8 Christmas Myths, 7 Fintech Tales and a Partridge in a Pear Tree 3

Alright, so i am about ready to put on my Christmas jumper and start celebrating the festive season. Before i do i thought i would share some, what i found, interesting Christmas myths alongside a list of popular fintech myths. Myths are often a convenient way of looking at a particular phenomenon which over time ...

16 Global Payments Trends for 2016 by McKinsey 7

Its been an incredible 2015 and many commentators are now looking ahead to forecast what payments trends will be prominent  in 2016. Readers of this blog will know that i follow McKinsey quite a bit and back in October they wrote an article – 16 in 2016: Trailblazing trends in global payments – which i will provide ...

The Lowdown on the SEPA Cards Standardisation Volume 2

SEPA card payments isn’t something that i have really gotten into so far, simply because the initial focus was achieving SEPA compliance and then funky fintech stuff started kicking off…! But last week, the European Payments Council issued a press release detailing the publication of a SEPA Cards Standardisation Volume (version 7.1). I must admit, it ...

Payments in Europe, the SEPA IBAN Only Rule and 2016 1

There has been quite a lot of discussion recently about the SEPA IBAN Only rule, and with it some confusion too. So in this post i thought i would try and take the complexity (for corporates) out of the IBAN only rule by providing a simple question and answer guide….. 1. What is the SEPA ...

What is the SWIFT Global Payments Innovation Initiative ? 2

For anybody interested in payments and SWIFT, the SWIFT announcement last week of a Global Payments Innovation initiative was hardly a bombshell. In fact with all of the hype around fintech companies eating up incumbents, and the need for traditional financial institutions to become more innovative and attentive to customer demands you could argue that SWIFT ...

10 Things I Hate About Cashless Payments 1

Over the weekend i had a really bad cold (!!) and ended up watching a bit of TV. One of the things i watched was the film 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern day adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy The Taming of the Shrew. It’s a pretty cool film and the title somehow ...

11 Insights From Anthony Jenkins Uber Moment Speech 1

Last Tuesday Anthony Jenkins, former group chief executive of Barclays, delivered a landmark speech – Approaching the “Uber Moment” in Financial Services – offering his opinion into the future of the industry. The Uber Moment speech is an incredibly powerful wake up call for incumbents, particularly banks, because here we have a former chief banker telling ...

The Top Payments News Stories in November, 2015 1

Payments news stories in November 2015 have been dominated by disruptive technologies and companies…. A continued focus of fintech, fintech investments, blockchain related collaboration, mobile payments initiatives and companies such as Square have been shaking things up this last month. This combined with some interesting payments reports and payments related surveys have culminated in a ...

8 Payments Companies Disrupting the Payments Industry 2

All the hip folk talk about fintech, and particularly payments companies because they are mixing things up and disrupting a world that has traditionally been ruled by large banks. Analysis provided by CB Insights highlights how investment in the fintech (financial technology) sector reached over $12 billion in 2014, and how companies in this sector ...

November 2015 SEPA Rulebook Is LIVE..!

Some of you may be aware that yesterday (22nd November, 2015) saw the introduction of new SEPA Rulebook for both the SEPA Credit Transfer and for the SEPA Direct Debit scheme. The new SEPA Rulebook changes have caused some people to panic, and others to go into denial. I’m exaggerating of course! But the new SEPA ...