317. News: Nettles and dock leaves

Apr 29, 2019

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This week we have some great stories for you as David and Simon are joined by a few great guests:

Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of GoCardless
Solange Dive-Chamberlain, Head of Commercial Banking Strategy at LBG
Chris Maddern, Co-founder & CPO at Button, formerly of Venmo
Niall Cameron, Global Head of Corporate and Institutional Digital at HSBC

We kick off the episode by taking a look at Station F, could it be France’s F-You to London’s fintech hub? Opened in June 2017, Station F is the world’s largest startup incubator. Station F acts as a statement of ambition. France wants to become the number one country for tech in Europe. Hiroki notes that Paris is five years behind London in terms of fintech environment and David's not a huge fan of the name...(02:50)

We speak to Oscar Williams-Grut, who wrote the story, for a bit more insight (03:34).

Next up, we talk about the evolution of the US prepaid card ecosystem. There were 10.7 billion prepaid card transactions worth $290 billion in 2016, according to The Federal Reserve. Business Insider Intelligence expects that to grow to $396 billion by 2022. Solange notes that prepaid cards impact on the way people interact with money and each other - driving customer behaviour (13:15).