Blog Index

This week’s main blog discussions include … The end of the smartphone? I’ve predicted the death of many things. The death of the keyboard, the death of the plastic card, the death of cash and cheques, the death of the branch, the death of main street and the death of the computer itself. Now, we…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Is Hamas funded by crypto? 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…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Forget cashless as cash is the only payment system that works 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…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Generative finance, or GeFi for short We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi?…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Gaming + AI + The Metaverse = ? I was asking the other day whether it is better or worse that my children play video games rather than watch movies, and the reaction was: time moves on. It surely does. The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Can you answer these four questions? It made me laugh. Someone posed the question: what is the hiring process for fintech? After a short thought, my reply was to ask the candidate four questions: What do you think about banks? Define Python for me. Why did Schrodinger have…

The main blog discussions this week include … A new Payment Services Directive, PSD3: what’s in it? In June, the EU put forward proposals for a new Payment Services Directive, PSD3. Having been involved in these developments since their inception in the 2000s, I was intrigued to read the text of PSD3, particularly as the…

This week’s main blog discussions include … What happens to crypto when you die? It used to be simple: you died, left a will, told everyone where the money was, they shared it. Now, is it more complex? You die, leave a will, tell everyone where the money is … but the password was changed…

This week’s main blog discussions included … 50 shades of green – is your bank sustainable? I was recently wondering which banks are the most green. Names come to mind like Co-operative Bank (UK), Triodos Bank (Netherlands), Alandsbanken (Finland), MyBank (China), Amalgamated Bank (America) and more, but they are few and far between. Some are…

This week’s main blog discussions include … The best challenger bank in the world? Brazil’s FinTech giant Nubank just crushed its 2Q 2023 earnings. We have never seen growth like NU’s in any challenger bank. In fact, some would claim – including me – that this ten-year-old company is not only the strongest neobank in…