Klarna and Block slam ‘outdated’ UK BNPL regulation proposals
Happy Friday fellow FinTech Fanatic,
Yesterday we celebrated King’s Day here in the Netherlands and its capital Amsterdam. King’s Day is a national holiday and celebrates King Willem-Alexander's birthday with lots of music, dancing, flea markets and fun fairs.
As the Dutch love a good party every now and then, we enjoyed some sunshine and a couple of drinks as well.
All aboard!
So, for that reason I’ll keep it short today and point you to the FinTech news listed below??
Have a nice day!
Google pushes forward in Web3 with Cloud Startup Program. Google Cloud announced that it’s rolling out benefits to allow Web3 startups to apply for its Startups Cloud Program. The benefits include grants from foundation partners, which include Aptos, Celo, Solana Foundation, HBAR Foundation and Near.
INSIGHTS
The speed and magnitude of FinTech’s impact on the traditional wealth management
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The Integrated solutions for startups and SMEs, with more than 45k merchants, achieving more than 1 million transactions per day worth $11 million.
FINTECH NEWS?
Fintech giants Klarna and Block slam ‘outdated’ UK buy now, pay later regulation proposals. The U.K.’s plan to regulate the buy now, pay later industry is “outdated” and will lead to worse consumer outcomes, executives at two of the industry’s giants said, vowing to fight tooth and nail to relax the proposed rules.
Stripe upgrades revenue and finance automation suite. By coordinating billing, tax, reporting, and data services in one modern stack, Stripe’s revenue and finance automation suite eliminates the inefficiencies of legacy finance tools and supports revenue growth
Ansa aims to help merchants create virtual wallets for customers. Founded by former Adyen product manager Sophia Goldberg and ex-Affirm software engineer JT Cho, Ansa is building a “wallet-as-a-service,” or embedded customer balances to let any merchant launch a branded flexible payment instrument.
FinTech Automation to provide payments technology on FedNow Service platform. FinTech Automation (“FTA”) announced that it has signed an agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to be a provider of enabling financial technology for instant payment services on the FedNow Service, which will launch in phases starting in July 2023.
Amazon Pay rolls out Citi Flex Pay to give credit card users instalment option. The new payment option brings Citi's Flex Pay BNPL option to a digital wallet for the first time. Eligible Citi credit card members can select three to 48 month payment plans for purchases of $50 or more.
Splitit looks to deliver ‘seamless card-attached’ instalment experience. Splitit has evolved its white label offering with the launch of a new ‘super-fast white-label payment experience’, SplititExpress.?
GPS rebrands as “Thredd” to reflect its unique position as the go to payments partner of innovators worldwide. Thredd has created a unique niche as a hands-on, modern processor providing reliable digital payment processing capabilities, including real-time, bespoke card management tools, reporting, and world-class fraud prevention technology.
领英推荐
Australia’s di?eiro app selects Envestnet | Yodlee to supply financial data and analytics so mortgage brokers can understand a borrower’s full financial position seamlessly via the consumer app. Read more
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
Carbon launches new transfer feature to boost Buy-Now-Pay-Later service. The new feature allows customers to make direct transfers to merchants, providing them with an easier and more seamless experience to buy-now-and-pay-later for the things they love.
BLOCKCHAIN
Hong Kong’s ZA Bank offers crypto conversions amid city's push into the industry. The bank will offer token-to-fiat currency conversions over licensed exchanges and will act as a settlement bank for clients to allow withdrawals in Hong Kong, Chinese mainland and U.S. currencies after they deposit crypto tokens with exchanges.
M&As
ZestMoney pivots to SaaS as PhonePe eyes its tech, talent. PhonePe is in talks to acquire ZestMoney’s tech stack, hire 150 employees, and forego an $18 million loan to expedite its own lending business launch as ZestMoney pivots to a credit aggregator tech white-label solution provider.
Korean fintech Kakao Pay to acquire majority stake in US brokerage firm Siebert. This is just the first step as Kakao Pay plans to acquire an additional 31.1% stake in Siebert depending on shareholder and regulatory approval. If it goes through, Kakao Pay would become the largest shareholder of Siebert, owning a 51% stake in total.
PARTNERSHIPS?
PPRO signs a strategic partnership with NPCI International unlocking simplified access to India′s UPI Payment System for cross-border transactions. This partnership removes complexity and boosts efficiency for international PSPs and merchants wanting to sell cross-border into India at scale
VigiPay of Nigeria selects ThetaRay for AML monitoring. Through the agreement, ThetaRay will provide VigiPay the SONAR AML solution, a cloud-based transaction monitoring and screening platform that can detect the earliest signs of sophisticated money laundering activity.
Mastercard and Egabi collaborate to expand access to digital lending solutions across Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa. Mastercard will activate egabi’s digital-lending capabilities and assets to provide an end-to-end lending proposition to financial institutions and fintech companies.
Vacuumlabs expands its partnership with Thought Machine by offering an enhanced suite of services to complement their core banking technology to help clients to benefit from Thought Machine’s security, scalability, and flexibility.
ConnexPay launches push-to-card technology with Payouts Network. Through this partnership, ConnexPay has launched new functionality that will enable payouts via Push-to-Card modalities. Read more
Sardine AI and Fortress Trusts join forces. The partnership will bring together the unique strengths of each company to provide safer, faster, and compliant ePayments for their clients.?
Temenos integrates with two DLT-based CBDC tech stacks. Temenos has moved to prove its readiness to help banks, ensuring integration of its platform with multiple DLT-based technology stacks, successfully executing end-to-end retail CBDC use cases for commercial bank touch points.
DONEDEAL
Ex-Palantir execs raise €2.5m to protect startups from cyberattacks. Bastion Cyber, a startup founded by Arnaud Fournier, Arnaud Drizard, Sébastien Duc and Robin Costé, offers cybersecurity for small and medium-sized businesses. The cash will be used to develop its platform and hire a commercial team to help scale the company’s partnership distribution.
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Cheers,
Marcel van Oost
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