Between digital native customers demanding instant gratification and the ever increasing amount of regulation, financial institutions are between a rock and a hard place. The era of the fintech started after the 2008 financial crisis, challenging the status quo. More than a decade later banks haven’t gone anywhere, yet fintech is more relevant than ever. What happened with all the fintech hopes and dreams? In this podcast Pål Krogdahl & Ville Sointu pick one topic in every episode and try to…
We have somehow survived long enough to make it to Season 14, and to kick things off, Ville is putting his co-host Pål in the hot seat. Pål actually went and published a brand new book, Rip Out the Core, proving that at least one half of this podcast is capable of being productive. We start the episode with a vintage Pål joke about minting meme coins. We will not spoil the punchline here, but…
Your favorite fintech nerd hosts Pål Krogdahl and Ville Sointu are joined by Janne Salminen from Helsinki Fintech Farm to close out the season before heading off to their summer holidays. We skipped the standard news roundup this time to reflect on the season, make some bold predictions, and let Pål shamelessly plug his upcoming book. Here’s what the guys daydreamed about in our season finale: 🤖…
We finally did it. We recorded an episode about legacy and somehow ended up discussing drones, artillery, aviation safety culture, and why bankers apparently don’t need pockets in their suits. In this episode of Fintech Daydreaming, we’re joined by Erik Åkesson to unpack one of the most overused and misunderstood words in banking: legacy. Is it the root of all evil? Or is it actually the thing…
We are out of the studio, trying our best to look respectable, and recording live in front of a real, breathing audience at the Nordic Fintech Summit right here in Helsinki! If you hear cheering, it’s probably for the free coffee, but we’ll pretend it’s for us. In this special live-stage episode, Pål and Ville manage not to trip over the stage wires while unpacking a massive lineup of regional…
In this episode of Fintech Daydreaming, Ville and Pål are joined by Riikka Laine-Tolonen, CEO of S-Pankki: a bank that started from grocery shopping and somehow ended up managing billions. Riikka walks us through the origin story of S-Pankki - born from a retail cooperative, supercharged by the famous S-bonus, and launched just in time for the 2008 financial crisis (great timing, obviously). Fast…
Welcome back to another monthly Nordic Fintech Highlights episode of Fintech Daydreaming! In this one, your hosts start off by complaining about what a slow news month it was—only to be immediately corrected by Janne, who points out that April was actually buzzing with funding rounds. Here’s what we covered: The Agentic Economy: Pål highlights SolvaPay, a Swedish fintech that just secured 2.5…
In this episode of Fintech Daydreaming, Ville and Pål are joined by Baard Slaattelid from Vipps MobilePay - a man who casually drops phrases like “closed-loop wallet,” “payment potato,” and “we accidentally enabled cross-border in five minutes” like it’s just another Tuesday in payments. We start where all great fintech podcasts begin: with bad jokes (courtesy of AI, no less), and a host who may…
In this episode of Fintech Daydreaming, Ville, Pål, and Janne are back with another round of Nordic Fintech Highlights—recorded somewhere between back-to-back meetings, holiday travel plans, and at least one log cabin in the Finnish wilderness (buffering included). From there, we dive into what actually happened in Nordic fintech last month: Modest funding rounds, ongoing consolidation, and the…
In this episode, Pål and Ville sit down with Markus Niemi-Nikkola, Chief Procurement Officer at Savings Bank and quickly realise that procurement might be one of the most misunderstood (and critical) functions in banking. What starts as a conversation about sourcing and vendor management turns into a deeper look at how banks actually get things done behind the scenes: from navigating legacy…
Another month, another set of headlines quietly orbiting the same big question: Where does AI actually change the game and where does it just sit on top of old problems? In this Nordic Fintech Highlights episode, Ville, Pål and Janne connect three very different stories through a familiar thread: automation is moving fast, but reality is still catching up. On the agenda: Janne: Lunar x…
