Fintech News Issue #53 February 3rd, 2016

One of the exciting disruptions in the FinTech space is the new opportunities to enter investing. Investing has always seemed murky to people outside the banking space. And those that could most use the expert advice never had enough money to afford the advice. But technology is lowering the barrier to investing and to attaining the expert advice that clarifies it.

Chris Skinner talks about how investment markets have aggressively adopted technology, but retail and commercial banking is catching up. It’s all about the bankchain!

Peter Drucker once famously stated “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” With this in mind, yet nonetheless undaunted, Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group decided to go for a proverbial drive down the payment’s forecasting road.

Peer-to-Peer Lending (P2P) is becoming an even more attractive investment option with the introduction of the new Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA).

William Laraque explains why he finds a lot of "role/goal confusion" with fintech and the blockchain, and why Davos was irrelevant.

We are nearing the end of this macro cycle. The next bear market is inevitable even if not imminent; we cannot know the timing but we know it is coming (it may have started already). What entrepreneurs and investors want to know is how will this affect both Fintech startups and incumbent Financial Services firms?

I often claim that we are going through a revolution in commerce and, every time we go through a revolution in commerce, we go through a revolution in finance.

He looked just like Captain James T Kirk, and I felt like I was programming the USS Enterprise to fly. He was my computer science lecturer – just like my school-boy hero – except he wore a white lab coat. One of my first projects when learning to code back in 1979 was to write a retail bank statement application.

Rather than viewing fintech start-ups and digital disruptors as threats, traditional banks and credit unions can view digital trends as a roadmap for success.

Powerful forces are reshaping the banking industry. Customer expectations, technological capabilities, regulatory requirements, demographics and economics are creating an imperative to change. Banks and credit unions need to get ahead of these challenges and retool if they are to find success in the upcoming decade.

According to a recent report by Citi, cash is slowly but steadily on its way out. At the same time, questions are being raised on why we should not accelerate the transition as much as possible. Converting payments to digital helps with transparency, and reduces both social and other labor costs on the overall system.

In just the first week of trading in 2016, the S&P 500 lost 6 percentage points and more than one trillion dollars in market capitalization. With the worst start in more than a century, the markets seem to be predicting a slow period for the U.S. economy. One segment that I think has the potential to survive, if not thrive, in the expected volatility this year is financial technology.

Explaining the appeal of bitcoin to the average American isn’t easy. Here in the US, it’s not terribly hard to save, spend, and send money.