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Articles by Alex Cruickshank
Nordic fintech could lead the world
Will the Nordics become the fintech and open banking innovation capital of the world? By Alex Cruickshank Published: 06 Jul 2021 10:00 When one door closes, another opens. Although Brexit may be a tired theme by now, the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) continues to have effects – positive and negative – across a wide range of industries. One of those industries is fintech. A significant number of fintech businesses started life in the UK before expanding into EU countries.
Just how smart is open banking?
82 percent of polled consumers use open banking, yet more than 40 percent say it's "dangerous" - what's going on? Open banking underpins the FinTech revolution. It's the foundation of a fast-growing sector of technology providing financial and payment services to millions of people around the world.
Brexit's FinTech compliance legacy
The UK's split with the EU has caused legislative headaches for some FinTech firms, but there are opportunities too. Much hot air was generated on either side of the Brexit debate, both before and after the 2016 referendum, right up to the official exit date last year. Around 80% of the CEOs and employees of FinTech firms voted "Remain" according to an Innovate Finance poll carried out soon after the referendum vote.
Open banking regulations: EU versus UK
The EU began the move to regulate and implement open banking, with the UK applying its own spin. Almost four years after PSD2, who's leading the race? Leaving aside the political aspects of Brexit, for better or for worse the EU and the UK are now on different trajectories. There were significant differences before Brexit, of course, but now the gap is widening. This is true in technology just as much as in other areas of business and commerce.
The risks of open banking
Open banking is driving the development of new FinTech services for bank customers, but is it secure? Open banking is still relatively new and, in principle, the risks of fraud are lower than with other online payment methods such as credit and debit cards. But is this actually true? Are there potential vulnerabilities in open banking that aren't present with existing banking and payment methods? The open banking regulations in the UK and Europe have only been in force for a couple of years.
How far has open banking come in Europe?
Open banking is a relatively new concept, having come into effect in Europe only in the last couple of years. So what is the state of play? By Alex Cruickshank Published: 29 Mar 2021 13:49 Open banking allows, and in some cases compels, banks to make it easy for financial services IT (fintech) companies to access the accounts of any customer who gives their authorisation for this to happen.
Coronavirus: Do Indian companies still have an edge in Nordic outsourcing?
Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing have affected Nordic outsourcing strategies. Do Indian firms still have the upper hand? By Alex Cruickshank Published: 04 May 2020 10:30 IT outsourcing in the Nordic region has increasingly been dominated by Indian firms. Local providers are still present, and some have even gained revenue over the past decade, but firms making use of Indian workers have made considerably larger gains overall and taken a bigger slice of the pie.
Tech Cynic: On a knife edge
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Are tech giants influencing the US presidential election?
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Can tech keep the US elections on track during coronavirus?
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Tech Cynic: WFH? Barely
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Hedgehog, please renew my passport
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Norwegian banking app gives access to other banks’ accounts
Banking customers can access and make payments from their other bank accounts using the DNB Mobile Bank app By Alex Cruickshank Logging into one bank account only to be presented with the transaction and balance details of a completely different account would once have been cause for concern. However, in Norway, it’s becoming an everyday occurrence designed to simplify users’ banking experiences.
Nordic lessons on digital transformation
Swedish financial services firm reports a successful IT outsourcing project with India-based IT services company By Alex Cruickshank Whenever possible, it is wise to learn from others’ mistakes when planning a significant transition of IT within an organisation. History is littered with outsourcing and digital transformation projects that went over budget, over deadline and, in some cases, over and out, pulling the organisations concerned so far down that they never recovered.
Tech Cynic: When China sneezes, the world catches a cold
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Nordic public cloud grew strongly in 2019
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Nordic M&A activity boomed in 2019 - can it continue?
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Tech Cynic: I know your face
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
What is behind Stockholm’s datacentre boom?
Datacentres are springing up in Stockholm – but what is drawing major IT companies to the Swedish capital? By Alex Cruickshank The Nordic datacentre boom continues as more businesses take advantage of the incentives offered by local governments in the region. Towards the end of 2019, it was announced that three companies – Advania Data Centers, Interxion and IP-Only – were planning to build new datacentres in Stockholm.
Personal transport as a service drives across Nordics
New mobility-as-a-service projects are gaining traction in major cities across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden By Alex Cruickshank The Nordics could see a pan-regional platform that enables citizens to access personal transportation on demand as the market for mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) expands. Towards the end of last year, a consortium of Nordic mobility companies and transport-related organisations announced a project aiming to unify the region’s MaaS market.
European tech trends: Challenges as Brexit uncertainty continues into 2020
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
North American technology trends: All eyes on #election2020
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Tech Cynic: The boys (and girls) who cried wolf
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Finnish biometric identity plans for seamless air travel
Finnair and Finavia explore options for automatic digital identification and authentication of air travellers By Alex Cruickshank Working on the assumption that air travel will continue to grow in the future, two Finnish organisations have carried out exploratory investigations into the possibility of simplifying the identification and authentication of passengers, for air travel in Finland and potentially elsewhere.
Google's quantum leap
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
Co-working at the crossroads
Alex Cruickshank has been writing about technology and business since 1994. He has lived in various far-flung places around the world and is now based in Berlin.
P27 pan-Nordic payments system moves a step closer
Six regional banks sign shareholders’ agreements, agree business plan and make financial commitments to payments platform By Alex Cruickshank An ambitious cross-border payments system for the Nordic countries has moved a step closer after being in the planning stages for some time. The initiative involves Mastercard and the P27 Nordic Payments Platform, which is a collaboration owned by Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, OP Financial Group, SEB and Swedbank.
Tech Cynic: Eavesdroppers, hackers, guests and privacy
Data Privacy and Security A couple of months ago I wrote about the fact that home assistants such as Alexa require the intervention of human workers at times to decipher user's instructions, improve recognition and basically fill in the gaps between perfect AI voice recognition and what we have today - which is a long way from perfection. For some people this is yet another reason, if one were needed, to avoid giving such devices house-room.
Nordic industrial giants continue to choose Indian suppliers for digital transformation
HCL signs new deals with Volvo Cars and Equinor as India-based IT services suppliers continue to grow in the Nordic region By Alex Cruickshank Two deals have been signed between Noida, India-based HCL and major corporations in Sweden and Norway, providing further evidence that Indian IT suppliers are forging ahead in Nordic markets.
Tech Cynic: this time it's personal
Social Networks Berlin is full of co-working cafés and similar venues in which so-called digital nomads vie with each other to be the most achingly ironic whilst also appearing - at least to themselves - untouchably professional. It's an almost impossible combination to pull off so most of them fail. Many use Apple laptops but with carefully placed stickers on the lids to almost-but-not-quite hide the Apple logo.
Nordic payment collaboration will ease cross-border payments
P27 and Mastercard to bring seamless cross-border payments across Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden Alex Cruickshank Despite often being grouped together under the “Nordic” classification, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden all have their own culture, economy and currency. Increasingly, however, efforts are being made to forge closer ties between the countries, often with IT at the core.
Drive for Nordic datacentre transformation
Nordic enterprises looking to spread abroad are outsourcing datacentre IT in cutting-edge ways to gain international advantage Alex Cruickshank Nordic enterprises are seeking advanced outsourced IT services and skills to help transform the way their datacentress serve their businesses.
Danish MobilePay app moves away from mainframe
MobilePay is the most widely-used mobile payment app in Denmark, installed on 90% of smartphones there and with four million users – more than 80% of the Danish population. Launched in 2013, the Danske Bank-owned app has grown beyond expectations to such an extent that the mainframe system on which it was hosted proved to be inadequate.
Location analysis expands Nordic telco’s range of services
Nordic telecoms firm Telia Company recently joined forces with startup Unacast to make use of anonymised location data from Telia’s network customers. Under the agreement, Telia will use Unacast’s platform to process its own anonymised user data to gain insights into crowd movement in and around cities. These insights could potentially be used to improve urban development, public transport, event management, tourism and retail.
Tech Cynic: Are they listening? Of course they are
Artificial Intelligence Well, that's pretty much the full set. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google have admitted that they or their contractors listen in to users' conversations and voice instructions. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Nordic banks move into wearable payment technology
Consumers have been used to tapping and paying with credit or debit cards for years, removing the need to enter their cards into a supplier’s card reader and type in their PIN. Typically, such transactions are limited to low amounts of money to prevent serious issues – for the banks in particular – should cards be used for unauthorised transactions, either intentionally or accidentally.
Tech Cynic: IT's role in the new climate change debate
Green IT I'm writing this article less than a mile from where Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is giving a speech today to people in Berlin. Climate change is a contentious subject and I'm not going to take a position on it in this article, lest the competing streams of invective in the comments section overload IDG's servers. Instead, let's take a look at technology's role in the climate change debate.
French and German companies have contrasting fortunes in India
Capgemini’s acquisition of Altran in June made waves in global markets and surprised some analysts, yet it hardly came out of the blue. The move is representative of an ongoing trend that’s seeing growing success for French companies such as Altran that leverage Indian global service companies with enthusiasm and drive, helping them to stay competitive.
Tech Cynic: Facebook's cryptic currency move raises eyebrows
Cryptocurrency Those who follow the value of cryptocurrencies will have noticed something odd happening recently. After languishing at a reasonably steady $5,000 Euros per Bitcoin for months, the most widely-known cryptocurrency suddenly leapt upwards in price in May. At the time of writing it's hovering around $12,000, having fallen from a high of just under $13,000. Other digital coinage has followed suit.
Three Finnish banks, one core IT platform
There are times when it makes sense for several different companies to share resources. This happens quite frequently in the car industry, for example, in which components and even entire sub-assemblies may be common to cars from different manufacturers. Usually, although not always, the individual companies in such projects are all subsidiaries of a single, larger organisation.
Tech Cynic: The rise and fall of Startup Stockholm Syndrome
Business Management Living in Berlin, Germany means that I inevitably cross paths with numerous startup employees, in both business and social situations. It's unfair to portray such a broad group of people with a simple stereotype, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Electronic ID in the Nordics - a model for other countries?
Use of electronic identity schemes in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark is far ahead of other countries – but why? Alex Cruickshank A recent report by Arkwright Consulting looked into the take-up of electronic identity schemes on a national basis, comparing Nordic countries with each other and also with Germany and the UK. It makes for interesting reading, for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the chasm between the Nordics and some other EU states.
Danske Bank and IBM bring AI to banking IT
IT outages can cause major headaches for banks. As well as damaging customer goodwill – something few banks can afford to do – such outages are increasingly being scrutinised by regulators and governments. Patience in some sectors is wearing thin, and sanctions, including financial penalties, may become more commonplace. The fallout from the TSB outage in the UK in 2018 is still reverberating around the banking industry, and it is far from being the only recent serious event.
Tech Cynic - Would you trust AI with your life?
Artificial Intelligence The world of IT can seem cult-like at times. Not so much the actual technological part of that world, because creating hardware and software requires pragmatism and focus on what is and isn't achievable (at least, so one would hope), but the marketing and analysis aspects, which are more often driven by desperate futuristic optimism than any connection with reality.
Tech Cynic: Who needs a Babel Fish?
Social Networks In August 2003, psychology researchers from the Open University carried out an informal study of online social interactions. 15 adults were shut in a room at Sussex University with computers running chat-room software, and invited to interact anonymously. Within 20 minutes the chat-room discussion had degenerated from polite, light-hearted chat into sexual banter and increasingly personal insults.
Tech Cynic: "Where's the button?"
Internet of Things (IoT) Sometimes one has to despair for the future of the human race, or at least the part of it that believes that adding Bluetooth, internet, wireless or app connectivity to everyday devices, most of which have functioned perfectly for decades without such connections, is an unquestionably good thing, and that the resulting hybrid/abomination will sell like hot cakes to a desperately enthusiastic public.
Tech cynic: Blocking fake news with technology, for a safer world
News Earlier this month, the most widely-read English news website in the world, the Daily Mail, was effectively flagged as a purveyor of fake news by Microsoft's Edge website.
Tech trends: Winners and losers as changing attitudes shift policies in North America
Trends As I write this, the FAANGs are wobbling. Recent stock market jitters have led to - or been led by - significant fluctuations in the prices of shares in Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. What once seemed an unstoppable upward trend in stock value has, well, stopped. Paused, anyway. Arguably reversed. Whatever happens next is going to be interesting to watch, just maybe from a safe distance.
Tech Cynic: The distraction bird
Mobile Communications Tech Cynic: The distraction bird When my daughters were young and annoying, as opposed to adolescent and annoying as they are now, I would sometimes have to placate and subdue them on long car journeys, especially once they were old enough to properly argue with each other, which was as soon as they could both speak. My chosen technique for defusing their travel arguments was the Distraction Bird.
Hamburg has ambitions to be a virtual reality hub
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that’s been on the cusp of usefulness for over two decades. Until recently, bold claims for its potential have never been fully matched by the capabilities of the technology. In the past few years, that’s changed. The technology has become usable and, perhaps more importantly, there are genuine practical applications for it. That’s especially true in the fields of industry and gaming/entertainment. VR-focused businesses are popping up all over the world.
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