Fintech

I’ve been wondering for a while how so many companies can be starting up something in the same space, and how are they surviving?  The reason for mentioning it is that we keep hearing these numbers around how many billions are being invested in FinTech, bitcoin, blockchain and such like, and yet I cannot see…

For those who weren’t looking, you might have missed the release of the Framework for FinTechh white paper released by the White House last Friday.  It’s the output of the work performed by the National Economic Council’s Adrienne Harris and her team, who I’ve been delighted to support. The paper represents the policy objectives for…

I’m just starting a project on real-time, immediate, faster payments or whatever you call it.  It’s basically making a payment that is either settled within seconds or the data is moved and settlement takes place at a later time, but it look immediate. There’s lots of reports out there about immediate payments, with my favourite…

I write so much that I sometimes forget what I’ve written, where.  For example, Mark Sievert of Silicon Valley Bank made an interesting comment on my predictions for 2017: Happy New Year Chris! One topic I am not hearing much about is the OCC December decision to offer Federal Charters to Fintech firms. http://bit.ly/OCCFintech. Many…

I seem to find most of the truly exciting stories these days are happening in unexpected places.  Tanzania, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Brazil … and specifically India. I wrote a fair bit about the demonetisation program in India at the beginning of December, saying that it’s a laudable objective but a flawed one, as 95% of the…

I was looking through Google Analytics to see which of my blog entries had been most read in 2016.  Here’s the list and, as you will see, it’s mostly people reading about blockchain news, although how to change the bank, fintech and innovation all get high rankings too. The top ten trends in banking innovation…

Earlier this year, I summarised some of the best research papers that had been released on FinTech and Blockchain in three parts: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  Thanks to Oliver Bussmann’s blog, I can now provide you with a list of the best research released on Fintech this year.  Enjoy! 2016-12 Digital Asset Holding Non Technical…

I’ve been talking a lot about open sourcing financial services this year and, more recently, tracking Open Banking.   The Open Banking Working Group was launched just over a year by HM Treasury to create an Open Banking Standard.  The standard is meant to guide how open banking data should be created, shared and used by its owners and those…

I’m relaxing and thinking.  A bad combination.  Just had several sessions with different conferences on Brexit, Open API’s, PSD2, Open Sourcing, Open Banking, Innovation and more … and it all seems like such drivel.  One of the sessions was asking the question: is it time to drop the curtain on innovation theatre?  Yes, for gawds…

I’ve noticed a great deal of schadenfreude related to the R3 bump.  Lots of people saying that blockchain is past its sell-by date, R3 are bust and distributed ledgers are dead.  I think it’s related to the journalists who, having delighted in bigging up blockchain big time for the past two years are now relishing…