Fathom4sight Newsletter: Weekly FinTech news curated by Fathom4sight!
Monday April 22, 2024
Top FinTech News Headlines this Week
?? Canada's real-time payment system won't launch before 2026
??? Canadian government provides clarity on Open Banking framework in Budget 2024
?? The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) will oversee Open Banking in Canada, receiving $1M in funding to support its expanded mandate
?? The capital gains tax hikes announced in the budget fuel a widespread backlash from tech entrepreneurs and investors
Budget 2024
In response to the proposed capital gains measures in?Budget 2024, more than 750 Canadian technology leaders have already signed an?open letter?by the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) calling on Ottawa to claw back the changes.?| BetaKit
This morning, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland met with a group of Canadian technology industry leaders in Toronto to discuss the federal government’s recent?capital gains tax hikes, which have fuelled?widespread backlash?from tech entrepreneurs and investors.?| BetaKit
The Canadian government intends to introduce legislation that establishes the “foundational elements” of an Open Banking Framework this Spring, and has promised “interoperability with the coming American framework” overseen by the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).?| Open Banking Expo
The Canadian government has promised open banking legislation by the end of the year and confirmed that the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) will oversee the new system.?| Finextra
Payments
The launch of Canada's oft-delayed Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system will now not happen until at least 2026, with new tech partners IBM and CGI brought in to the process.?| Finextra
Amazon is working with Stripe to expand its Just Walk Out retail stores in Australia and Canada; Safaricom is working with Onafriq to support remittances sent via M-Pesa to Ethiopia; and more.?| American Banker
After achieving $2 million in revenue (and profitability) in its first year, the Toronto-based company is doubling down on the even larger India remittance corridor, which receives flows of over $100 billion annually. Anyone in Canada can access Pesa’s new India remittance service by signing up or downloading the app via the company’s website. Approval takes only a few minutes, owing to Pesa’s efficient compliance technology.?| FinTech Futures
Responding to the ever-growing need to move money seamlessly, Mastercard and VoPay announced a strategic partnership that will offer choice, simplicity and efficiency for near-real-time money movement in Canada and internationally for businesses and consumers.?| Finextra
The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) new identity verification service may improve accessibility for those working with tax professionals and applying for means-tested financial assistance, but may still be out of reach for some vulnerable Canadians.?| Investment Executive
Nuvei announces the launch of its new Invoice Financing services that have been integrated into several leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, including Sage and Acumatica. This new service enables merchants to access Nuvei's Invoice Financing solutions directly within their ERP systems to optimize cash flow and unlock working capital more efficiently.?| Newswire
Just weeks after reaching a landmark $30 billion settlement on interchange fees designed to provide relief to retail businesses, Mastercard appears to be planning to increase certain credit card fees beginning April 15. Mastercard plans to increase its Acquirer Brand Volume Fee – which applies to all credit, debit and prepaid card transactions and is also known as an assessment fee – from 0.13% to 0.14% beginning April 15.?| Payments Cards & Mobile
HSBC Australia and Westpac have signed on as the first banks to offer a new Mastercard app that enables virtual commercial cards to be added to digital wallets.?| Finextra
Financial Institutions
After about a decade of steady growth at its U.S. investment bank, Royal Bank of Canada is launching a cash-management business in its "second home market" in a bid to win more of its clients' spending.?| American Banker
Scotiabank announced that it is accepting grant submissions across its footprint for the Net-Zero Research Fund. Organizations developing innovative research and opportunities to decarbonize key sectors and support the shift to a low-carbon economy have until May 28, 2024, to submit a submission for funding.?| Newswire
CIBC has proudly been recognized as one of Canada's Greenest Employers for 2024, marking the third consecutive year the bank has received this award from MediaCorp Canada. This recognition underscores CIBC's commitment to environmental stewardship and its efforts to create a culture of sustainability within the bank and broader community.?| Newswire
Toronto-Dominion Bank is confronting shareholders at a moment when investors and executives alike are clamoring for clarity on potential penalties in a U.S. probe and the future of the firm’s leadership.?| BNN Bloomberg
"This recognition speaks to the consistency with which our more than 2,600 employees across Canada show up for each other," says Chris Fowler, President and CEO, CWB Financial Group. "With collaboration and creativity, our people have shaped a culture that creates incredible experiences and successful outcomes for themselves, our shareholders and our clients. I am honoured to work alongside a group of dedicated employees who continue to raise the bar in our workplace. Our people are the heartbeat of CWB."?| Newswire
Crypto & DeFi
Cryptoasset firms will soon have greater disclosure requirements. The Canadian government announced in the 2024 federal budget that it intends to implement the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), which the OECD agreed to in August 2022.?| Investment Executive
In 2022, Canadian crypto custodian Balance celebrated its fifth anniversary with $500M of assets under custody. Founded in June 2017, the Toronto-born FinTech—which recently moved its headquarters to Calgary—introduced its custody services in a closed pilot in August 2018. A public launch followed one year later. This month, Balance announced that it has earned SOC 2 Type 2 compliance as a digital asset custodian.?| Fintech.ca
This collaboration is set to develop innovative ETPs that leverage Core Chain's unique blockchain capabilities, introducing a first-of-its-kind Yield Bearing BTC ETP and a novel Core ETP. These ETPs aim to redefine Bitcoin's utility as an investment opportunity within the digital asset ecosystem, granting BTC native yield through non-custodial BTC staking.?| Newswire
The Canadian FinTech Summit took place in Toronto this week and the highlight of the conference was the Pitch Battle Competition. Presented by Canadian VC firm Framework, the Canadian Fintech Summit is an annual gathering of fintechs, investors, enterprises, financial institutions and service providers.?| Fintech.ca
领英推荐
Wealth Management
CapIntel has announced in a statement that it has extended its partnership with IG Wealth Management for an additional five years as part of a greater goal to enhance financial advisory services across Canada. This renewal builds on a collaboration that began in 2021, signifying a mutual commitment to enhance the client and advisor experience in financial planning.?| Wealth Professional
This collaboration makes Conquest's AI-powered financial planning platform available to nearly 1,400 independent advisors across the Desjardins Financial Security Independent Network (DFSIN), Desjardins Financial Security Investments (DFSI), and SFL Wealth Management distribution networks throughout Canada.?| Wealth Professional
This desktop version provides users the ability to have customizable multi-screens and rearrange widgets, allowing traders to analyze trends, decipher market data and make informed trades easier and more efficiently.?| Finextra
Life Design Analysis (LDA), a cloud-based sales and productivity software provider for insurance carriers, distributors and advisors, today announced a partnership with IG Wealth Management (IG) to deliver strategic tools to enhance IG advisors' abilities to facilitate informed risk management decisions for their clients' insurance and financial planning needs.?| Newswire
These latest recognitions follow IGM having been recognized by Mediacorp as one of Canada's Top 100 Employers for 2024 last November. Mediacorp compiles rankings in a number of special-interest and regional competitions, recognizing companies that provide their employees with an exceptional workplace.?| Newswire
A new Leger survey conducted for Wealthsimple reveals how Canadians are seeking retirement that is less traditional and reflects evolving factors such as the cost of living, people’s work lives, and the happy fact that we are living longer.?| Wealth Professional
Insurance
Aligned with BOXX's vision to make the world a digitally safer place, Cyberboxx Business 5.0 addresses the growing complexity of cyber insurance policies with a simpler and complete base form, making brokers' lives easier. The policy wordings are designed to make cyber insurance more accessible to the many businesses that are vulnerable to cyber risks.?| Newswire
Charged for Change is an initiative to bring chargers to municipalities that currently lack EV infrastructure. Through the $3M partnership over three years, municipalities can apply for funding to receive Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations. The program delivered Level 2 charging stations to seven Ontario municipalities in its inaugural year of 2023. The program opened to submissions from across Canada this year.?| Newswire
Founded in 2022, Summit calls itself a national insurance brokerage and risk management firm with technology-driven solutions. It offers various types of insurance across many different businesses, including construction, nonprofits, and even other FinTech businesses. The all-equity seed round was led by New York-based venture capital (VC) firm IA Capital Group with a follow-on investment from Calgary-based Harvest Ventures.?| BetaKit
Capital Markets
Landerz raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding as it seeks to expand its platform designed to simplify and shorten the process for complex commercial and multiresidential land transactions.?| RENXHomes
Blossom, a B.C. financial technology firm, is using FrontFundr to raise capital from Canadians—and is seeing strong early success. Blossom claims to be growing by more than 10,000 users per month, has already raised more than $2 million previously from investors such as LOI Venture and Pareto Holdings. Now, it’s set to raise nearly as much—or more—through crowdfunding.?| Fintech.ca
Vistara Growth, a provider of flexible growth capital to software and technology-enabled services companies, has invested US$18M in Vancouver-based Clariti Cloud Inc. (“Clariti”), the premier SaaS provider for permitting and licensing solutions to state, provincial and local governments in the U.S. and Canada.?| Vistara Growth?
FI Tech & Software
The funding announced includes over $11.5 million for four companies through PacifiCan's Business Scale-Up and Productivity program and over $2.4 million for three companies through its Jobs and Growth Fund.?| Newswire
"With electronic payments becoming faster and more frequent, our ability to help clients protect their organization from financial crime is a key element of our adaptive banking strategy," said Andy Schmidt, Vice-President & Global Industry Lead for Banking at CGI. "By combining scalability, granularity, and AI, CGI's Hotscan360 solution enables clients to quickly scan structured and unstructured message formats at high speeds, and with extremely low false positive rates."?| Newswire
Lending
Pineapple Financial with an integrated network of partner brokerages and agents across Canada, today announced the launch of Doc Genius, an intuitive, end-to-end document management system that seamlessly connects the highly-secured client portal to the deal conditions in the PineappleONE mortgage application, thereby streamlining the entire process.?| Newswire
AI
Consumer credit bureau Equifax said artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasing role in its operations. In announcing the company’s quarterly earnings Thursday (April 18), management noted that 70% of the new models and scores Equifax built last year were made using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), with the goal of bringing that number to 80% this year.?| PYMNTS
This appointment comes on the heels of the company's $27 million seed funding to leverage the power of generative AI to automate and accelerate the processes of onboarding, managing, and paying international team members. The company's novel AI agent, Alberni, can perform complex HR tasks such as automating the process of generating global employment agreements or on-boarding new employees — all within minutes by leveraging conversational AI.?| Newswire
The additional capital will help TrojAI build on its success, grow, and continue to enable enterprises to secure AI models and applications. It will support product development, sales, and marketing efforts. To meet growing global demand, TrojAI will also expand its operations to the U.S. with a new office in Boston, Massachusetts.?| Newswire
Challenger Banks
KOHO Financial is now an official partner of the NBA, presenting the 2024 NBA Playoffs in Canada. The collaboration marks the league’s first partnership with the Canadian FinTech.?| Fintech.ca