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I find times interesting, as so many fintechs had an amazing ride in the 2010s but, in the 2020s, it seems not. Fintech took a hammering in 2023 with investing down 48% compared to 2022, which was also a bad year … … and now we move into 2025 and reflect on 2024 where it…

I made this headline immediately challenging for anyone not in my space, as it incorporates all the TLAs (three letter arconyms) to confuse and abuse you. A fascinating release from Europe’s Central Bank announced that they aim to move soon to distributed ledger technology (DLT) settlements for payments last week. What did the announcement say?…

Every day there appears to be another update about how AI will change our world. The latest one in my inbox is a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), who warn that AI is likely to have a “seismic impact” on the economy and society, particularly in roles reliant on computer-based tasks. That’s almost all of…

There’s been a bunch of headlines in the last week of online banking failures whilst, at the same time, another group of headlines of bank branch closures because customers should use digital banking. Barclays hit by major IT outage on tax deadline day – BBC News Moment customers surge around Barclays’ cash machines for ‘free…

Five years ago, on 31 January 2020, the UK left the European Union. Not everyone is happy about this. The number of Britons saying the UK was right to vote to leave the EU has hit its lowest level since the referendum, ahead of the fifth anniversary of Brexit on Friday Right to vote to…

I had a nice conversation the other day with a research group about the future of cash. Here’s a quick summary of the conversation. The conversation explores the future of cash and digital currencies, highlighting different demographic preferences and the challenges in transitioning to a cashless society. Demographic Tiers: There are three main demographic groups: tech-savvy…

It’s funny how things go around and come around again. For years, I’ve been bemused why banks cannot merge and be successful across borders. There have been almost zero European bank mergers of any size that are cross-border and the few that exist – Santander, Unicredit, Nordea to name a few – have all found…

For a long time, I’ve had this chart that shows how banks can become digital banks by moving from the distribution of paper through buildings with humans to the distribution of data through software and servers. It’s a stable of my presentations and the argument is that the front, middle and back office needs to move…

Continuing the theme of payments in 2025 I really liked the view of McKinsey, who produced a really nice report to coincide with SIBOS last year. What did they say? In short “simpler interfaces, complex reality”. What does that mean? It means that “payments are becoming disconnected from accounts, and the number of players is proliferating,…

A really interesting conversation popped up during a meeting with a fintech yesterday. The core of the discussion was around trust and identity – my favourite themes of the moment – and we got into a debate about the fact that most people want freedom and control of their lives. They want privacy and security…