Future of FinTech | Edition #22 – June 2022
We’re upholding our weekly tradition of keeping your cups abubble with the latest FinTech deets as we bring you the newest edition of the Future of FinTech Newsletter! If you're new and curious, read on to find out what happened in FinTech across six dynamic themes and join other FinTech nerds in receiving some fresh Weekly FinTech Brew served right to your inbox every Tuesday!???
What’s Brewing??Apple entered the BNPL space with its new?Apple Pay Later?feature, allowing users to split any Apple Pay purchase into four equal installments over six weeks with zero interest and no fees. The move has elicited quite the mixed responses within the few hours of its release: a game-changer or a bite into increasing debt??
Additionally, we bring you the week’s?Top 10 FinTech News Stories?as an accompaniment to your zesty FinTech cuppa:
Back to business then ??
Edition #22?comes with?numerous power-packed partnerships across all segments as ecosystem participants gear up to make more seamless financial experiences.?
Here’s the TL;DR:
For the longer read, let's get going –
The?Open Finance?landscape witnessed a lot of players teaming up last week as Open Banking rapidly makes its way into the mainstream.
MENA region’s?Tarabut Gateway?entered four new key banking partnerships as part of its expansion in Saudi Arabia. The Open Banking platform was selected by?Riyad Bank,?Saudi British Bank (SABB),?Alinma Bank, and?Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF)?as a partner to continue supporting the sector’s growth in the Kingdom.?TrueLayer?and?Thunes?teamed up to facilitate clients in the UK and different parts of the European region in improving their payment experience.?Yolt?also made the headlines for its collaboration with SME lending platform?October?to demonstrate how Open Banking can play a vital role in providing greater financial inclusion for SMEs while making the process much easier when applying for a loan. Furthermore,?Sherpa CRM?joined forces with?Nordigen?to enable the former’s clients to connect their bank accounts directly to the management tool and stay on top of all their finances in one place.
Not only that, but?Plaid?also added online payment services provider?Mollie?to its payment partner ecosystem to provide SME merchants across the UK and Europe with tools to grow their businesses to match the growing e-commerce market demand. Similarly,?Salt Edge?and US-based PFM app?Banktivity?partnered to enable the latter’s customers in the UK and EU to instantly access 2,500+ Open Banking and PSD2 channels, thus helping to fix the pain point of tedious manual financial data entry.?OpenPayd?and?Yapily?also united to combine their respective payments and open banking expertise to provide a unified service offering in instant payments for businesses across the UK and Europe, all through a single API.
In other news,?Financial Data Exchange?announced its Spring release of FDX API 5.1. The updated version merges the main Core, Tax, and Money Movement introductions into one document for ease of use and improved formatting.
The?Digital Finance?sector seemed to be bustling with several activities the past week as firms looked to make the movement of money more reliable and secure.
On the partnerships front,?Nav Technologies Inc.?announced a partnership with?Marcus by Goldman Sachs?to offer small business owners financially smart lines of credit with fixed rates, no origination or maintenance fees, and a fully digital experience.?Monzo?integrated with global FinTech firm?Wise?to give clients a simple, affordable way to send funds overseas using the “real” exchange rate with “no hidden fees.”?CreditRich, a Black woman-owned neobank offering intelligent bill pay for credit optimization, and?Visa?announced the CreditRich Visa debit and credit card intending to deliver a simple, high-reward neobanking experience to Millennials, Gen Z, the Black community, and the underbanked.?Revolut?collaborated with e-grocery app?Bringo?to offer Revolut users in the Romanian market to benefit from 10% cashback if they shop from the Bringo app and pay with the Revolut card or app.
Marqeta?also joined?Mastercard’s?Network Enablement Partner program to empower its Asia-Pacific customers to quickly scale across multiple geographies, accelerate product innovation, and optimize performance and efficiency. While German neobank?N26?partnered with?Stripe?to power its payments technology,?M-Pesa?teamed up with?Visa?for virtual card payments service in Africa. Moreover, Vietnam’s?Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MSB)?selected?Temenos?to modernize its core banking system to transform it into an agile, future-ready bank.?Bexs Pay?also sealed a partnership with?Nubank?to provide Brazilians with easier access to international products and services.
As for the various funding rounds, Saudi Arabia’s?HyperPay?raised $36.8M in a new investment round led by Mastercard to support the payment services provider’s regional expansion to Egypt, Qatar, and Oman. Neobank?Kroo?also secured $32.5M in a Series B funding to further its growth and development, focusing on recruitment, expansion and contributing to social causes.?
Speaking of expansion, Singapore’s MSME-focused?Green Link Digital Bank?made its debut with the aim of helping underserved businesses with accessible commercial banking, looking into expanding its service coverage to the digital economy. The Banese Group similarly introduced a new digital bank?Desty?to the Brazilian market with support from?Technisys?to monitor market changes and help meet consumer needs to support financial inclusion in the country. China’s?Ant Group?also made the headlines for launching a digital wholesale bank in Singapore, dubbed?ANEXT?Bank, as part of a strategic effort to ensure the banking sector remains progressive, globally competitive, and vibrant.
Multiple industry players came together to form necessary integrations and affiliations in the?Embedded Finance?sphere as the demand for multiple BNPL options continues to rise.
BNPL platform?Optty’s?partnership with payments provider?Payoneer?answers just the same. Payoneer is the latest to be added to Optty’s partnership list, with the company’s Payment Platform acting as an integration tool for the BNPL offering, providing easy access to amending the customer’s shopping experience. B2B BNPL?Tranch,?in a similar move, picked technology provider?Yobota?to provide its core banking infrastructure as Tranch develops its flexible payments service.?Stripe?also made the bulletin for offering customers BNPL installment plans thanks to an integration with?Affirm's?adaptive checkout product. Likewise,?Federal Bank?extended its existing partnership with?Pine Labs?to enable Federal Bank credit card holders to avail the benefits of BNPL at any merchant store pan India, powered by Pine Labs PoS terminals.?
领英推荐
What’s more –?Marqeta?announced a new partnership with?Klarna,?where Klarna will use it to issue the Klarna Card to enable its US customers to pay anywhere using Klarna’s “Pay in 4” solution both online and in-store. Swiss web 3 payment startup?DePay?also integrated its web 3 P2P solution into commerce platform?Shopify?to allow buyers to send direct payments to store owner wallets with tens of thousands of accepted tokens on supported blockchains.
Klarna?was also in the news announcing it would report its credit data to lenders, reporting consumer purchases paid on time, late payments, and unpaid purchases for their “pay in 30 days” and “pay in three” orders. As for the other activities, Kabbage co-founders launched?Keep Financial, a business model that helps companies attract and retain top talent by regularly distributing a cash bonus to employees as long as they stay on board with the firm for a pre-determined period. FinTech unicorn?slice?secured $50M as part of its Series C funding round to support its new UPI product expansion. SaaS construction procurement platform?Constrafor?also grabbed $106M in equity and credit seed funding to finance construction subcontractors.?
An assorted mix of affairs made for the eventful buzz in?DeFi?as new solutions pave their way into the expanding industry.?
DeFi crypto wallet?Kirobo?introduced its new inheritance solution, allowing users to generate and execute an automated last will without the need for lawyers, government authorities, or any other centralized entity. US-based cryptocurrency exchange?Kraken?launched a staking feature through its mobile Pro app to enable users to stake and unstake while at the same time managing and tracking their rewards through the application. Lithuanian FinTech company?Kudona, a subsidiary of the German company rubarb GmbH, grabbed headlines for its plans to recall a conventional savings book that currently yields significantly higher interest rates. The target groups are private individuals and companies, which are particularly affected by negative interest rates. The application will be easy to use and focuses strongly on the security of customer funds.
That’s not all – Luxembourg-based?Bitstamp?introduced its Bitstamp Earn product to American investors, where investors fund their Bistamp accounts and then collect staking rewards. For its part, Bitstamp takes a fee on the yield customers earn. Blockchain oracle platform?Chainlink?announced the launch of its price feeds on the?Solana?blockchain. The integration allows DeFi developers to use the feeds within their dApps. Solana-based projects have committed to using the price feeds for their products. Yield aggregators Francium and Tulip and lending protocol Apricot Finance are among those that will use them. Lewis Capaldi’s upcoming performance on an exclusive DeFi-funded show this summer initiated by scalable and boutique ticketing solution?XTIXS?in partnership with?GET Protocol?also made for a key headline in the segment.?
Several platforms were seen unifying their offerings under one roof to streamline access to information in the?Platform Finance?vertical.?
UAE FinTech startup?Pemo?launched its all-in-one spend management platform to offer fast, transparent, and simplified invoice payment and expense management solutions and smart corporate cards for SMEs in the MENA region. Commercial property finance brokerage?Stamford Capital?introduced a FinTech marketplace for commercial real estate agents, providing insights on the lending market comprising banks, non-banks, and private lenders. Toronto-based FinTech startup?Wealthsimple?similarly launched its new, rebranded app that ensures its users will be able to access the startups’ core services, from stock and crypto trading to spending, through a single interface. Singapore also officially launched a centralized platform,?Singapore Trade Data Exchange, that streamlines information flows across a fragmented global supply chain, providing "trusted, secure, and inclusive" access.
On the other hand, Indian supply chain finance platform?KredX?and?Tradewind Finance?made the news for working together to help provide financing for international business, exports, and imports. Indonesia’s technology group?PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia?also hit the headlines for injecting fresh capital of $58.6M into its subsidiaries Velox SEA and GoPay.
Numerous brands were observed to take steps for their commitment to managing their environmental impact in the?Green Finance?space.
Sustainability-as-a-Service solution provider?ecolytiq?closed its investment round, raising $14.5M to expand its solution, which is currently available in Europe, Canada, and the US, serving ecolytiq’s core mission to help banks all over the globe to empower their customers with much-needed transparency on individual environmental impact.?Rimac Group?raised $536M, which will help the Croatian startup expand beyond its electric hypercar roots and grow into a global EV components supplier — and eventually a publicly-traded company.?Germany?also raised $4.3B in green bond proceeds to fund green expenditures and investments as part of its sustainability strategy.
Furthermore,?BlackRock?joined hands with sustainability analytics and data science platform?Clarity AI, integrating the latter’s capabilities into its own Aladdin operating system to support enterprise reporting for the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) framework.?Accenture,?Microsoft, and their digital, cloud, and advisory services and solutions joint venture?Avanade?announced the launch of a new partnership to help organizations transform operations, products, services, and value chains to accelerate the net-zero transition, with plans to expand focus in the future to tackle other ESG issues.?Bloomberg?also launched new indices, including EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks, expanding the firm’s fixed-income and equity index offerings. Even?Nasdaq?made the news for acquiring ESG data collection, analytics, and reporting software provider?Metrio?to bolster its IR & ESG services portfolio.
When it comes to the various regulatory events, the French regulator,?The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF),?called for the regulation of providers of ESG data, ratings, and related services in response to an ongoing public consultation by the European Commission into the functioning of the ESG rating market, and into the consideration of ESG factors in credit ratings. EU markets regulator,?the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), similarly announced the release of a new supervisory briefing to align the supervision of investment funds with sustainability features. However, all wasn’t sunshine and rainbows in the green space, as German prosecutors raided asset manager?DWS?and its majority owner?Deutsche Bank?over allegations of misleading investors about "green" investments. Following the same, DWS’ CEO, Asoka Woehrmann, resigned from his position, with Stefan Hoops joining in as his replacement.?
Some other happenings in the FinTech universe ??
Some more notable headlines from beyond the six dynamic themes to keep you up-to-date on the FinTech bustle–
And that's a wrap ??
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Crypto Cuppa, and we'll be back with more next week!?
If you're hungry for more FinTech insights, check out some of our other work at?WhiteSight .?
Our latest publications include exploring how?The Future of Financial Services Will Run on Open Rails ?and?Unearthing The Bustle In Green Finance: Earth Day 2022 .
If you're someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog?Fintersections , where our team members analyze the convergence of FinTech with the world.
FinTech research is in the WhiteSight DNA, so if you'd like to get in touch with our strategic intelligence and research content services, reach out to us at[email protected] .
Software engineer
2 年Excellent, keep it going, very interesting and relevant posts....