It's the time of year when the lists appear. This week, we round up lists of top influencers in various FinTech sectors around the globe.

I spent a couple days in New York this week and noticed an energy for business I don't experience in other cities. In every restaurant, coffee house, and shared business space I spent time in, individuals and groups were meeting to discuss their next new idea, offer, and deal.

In a surprise move, the Indian government retired the country's current high-dollar bank notes and replaced them with new versions. ATMs ran dry as people went to banks to exchange their banned old notes for the brand-new ones.

This week's issue of The Economist mentions FinTech as a factor in two economic trends in financial services and their relationship to technology: falling revenues for investment banks and shifting power for the City of London.

Last week, I attended the 2016 edition of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Payments Symposium. As I listened to the presentations, it became clear to me once again how important internetworked technologies are to the future of the financial system in terms of individual empowerment and corporate control.

The leaders in FinTech and banking are featured as American Banker releases its annual list of FinTech companies to watch, and Burnmark releases an excellent and comprehensive report on challenger banks throughout the world. Take a look, too, at a future without cash in this week's links.

Banks are locked in a traditional structure of proprietary and legacy, and they strongly wish to keep it that way. The problem is more and more banking operations are increasingly done in marketplaces that level the playing field for new entrants, writes banking consultant Chris Skinner in "The banking bazaar and the bizarre banker."

I am sharing a report written by Leo Melamed, Chairman Emeritus of the CME Group, you can find the report by clicking here.

I am generally gung-ho on banks and their need to embrace FinTech partners and on the need for FinTech firms to build the systems that can help smaller banks compete. The record, yet rather paltry, $185 million fine levied on Wells Fargo for fraudulently opening accounts to meet sales targets gives some support to that thesis, even though it's another black-eye for the industry.