After the financial crisis in 2008 a lot of top talent fled the big banks and head to Silicon Valley;...
As more financial services firms beginning using Google, Amazon and Microsoft for cloud based services regulators are starting to take...
According to Bloomberg, Google is working on its own blockchain technology in their cloud business; the distributed ledger would allow third parties to post and verify transactions and will also offer a white-label product for companies; Google has also been active in acquiring and investing in startups according to the source. Source
Nomura analyst Dan Dolev says that Square resembles Amazon and Google in the early days of those tech giants; "In 10 years, Square is likely to be a very different company helped by accelerating share gains from payment peers and relentless disruption of services like payroll and HR," Dolev said in a note to clients that was reported by Business Insider; the combination of new business ventures and increasing the number of ways they process payments are twos of true main reasons for the optimism; shares were trading almost 5 percent higher on Friday after the note. Source.
Google Wallet, Android Pay and Pay with Google will now all become Google Pay; this way the company can better brand their products and make it less confusing; Google has launched a number of products in the last 10 years aimed at different payments markets and found varying degrees of success; they hope ensuring the same brand for multiple layers of products will help to cut down on confusion and hopefully help them to build a better customer experience to compete with the likes of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Source.
Google and PayPal have announced that they will be looking to expand their payments partnership; PayPal will be available across...
Dodd-Frank requires banks to disclose information about employee wages and the data shows a mixed bag for banks; banks like Goldman Sachs lie on the high end of the pay scale while small banks in locations like Houston are at the bottom of the spectrum; what the data also shows is banks are finding it hard to compete with big tech firms for talent as companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon tend to pay premium wages; wages overall look to be rising as lower skill, lower wage jobs are becoming less frequent across the industry. Source.
Ireland has become a hub of technological innovation as big tech, fintech and big financial services companies set up shop in country as an alternative to the UK; “Ireland has always been quite an innovative country; it has to be because it is such a small market, you can’t just lean on the Irish market to produce a decent fintech business.” says Sinead Fitzmaurice, co-founder of TransferMate, to the FT; talent from Google and Facebook have not only started their own companies but have also moved into finance giants like Deutsche Bank; low corporate tax rates combined with the tech talent has help the country become an emerging fintech market. Source.
Since the financial crises banks, for the most part, have focused their time and effort on complying with new regulations and building up capital ratios in case another crisis hits; while they were doing this another industry, fintech, emerged and has eaten into some of the core profit making businesses of the banks; banks have started to catch up with technology and as countries like the US look to pare back some crisis era rules the banks see the next few years as the perfect opportunity to invest wisely in technology; the one thing the banks might not be able to handle is if Amazon, Facebook or Google begin to encroach further into fintech, potentially bring in competition who can immediately match up in size and strength. Source.
In their latest edition of Confessions, TearSheet talks to an analyst at a startup attached to a large bank about innovation, trying to get tech talent and why more fintech companies should partner with banks; about half of the talent at the startup came form inside the bank and as the analyst points out it was more because of convenience as hiring from the outside could take months; banks have trouble keeping top talent because the projects are not as interesting as projects at Google or Facebook; other areas discussed include default rates ticking up, marketing practices and expanding product offerings. Source.