Technology, social media and virtual currencies such as bitcoin are changing the purpose of banks, a leading financial commentator has claimed.
Speaking at the ACT’s annual cash management conference in London on 13 February, Chris Skinner, director of European networking forum the Financial Services Club, said: “Banks are not there for banking, banks are there to manage your data.”
Commenting on bitcoin, Skinner noted that the currency scared regulators because “it’s a new form of value exchange based around data exchange”.
He added: “It’s not money that makes the world go round, it’s data. Money is just becoming data.”
But he pointed out that neither data nor the internet are secure, raising challenges around information security. “Banks need to rapidly rethink how they serve you, and manage your data securely for you, and exchange that value for you.”
Skinner explained that the microchip is superseding coins, notes, cheques and cards as a means of value exchange. Soon, he said, we will find chips are embedded in what we wear, not what we carry.
“Technology is driving change,” Skinner told delegates, giving the example of Kenyan mobile phone-based money transfer service M-PESA, which he said had “changed a country and a continent overnight”.
Skinner said that capitalism had died and instead we have a “sharing economy based around conscience and community”.
More than 250 delegates attended the ACT’s 10th annual conference, which was sponsored by Barclays and had the theme of ‘Cashing in on growth’. Among the other speakers at the event were Chris Brauer, founder of the Centre for Creative & Social Technologies, Alison Wilson, treasurer of smoothie maker Innocent, and Paul Downie, head of liquidity and FX at oil giant Shell.
Sally Percy is editor of The Treasurer