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BACKCHAT/DIARY Backchat B
ackchat is finding it more and more entertaining at fintech conferences to watch the interactions between the new financial wizards and the older guard of vested privilege and money. As the talk turns, as often it does, to the valuable partnerships being forged between the big banks and the new upstart fintechs, some very basic realisations begin to hit home. It is now dawning on the banks that the length of many fi ntech partnerships will be horribly foreshortened by the fact that many of them just aren’t in it for the long haul – the sooner they can cash in, earn out and hit a beach they will be leaving the banks holding a whole new bunch of infant businesses.
Monzo has been around for a while, and has surpassed any other challenger bank in terms of growth rate and customers, despite not managing to break even just yet. However, in its rise to become a banking eminence, the small fish seems to have run into a complication: the current account. Monzo’s current account was its long-term plan to make money – slightly different from its plans to increase customer onboarding. Now the bank is dragging the burden of having an attractive “try-out” offer: the pre-paid card.
Pre-paid cards were convenient to get. They added an extra layer to your own financial management, that being the money that you decided to put into the card itself. Our junior reporter, who hangs out with many millennials like himself, noticed that in his circle, very few have made the change from pre-paid to a current account.
With the oncoming shutdown of its costly debit top-up feature chipping away at the bank’s capital, there’s a notable number of customers that are in no hurry to make Monzo their primary account. It may prove a make-or-break moment in Monzo’s development.
In recent months, we’ve seen governments and regulators of the world distance themselves from cryptocurrency. “We told you it’s risky, we told you it’s problematic,” they said during turbulent price fluctuations. Like a man with body odour in a boardroom meeting, cryptocurrency has few corporate friends.
Yet, not many regulators have been quite as clandestine as the Central Bank of Poland, which was discovered using YouTube celebrities to smear the cryptocurrency industry. Titled “I Lost All My Money?!”, the video features a man investing all his money in cryptocurrency and being shown up at a restaurant due to his inability to pay with Bitcoin. The video gained more than 500,000 views, and was not marked as promotional. According to Polish news site
money.pl, the campaign was organised by YouTube partner network Gamellon. The Central Bank of Poland spent around $27,000 on it. Considering that under Polish law, it’s illegal to publish content without disclosing that it has been sponsored, the Central Bank might just be in some hot water.
IN THE NEXT ISSUE
The IBS Journal Sales League Table 2018, plus a look at 2018 banking technology trends
Diary MARCH
12th – 14th: MoneyLive Cards & Payments, Amsterdam
https://new.marketforce.eu.com/money-live/event/ summit
13th – 15th: Money 20/20 Asia, Singapore
https://asia.money2020.com
19th – 20th: Innovate Finance Global Summit, London
https://ifgs.innovatefi
nance.com
21st – 22nd: Self-Service Banking Asia, Jakarta
www.rbrlondon.com/events/ssba
27th – 28th: MoneyLive Digital Banking APAC, Hong Kong
https://new.marketforce.eu.com/money-live/event/ digital-banking-apac
APRIL
3rd: Retail Paytech Forum, London
https://emergingpayments.org/events/retail- paytech-forum
12th - 13th: Global Banking Innovation Forum Expo, Prague
www.uni-global.eu/portfolio-page/10th-global- banking-innovation-forum
15th – 16th: Seamless Payments Middle East, Dubai
www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/seamless-middle- east/
index.stm
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2018 banking tech/FinTech events
For a comprehensive listing of industry events, visit our website:
www.ibsintelligence.com
IBS Intelligence is a prominent media partner of many FinTech industry events worldwide. If you are interested in a media partnership with us and marketing opportunities, please contact
Abhijit Chakravarty, Marketing Manager Email:
abhijitc@ibsintelligence.com
www.ibsintelligence.com | © IBS Intelligence 2018
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