Global

Chase ’s digital-only bank, Finn, launched nationwide in the U.S. a few weeks ago, to piqued interest from fintechs and banks alike. It’s by no means the country’s first digital only bank—Ally and Simple have been around for years—but it has won the race to be the first nationwide digital brand from the United States’ banking giants. (Citi has plans to launch a “national digital bank” soon, while Wells Fargo’s Greenhouse is due to come out of beta in the near future.)

When the world’s most famous VC firms move you should pay attention. a16z is the firm most synonymous with Silicon Valley, big tech and venture capital. Now they’re coming to crypto with a $300m Fund. If crypto is dead, then maybe now crypto is much much more interesting than it was 6 months ago. After the winter comes the spring…

You can catch the full Fintech Insider discussion on the news today at 4pm on the podcast here (go subscribe now). This week we had a great show: Simon Taylor and Sarah Kocianski sit down with our guests Editor in Chief of Computer Weekly, Bryan Glick, Business Development at Bud, Nina Mohanty, and 11:FS Pulse Analyst, James Safford to discuss all things fintech.For our deep dive this week, we’re taking a closer look at what happened in Zimbabwe after EcoCash suffered a two-day crash; effectively stopping all payments for the nation.

For those of you in a rush, there’s a TL;DR at the bottom of the page. For everyone else 11:FS Co-Founder Simon Taylor, has written a great deep dive for you into the regulatory sandbox: why it’s necessary, what it is, what it’s achieved so far, and most importantly a close look at the fourth cohort.

In this weeks’ Fintech Insider we have an interview with author, CEO, blogger, and fintech insight extraordinaire, Chris Skinner! We grabbed Chris and took him to the pub for a drink and a quick conversation on his new book Digital Human. Listen to the interviews in full on Fintech Insider here, stream it below or read on for a few key insights.

In my entire career to-date, I never heard a vendor describe themselves as simply a vendor. We do a thing, you pay for the thing, we shake hands and go our separate ways.

As we emerged from lockdown(s) and started meeting in person, banks, fintechs and FS companies of all shapes and sizes had been busy doubling down on their digital efforts.

We knew we had to pull out all the stops for the first IRL After Dark since records began. Well, March 2020.

As Policy Director of the Financial Conduct Authority, David Geale is responsible for policy across financial services, from consumer credit through to senior exec accountability in banks, and many things in between. He spoke to FinTech Insider about the FCA’s focus on innovation.

It’s week 3 of our One Fintech Nation series in association with Tech Nation. Here’s a quick review of our latest incredible podcast episode looking at how Fintech is a force for good. As you’ve seen in recent posts on fintech inclusion it’s an issue close to our hearts here at 11:FS. You can/should/need/have to listen to it now.

Traditionally, tech teams place their QA function outside of core development. They form entire herds of QA people that come at the end of a feature being developed and do what they can. Most of the time they’re not even based on the same floor, or they’re outsourced entirely. But why is this?

This is the fourth instalment of a 6 part series that explores the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) for US SMBs that we identified in our recent research. Each blog post explores one of the jobs and how we examined it with a JTBD canvas. If you missed the first post that explains JTBD and the canvas, check it out before reading this.

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.

China has long been on the radar of those with ambitions of marrying technological innovation with a payments-savvy population of big spenders. Traditionally, though, China’s economy had been centrally-planned, driven by investment and built around large state-owned enterprises (SOE). Banks had focused mainly on providing services for these SOEs, under-serving SME and retail consumers. So, naturally, with Alibaba and Tencent so successfully serving other areas – e-commerce and social media respectively – it should come as no surprise that they’ve found themselves filling this vacuum.

You can catch the full Fintech Insider take on the news today at 4pm on the podcast here. Sticking to our Monday news blog format, we’re going to take a close look at one of the most interesting stories of the week’s show. For analysis straight from industry experts subscribe to our podcast! Fintech Insider host and 11:FS co-founder Simon Taylor sits down with Freddy Kelly, Veronique Barbosa, Tanya Andreasyan, and Philip Clarke to discuss the news, including Amazon teaming up with American Express for SMBs.