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Shaping the future of finance

What’s hot in AI?

I blogged the other day about what’s hot and what’s not in fintech, but what about what’s hot and what’s not in AI? Equally, as I also blogged, AI is not one thing. It’s a million use cases which are all different. So, what are hot use cases for AI? Well, luckily, Allie Garfinle on Forbes, has surveyed…

Stripe strikes

There’s been a lot of activity around Stripe this week, who are now valued at $70 billion (slightly down from 2021 but up from 2023). Stripe’s valuation has edged up to $70 billion as Sequoia Capital offers to buy shares from its investors looking to cash out of the fintech that helps merchants process customer payments. Source: Marcel…

We are in a Strategic Inflection Point … have you got that?

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that artificial intelligence (AI) is the big news of the last year, but have you been watching Nvidia, the chip maker that drives AI? It’s now bigger than Intel and about to exceed Microsoft and Apple in market valuation. Here’s an analyst’s view from Barrons: Nvidia Has More Than Doubled…

Every country in the world is being transformed by fintech

I travel the world a lot and am amazed about the wave of changes technology has introduced into banking. In almost every country I visit, fintech has grown from an ember to a burner, and almost every country is being transformed. From Taiwan to Timbuktu, everything is changing. Therefore, just to give one more example…

The Finanser’s Week: 8th July – 14th July 2024

This week’s main blog discussions include … The CIO managing a $17 billion budget and $10 trillion of transactions PER DAY I just spotted a great article about JPMorgan’s CIO who manages a $17 billion budget (last time I looked, it was $11 billion). That sort of budget makes most fintechs look like small fry….

Debanked? The regulator forced us to do it (sorry)

I met the bank I debanked the other day. They apologised to me, as they knew I was talking about them during my presentation, and explained: “we cannot serve our customers because of the regulators”. This made me wonder, as the reason why I debanked them is their interrogations of my dealings in cryptocurrencies. It made…

People buying bitcoins are psychos

I was quite amazed to see an item across my desk last week with the headline: Investors in cryptocurrency are more likely to be psychopaths Seriously? The headline is based on a report of a survey, published in the journal Plos One, who canvassed over 2,000 Americans of whom 30 per cent said they owned…

I bet you’re not dismissing challenger banks now

I remember ten years ago when fintech was emerging from under the hood and challenger banks become a new phrase. Most of the bankers I spoke to back then said they would never be really challenging. Ten years later, the situation is rather different. Revolut has over 40 million customers and is profitable; Monzo has…

Evolve Bank & Trust + Synapse = a perfect storm

I got an email the other day about a data breach at Evolve Bank. Who? I don’t deal with Evolve Bank. What’s going on? The email came from Wise and reads as follows: There’s been a data breach at Evolve Bank & Trust. Evolve Bank & Trust is a regulated bank that we worked with…

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