News & Views: April 2019
The driving force behind Navigate is to give you, our readers, valuable insights into the dynamic markets we operate in. We trust that Navigate does that but we are also aware that we don’t have a monopoly on good insight. As such, Visa provides Navigate users with regular updates on the interesting things we are reading, watching and listening to.
Our intention is to share content you might have missed from a range of different sources, from highly respected titles to gems from less obvious sources Visa experts around Europe value.
Open Banking
Compelo: Payments specialist Klarna launches Open Banking Platform
Competition in the Open Banking sector is heating up with new disruptive entrants. Fintech Klarna, an alternative payments provider, is the latest entry to the scene with the launch of its own Open Banking Platform. Swedish for ‘clear’, Klarna promises its new platform will promote competition and innovation across the European payments industry. We’ve previously featured the company on Visa Navigate – check out our article from January on how Klarna and Zalando both “think like a customer.”
Financial Times Alphaville: Bank runs in the digital era
The Financial Times’s Alphaville column cuts through the hype to scrutinise the little discussed risk of crippling ‘bank runs’- when huge amounts of customers withdraw money at the same time. Could the traditional physical bank runs of old really play out in a digital era? Journalist Thomas Hale argues yes - the risk is very real given the untested yet increasing integration of social media with the financial system.
Bob's Guide: Consumer education crucial to Open Banking
Do consumers need better education around Open Banking? Nordea and Volt Bank executives certainly think so. As Robert Dunn, Head of Operations at Volt Bank comments, “even the name plays into the pessimism around trust and security, customers want to know how ‘open’ their data really is.” According to the piece, a staggering 78% of consumers in the UK haven’t even heard of Open Banking.
Banking Tech: Open banking: progressing to the summit
The SCA directive in September will transform the banking landscape for both banks and consumers. As Infosys’ Rahul S.Wadhavkar here points out, banks and traditional lenders should embrace the changes coming their way – although both banks and disruptors are still working to establish themselves and are ‘trekking through the foothills of open banking’.
Payments Power Players
Forbes: He Founded A Fintech Worth $43 Billion: Worldpay Entrepreneur Nick Ogden
Nick Ogden, widely regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of global fintech, sits down with Forbes to share business insights and entrepreneurial tips from his fascinating journey to the top. Nick launched Worldpay in 1997 after noticing that consumers wanted multi-currency options when buying online – today Worldpay is a global giant and processes over 40 billion transactions annually.
It Took Three Tries, But This Entrepreneur Transformed His Struggling Startup Into A $2 Billion Unicorn
This Forbes feature introduces readers to another inspirational entrepreneur, Jason Gardner, founder and CEO of payments processor Marqeta. Jason experienced a challenging journey to success in Silicon Valley. Despite initial investor scepticism and a number of setbacks, his company now commands strong revenues and a $32 billion market value.
Payments Source: The Most Influential Women in Payments 2019
Now in its ninth year, Payments Source pays homage to the most influential women in the payments sector, celebrating their contributions to banks, start-ups, retailers, payment providers and more from around the world. The industry’s leading lights include Visa’s own Ellen Richey, chief enterprise risk officer, who has been awarded a lifetime achievement award, and who plans to retire after a 40-year career in law and risk management. Other honorees include Billingtree’s Christine Lee, Walmart’s Karla Allen and Interac’s Kikelomo Lawal.
The Telegraph's Tech Hot 100: Here’s how we ranked the UK’s most successful tech founders
Measuring both personal wealth and company growth, The Telegraph’s Tech Hot 100 is the definitive list of the UK’s leading technology entrepreneurs. Some of the biggest hitters from the payments world are included in the top ten – Revolut’s Nikolay Storonsky, Transferwise’s Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus, and Monzo’s Tom Blomfield and Paul Rippon.
5G
PYMNTS: Virtual Reality: 5G Retailers’ Secret Sauce?
5G hasn’t landed just yet, but it is fast approaching and the effects on our day-to-day lives will be seismic, not least on retail payments. According to PYMNTS, the impact on the retail sector will centre on virtual reality and augmented reality, with South Korea and China leading the way.
Essential Retail: Shop 'til 5G drops
Essential Retail continues the theme of retail and 5G, with Deloitte’s Digital Transformation lead for consumer and industrial products here dissecting the changes ahead. Richer customisation, drone delivery, virtual reality dressing rooms, and augmented reality experiences at home or in-store are all on the list.
Finextra: Barclays champions 5G, predicts £15.7 billion boost to UK economy per year by 2025
Finextra drew our attention this month to a recent Barclays report, ‘5G: A Transformative Technology’, which has found that 5G could increase UK business revenues by an incredible £15.7 billion by 2025. Worryingly, the report finds that industry leaders aren’t fully up to speed with 5G – only 15% are actively thinking about how to use it.
Wired: How 5G will fuel future business
Wired features an in-depth analysis, penned by BT, on how 5G’s ultra-high-speed data will create unprecedented opportunities for business. The piece drills down to the basics of 5G, describing the meaning of convergence, examples of 5G in real life, and what’s next.
BBC Tech Tent: Let the 5G battle commence (podcast)
This BBC Tech Tent podcast hosted by technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones assesses claims made by the United States and South Korea on the 5G ‘race’, why it matters and why country leaders are getting so excited about something consumers can’t yet access.
Fintech
Tech Crunch: Swedish fintech Zaver has raised $1.2M seed for its P2P payments platform
Zaver, the Sweden based peer-to-peer trading platform, has recently acquired more than $1.2 million in seed funding. In an interview with Tech Crunch, the founders explain their direct competitors lie in the growing start-up centric credit card industry – not the traditional banking giants you might expect.
Finextra: South Korea, a FinTech Hub-To-Be?
Finextra’s blog explores whether South Korea is the next unlikely Fintech hotspot following regulatory changes designed to energise the country’s fintech sector. These include new rules on bank investments and a regulatory ‘sandbox’ for start-ups.
Bloomberg: Dimon Says JPMorgan Is Inspired – and Worried – by China’s Fintech Progress
Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase & Co’s CEO recently said in a letter to shareholders: It’s hard not to be both impressed and a little worried about the progress China has made” with artificial intelligence and fintech, and that “It made our management team even more motivated to move quickly”. Bloomberg writes that JPMorgan will be using their learnings from China to invest in machine learning and cloud computing to meet the challenge.
And one from the Archives...
Every time we produce a ‘News & Views’ we will also point you towards a piece of content that isn’t brand new, but that we have found extremely interesting and that supplements the content from Navigate.
Raconteur: Meet the future of money: the superapp
Digital convergence – and the concept of all monetary transactions being completed by one ‘super app’ on your smartphone - is under the spotlight in this piece for Raconteur by Pat Patel. Following his 2018 travels across the financial hubs of Asia, Pat discovered the Asian region is ‘fully bought into the superapp of money’ and questions when Europe will catch up with integrated payments.
For further insights, read more of our News & Views content here.
All brand names, logos and/or trademarks are the property of their respective owners, are used for identification purposes only, and do not necessarily imply product endorsement or affiliation with Visa.
Share Feedback