Ep.188. News: Pump that Money

With Ross Gallagher in the host's seat for the very first time, he led co-host Simon Taylor, Nina Mohanty, Doug Bobenhouse and Valentina Kristensen to take a look at the week's top stories.

We kicked off with news that research from Cedr and Trustpilot discovered a way for open banking to pump £1bn into the UK economy. This is obviously great news but is dependent on customers fully adopting the opportunities Open Banking offers and begin sharing their data.

The next three stories surround digital banking and new propositions as Lloyds announce plans for a £3bn digital transformation of their services over 3 years (not so long after their last 3 year transformation plan). Hot on their heels is Virgin Money's less pricey but not insignificant £38.3 million investment in a digital bank, which is disparaged by our team as being "just an app" (so far) and "putting lipstick on a pig". Finally there's easyJet CEO launching easyMoney, but kicking off with just an ISA, as the first of several products. Again the team is not impressed, and thinks they could've tried harder.

Next up we discuss New York's commitment to fighting cyber crime and the shocking news that previously cyber crime crackdowns had only been voluntary and on a state by state basis, only now the US is cracking down but not, as lamented by Nina, at a federal level.

The team also discuss Square continuing to support bitcoin, N26 continuing to grow exponentially, GoHenry teaching kids how to earn and save, contactless cards embedded in coats for the homeless in Amsterdam, and 50 Cent's insistence that he never owned any bitcoin - despite previously claiming to have earned $8million in bitcoin for the sale of his last album - our team have 21 Questions for him on this one.

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Special Guests: Doug Bobenhouse, Nina Mohanty, and Valentina Kristensen.