Learn about the latest FS trends and news, from industry experts.

When a customer reaches checkout today, they may get a choice to pay now, split the cost, or move it into credit. That is a very different starting point from the old model of applying for credit in advance.

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.

The UK is currently facing a rare opportunity in the world of payments. After years of debate about the future of the country’s payments ecosystem, government and regulators are now moving from discussion to delivery, with work underway to implement the National Payments Vision for world-leading payments delivered on next-generation technology.


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? 

“It’s clear they’re not slowing down in transforming the financial landscape.” Those were the words of Jacqueline Dewey, CEO of Smart Money People, speaking about 11:FS after we claimed our fifth...

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.

11:FS' own Ollie Sebley rounds up another edition of Finovate Europe, what he took away from the talks, and what they say about the outlook for financial services through 2026 and beyond.

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

While consumer-focused fintech has seen waves of innovation since the early 2000s, the small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector has remained comparatively underserved.

Unlocking agentic AI’s upside demands rethinking how humans and systems share control, rebuilding data and API foundations, and scaling autonomy in measured steps with rigorous human-style QA