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Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Modern Warfare: What is Payments’ Role in Conflict?

One month after the start of the Russian war against the Ukraine in 2022, the Ukrainian government took an unusual decision for a country at war with one of the world’s most powerful militaries – they legalised the cryptocurrency industry. While in other parts of the world crypto is associated with anything from utopian visions of a post-banking

/payments

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Musk, Trump and What’s Next in Payments

The first months of 2025 have passed so quickly that there is barely time to reflect. First there would be painful tariffs and retaliatory tariffs, now Canada and Mexico have ‘caved’, but really they agreed to do things that they are already doing. By the time you read this the story will have progressed so far that the news in the links abo

/payments /predictions

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

SMEs, AI and PSD3 – Everything You Need To Know About What’s Coming in 2025

This past year will hopefully go down as a transformative year for the UK’s economy in general and its FinTech industry in particular. The big news was that after 14 years we have a new government, but the small print was that this new government wouldn’t be doing much to distinguish itself from its predecessors. While we didn’t see a return to

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

SMEs are the bedrock of the economy – they need to be part of the APP fraud conversation

The recent decision by the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) to mandate that banks and payment companies refund victims of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud up to £85,000 within five days has created a rift in the financial ecosystem. While the move was welcomed by some in the consumer protection space, others – particularly SMEs and the FinTechs t...

/payments /inclusion

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

The Smart Approach to Risky Business

Every Saturday morning, I do Muay Thai at a local gym. Mercifully, combat sports and payments have few overlaps – but there is one lesson I can take from one to the other: identifying the meaning of different types of pain. There’s superficial pain, which you need to grin and bear – doing so means you grow and get stronger. But there’s also pain t...

/payments /regulation Fintech

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

How Regulation Can Supercharge Your Business

We all rely on the world that regulation creates – yet we groan at the mere mention of the dreaded ‘red tape’. With each new evolution in payments regulations, like the introduction of PSD2, we see a slew of doom-mongering articles on how it will negatively impact the industry, its stakeholders, potentially cause friction in the payments process,...

/payments /regulation Fintech

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Survival of the fittest: Why low fintech investment can be good for Fintech

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” This quote from author G. Michael Hopf (which in modern terms obviously relates to all human beings) has spread far beyond its origins in a middling science-fiction novel and has become a catch-all explanation of ‘decadence’. ...

/payments /predictions Fintech

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Can AI recession-proof your company?

Is a recession coming? Even a brief Google search on the word reveals dozens of articles that say unequivocally that there will be a recession. Although the press is reading tea-leaves to try to define when the recession will hit, businesses should be battening down the hatches. There are as many ways to do this as there are individual business...

/payments /predictions Fintech

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Sustaining Momentum: Driving Trust During Economic Downturns

In an era characterised by economic uncertainties and cost-of-living crises, the spotlight needs to turn towards increasing trust as a means of keeping the millions of people who will be affected by the current economic downturn inside the financial mainstream. It is estimated that 4% of the British population remains unbanked, trapped on the fri...

/payments /startups Business

Scott Dawson

Scott Dawson CEO at DECTA

Can AI really change the payments industry?

The world is awash with news and articles on artificial intelligence (AI), and the payment industry is no exception. Recently we have learned that Mastercard have rolled out an AI tool to spot real-time payment scams, U.S Bank is using AI in business travel management, and conferences are filled with talks on an AI future. A year before, the fin...

/payments /predictions Artificial Intelligence and Financial Services

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