The Fintech Nerd Who Refused to Shut Up
Simon Taylor does not want to be described as an influencer. He is not one. He is something considerably more dangerous: a practitioner who writes. For over two decades he has been inside the machinery of financial services - at BT, at TSYS, at Barclays, at 11:FS, at Sardine, and now at Tempo - and every weekend he sits down and translates that machinery into something 45,000 professionals actually want to read.
The newsletter is called Fintech Brainfood. It is the #1 weekly fintech briefing on the planet, and it is written by one person, on weekends, as a deliberate act of independence. Simon has never let it be captured by an employer's marketing agenda. That is the entire point. When Barclays signs his paycheck, Fintech Brainfood remains Simon's voice. When Sardine does. When Tempo does. The newsletter stays separate, opinionated, and stubbornly honest.
That particular stubbornness is also what has made him one of the most credible voices at the intersection of payments, AI, and the future of money. He has not just watched fintech happen - he has been inside the rooms where decisions got made, and he tells you what those decisions actually mean.
Fintech is only 1% finished.
- Simon Taylor, 11:FS - the thesis that launched a thousand decksThat three-word phrase - "Fintech is only 1% finished" - became one of the most-repeated lines in the industry. Not because it is a bold claim, but because Simon backed it with specifics: fintech had primarily served mid-market retail consumers under 35, leaving the vast majority of financial services untouched. It was a challenge dressed up as a rallying cry. Most rallying cries fade. This one is still cited in conference keynotes eight years later.
Twenty Years. Every Layer of Finance.
There are fintech commentators who have never worked in finance. Simon Taylor is not one of them. He has held senior roles at every layer of the stack - legacy telco infrastructure, payments processing, global banking, boutique consultancy, fraud tech, and now blockchain infrastructure. The breadth is not accidental. It is why his analysis cuts differently.
The Barclays chapter deserves particular attention. Simon led the blockchain R&D team that made Barclays the first bank in the world to execute a live trade finance transaction on a blockchain with a real customer attached. This was not a proof-of-concept demo in a lab. It was a live transaction, a real counterparty, and a real asset - the kind of milestone that looks modest in hindsight and required enormous internal wrangling to actually happen.
"He led the team that made Barclays the first bank globally to execute a live trade finance transaction on a blockchain with a real customer."
- Industry record, 2016Then came 11:FS. Co-founded with David Brear in 2016, 11:FS became the UK's defining fintech consultancy - the firm that global banks called when they needed honest advice rather than reassurance. Simon ran the Ventures practice and co-hosted the Fintech Insider podcast, which became one of the most-listened fintech shows in the world. The firm's approach was simple and slightly impolite: tell banks what they needed to hear, not what they wanted.
How It Happened
45,000 People Read His Weekend Work
Fintech Brainfood started as a hobby. Simon had thoughts about fintech that could not fit in a tweet and nowhere obvious to put them. So he started a newsletter. He wrote it on weekends. He kept it separate from his employer. He never let it become a marketing asset.
That structural independence is the product. Readers know that when Simon writes something positive about a company, it is not because the company pays his mortgage. And when he writes something critical - which he does, regularly - there is no HR department reviewing his drafts. The subscriber base reads like a who's-who of global banking: executives at JPMorgan, VCs at Andreessen Horowitz, founders building the next generation of payments infrastructure.
The voice is distinctive. Simon writes like someone who has been in too many bad meetings and is still somehow enthusiastic about the problems. There are "Weekly Rant" sections. There are bullet points. There is a consistent refusal to dumb things down while also refusing to be inaccessible. The technical depth is real. The energy is relentless.
"Fintech Brainfood is my personal space to make sense of the world, started as a hobby and still written every weekend to bring an unbiased view on the market."
- Simon TaylorThe companion podcast - also called Fintech Brainfood - extends the newsletter's reach to audio. Simon regularly brings in guests from across the industry: founders, investors, operators, and the occasional regulator willing to say something interesting on record.
Payments on the Blockchain - For Real This Time
In 2025, Simon announced his latest move with characteristic directness: "Guess what, Fintech Nerds? I got a new job." The new job was Tempo.
Tempo is not a typical blockchain startup. It is a payments-focused Layer 1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, the two organizations that arguably understand global payments infrastructure better than anyone. The company raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation. Simon joined as GTM Lead.
Why Tempo Matters
Tempo's thesis is that stablecoins can do for money movement what TCP/IP did for data: make it programmable, instant, and cheap. In March 2026, Tempo launched its AI Payments Protocol (MPP). DoorDash, Visa, and Stripe are early adopters. Simon's job is to explain why the world needs this - and to the right people at the right time.
His position on crypto has always been more nuanced than the typical maximalism or dismissal. "Banks multiply money. Stablecoins move it. We need both." That framing - not a battle between TradFi and DeFi, but a recognition that different tools do different things - is exactly why Tempo made sense for him.
The newsletter continues. NerdCon continues. Simon is one of those operators who treats "writing about the industry" and "building inside the industry" not as alternative careers but as a single ongoing project. He runs both tracks simultaneously, and neither suffers for it.
1% Finished. A Decade Later, Still True.
The "Fintech is only 1% finished" thesis emerged from Simon's time at 11:FS and has been tested against a decade of market movement. The argument: fintech disruption had, by the mid-2010s, primarily reached a narrow demographic - young, urban, mobile-native consumers. The full scope of financial services - cross-border payments, SME banking, insurance, wealth management, embedded finance, B2B infrastructure - remained largely untouched.
A decade later, the State of Fintech 2025 report Simon published confirms the thesis is still directionally correct. Nubank has 100 million customers in Latin America. Klarna has 85 million. Revolut has 50 million. These are fintech hyperscalers - companies at a scale that was unimaginable in 2016. But infrastructure finance, cross-border B2B payments, and the global majority remain largely pre-disruption.
Simon's newer obsession: agentic payments. "The next wave of consumer fintech isn't an app - it's a personal agent." The thesis extends: AI agents will need to make autonomous financial decisions, which requires payment infrastructure that can be programmed, permissioned, and trusted by machines. Stablecoins and smart contracts are the obvious candidates. Which is precisely why he is at Tempo.
Comic-Con for Fintech. No Suits Required.
Most banking conferences are networking events dressed up as education. Simon knew this because he had spoken at too many of them. So he co-founded Fintech NerdCon: an operator-focused event explicitly designed as "Comic-Con for builders, bankers, and innovators."
The premise is simple. The people who build fintech infrastructure - the engineers, the product managers, the founders, the fraud specialists - deserved a conference designed for them, not for their CMOs. NerdCon 2026 is heading to San Diego. The speaker roster reflects the same breadth as Fintech Brainfood: practitioners who have done the things they talk about.
What Fintech NerdCon Is Not
It is not a sponsored panel parade. Not a vendor exhibition hall disguised as insight. Not a room full of people trying to sell you something. It is, by Simon's explicit design, the conference he always wanted to attend - and never found.
The Scorecard
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Built Fintech Brainfood to 45,000+ subscribers - the #1 weekly fintech newsletter globally, written independently every weekend since 2019.
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Led Barclays to become the first bank globally to execute a live trade finance transaction on a blockchain with a real customer attached.
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Co-founded 11:FS, the UK's leading fintech consultancy, advising major global banks, central banks, and regulators.
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Coined "Fintech is only 1% finished" - a thesis still cited across the industry eight years after its introduction.
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Co-founded Global Digital Finance (GDF), developing international standards for digital assets in collaboration with the OECD.
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Co-created the Fintech Insider podcast, one of the most-listened fintech podcasts globally.
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Consistently voted among the most influential people in banking, insurance, and fintech by peers and industry bodies.
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Co-founded Fintech NerdCon, reimagining the industry conference format as operator-focused, practitioner-led events.
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Joined Tempo - incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, $5B valuation - as GTM Lead to help bring stablecoin payments to scale.
Things He Has Actually Said
"Banks multiply money. Stablecoins move it. We need both."
"The next wave of consumer fintech isn't an app - it's a personal agent."
"We lost a generation of fintech growth."
"Fintech Brainfood is my personal space to make sense of the world, started as a hobby and still written every weekend to bring an unbiased view on the market."
"Guess what, Fintech Nerds? I got a new job. I'm joining Tempo, the payments-focused L1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm... And yes, I'll still be doing Brainfood, Nerdcon..."