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I was talking with a friend about growing up. Back in my day, as the old farts say, I had cash and a bank account. I had one bank account and that was it. During the years, I moved around a bit, switched accounts between banks, but cash, cheques and card was it. Then a…

I’ve recently had a couple of interesting visits to the Middle East and Africa, namely Riyadh and Cairo. Both are keen to highlight progress in fintech, which is interesting as they are two cities that have been on my radar but a little behind others like Dubai and Lagos. So, I was interested in what…

“AI, powered by quantum computing, is going to put financial crime potentially on steroids.” It’s not my quote. It’s actually a comment made by David Duffy, CEO of Virgin Money (now Nationwide) after visiting Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle. From my side, this is an area that’s been worrying me for a while, ever since the…

I’ve recently been seeing more and more about eugenics. Eugenics is a supposed scientific way to develop the perfect human, immune to disease and designed to live long and prosper (as Spock would say). A more formal definition comes from The National Human Genome Research Institute: Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial…

Talking about trust, the other side of the coin is what is the bank doing to protect privacy? Increasingly, due to regulatory concerns, banks are becoming government spies. They are watching our every move and reporting it. This recently cropped up on my personal radar when the bank became my interrogator and grilled me about…

Building upon my blog about Revolut the other day, and their need for a banking license, I’ve been accused many times of coming back to a theme that you can only be a bank if you’re a bank with a license. Why do I keep coming back to this theme? It’s all about trust and…

It’s all about the difference between an emoney provider and a bank … I’ve been having an ongoing debate with a Revolut fan about the fact that they have an emoney licence, as an EMI (Electronic Money Institution), and that they are not a bank in Britain. It’s part of the ongoing debate about their…

You may not have spotted it this week, but there has been a number of major strategic changes and moves by fintech leader Stripe. I’ve followed Stripe since their founding in 2010, and use them as a poster child of change in finance and technology, as demonstrated by their fast cycle growth from a company…

The bank that wants to verify my identity but cannot accept the information … OMG, what’s going on? Under new UK government rules, there’s been a crackdown on money laundering and customer identity in the banking system. The response of the banks has been archaic to say the least. By way of example I blogged…

One of my readers picked me up on my articles about the use of customer data, AI and open banking last week, saying that I had missed a critical point. What had I missed? Well, the discussions were mainly about the use of customer data for marketing, advice, safety, security, risk and compliance … but…