Chris Skinner
Chris Skinner is one of the most influential and prolific thought leaders on the future of banking, finance and technology. The Financial Brand awarded him best blog and he was recently mentioned by the Wall Street Journal as one of the The Financial News Top 40 Fintech influencers globally. He has been in technology and banking for many years and mixes the best of old school and cutting edge in his work. In Europe, he is well-known as the Founder and Chairman of the Financial Services Club, a network for financial professionals that focuses upon the future of financial services through the delivery of research, analysis, commentary and debate. Founded in 2004, the Financial Services Club meets regularly across Europe with centres in Austria, England, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia and Sweden. He is also CEO of Balatro Ltd., a financial research company. Learn more here .
Articles by Chris Skinner
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Is Getting Cheaper. So Why Is the AI Bill Getting Bigger?
McKinsey reportedly uses AI for as much as 30% of its tasks, which means the problem is not failed adoption but successful adoption.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
When a Crypto Joke Became a $100,000 Lifeline for Science
What problem are we solving? Why does this need a blockchain? Why does this need a token? Why would anyone buy it?
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Is Redefining Disability One Financial Decision at a Time
It is making finance, communication, work and everyday life adapt to people, rather than forcing people to adapt to systems.
- Opinion
Most Valuable Asset in Your Portfolio Isn’t Money
**One of the more interesting articles I read over the weekend wasn't about artificial intelligence, stablecoins or digital banks.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
Trusting Code Used To Be Crypto’s Advantage. AI May Have Changed That Forever
For years, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) has sold itself as the future of finance: transparent, decentralised, unstoppable.
- Artificial Intelligence
What Calculators Teach Us About the AI Revolution
Personally, I’ve been thinking about AI, ChatGPT, Gemini and all of these new systems and, in fairness, it is easy to see why people are worried.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Isn’t Replacing Humans — It’s Replacing How We Work
We are living through the third great revolution in modern business.
- Artificial Intelligence
Are We Living Through a Sputnik Moment?
A Sputnik moment is the moment the world suddenly wakes up and realises someone else may have leapt ahead technologically.
- Artificial Intelligence
Banks That Fail To Adapt To AI Could Become Financial Dinosaurs
But if your institution is still talking about becoming digital in 2026, then you are already behind the curve.
- Artificial Intelligence
Why Most Banks Will Fail at AI—And Don’t Even Know It Yet
AI, which everyone is desperately trying to plug into systems that were never designed for intelligence. And that’s the problem.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
When Digital Money Funds Power: Crypto’s Growing Role in Political Systems
The Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute (BISI) produced a document yesterday about the risk of cryptocurrency to democracy .
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Is Becoming Your Operating System—Are You Ready?
The challenge is reinventing the enterprise for a world where machines don’t just support decisions, but increasingly make them.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
Tokenization and AI Are Building a Whole New World of Money
I just had an interesting podcast conversation about stablecoins, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and tokenised deposits.
- Opinion
What Happens After the Jackpot? Real Stories of Fortune, Risk, and Regret
We all dream of the day that we get millions of dollars in our account. What would you do? Well, here’s the answer for some.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
Billions in Crypto Risk Being Lost Across Generations
I recently tried to cash in a bitcoin. It’s a physical bitcoin that is active, and I have the bitcoin address.
- Opinion
Five Shifts Redefining Treasury in Age of Programmable Money
How is programmable money reshaping treasury operations and financial infrastructure? I had a great chat the other day – the first in a series of three – with Quant’s Chief Product Officer Martin Hargreaves about programmable liquidity.
- Alternatives & Digital Assets
Trade Bitcoin With Just Your Heartbeat
I use a variety of sites like Coinbase and IG for investing but find them very cumbersome.
- Market Intelligence
Digital Assets, Stablecoins, and Rise of Intelligent Compliance
We saw it with the internet, with mobile banking, with fintech—and now we are seeing it again with digital assets and stablecoins.
- Opinion
The Future of Money: What It Could Look Like by 2050
They will probably be amazed that such systems worked, but it’s a bit like me being amazed about how tally sticks worked a few centuries ago.
- Artificial Intelligence
How JPMorgan Is Transforming Banking with Cloud, AI, and New Branches
There’s been a lot of talk this week about JPMorgan spending $20 billion on technology in 2026.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI-Generated Fight Scene and Robot New Year Show Signal a New Era
If you haven’t seen them, you need to, because both show how technology is developing faster than any of us know.
- Market Intelligence
Cryptocurrencies Are Rife With Scams and Money Laundering
Cryptocurrencies are rife with scams and money laundering. It just reflects the same things we see in traditional financial services.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Isn’t Taking Over—It’s Learning To Work With Us
Many movies, media and headlines portray AI as frightening. It’s going to take out jobs, bring robocop to the streets and take over our lives.
- Opinion
Digital Banking Didn’t Kill the Branch, It Reassigned It
Some think that the pandemic proved that customers can bank fine without them and that many now prefer digital.
- Research
Are We Ourselves From Day One? Nature, Nurture, and That First Spark
How much of your personality is genetic versus environmentally developed? Is it nature or nurture?
- Artificial Intelligence
Post-Quantum Security Is Becoming a Requirement for Money
Put that in context: it means that most cryptocurrencies and bank encrypted systems will be broken in the next twenty years.
- Opinion
When Wealth Concentrates, Revolutions Follow: A Warning History Keeps Repeating
We all should have heard of the 1% by now or the fact that six men have more wealth than half the population of the planet combined.
- Market Intelligence
Why 2026 Will Be the Most Important Year in Fintech and Crypto Since 2008
Pointing to a world defined less by individual products and more by systemic shifts in how economies, institutions, and people interact with technology.
- Opinion
The World Economy in 2026
Well guys, it doesn’t look good. Most banks and economic think tanks reckon the world is in a dive. Happy New Year!
- Artificial Intelligence
Nothing Is Real Anymore: Why Deepfake AI Defined 2025
AI and AI hype from Agentic AI to AGI Artificial General Intelligence to Robots, chatbots and more but, for me, it has been the year of Deep Fake AI.
- Artificial Intelligence
Digital ID Is Inevitable—but Who Controls It Will Decide Everything
Many governments around the world are developing digital IDs, inspired by the success of Aadhaar in India, the world’s first major scheme.
- Artificial Intelligence
Stripe Offered $1.2 Billion. They Said No. Now Airwallex Is Worth $8 Billion.
Today, they’ve just shared that their latest valution is $8 billion valuation, based upon $1 billion in revenues ARR.
- Artificial Intelligence
The Rise of AI Girlfriends: Have We Given up on Dating Each Other?
Are we giving up on dating and instead putting all of our demands onto digital people who are programmed to behave and speak exactly how we want?
- Artificial Intelligence
The Third Technology Revolution Is Here: Why the Intelligence Era Will Eclipse Digital and Mainframe
I would claim that the second revolution culminated in smartphone connectivity and cloud computing.
- Artificial Intelligence
Don’t Believe What You See: How AI Deepfakes Are Costing Millions and Growing Fast
The critical factor here is that scams using AI and deep fakes will be persistent and growing over the next decade.
- Artificial Intelligence
The Rise and Fall of Human Interaction
We are now socially interacting digitally far more globally on Instagram and TikTok, but interacting far less socially face-to-face. Is this good or bad?
