Monzo's new round of cash at almost 40% discount, ANNA Money closed a $21 million funding round, and Revolut has been granted a license down under

At the beginning of the quarantine, we made the plan to organize The Future Of Banking event because of the current COVID-19 crisis. Due to the crisis, we had to postpone our physical event in Sydney, The Future of Banking: Live. Also, because everybody was sitting at home, we wanted to bring value to the FinTech/digital banking community by organizing this online multi-day event where people can log in from all over the world.

The organization of such an event costs time, effort, and money. This is the reason why we charged money, at first, for tickets. However, because we found some great sponsors, we are able to host the event for free! We are extremely happy that we can do this because this follows up the idea of bringing value to as many FinTech enthusiasts as possible from all over the world.

So, from now on we name our sponsors: Superheroes.

We want to thank all of our Superheroes for making it possible to bring this great online event and bring value to the FinTech/digital banking community! 

So, just to reiterate: the event will be free. Be sure to visit our site on Tuesday, May 26th, 2020 for our Americas regional day. 

Also, be sure to follow our channels for the official launch of the finalized schedule. 

If you need anything at all or have any questions regarding the event be sure to contact us.

I look forward to hearing from you! Sign up now in the following link.

 Finally, join me as we explore Chile’s FinTech industry for the latest article of my Latin America landscape FinTech series.

Monzo is raising a new round of cash at almost 40% discount, ANNA Money closed a $21 million round of investment, and Revolut has been granted a license to market in Australia. 

British digital bank Monzo Bank is raising a new round of cash from investors at an almost 40 percent discount to its previous fundraising, highlighting the pressure the coronavirus crisis is putting on private tech company valuations. The bank is close to agreeing on a deal that will value it at around ￡1.25bn, compared with the more than ￡2bn valuation secured at its most recent funding round last June, according to several people familiar with the negotiations. Also, Monzo Bank announced it has moved its Faster Payments connection in-house. The digital banking group revealed that the decision to shift in-house was due to the problems making and receiving bank transfers last May. Furthermore, Monzohas appointed the former head of fraud at JP Morgan Chase, David Laramy, as its new vice president and head of global financial crime. The news, first reported in Fintech Futures, comes just a week after the challenger bank appointed former AMEX exec Sujata Bhatia as its new COO.

 Digital bank Starling Bank and Funding Circle UK, a marketplace lending platform serving SMEs, have formed a strategic partnership to provide loans to small businesses under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). According to a note from Starling, the bank will lend via Funding Circle alongside institutional investors to provide access to credit to UK SMEs.

Read FT Partners FinTech Industry Research report, an interesting deep dive into the N26'S 100M Series D add-on funding round.

 Former employee of Sberbank Anton Nikonorov plans to launch a neobank for the self-employed in Europe. The project is called Intruder. According to Nikonorov, the target audience is the Z generation, especially streamers, influencers, and bloggers. The bank will have a mobile app, users can open accounts, and get cards remotely, as well as automate commerce and receipt of payments on social media.

 Say hello to the Bitwala Bitcoin interest account! The best bits: 1) Weekly payouts every Monday 2) No lockup, you can add & withdraw anytime 3) Fast Liquidity: withdraw and convert to Euro within minutes 4) Minimum investment of €10 in BTC 5) Only network fees apply - no additional fees for investing or withdrawals. The interest account is made possible through a partnership with Celsius.

ANNA Money, a mobile-first banking, tax accounting and financial service assistant aimed at small and medium businesses and freelancers, has closed a $21 million (￡17.5 million) round of investment from a single investor, the ABHH Group, the sometimes controversial owner of Alfa Bank in Russia, the Amsterdam Trade Bank in the Netherlands and other businesses.

ANNA Money has collaborated with Payoneer. The partnership aims to facilitate international payments for ANNA’s customers including small businesses and freelancers and allow them to receive payments in USD or EUR directly into their account. “Joining forces with Payoneer is a truly significant addition to ANNA’s services. Business is global and many of our customers work internationally. We can now enable them to reach across country borders for the first time."

An ASIC spokesman confirmed that Revolut had been granted a license to market non-cash payment products to retail and wholesale clients in Australia. The license does not permit the company to market other financial services such as share trading that are currently offered in the UK. Revolut’s core offering in Australia is a digital money account that allows customers to transfer cash globally at market-leading exchange rates.

Revolut has signed up 1m Irish customers—accounting for roughly 25 percent of the adult population on the Emerald Isle. According to Ireland’s Central Statistics Office, its population was 4.9m in April 2019 meaning 1 in 4 Irish adults are Revolut customers. In February 2020 Revolutannounced that it would be shifting regulatory responsibility for its European payments network to Ireland and Lithuania ahead of the potential loss of passporting rights because of Brexit.

Business banking platform Penta’s 20,000 clients have mostly been small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) but is now providing its product as well as services to solo self-employed individuals. “By opening up to the so-called liberal professions and sole traders, we have realized the great demand for good digital solutions within those segments,” Penta CEO Marko Wenthin said. 

Fiskl: Intelligent Financial Manager for Small Businesses, a UK-based software as a service company, joined hands with Salt Edge, a leader in offering open banking solutions, to deliver a seamless financial control experience to millions of small businesses globally. Open banking genuinely transforms the way businesses manage their money. Fiskl is a software technology company that created an intelligent financial manager that helps micro-businesses manage their day to day business finances without the help of an in-house accountant. 

Having already secured ￡2 million in seed money, Lanistar is a start-up aimed at creating a new debit card to help customers streamline their money via new technology and open banking. Gurhan Kiziloz is the 29-year-old British entrepreneur promising “a new hassle-free bank” that is set to challenge the supremacy of the big banking institutions when he launches Lanistar later this year.

N26 has lost 10% of its 90-person New York-based workforce, marking the first instance of job losses at the German challenger bank due to operational reasons. The challenger has confirmed the job losses, highlights the strain coronavirus is putting on its operations. However, N26 has not made any further redundancies among its 1,500-person strong global workforce.

Stash uses Twitter #StashStockPartyy and community to get the word out about its Stock Parties. The parties are similar to Stash’s Stock-Back rewards program, which rewards Stash customers with cashback in the form of fractional shares on their everyday spending. More than $10 million in Stock-Back rewards have been given out to-date, up from $5 million in November 2019. There appears to be a halo effect around earning or gifting fractional shares of stock.

Challenger bank Oxygen is rolling out a new platform for financial services tailored to freelancers and independent contractors, the company said in a statement on Thursday (May 14). Hussein Ahmed, founder, and CEO of Oxygen, said the gig economy in the U.S. is at an all-time high and growing. “Unfortunately, some traditional institutions aren’t adapting. That’s leaving the newest generation of workers and those who are self-employed short on options,” he said.

A new partnership with Cross River Bank will allow Seattle-based Remitly's customers to receive disbursements in near-real-time over international debit card networks, the digital remittance company said. Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River Bank, which recently expanded its push-to-card transaction capabilities internationally, will serve as the settlement bank for Remitly's clients.

Last week, Nubank announced the launch of its “Dividir Valor” perk. Through it, the app automatically estimates how much everyone must pitch for a shared charge. It then sends all parties involved a notification via email or through the app itself if they already have a Nubank account. According to a blog post, at the moment it is only available for some users. But it will eventually be released to all.

Revolut announced that it has appointed James S. - previously the chief operating officer (COO) of insurtech Singapore Life - as its Singapore chief executive officer to lead the growth of its Asia business. The firm also hired former Credit Suisse managing director Rayson Tan as its new chief compliance officer, chief risk officer and head of legal in Singapore.

India-based digital bank RazorPay announced on May 11, 2020 that it’s planning to recruit more staff members for key positions across its engineering and product design teams. As previously reported, the banking challenger had revealed that there had been a significant increase in the number of digital transactions in the country, following the COVID-19 outbreak. There has also been an increase in the number of companies or businesses that are either considering or have already adopted digital payments methods instead of dealing in cash.

The State Bank of Pakistan has permitted NayaPay (Pvt.) Limited, an upcoming E-money Institution (EMI), to commence operations on a limited scale. It is the second company to be provided such permission. The pilot stage is a precursor to the full launch of the services and features of the EMI to the general public. Over the course of the pilot, NayaPay will sign up users under the supervision of the SBP and demonstrate its go-to-market readiness to qualify for commercial approval.

The era of digital banking is well underway in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and is set to accelerate in the next five years, with 63% of customers willing to switch to neobanks and challenger banks between now and 2025. That’s according to a joint report released today by IDC and Backbase, which also found that APAC is expected to see an explosion in new financial institutions in the same time period as new banking licenses are issued and markets become increasingly liberalized. The research was made through review of 55 banks, 20 challenger banks and 40 fintech disrupters in markets throughout APAC.

An ASIC spokesman confirmed that Revolut had been granted a license to market non-cash payment products to retail and wholesale clients in Australia. The licence does not permit the company to market other financial services such as share trading that are currently offered in the UK. Revolut’s core offering in Australia is a digital money account that allows customers to transfer cash globally at market-leading exchange rates.

The COVID-19 crisis has significantly reduced the revenue generated by some of the largest banks in Australia. The pandemic may present opportunities to banking challengers such as 86 400 to gain market share. As the nation’s Big Four banks try to deal with a dramatic increase in bad loans and debts, digital bank 86 400 is planning to strategically expand its operations. The challenger bank has issued around $20 million worth of home loans, which have been offered since December 2019.

Volt Bank has decided to reduce its $50 million capital raising aimed at international investors, push back the launch of its lending products, and delay its public listing plans because of the COVID-19-related economic uncertainties. The company successfully closed a $70 million capital raising in January, which was oversubscribed, and immediately embarked on a Series D round, but it was forced to pull the plug as offshore investors' purse strings tightened. Volt co-founder and chief executive Steve Weston said the FinTech start-up was instead pursuing a $15 million rights issue to its existing investors.

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