Well I’m not sure whether anyone will actually read yet another annual highlights thing or not, but everyone else seems to be doing it so I thought why not join in and put together my “Forbes Wrapped” for 2024! So, thanks to all of you out there, here are the ten most read columns that I posted on Forbes last year.
Your List, Not Mine
I’m not sure what this list means, by the way, because I don’t think there is a direct correlation between how good a piece is or how important it is and how many people come to read it! But I think it does say something useful about business, because the people who read Forbes are business readers rather than technologists. That makes it a very useful discipline for me to try to take what I think are important and interesting developments in the fintech space and then work hard to make them accessible to help business strategists in their work. Frankly, the feedback I get helps me to better understand the key business issues and that keeps me learning, which I like very. Anyway here we go with your top ten!
In tenth place, suitably, was a piece about Apple Pay reaching its tenth birthday. I don’t know if anything that I wrote about it was much different to what everyone else wrote about it, but thank you so much for liking “Apple Pay Is 10 Years Old. Apple ID Is Just Beginning”.
In ninth position waas “JPMorgan Chase Is Right To Be Bullish On Retail Biometrics”, in which I reiteratd my theory that whatever their security concerns, consumers in practice like biometric solutions because they are convenient. When correctly implement, biometrics are a win-win that delivers security to the service providers while delivering ease of use to consumers.
At no.8, it’s Apple again (you all seem to especially like stories with Apple in), but this time talking about their use of new encryption technology. Technology that is amazing and brilliant and useful (and not invented by Apple) but is also quite hard to explain so that’s why I titled it “Witchcraft Or Mathematics, Apple’s New Encryption Tool Is Important”.
A point I made in several talks over the course of the year was that the push for tokenisation is not about technologuy but business. It is what the serious money people (eg, Larry Fink) and serious money institutions (eg, BIS) think that that is important in shaping the next generation Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI), and what they think about is digital assets. At no.7 in your list then is “Listen To The Money Men About Tokenization, Not The Technologists”.
In sixth place is a story that you liked, but other media loved even more. Never mind mutiple BBC radio appearance, it even got me live on CNN. Thanks to the antics of criminals in major cities, but especially London, lots of people wanted to hear about how “My iPhone Was Stolen, I Survived. So Did My Bank Accounts“.
I think the piece in fifth place might have been my personal favourite for this year. It combined some of my the themes that I keep getting drawn back to — AI, digital identity and fraud — in mixed them together in a suitably juicy celebrity gumbo. I Loved “Celebrity Deepfakes Vs. Deepfake Celebrities And Valid Vs. Real” and I think that the whole “what does real actually mean” thing is going to snowball over the coming year.
At no.4 was my top rated Apple piece which was about the opening up of the NFC interface and the secure element, which I thought (and I wasn’t the only one who thought this) was one of the most significant fintech moves of the year. I explained why in “Apple Opens Up. This Is Huge“.
Your no.3 was right up there for me personally because of my interest in the metaverse and spatial computing. Quite a few of you found “Mark Zuckerberg And Why Smart Glasses Will Replace Mobile Phones” pretty interesting and I think that in time we will look back on this as an important step forward in the shift to post-mobile interfaces.
The second most popular post was about the complexities of merchants service charges and sales tax. I guess I must have a lot of readers from the payment card industry and for them “Paying In America Is Annoying” was irresistible. On reflection, given what I said about trying to write for a business audience rather than technologists, I should write more about the business models around payments (and fraud).
So we come to the top spot. The post that you were most interested in last year was not about quantum computing or stablecoins, Walmart or Revolut. It was this post about QR codes, the rise of “qishing” and the need to shift to more secure alternatives. Here is “We Need A Plan To End QR Codes In Fintech”. I can’t resist pointing out that I’m actually half way through another piece about QR codes right now, as the impact of QR-based fraud continues to grow and spread.
Coming Soon
There we go then, that was 2024. What did I learn from my Wrapped? Well, I learned that writing about Apple always generates interest because when Apple makes technology choices (eg, post-quantum security) it in a way legitimises those technology for the finance sector to use. I also learned that for a lot of business readers, stories about the more mundane technologies (eg, QR codes) are more interesting than stories about more exotic technologies because they relate to specific business challenges. I also learned to write a little better when it comes to explaining what technology choices mean for financial services in particular and business in general. So a big thank you to my readers and to the great team at Forbes, and here’s looking forward to 2025.
I won’t make any predictions for the coming year other than to say that from the half written articles and jumbled notes that I have in front of me right now, I can see that stablecoins are a focus along with fraud, AI and what will almost certainly be my favourite topic for the coming year, agentic commerce.
Have a great 2025!
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