305. News: Graceful degradation

This week we have some great stories for you as Sarah and Simon are joined by a couple of great guests:

• Daniel Hegarty, CEO of Habito
• Sharon O’Dea, founder of communications and collaboration consultancy Lithos Partners

We kick off the episode by taking a look at the RBS trials for a biometric fingerprint bank card. Sarah thinks it's not a terrible idea and a potential solution to upcoming Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) demands. But Simon and Daniel disagree. Simon thinks the whole thing is a gimmick and customers deserve a better UX whereas Daniel just can't see any good use cases for fingerprint cards (01:50).

Next up, we talk about Bank of England telling VISA Europe to hire PwC after the 2018 outage. Simon reckons that having more eyes looking at the problem can only be a good thing while the outages problem rumbles on, Sharon agrees and comments that VISA's outage was a human error issue but there's a need to look at why that error could occur in the first place (08:36).

We also have an interview with Nick Cook to find out more about the FCA appointing its first Director of Innovation.

Other stories include:

• UK cash on verge of collapse
• Instant transfers in the US via PayPal and JPMC
• British Bank Awards - fintechs won big against incumbents
• Tide to raise funds to match the remedies fund payout
• eBay founder’s fintech fund for global financial inclusion
• And finally, Japanese Banks Will Finally Stop Using a Piece of 1800s Technology

All this and much much more on this week's news 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 [email protected]

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

Special Guests: Daniel Hegarty, Nick Cook, and Sharon O'Dea.

Links:

• RBS trials biometric fingerprint bank card - BBC News
• Bank of England tells Visa Europe to hire PwC after 2018 outage - Finance - iTnews
• UK cash system ‘on the verge of collapse’, report finds | Money | The Guardian
• PayPal now lets US users instantly transfer funds to bank accounts in seconds | TechCrunch
• Smartphone challengers Starling and Monzo the big winners at the British Bank Awards | Daily Mail Online
• Tide to raise £60 million for business banking push
• Omidyar Network launches fund for fintechs making a social impact - Business Insider
• The Financial Conduct Authority Appoints First Director of Innovation | Crowdfund Insider
• Japanese Banks Will Finally Stop Using a Piece of 1800s Technology - Bloomberg