AI appearing more and more in financial conversations. A few examples just this week: AI’s Role in Banking: A Game Changer or Just Another Fad? How Artificial Intelligence is changing banking How AI is helping banks support sustainability transformation. The ability to quickly process large amounts of data makes AI models…
Read MoreThis was an interesting headline in The Wall Street Journal which made me open my eyes: Why the Coolest Job in Tech Might Actually Be in a Bank For tech and AI talent, jobs at financial services companies are more desirable than they have ever been. Banks have been working hard to make it happen….
Read MoreBack in 2012 I argued that there would soon be mobile wallet wars. In 2014, I speculated that there would be mobile wallet wars but that it was early days. In 2020, I still noted that mobile wallets were pretty awful. Today, it is clear that the mobile wallet is the core of the customer relationship and competitive…
Read MoreLast week, a report was released by the UK’s Parliamentary committee saying that the UK regulatory body for financial conduct – the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) – is “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst” and that it has a “toxic culture”. This is based upon an investigation of the FCA which took almost three years…
Read More
I got another good question in my banking session the other day: AI disruption will be transformational to banks revenue generation and cost optimisation. How do you see the people and organisational model of banks developing as they harness its benefits? This is a tough one, but the answer is clearly that everything that can…
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I was recently asked: Where are the boundaries of digitalisation (are there any)? We all would have different answers to this one, but there are boundaries to digitalisation. The main boundary is where technology is replacing the human, rather than augmenting humanity. I blogged about that last year: AI should augment the human and automate…
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I know that my blog is meant to focus upon business, finance and technology, but every now and again you start asking existential questions like: What is time? Why do we have borders? What is money? Do we live in the matrix? So, I thought I would address these questions. What is time? Time is…
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Fifteen years ago, I did a major survey into the use of cloud computing in financial services. Bear in mind this was really early days, and the results were quite nebulous. The main headline was that cloud computing needs better definition to succeed: The research report, which encompasses the views of over 230 financial professionals…
Read MoreI got a whole load of payments predictions for 2025 … just a shame that it was no one paying me! Seriously though, a lot of people shared a McKinsey report that focuses upon this area, released around Sibos 2024, that opens with: “The tantalizing vision for global payments has long been that they’d be safe,…
Read More
One of my friends just sent me an interesting article all about trust, fraud and cryptocurrency so, as a Christmas present, I wanted to share it with you. Here goes … With the digital revolution, crypto has become a global financial phenomenon. Blockchain technology has changed how we make transactions, interact with clients, and use…
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I asked the question: What’s a cash machine for if no-one uses cash? in the 1990s. As the guy heading up the strategy for cash machines for a major cash machine company beginning with N and ending in R, it was a good question to ask. Thing is that no-one took the question very seriously…
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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…
Read MoreI wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent reason. You cannot get it reopened and often find it difficult to…
Read More
It seems like most of the news this week has been about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Between Donald Trump, a crypto convert, and Elon Musk, a crypto enthusiast, everyone is now getting in on the game. By way of example, here’s a few headlines in the past week: There’s another big winner of the US election:…
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It’s fascinating how things change. Donald Trump is President-Elect and bitcoin’s price soars to over $80,000. Quite predictable as he will be the crypto-President, as mentioned in July, but maybe a forecast of a bitcoin price of $100,000+ by year-end is not so outrageous after all. Then, what intrigued me, is two stories. The first…
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Unsurprisingly, after a major election that will influence the Western world, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a flood of PR releases and contacts to tell me how this will influence the economy, Europe and the world. Some even got more specific, talking about how it will change fintech and cryptocurrencies. Let’s take a…
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It intrigues me how quickly our world of money is changing from crypto to fintech to BaaS to infinity and beyond. The question that constantly sits in the back of my mind is how to regulate all this stuff to maintain trust? From Synapse to FTX to Beenz to Boo, how can the regulator keep…
Read MoreI got a whole load of payments predictions for 2025 … just a shame that it was no one paying me! Seriously though, a lot of people shared a McKinsey report that focuses upon this area, released around Sibos 2024, that opens with: “The tantalizing vision for global payments has long been that they’d be safe,…
Read MoreI wanted to make this a short blog update on tech changes in 2025, but it’s incredibly long and, unsurprisingly, nearly all about AI. If 2023 was the year of ChatGPT and 2024 AI, this is the year of Agentic AI. What’s the difference? Well AI has so far been pretty much a pull technology. You…
Read MoreI was tempted to include this in the economics section, but the focus is different. The focus here is on your company, its staff and work. Economics is focused upon countries, markets and investments. The two are different. Nevertheless, it is hard not to cover the same things, as almost all business predictions seem to…
Read MoreWelcome to 2025! As usual, at the start of the year, there are a whole raft of predictions as to what will happen. I used to write my own personal predictions and review them at the end of the year but now, with so many predicting so many things, I’ll leave to the panel of…
Read MoreI asked the question: What’s a cash machine for if no-one uses cash? in the 1990s. As the guy heading up the strategy for cash machines for a major cash machine company beginning with N and ending in R, it was a good question to ask. Thing is that no-one took the question very seriously…
Read More
I found a very nice montage of the future jobs world on my newsfeed the other day, so here is the final summary of the other work we will be doing. I don’t agree with all of the thoughts below, e.g. working anywhere in the world is already here, but it makes for an interesting…
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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…
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It is easy to believe in these futuristic scenarios that we won’t need human advisors. In the words of Vivian Ward, the escort in Pretty Woman: Vivian: You work on commission, right? Saleswoman: Ah, yes. Vivian: Big mistake. Big. If you believe that the future will no longer involve financial advisors, you are making a…
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With drones, self-driving vehicles and supersonic flights rising day after day, we are very likely to see a massively congested sky by 2050. Some would say the Jetsons has arrived and, if you look at what is happening today, they are not far wrong. Most of our flying and automated vehicle structure will run autonomously…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Why US Banks are Leaving the Net Zero Banking Alliance ‘X Money’ Leak Reveals Elon Musk’s Game-Changing Plan As Bitcoin Nears $100,000 Price Trump’s Wall Street accident waiting to happen Making of the most connected bank in Bangladesh PSD3’s Global Reach Brings US Firms New Challenges Fintech Sector in…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include: ‘Trump bump’ adds almost $2 trillion to crypto market EU crypto regulation MiCA comes fully into force FinTech Ad Spending Climbs 45% in Last 3 Years Shawbrook aims to kickstart London IPO market with £2bn float The banking system’s net zero reckoning Investment banks prepare for 2025 crunch More records…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The Top Ten Blog Posts for 2024 2024 has been a bumper year for this blog. According to Google Analytics, the blog has 175,000 active users, an increase of 30% over 2023, with near 300,000 views and a million interactions and so, as usual, I share the most…
Read More2024 has been a bumper year for this blog. According to Google Analytics, the blog has 175,000 active users, an increase of 30% over 2023, with near 300,000 views and a million interactions and so, as usual, I share the most read blog entries at the end of the year. Here are the Top 10…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Berlin mulls extravagant measures to stall takeover attempt on top bank – POLITICO A running list of BaaS banks hit with consent orders in 2024 | Banking Dive US regulator orders USAA Federal Savings Bank to correct unsafe practices | Reuters The fintech sentiment: Are banks ready for DORA?…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Why VPNs Have Become Essential to Fintech Cybersecurity 40% of UK High Net Worth Individuals Currently Hold Cryptocurrency Assets Lloyds advert banned for making false environmental claims | The Guardian UK Stock Market’s IPO Ranking Now Trails Oman and Malaysia – Bloomberg Bank worker stole £5m from safe deposit…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Bitcoin rallies past $107,000, hopes grow for strategic reserve | Reuters Donald Trump and the “crypto capital of the planet” | Lowy Institute Nubank Announces Investment in Tyme Group, a Digital Bank With Operations in South Africa and the Philippines Why Norges Bank leads the world in transparency FIS…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Bitcoin jumps to new record high of more than $106,000 – BBC News The fintech company that collapsed and took $90m of people’s life savings with it | The Independent Tech-savvy Saudis push consumer fintech to new heights | Arab News Lloyds Bank seven-day warning over ‘locked’ accounts HSBC…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The Top Ten Blog Posts for 2024 2024 has been a bumper year for this blog. According to Google Analytics, the blog has 175,000 active users, an increase of 30% over 2023, with near 300,000 views and a million interactions and so, as usual, I share the most…
Read More2024 has been a bumper year for this blog. According to Google Analytics, the blog has 175,000 active users, an increase of 30% over 2023, with near 300,000 views and a million interactions and so, as usual, I share the most read blog entries at the end of the year. Here are the Top 10…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … 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…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Is it debanking or derisking? I wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … When everything is digitised, what do humans do? I was recently asked: Where are the boundaries of digitalisation (are there any)? We all would have different answers to this one, but there are boundaries to digitalisation. The main boundary is where technology is replacing the human, rather than…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions included … Tally-ho! No, it’s not exciting fox hounds – it’s all to do with accounting I thought I had just found a new podcast called Money by David Walliams, the famous British comedian and children’s author. Then I found out it is by David McWilliams, the less famous Irish economist…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Will the new America be based upon a digital dollar that is stable? It’s fascinating how things change. Donald Trump is President-Elect and bitcoin’s price soars to over $80,000. Quite predictable as he will be the crypto-President, as mentioned in July, but maybe a forecast of a bitcoin…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions include: What does Trump’s victory mean for banks, tech, fintech and the future? Unsurprisingly, after a major election that will influence the Western world, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a flood of PR releases and contacts to tell me how this will influence the economy, Europe and the world….
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions include … Banks make millions from the most vulnerable As mentioned, I’m dealing with my mother’s financial affairs as she reaches end of life, and I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. The process is that there first needs to be a Power of Attorney in place. Luckily, she saw that coming and…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The Lloyds Bank Turd If you’re having breakfast or eating right now, please do not read this blog entry. I really didn’t want to write this blog, but it’s too irresistible to ignore. In fact, I cannot believe I haven’t seen this before as, the other day, guess…
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