Pulse: Technology


Startups Upending Space Industry, Accelerating Space Exploration: Part I: Making Stuff in Space

There is a dynamic underway in the space industry that is disrupting the way space technology is developed and deployed.  This new dynamic may accelerate the expansion of human presence in space and the colonization of the moon and Mars. This latest area of “democratization” of technology will also open the use of space to a wide range of players, including non-state actors, all over the planet.  Some of what the startups are doing theoretically could have been done by the aerospace giants but were likely inconceivable within their business models.

U.S. Faster Payments Update, Canadian Blockchain Experiment

Last week, I attended the 2016 edition of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Payments Symposium. As I listened to the presentations, it became clear to me once again how important internetworked technologies are to the future of the financial system in terms of individual empowerment and corporate control.

FinTech Leaders

The leaders in FinTech and banking are featured as American Banker releases its annual list of FinTech companies to watch, and Burnmark releases an excellent and comprehensive report on challenger banks throughout the world. Take a look, too, at a future without cash in this week's links.

Questioning Banking

Bankers have accepted that FinTech is here, reports The Daily FinTech in its SIBOS 2016 wrap-up story. Realism in FinTech among both banks and startups, the move to realtime payment, and (naturally) semi-real blockchain topped its list of takeaways.

What Would Einstein Do? Embedded Dilemmas in Disrupting Markets

Earlier this month, Ford CEO Mark Fields made two head-scratching announcements. Ford acquired San Francisco-based Chariot, a popular crowd-sourced shuttle-van service that uses algorithms to adjust routes and increase transit efficiency. The company simultaneously announced a partnership with Motivate, the nation’s largest bikeshare company, to implement a 10-fold expansion of the Bay area’s bikeshare program under the “Ford GoBike” banner.
 

Payments Milestones

Marketplace Banking: FinTech Articles of the Week

Banks are locked in a traditional structure of proprietary and legacy, and they strongly wish to keep it that way. The problem is more and more banking operations are increasingly done in marketplaces that level the playing field for new entrants, writes banking consultant Chris Skinner in "The banking bazaar and the bizarre banker."

Backing Banking?

I am generally gung-ho on banks and their need to embrace FinTech partners and on the need for FinTech firms to build the systems that can help smaller banks compete. The record, yet rather paltry, $185 million fine levied on Wells Fargo for fraudulently opening accounts to meet sales targets gives some support to that thesis, even though it's another black-eye for the industry.

Advice and Consent

My FinTech conversations this week have focused on the newer end of the ecosystem. An upcoming profile will feature a firm that provides bitcoin ATMs targeted at the unbanked so they can send money at lower fees than traditional transfers.

Another conversation with a financial planner concerned how he is working as a coach and trusted advisor, making more on his advice than on transactions. Given the rise of roboadvisors in the wealth management sector, it's a good move.

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