Barclays is acquiring the UK arm of GoHenry, a money app for 6 to 18-year olds. With a reported price tag of £180 million for around 500,000 active accounts, £360 per head is a chunky investment.

For the past decade, the banking industry has been focused on developing frictionless interfaces. Financial institutions have prioritised seamless transactions, instant gratification, and engaging gamified features in a bid to build the ultimate digital financial experience.

The need for better, tailored support through the customer experience is clear, but few are accounting for the fundamental shift that financial services has experienced with the introduction of AI.

Loyalty is defined as “a strong feeling of support or allegiance”. However, in the context of financial services, it is more accurately defined as engineered persistence: a series of subconscious cues that steer customers toward familiar choices.

For years, banks have relied on OTPs as a second factor for logins and sensitive actions. Sent via SMS, these short codes were designed to add security on top of a password. But they have become one of the weakest and most frustrating parts of the banking experience.

The people using business banking tools don’t necessarily have financial backgrounds. Many smaller businesses can't afford a dedicated finance team. Yet banks keep building products that assume expertise their customers don't have, leaving them to figure things out on their own.

As our financial lives become more complex, there is a growing expectation for banks to offer more support, be more relevant, and generate greater everyday value. One of the clearest places this shift is starting to show up is in subscription banking.

Around the world, people have instant, around-the-clock access to banking apps and their own financial data. So why do so many people still feel uncertain about their financial future?

Most AI deployments so far have focused on AI that “talks”, which can search, summarise, and draft content to support employees. The next wave is different: AI agents that “do” are starting to take bounded actions inside workflows, moving cases forward and coordinating steps end-to-end, with humans kept in control where it matters.
Financial accessibility has long been framed as a matter of compliance or corporate social responsibility. But today, it’s emerging as something much bigger: a competitive advantage.

As the industry adjusts to a new digital landscape, players across the spectrum are fighting to muscle their way into the financial epicentre and ‘win’ the salary battle to become the payday home of their customers.

Consumers are evolving, and so are their expectations and demands. As the purchasing power of the younger, digital-native Gen Z and Gen Alpha grows and older generations become more comfortable with the possibilities that AI and other new technologies enable, businesses have to work harder to keep them happy and retain their business.

Saving money and paying bills might not sound exciting - but today’s finance apps are borrowing tricks from video games to change that.

Kate Moody and Nicole Perry are joined by some great guests, from DealStreetAsia and Fintech Business Weekly, to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Sequoia makes first investment in Pakistan, LendUp enters liquidation, and trade in your pandemic impulse buys!

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from Plaid, Payments Solved, and The Payments Association EU, to look at how PSD3 might influence Open Banking going forward.

David M. Brear and Nicole Perry are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: European investing app Shares snaps up $40m financing round, Plaid launches Variable Recurring Payments, and we dip into the Fintech Insider mailbag!

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: a special bonus interview with author and presenter Jamie Bartlett, where we chat about all things Missing Cryptoqueen, and his new book: “The Missing Cryptoqueen: The Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency Con and the Woman Who Got Away with It”. All this and much much more! All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Nigel Walsh and John Bean are joined by a panel of guests from Anthemis, Flock and Instanda to talk through the biggest news of the month. Hear about: No-code insurtech scale-up Instanda raises £37m, insurance start-ups face credibility crisis, and GEICO may have to pay a woman who got an STD in an insured car. All this and much, much more on today's Insurtech Insider!

Kate Moody and Amy Gavin are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Starling pulls Irish bank application, Stori becomes Mexico’s latest fintech unicorn, and ‘Eat The Rich’ popsicles are selling fast!

Kate Moody is joined by some great guests, from Chetwood Financial, Innovate Finance, and Minna Technologies, to ask how will inflation impact financial services going forward.

David M. Brear is joined by investigative reporter and author, Dan McCrum, to dive into his new book about uncovering the truth about payments company Wirecard.

Benjamin Ensor and Deepa Anikhindi are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Agricultural bank Oxbury raises £20m in a funding round, Payl8r calls for open banking to be legally required for credit assessing, and the world's first fintech sitcom!

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from Bunq, Maxwell and Molo Finance, to help put together the perfect mortgage offering taking aspects from across the world.

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: an episode focused on ownership. Ownership is web3’s ability to prove that digital assets are owned by users. But how exactly does it work? How is it different from the world of web2? And what changes can we expect to see in the world now that assets are on-chain? All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

David M. Brear and Kate Moody are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Kroo lands full banking licence, Credit Suisse bank found guilty over money laundering charges, and we answer questions from the Fintech Insider mailbag!

Gwera Kiwana is joined by some great guests, from Spiralem, Observer Research Foundation and Jipay, to discuss the merits and challenges of financial inclusion.

Nigel Walsh and John Bean are joined by a panel of guests from Innovate Finance and FinPro to talk through culture in insurance. All this and much, much more on today's Insurtech Insider!

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from 11:FS, Queer Money Podcast, Emerald Life, and Euphoria, to discuss the issues faced by the LGBTQ community when it comes to financial services.

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...

