The main blog headlines are …
This is no Black Swan (Part Two)
I was having a bit of ding-dong over my article about the coronavirus pandemic being perfectly predictable and not a black swan. There are many who believe the reaction to the pandemic is a black swan, as in the lockdown of Planet Earth. Hmmm … …
I was sitting and thinking that I’ve been a bit negative in my recent posts. I don’t like being negative as I’m an optimist. So I determined that today I must write a cheerful story … whoops! failed. Instead, I woke up to the news …
Is the whole system about to fail?
I’m a simple guy. I don’t trade or invest much. That may seem surprising for a FinTech guy, but most of what I’ve invested in seems to lose value. As a result, I collect rare comics instead as Batman, Spiderman and Ironman are forever. That …
When is it safe to stop staying in?
Sitting at home, as usual, and thinking about life, I realised that my blogs were becoming far more personal and revealing than usual. I don’t post a lot of them, as I think they are too personal and revealing, but it made me realise that …
2020: No Vision (I thought we were an autonomous collective)
Like many, I’ve watched 2020 unfold with a mixture of shock and horror. It began with Australian bushfires followed rapidly by the coronavirus pandemic and now the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. My real shock was that there could be so many global demonstrations during a …
And the main news headlines are ….
Visa predicts ‘permanent’ shift in consumer spending habits - Financial Times
Charlotte Hogg says debit cards are being used more and cash transactions tumbling
Banks 'could share branches' in bid to rescue access to cash - The Telegraph
UK Finance boss resigns as Amanda Staveley high court case continues - Guardian
Ex-Barclays executive Stephen Jones says he apologised over alleged sexist remarks referred to in court documents The boss of the banking lobby group UK Finance has resigned just weeks before his alleged sexist remarks about the financier Amanda Staveley are due to be revealed in the high court. Stephen Jones,
Metro Bank in talks to buy peer-to-peer lender Ratesetter - Sky News
Metro Bank, the high street lender which has been beset by problems during a troubled 12-month period, is in advanced talks to buy Ratesetter, one of Britain's biggest peer-to-peer lenders.
Amazon And Goldman Sachs: A Small Business Lending Wake-Up Call For Banks - Forbes
Amazon and Goldman Sachs announced a partnership to provide lines of credit up to $1 million to merchants selling on the Amazon platform. According to CNBC:
Light on tech, heavy on banks — has Warren Buffett lost his touch? - Financial Times
Too big. Too slow. Too old-fashioned. Criticism mounts after Berkshire Hathaway’s bad run
Facebook launches WhatsApp digital payment service - BBC
WhatsApp Pay's introduction in Brazil comes ahead of expected launches in India, Indonesia and Mexico.
PagoFX — Can a bank really build its own fintech? - Sifted
The track record of banks building their own successful ventures is a patchy one. Last year say, JP Morgan Chase shut down its digital banking service Finn, only a year after rolling it out in the US. But Santander is going large with PagoFX, with plans to aggressively push it out to 20 countries within the next four years.
The past three months have proved it: the costs of lockdown are too high - Guardian
Governments now know the economic, social, health and educational costs of full Covid-19 lockdowns scar too deeply Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage The past three months have been a global experiment to test whether modern economies built on social interaction are compatible with methods for tackling
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
