Today’s news belongs to the world of finance. While some market players go big like PayPal or Klarna (or Binance...), others keep it quiet just like Dwolla disrupting payments. Enjoy reading and don’t forget to join Netguru’s live chat with Dwolla to hear their story: 4pm today here on LinkedIn.
Disrupting Retail
- From Warby Parker and Allbirds to Claire's and Mattress Firm, companies across sectors are seizing the opportunity to enter the public markets. That's coming off of a two-decade high for IPOs across industries last year when 407 companies filed initial public offerings — a 109% increase from 2019 — according to data from Trading Platforms.
- Unilever has partnered with Co-op to launch two refill packaging store trials, with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour towards refillable and reusable packaging in a convenience environment. Co-op’s head of format development, Ian McCutcheon, said: “We are continually working to develop new ways to provide added services and choice conveniently.”
Finance & Tech
- Standard Chartered's innovation arm has enlisted the help of Starling Bank for a digital platform that will help UK savers invest in green and sustainable projects. Anne Boden, CEO, Starling, says: "Starling will handle the technical and regulatory demands behind the scenes, leaving Shoal to take care of their customers."
- Swedish BNPL giant Klarna has officially launched its app in Ireland, enabling online shoppers to split their purchases into three interest-free equal payments. Sebastian Siemi?tkowski, CEO, Klarna, says: "Ireland is a really exciting market for us, as people turn away from credit cards. As the older-style financial institutions exit the market we’re here to create more competition, which is in the best interest of the consumer."`
- PayPal reported revenue growth for the third quarter of 13% on Monday and said it’s teaming up with Amazon to let U.S. customers pay with Venmo at checkout, starting in 2022. However, after initially rising in extended trading, PayPal shares reversed course and fell 5% after the company issued a revenue forecast for next year that missed analysts’ estimates.
- BNY Mellon has launched an ISO 20022 Hub to help clients and other financial institutions to manage the transition to the new payment standard. Set for introduction in November 2022, the ISO messaging standard promises to have significant and widespread impacts on financial institutions across the globe over the coming years.
- The Banque de France has published an upbeat report on its series of experiments with a wholesale CBDC but says its work has also thrown up new questions. Isabel Schmidt, head of direct clearing and asset account services products at BNY Mellon, says: “It is critical that institutions fully understand what’s required for a successful migration and begin to prepare for the transition starting now.”
- Thousands of disgruntled Binance customers have registered claims against the trading platform following the outages it faced in May 2021. Earlier this year, Liti Capital announced it is financing the proceedings to be brought in the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, with claimants being represented by White & Case LLP.?
- Jumo, a South African and London-based fintech startup that helps the underbanked get access to financial services such as loans and savings products, has raised $120 million with backing from Fidelity and Visa. “Jumo’s lending platform is highly attractive in its ability to scale across markets and drive financial inclusion by creating access to credit for consumers and small businesses,” says Melissa McSherry, global head of risk and identity services at Visa.
- Kenny Eon of Emburse and Marc Sevitz of VAT IT consider what VAT reclaim and international business travel will look like in the aftermath of Brexit, and what steps businesses should take to prepare for the new regime. Many aspects of our business and personal lives have changed in the aftermath of Brexit. From new European Health Insurance cards when going to the EU, and changing rights around living and working in various EU countries, through to value-added tax (VAT) reclaim, the regulatory environment we face differs considerably.
All-Things-Innovation
- The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub is reporting a positive case for the use of distributed ledger technology in streamlining the green bond issuance process, while making it easier to track projects' positive environmental impact. Bénédicte Nolens, head of the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, says: "Both prototypes show that DLT technology can be used to streamline green bond issuance across the lifecycle and ensure that retail investors have full transparency on the use of proceeds, in real time on an easy to download app.
- As part of its Meta rebrand, Facebook has renamed its financial services and payments group from F2 to Novi. Says Novi head David Marcus: "Our mission remains to empower everyone, everywhere to access the world’s financial system to accelerate financial inclusion and economic empowerment.
- Alphabet, the parent company of Google, surpassed $2 trillion in market capitalization on Monday. Just in case someone wants to get a card going around that we can all sign. This makes Alphabet the third US company to be inducted into the two-followed-by-12-zeros club, joining Apple and Microsoft. Its value doubled during the pandemic, when much of life migrated online.
- Vimeo said its third-quarter revenue rose 33% year over year to $100.1 million. Its loss per share was $0.07. These results beat analysts' average forecasts for the two metrics. But Vimeo's revenue was only slightly ahead of the $100.0 million consensus estimate by analysts. The company's loss per share was narrower than the $0.10 loss analysts anticipated.
The Number to Remember
- Bitcoin’s price at one point rose above $68,000, eclipsing a previous record set in late October. The world’s biggest digital currency climbed as high as $68,521 before easing slightly to $67,935. It was last up 3% in the past 24 hours as of 4:30 a.m. ET, according to Coin Metrics data.
Reader’s Corner?
- How to choose one idea out of one hundred? Jessica Constantinidis, Evangelist in the Chief Innovation Office at ServiceNow shared something that resonated with me: My motto is: “You can put a sensor on anything, but does it make sense? Drop me a line if you feel like being featured in our series
And let’s wrap up here! See you next time!?
