Love it or hate it, the banking world can no longer afford to ignore or resist the latest social networking phenomenon that is sweeping the world.

In fact, the customer owns you – if they want to – while others think that banks are all the same

Established 10 years ago to facilitate eBay transactions, PayPal has taken hold of the online payment market.

When Barclays Bank takes part in a local currency scheme, others should pay attention. Writer Chris Skinner.

Ruthlessly slashing costs is a common response to troubled times. But it won’t guarantee survival – in fact, experience tells us it has the opposite effect. By Chris Skinner.

Payments experts believe that most of the firms that will lead innovation on payments are brand new businesses that are not in the financial services industry. 

In the financial markets, there seems to be a repeating pattern of related crises and business collapses every decade or so. Could it be because lessons are not being learned from past mistakes? By Chris Skinner.

Some banks are making efforts to engage with people through virtual worlds and social networks on the internet but their knowledge of this area is still limited – and being excluded by corporate firewalls does not help, writes Chris Skinner.

A recent encounter with a business banker proved that, as far as financial services are concerned, the days of human relationships and judgement calls are over. The computerised process is king. By Chris Skinner.

It is high time that retail banks stopped thinking of electronic channels as extensions of the branch and started thinking about the electronic structure as the foundation upon which all the channels, including the branch, are built. By Chris Skinner.