We had a great discussion at the Financial Services Club Central & Eastern Europe (FSClub CEE) this week. Now in its fourth year of operation, the Club meets regularly at the residence of the British Ambassador in Vienna, Austria (see postnote if you want a laugh). The theme of the meeting was: “the future of…
In case you didn’t see it, Wired magazine ran an article about Jack Dorsey and Square this month. Throughout the article, they compare Jack Dorsey to Steve Jobs and Square with Apple. In a long opening – the first page is just about pouring tea! – they finally get to the crunch so here’s my shorter,…
After discussing Metro Bank yesterday, the other presentation that caught my attention at innotribe Belfast was from Fidor Bank. The two presentations are like going from one extreme to another however – Metro with their branch based focus compared with Fidor with their GLoSoMo (Global-Local, Social Mobile) approach. I interviewed Fidor Bank CEO Matthias Kröner…
I had an interesting dialogue over lunch yesterday. One of my colleagues had just got his iZettle dongle. iZettle is a Square for Europe, offering Chip & Signature payments on smartphones (Square reads the mag stripe). It was originally going to be Chip & PIN, but the PIN terminal detail is too costly to rollout…
Just been reading this month’s Bloomberg Markets, with the lead story: “Woman Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated By Citigroup Wins $31 Million”. The story proves to be an intriguing in-depth analysis (4,000 words) and is not an indictment of Citigroup per se, but of the corporate mentality of any global business today. You may disagree with…
Just spent a few days in Moscow. It’s my third visit here, and each time I find the country intriguing, enlightening, engaging and frustrating. By way of example, the society is still very rules-based but everyone ignores the rules because no-one enforces them properly. The traffic is jammed all day on the freeways, and cars…
I was recently asked to make a comment on the UK Building Societies sector. Like American credit unions, most building societies exist in the interests of their members as mutual organisations. They balance customer interests with their portfolio of business, and try to manage all on an even keel. Unlike most other financial institutions, the…
There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility. If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass fast. That’s true of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The more intuitive, accessible, easy…
The shock news this week is that JPMorgan, that mighty institution of financial stability that has steered through this crisis with ease and made Jamie Dimon, its CEO, the sage of finance … has been rocked by a trading scandal on the scale of a Nick Leeson, Jerome Kerviel and Kweku Adoboli. This time the…
