Fintech

I often say that blockchain is one of the most complex areas, combining all we don’t know about technology with all we don’t understand about finance. It’s a big hole of acronyms, confusion and debate. Some things that claim to be blockchain don’t use blockchains, and some blockchains claim not to be blockchains but blockchain…

I often talk about the business model of a bank (or any business) being made up of three major parts: A back office that manufactures the product and administers the service; A middle office where the infrastructure is built to connect the back and front office; and A front office where the relationship exists between…

The term The Internet of Things (IoT) was first used twenty years ago. Twenty years later, IoT is emerging rapidly. We have our cars and homes networked but, more than this, we have gadgets like Google Home, Siri and Alexa. Amazon has taken this even further with services like Key for Garage, a smart door…

I saw a write-up in The Financial Times the other day on how Silicon Valley is eating the banker’s lunch. The article was written by Tom Braithwaite. Tom Braithwaite is the companies editor, managing the FT’s business coverage. Based in London, he was previously a Lex columnist in San Francisco. Prior roles include US banking…

There are lies, darned lies and statistics. I often quote numbers in my presentations and get pretty annoyed if they’re wrong. I also prefer to take official sources rather than estimates. So I quote that last year China processed USD$40 trillion (277 trillion yuan) of mobile payments, as reported by the People’s Bank of China ……

Who wants transparency when you can have magic? Do you watch The Crown? If not, maybe you should as Series 3 is about to begin with Olivia Coleman, a great actress. The first two series weren’t bad either, with Netflix spending $130 million on the season (around $10 million per episode some estimates) making it…

I received a long and lengthy article last week from Taylor Ryan, CMO at Valuer.ai (tryan@valuer.ai). The link provides a comprehensive article on European FinTech developments. It’s so good that I am happy to share it with y’all. Enjoy.   THE BEST FINTECH STARTUPS IN EUROPE Government support for the financial sector and financial technology (fintech)…

There’s a regular itch that I feel in the back of my neck. I scratch it, but it won’t go away. The itch is an alarm call really, and it’s asking whether all this FinTech investment is worth it. Last year, $111.8 billion was invested in over 12,000 start-up FinTech firms worldwide, according to KPMG….

The big news yesterday is that Klarna is now Europe’s largest FinTech unicorn, valued at $5.5 billion, and the sixth largest FinTech unicorn worldwide (discounting Ant Financial, Ping An and co). According to CB Insights, Stripe is the largest FinTech unicorn (USA, $22.5 billion), followed by One97 Communications (PayTM India, $10 billion); Nubank (Brazil, $10…

Over a decade ago, I curated a book about MiFID – the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. I don’t blog about this much these days, as my audience is firmly in the retail and payments technology space, but I still keep close track of the investment markets, clearing and settlement, custodial banks and central counterparty…