317. News: Nettles and dock leaves

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317. News: Nettles and dock leaves

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David and Simon are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including Paris tries to come for London’s fintech crown, Robin hood applies for a banking charter as T-Mobile tries to get back into banking and Germans hold more gold than Fort Knox.

This week we have some great stories for you as David and Simon are joined by a few great guests:

  • Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of GoCardless
  • Solange Dive-Chamberlain, Head of Commercial Banking Strategy at LBG
  • Chris Maddern, Co-founder & CPO at Button, formerly of Venmo
  • Niall Cameron, Global Head of Corporate and Institutional Digital at HSBC

We kick off the episode by taking a look at Station F, could it be France’s F-You to London’s fintech hub? Opened in June 2017, Station F is the world’s largest startup incubator. Station F acts as a statement of ambition. France wants to become the number one country for tech in Europe. Hiroki notes that Paris is five years behind London in terms of fintech environment and David's not a huge fan of the name...(02:50)

We speak to Oscar Williams-Grut, who wrote the story, for a bit more insight (03:34).

Next up, we talk about the evolution of the US prepaid card ecosystem. There were 10.7 billion prepaid card transactions worth $290 billion in 2016, according to The Federal Reserve. Business Insider Intelligence expects that to grow to $396 billion by 2022. Solange notes that prepaid cards impact on the way people interact with money and each other - driving customer behaviour (13:15).

Other stories include:

  • N26’s Viennese whirl
  • Turning the Tide on business registrations
  • Stripe’s new SCA acquisition
  • Robinhood shoots for a banking charter
  • T-Mobile’s Take 2 on digital banking
  • And finally, The Germans hoard more gold than the Bundesbank

All this and so much more on today's show.

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, leave a review on iTunes and let us know your thoughts on the stories @FintechInsiders on Twitter where you can also ask the hosts questions, or email podcasts@11fs.com

This week's episode was produced by Laura Watkins and edited by Alex Woodhouse.

Special Guests: Chris Maddern, Hiroki Takeuchi, Niall Cameron, and Solange Dive-Chamberlain.

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