Your Top 10 Stories From Last Year, My 3 Predictions For Next Year

It’s that time of the year again so as we head into the Christmas break let me look back on 2023 in the now traditional fashion by going over my top 10 Forbes columns this year. When I say top 10, I mean the stories with the most visits from you, the readers!

Your Top Ten

Here we go then. The top 10 stories for 2023 were:

1. In “The wallets wars are not about money they are about identity” I set out why it is that the battle for consumers’ digital wallets is just so strategically important: and it’s not about payments. With the launch of the European Union’s Digital Identity wallet coming soon and lots of activity around more decentralised digital identity services in the startup space, I can see why it is that many organisations feel need to develop their own plans for either providing or using them.
2. I remain sceptical about cryptocurrency but not about digital assets or tokenisation, as I set out in “Larry Fink says tokens are the next generation for markets”, and throughout the year this view has strengthened.
3. The tensions about cashless retailing in America fascinate me and clearly many others too given the response to my column “The number of ATMs is falling the number of reverse ATMs is rising”. Questions around the future of cash and the drift towards cashlessness attract passionate debate and digital currencies are a particular interest of mine, I am interested to see the many different facets of the issue.
4. Some early experiments linking generative AI and APIs led me to write that “The impact of ChaGPT and open banking cannot be underestimated” and I stand by that statement which, given the continued repaid evolution of generative AI tools, was far from hyperbolic.
5. It was no surprise to see so many people interested to read more on “Apple launches connected cards using open banking in the UK” because the role of Big Tech in financial services is a matter of strategic importance across the financial services industry and beyond: Apple’s moves in the UK are perhaps a window into the evolution of the US financial services sector given the introduction of open banking there.
6. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) was the story at the heart of “India has a digital infrastructure, American needs one”. I was not suggesting that America replicates the “India stack” but I was suggesting that it needs to learn from India and go beyond the “India stack” to deliver 21st century infrastructure for growth and productivity.
7. Two of my obsessions came together in “National ID is a foundation for CBDC”! A CBDC must be privacy-enhancing, but not anonymous. That means that the interface and interactions between digital money infrastructure and digital identity infrastructure must be defined not by technologists or bankers but by civil society.
8. There are many people, not only me, who think that instant payments may provide “A Real Alternative to cards in Europe”. In a way, I am surprised that the big retailers have not moved in this direction already.
9. Probably my favourite piece (even though it wasn’t yours) covered “ChatGPT’s golden rule”, the golden rule being that you should never ask ChatGPT a question that you do not already know the answer to. Large Language Models (LLMs) do not know what is true or false — and they hallucinate. That may be OK for writing a blockchain PR puff but it’s not OK for regulated financial services businesses.
10. And coming in at number 10 is my column on why “We need instant payments and CBDC”, a reflection of the confusion between the two entirely different, but both foundational, elements of future financial services.

Thanks again for all your interest in my columns and your comments on my ideas and observations via social media, I genuinely do appreciate at all feedback, good or bad.

Looking Forward

Looking forward to 2024, I think it is actually pretty easy to make some fintech predictions! Last year I said that in was doubling down on the issue of bots and that turned out to be an accurate insight. It would be easy to again put AI at the centre of any predictions because of course AI is the most important technology. If we look beyond that though, some of my recent work on multiple continents points me again towards digital identity, where a combination of overwhelming fraud and demand for new services means that the pressure for sector-wide solutions is growing again. The steady advance of open banking in the U.S. will also mean strategic re-focus on the manufacturing, packaging and distribution of financial services and, I suspect, more attention from Big Tech. Finally, if I have to pick something from left field, so to speak, I think it’s going to be metaverses of one form or another.

Many people looked at the early effort from Meta and others and decided that metaverses are not going anywhere fast. I think they are wrong, and I expect the release of Apple’s VR/AR headsets to spur new products and services in that space. As commerce comes to the metaverses, financial services will follow!

Happy Holidays!