
There’s a reason counties often refer to their tech hubs as “the Silicon Valley of [insert country name here].” The Bay Area is the proud birthplace of some of the world’s biggest technological triumphs, home to global powerhouses like Apple and Visa. Every year the Valley also attracts a host of fintech start-ups - such as Credit Karma, Chime and Varo Bank, to name a few. But it’s not just California driving the future of financial services. We’ve done our research to see which companies across the 50 states are leading the fintech charge. (Did you miss our first blog? See who’s doing awesome things on the other side of the pond with our list of the hottest European fintechs.)

Back at the end of 2019, we dived into the perfect fintech storm that was brewing in the Middle East. Diversification had already started in the region, but financial inclusion was reluctant to follow. So where are we now? It’s 2020, and things have been hotting up in the region with opportunities continuing to surface. But what does the region hold for fintech and why is the Middle East where the real gold lies?

It's a truism that the hardest job in engineering is that of 'Tech Lead'. You're the person who's not only writing code, but simultaneously leading a small group of other engineers and spending large amounts of time talking to stakeholders and the Product Manager (or, ten years ago, *Project* Manager). This is taken from our Unfiltered newsletter. Subscribe now for a no BS, uncensored analysis of fintech news and hot topics delivered to your inbox each fortnight.

London’s been at the centre of the fintech bubble for over a decade now, and the rest of Europe isn’t far behind. One of the few silver linings of the coronavirus pandemic could be that it might act as a catalyst for a tonne of investment into fintech, as more and more people recognise the need to go digital. Despite the trend for falling investments in 2020, the UK fintech sector is still looking flush thanks to investments of over $1.84 billion. To give you a heads up on the next big companies on the scene, we’ve rounded up the hottest startups on our watch list 🔥

As we roll into 2018 thoughts inevitably turn to the big themes that we might expect (and hope) to see for user experience in the financial services industry this year.

There’s been a huge leak of files from FinCEN, the US-based Financial Crime Enforcement Network. Over 2000 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and hundreds of other documents appear to show how banks have been unable to prevent trillions in money laundering, tax avoidance and criminality over the past decade. But there's a more in-depth story to uncover here.

At the beginning of 2022, many early-stage investors looked ahead with optimism as we emerged from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and global economies started to show signs of growth again.

In the first part of this series I introduced the story of Frederic Tudor, the American Ice-Block King; and discussed lessons learned from his then new product offering as it relates to blockchain technology. Tudor was able to successfully corner the ice-block shipping market and eventually was shipping blocks of ice to as far away as Calcutta from his home in Boston.

Guest author Richard Davies gives his thoughts on the importance of scaling agile to all functions of an organisation, and some key factors on how to get there.

There’s been no shortage of attention paid to the emergence of fintech in the Middle East recently. In fact, we wrote about the ‘perfect storm’ that was brewing in the region and recently gave an overview of the digital challengers emerging to meet these needs.

We’ve sifted through the data to find out what 11:FS Pulse users have been loving and where their focus has been for the last 12 months.

Money 20/20 USA has kicked off and the 11:FS team are here on the ground!

Day 2 has come to an end here at Money 20/20 and, despite last night’s industry party, it was jam packed with action.

I’ve poked fun at banks and fintechs, but now it’s time to take on the consultancies. Sometimes it can feel like you’re spending your money on bad advice and worse decisions. Sometimes you are.

There’s a sweltering heat wave hitting the city and I’ve never been so thankful for the office air conditioning. We’ve just entered July, everyone’s moving onto their Q3 targets and writing reports on Q2. So what happened in Q2 for the fintech world? And where are we about to go for Q3? I take a look at the 11 biggest stories that happened in fintech over the last three months.

Simon Taylor and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Crowdcube and Seedrs' merge, the FCA’s new sandbox dedicated to overcoming coronavirus challenges, and Venmo launches a credit card, as Credit Karma launches a checking account.

Sarah Kocianski and Ross Gallagher are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Open Banking doubles its user base in 2020, Amazon's new payment method in the palm of your hand, and can Ping An rescue HSBC?

Simon Taylor and Ross Gallagher are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: The FinCEN file leak, Tink continues path to European domination, and NationWide claps back again racism.

Sam Maule is joined by some fantastic guests from across Latin America to talk about development, growth and impact of fintechs in the region.

Jason Bates and David Brear are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Alibaba invest 3 BILLION in Grab, Klarna reaches an $11Bn valuation, and Microsoft dig up a data centre they buried underwater off the coast of Scotland 2 years ago.

David Brear is joined by some fantastic experts from IBM to discuss the opportunities that public cloud offer for business transformation in financial services.

Sam Maule and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: RTGS Global rolls out stage 1 of liquidity visibility network in collab with Microsoft, banks work with fintechs to counter ‘deepfake’ fraud, and Paypal terminates accounts linked to a Russian influence operation.

Sarah Kocianski and Nigel Walsh are joined by some amazing guests to talk through digital transformation in the insurance industry.

David Brear and Mel Stringer are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: More raises as Chip launches Series A, Paypal is coming for Klarna and AfterPay, and Goldman Sachs launches its own font: Goldman Sans.

Simon Taylor is joined by some great guests to talk about the growth and impact of banking as a service on financial services in the US. This week we're joined by Railsbank, Marqueta and Synapse.

Sarah Kocianski and Jason Bates are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Railsbank in talks to buy Wirecard UK, JPMorgan to [possibly] launch a UK digital challenger bank by 2021 and the UK's 800% surge of open banking payments during lockdown. All this and much more on today's show.

Sam Maule and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days in US financial services and beyond including: Facebook rolls out its Facebook Financial Initiative; AmEx in talks to buy Kabbage and Robinhood blows past rivals in day trades, and much much more!

Simon Taylor is joined by some great guests from two of the biggest banking as a service providers from both sides of the Atlantic, GPS and Galileo, to lift the lid on this industry niche that's blowing up right now

Ross Gallagher and Simon Taylor are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Varo Money get their full national charter; Google teams up with 8 US banks to offer digital bank accounts by 2021 and Wirecard processed payments for the mafia.

Simon Taylor is joined by some great guests to talk about the growth and impact of digital banking in the APAC region, with a special focus on Australia.

David M. Brear, our 11:FS CEO, takes us through legacy technology within banks - but of course, with a really cool Lightboard.
Welcome to episode 5 of our new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service!

11:FS CEO David M. Brear takes to the lightboard to give us the full run-down, with examples of companies that are leading the way.
Welcome to episode 4 of our new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service!
Welcome to episode 3 of our new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service!
Welcome to episode 2 of our new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service!

Welcome to episode 1 of our new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service!

When people discuss 'banking being broken', they often refer to the technology itself. However, that isn't necessarily the case.

Minimum Lovable Brand | 11:FS Explores

In this video, our Head of Research, Sarah Kocianski, unpacks exactly how banks make money - with the handy edition of a super cool lightboard!

Fintech is only 1% finished. But what do we mean by that? Simon Taylor, Head of Ventures at 11:FS takes us through the landscape of financial technology in this Lightboard edition of 11:FS Explores.

In this episode of 11:FS Explores, Adam Davis picks apart Open Finance, and what we have to look forward to if this technology became a reality.
Inclusive design is a mindset and a process that suggests that you should bring as many people as possible - and the most diverse of voices that you can - into your product design product process, so that you're being truly inclusive. It's designing with people rather that just at them. Charlotte Fereday, Product Director, Ventures, explains what inclusive design is, why it's important, how you can design more inclusively, and answers - how possible is truly inclusive design?

The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...


The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...

