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Shaping the future of finance

ValueWeb

Is the Uber of Finance the Blockchain?

I've recently been saying that the Uber of Finance is not a company, but the Blockchain.  Many people have tweeted and asked what I mean, so here's the explanation. Various stories appear about money but the first mentions appear to date back over 12,000 years ago, when ancient tribesmen in Antonia swapped Obsidian stones to store value.  What…

Blockchain, Chris Skinner

When everyone on the planet has a mobile money account, things will change

I talk about M-PESA and mobile financial inclusion a lot.  It’s high on the agenda of many governments and charities, most notably the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who claim that the world’s poorest nations will see an uplift in their wealth faster than any other nations over the next fifteen years thanks to mobile…

MPESA

Digital banks think differently

Six years ago, when #innotribe first started at #sibos, we were given the chance to pitch an idea.  My team’s idea was to integrate the trust you have built in the social network into the financial credit scoring system, and give you a trust score that could be leveraged by the bank.  We didn’t win…

Experience Design

Building the new financial marketplace

I introduced the business model debate about banks yesterday, as the discussion always comes back to the new competition.  Who are the new competition?  Are they the upstart fintech startups or are they Google, Amazon and brethren? The answer is it’s both, but I wouldn’t worry about Google, Amazon and co as much, as they…

Marketplaces

Will banks be laid low by a killer blow from new competition and regulation?

I regularly talk about the business model of banking and how it’s changing.  The business model is based upon three things: Manufacturing, which runs the product and services innovation and administration centres in the back office; Processing, which focuses upon operational excellence in processing orders from front office through back office; and Retailing, where the…

Gorillaz of Banking

The wifi payments world of the very near future

I was talking about the internet of things again today, and realised that I have a grand vision of the not too distant future where everything communicates with everything.  We have chips as tiny as nanodots inside every brick, pavement slab, tyre, wall, ceiling … you name it.  We have more intelligent chips inside car…

What do narrow banks mean for wide banks?

In this world of choice that emerges from the integration of new technology models and old financial models, we see hybrid systems emerging that bring together the best-of-the-best.  A great example was announced today, as Metro Bank and Zopa join forces.  The deal allows deposits from Metro Bank retail customers to use P2P lending as…

Funding Circle 200515

Why banks (and PayPal) don’t simplify

As the internet reinvents commerce on this planet, it’s interesting to see the two things that enter the innovation mix: simplicity combined with connectivity.  When you think about the Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Amazon and more, you realise that they have all simplified some complex things from sharing to finding.  Google’s home page has stayed…

Google

Fintech is hot, hot, hot

I was flicking through the Economist this week and was surprised to see a big quarterly special all about Fintech.  Wow, this stuff is hot, hot, hot.  That’s what the magazine makes clear: From payments to wealth management, from peer-to-peer lending to crowdfunding, a new generation of startups is taking aim at the heart of…

Intelligent Money: Our Future Is Where We Do Not Think About Money, As Our Money Thinks For Us

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