No cash or card? No problem. Just don’t leave home without your phone

Who dominates the phone market dominates the internet. A whole world of information is now available in your hand, replacing your mind as a memory base for instant decision-making.

The reason why traditional bank shares are dropping like a stone is that mobile phone companies and financial technology (fintech) platforms “get it”. Banks and conventional financial institutions are stuck with so much legacy hardware (branches and outdated mainframes) and complex regulation that their CEOs feel besieged by bad news – cyberattacks, privacy leaks (like the Panama Papers), capital requirements and huge fines. No wonder top bank talent is leaving the industry. In Silicon Valley, they get fat bonuses to become “cool”. Meanwhile, regulated bank CEOs are held responsible for everything that goes on in their bank, and have to deal with soul-destroying staff and expenditure cuts, on top of their own pay cuts.

‘Fintech is about to disrupt the banking world’: No of start-ups in Hong Kong doubles in 2015

Fintech a boon for the unbanked but a nightmare for regulators

Fintech can deliver payment services at a fraction of the costs of paper-based payment. Increasingly, we spend more on software than on the actual hardware.

The consultancy firm Oliver Wyman has come up with a major report on “modular finance”, which argues that technology has transformed finance into modular parts – modular supply (provision of financial services by specialists); and modular demand (buying new services from such specialists). It begins with a cartoon about a customer buying a house, arranging a mortgage and insurance, selling stocks and wealth products for the down payment and paying for all fees through a mobile phone. In short, the game of finance is being fought by one super-bank to rule them all versus one phone to rule them all.