Rebank: Fintech Analysis

The Omidyar Network is a high-impact, social investment fund set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Today, we're joined by Ameya Upadhyay, a Principal at Omidyar.   Ameya focuses on the firm's Fintech and Financial Inclusion efforts, investing in organizations that have the potential to create economic opportunity for individuals in Africa, Europe, Myanmar and India. His portfolio includes first m...

Scott Crowder is the CTO of IBM's Quantum Computing business. In March, IBM announced the construction of a 50-qubit quantum computer as part of its IBM Q program, an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computing systems. IBM Q enables customers to access quantum systems and services via the cloud. The technology sits alongside classical computing solutions,...

UX is a make-or-break component in mobile gaming, and many of the same learnings are being brought to fintech.   Today, we're joined by two fintech venture capitalists for an update on investment trends in our industry.   Alvaro Alvarez del Rio is Principal at Initial Capital, a mobile gaming and fintech focused venture capital fund. Prior to joining Initial Capital, Alvaro worked in investment ba...

Penta and Crunch are reinventing banking and accounting for startups and sole traders. Darren Fell is the Founder and CEO of Crunch, one of the original cloud-based accounting platforms, launched in 2009. Crunch serves thousands of sole traders and small businesses in the UK with an ever-increasing range of accounting and financial services products. Lav Odorovic is Co-Founder and CEO of Penta, a...

Brett King, acclaimed author, speaker, futurist and host of the Breaking Banks radio show joins us to discuss quantum computing and AI following the Innovate Finance Global Summit event in London on April 10th, 2017. 

Michael Kent is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Azimo , one of Europe's most successful fintechs of recent years. Michael is also co-founder and a non-executive director of Tandem , a new digital-only bank in the UK. Previously, Michael co-founded Small World Financial Services , a money transmission provider, which he grew to $4.5bn in annual transaction volumes. Michael is also...

The OECD is actively working to promote fintech to its member countries.   Today, we're joined by Gert Wehinger, a Senior Economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In nearly 20 years at the OECD, Gert has worked on subjects including financial market structure and stability, economic policy and regulation, and engagement of the private financial sector.   Gert...

Usama Fayyad is the CEO of Open Insights, a US-based data strategy and technology company. Usama also serves as CTO of Stella. AI a Mountain View, CA based, VC-Funded startup, and as Interim Chief Operations & Technology Officer for new, innovation-focused division of MTN, Africa's largest telecommunications provider. From 2013-2016, Usama was Chief Data Officer at Barclays. He remains active in U...

David Brear is one of the most prominent thinkers and doers in our industry. David is focused on addressing one of the biggest challenges in banking: driving technological innovation at large, incumbent organizations. David is CEO and co-founder of 11:FS, a FinTech consultancy that helps banks become truly digital. He's also cohost of FinTech Insider, a blockbuster podcast about FinTech and financ...

Two Queens of Fintech, Duena Blomstrom and Liz Lumley, join us today for an insightful conversation about bank-fintech collaboration, plus an exclusive announcement from Duena. Duena headed sales for Meniga, a successful Icelandic fintech startup, from 2010-2015. Duena has been investing in and advising fintech startups since then, especially on commercial and go-to-market strategies. Liz ran Star...

Eugene Danilkis is co-founder and CEO of Mambu , a banking technology provider based in Berlin. Eugene is literally a rocket scientist: He led a software engineering team developing NASA-certified software for the International Space Station prior to founding Mambu. Mambu is a cloud-based technology platform that enables banks and fintechs to rapidly address new market opportunities and reduce the...

Simon Cant and Danny Gilligan, founding partners of Reinventure, an Australia-based, fintech venture capital fund, join us today for a discussion on fintech investing.    Simon and Danny are entrepreneurs, and they bring that experience and mindset to venture investing.    We cover a number of interesting topics today, including how Reinventure thinks about fintech investing, how best to engage an...

Nektarios Liolios is  CEO & Co-founder of Startupbootcamp FinTech and  Startupbootcamp InsurTech, the leading innovation programs in the financial and insurance industries.   The programs provide funding, mentorship and office space in the heart of London, Singapore & New York, along with access to a global network of investors and VCs, for up to 10 selected FinTech startups per class.   Nektarios...

Shazam founder Dhiraj Mukherjee joins the show today. Dhiraj is currently Head of Innovation at Virgin Money, a prominent UK bank and part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.   After graduating from Dartmouth College and then Stanford GSB, Dhiraj co-founded Shazam, one of the best known apps of all time. Launched in 2002, the platform is alive and well today.   Dhiraj is a seasoned digital innovati...

Sophie Guibaud is Head of European Expansion for Fidor Bank, one of Europe's original and best known digital-only banks.   Originally launched in Germany in 2009, Fidor expanded into the UK in 2015.   Prior to joining Fidor, Sophie led product strategy and commercialization at Bankable, a white-label banking platform provider. Before that, she was the Chief Marketing Officer at HelloFresh, a Rocke...

Dave Birch (@dgwbirch) is Director of Innovation at Consult Hyperion, a secure electronic transactions consultancy.   Dave is an internationally-recognized thought leader in digital identity and digital money. He has been named one of the global top 15 best sources of business information by Wired Magazine, one of the top ten most influential voices in banking by the Financial Brand, one of the to...

Syrian refugees are facing one of the most difficult challenges humans can experience.   Balazs Nemethi, founder of Taqanu, wants to support them in their plight.   Taqanu seeks to provide banking to anyone, regardless of background and available documents. One of their first target user groups is refugees displaced by unrest in Syria, but the potential for a solution like Taqanu extends across re...

Pascal Bouvier (@pascalbouvier) is a full-time venture capital investor, fintech practitioner and prolific blogger.   Before becoming a full-time venture capitalist, Pascal founded and ran startups, worked for commercial and investment banks, and has been at one time or another a CFO, COO, CIO… the list goes on.   Pascal is currently Venture Partner with Santander InnoVentures. Prior to joining In...

Financial inclusion is a global issue. In fact, it's probably more global than most of us think. Even in developed markets like the UK, US and Western Europe, there are huge numbers of unbanked people. Pockit, a UK-based neobank, is addressing that problem in the UK. Launched in 2014 and currently serving 123,000 customers, Pockit is making a profound impact on the lives of a huge number of financ...

This is Part 2 of a two-part review of our first 18 episodes. Before you rip out your headphones in disgust, let me explain.   I'm not a fan of the classic "year in review", I mean, we were all there, right? If we were paying attention the first time around, why do we need to get sentimental? Similarly, previews of the year to come, while sometimes fun, are often pure speculation and rarely add va...

Episode 19 is a special one. We're celebrating the year-end with a long-overdue dive into some of the key concepts that have found their way across multiple episodes to date. We've interviewed some of the most noteworthy founders, investors, thinkers and doers in fintech & banking innovation over the past few months. Their insight and analysis will see us well into 2017 and beyond, so we're hunker...

Andra Sonea is a banking systems specialist. Until recently Lead Solutions Architect within the Innovation & Digital Development Directorate at Lloyds Banking Group in London, Andra is currently pursuing a prestigious Anthemis Fellowship to build on her work in banking systems architecture.   Andra has been involved in fintech for many years and is a keen supporter of collaboration between financi...

We've got a great episode today with Tom Blomfield (@t_blom), co-founder and CEO of Monzo (@monzo), a new, digital-only challenger bank in the UK.   Monzo is seeking to fundamentally change the way banking is done and challenge a lot of assumptions about the way people want to interact with their money.   Tom is a serial entrepreneur, he founded an e-commerce platform for students called boso.com...

Brett King (@brettking) is a bestselling author and was voted Innovator of the Year for 2012 by American Banker. Since 2010 Brett has released 5 Global Bestselling books, including Bank 2.0, Branch Today – Gone Tomorrow, Bank 3.0, Breaking Banks and his latest Augmented. His books have topped bestseller charts for banking in 18 countries and have been translated into 9 languages. A global thought...

David Robson leads IBM's Watson business in the European financial services sector. Perhaps the world's most recognizable AI system (after HAL 9000), IBM's Watson is live across multiple industries and is using artificial intelligence to solve hard, real world problems. For the uninitiated: Watson is a cognitive computer that can read, understand, reason and engage with humans in support of a broa...