Fintech News Issue #55 February 15th, 2016

JP Nicols hosts a special episode out of London following Finovate Europe, the granddaddy of FinTech Conferences. Finovate began in 2007, and is now 3 yearly conferences that provide a forum for FinTech companies to demo their latest innovations. Talking to some of the Best in Show Winners and Roberto Ferrari. Also, Steve Lanklar, Senior VP of Direct Capital, tells us his story of successfully being acquired by a bank and maintaining the innovative strategies that challenge old finance notions.

Chris Skinner provides a convenient selection of research articles that talk about fintech, blockchain, bitcoin, payments and security.

What are the trends expected to drive fintech innovation in 2016? I am happy to publish, on behalf of Envestnet® | Yodlee®, the results of the second annual Global Fintech Influencer Survey.

Bitcoin has been proclaimed dead 89 times. It has been labeled a Ponzi scheme and a failed experiment. Writers have argued for it to be forgotten and for developers to move on to greener pastures. But moving beyond this rhetoric, it’s not all that difficult to compare the rise of bitcoin to that of another technology: the World Wide Web.

Are central banks artefacts of the Industrial Revolution, like canal networks or newspapers, or are they indispensable to the operation of the modern economy? To be honest, I tend to the more revolutionary perspective.

Mike Lawson talks to E Andrew Keeney from Kaufman & Canoles about six legal predictions that could have an impact on credit unions in 2016.

A study of the system that powers Bitcoin concludes that it cannot become widely used without a major redesign.

The future of banking is digital, says Brett King,

Dynamic pricing is evident in almost every industry. Would this pricing strategy work in financial services? What are the benefits and challenges of a dynamic pricing model?

On Tuesday, IBM announced that it’s been working to make blockchain technology—which was refined and popularized by Bitcoin—easier for businesses to use for financial and non-financial purposes.

As the banks face ever-tougher tradeoffs between security and convenience, they must look to new technologies that can improve the former without damaging the latter, says Gary McAlum, senior vice president and chief security officer for USAA.

Following my previous blog about Big Data Analytics and Cyber-Security, this second post in my series on payments highlights banks and FinTech hubs as well as blockchain and cryptocurrencies that continue as important priorities for banks. [See a link to Part 1 in the article]