Ep. 172. News: Fintech Insider – The Pub Crawl

David, Jason and Simon were joined by Chris Skinner and Monty Munford for this week’s news show from a pub in Bermondsey, complete with pints and pie – the full British pub experience.

We’re now past “deadline day” so naturally our first batch of stories concerned Open Banking and what the banking landscape looks like so far in the wake of PSD2 becoming law on 13th January. The guys chat about the impact the media has had on people’s perception of open banking and potentially on customer adoption of it. They also touch on how Nationwide is the latest big bank to ask for an extension to meet the PSD2 deadline, and is meeting the deadline necessarily in correlation with being “good”?
Staying on the theme of open banking they also talk through Monzo’s interim API that they released in conjunction with the PSD2 deadline, and reflect on our interview with Tom Blomfield where he contested that Monzo are potentially better placed that the GAFA companies to take on Alibaba and build the financial control centre for the West.

Speaking of Alibaba, the guys muse through their latest developments and the willingness of the Chinese government to support the Eastern tech giants in a way that regulators and governments are yet to do in the West. This leads to a lot of philosophising from all sides on the perpetual East vs West conundrum and who is currently winning?

Moving on to arguably the biggest story of the week, the guys discuss the so-called “Crypto blood bath”, as all cryptocurrency prices tumbled and no one really knows why the price tumbled for as far as it did for as long as did, or why it happened now. Following on from Business Insider’s thoughts on why the prices have fallen so quickly, the team give their predictions, stay tuned to see who is right!

Please note, we do not produce Fintech Insider, we merely are fans and repost it!