What’d I miss? News and Insights that got noticed

Key themes this week (April 7-13)

• Apple Card’s new high-yield savings account
• CFPB: some payments firms systemically important
• Visa+ Send P2P Payments to Anyone
• Real-time business payments solution

Declines in Loan Values Are Widespread Among Banks

"...Banks reporting large fair-value discounts on their loans could face earnings or liquidity pressure. They could face pressure to pay higher rates for deposits and other funding sources, while yields on fixed-rate loans they own stay low."

Key takeaways:

• The unrealized losses on loans and securities likely fell at many banks in recent weeks as Treasury yields declined
• If liquidity issues arise for these banks, they may need either to issue additional debt capital at higher interest rates or to sell those loans to become more liquid

LinkedIn Post

U.S. Bank partners Kyriba for real-time business payments solution

"...Kyriba’s API Connectivity Network integrates banks, enterprise resource planners (ERPs), trading portals, data services and payment apps using pre-built connectors to minimize IT installation time and cost.”

Key takeaways:

• US Bank and Kyriba clients can now send instant payments to vendors, customers, and employees from the existing Kyriba dashboard, as well as payments via the Zelle? app
• The partnership enables Kyriba customers to reduce payments costs, strengthen supplier relationships, and improve cash visibility and forecasting
• Anu Somani, says: “With real-time APIs, we’re meeting our customers where they are, easily embedding our payment solutions directly into their existing systems.”

LinkedIn Post

FinFit and Salary Finance US merge

"...FinFit is merging with Salary Finance US, a fintech focused on salary-linked savings and loans for employees, creating a workplace financial platform serving over 10 million US workers. Financial terms were not disclosed."

Key takeaways:

• Both companies have been part of the rapidly growing market of financial wellness employee benefits offered through the workplace
• Financial instability, today more than ever, compounds stress that leads to negative productivity and health outcomes

LinkedIn Post

JPMorgan CEO Says Banking Crisis Adds to Recessionary Pressures

"...The crisis is “just like another weight on the scale” adding to the pressures presented by quantitative tightening (QT), higher inflation and the war in Ukraine, Dimon told CNN in an interview posted Thursday (April 6).”

Key takeaways:

• “We are seeing people reduce lending a little bit, cut back a little bit, pull back a little bit,” Dimon said. “It won’t necessarily force a recession, but it is recessionary.”
• Dimon also said during the interview that the latest banking crisis is different from the one in 2008 because it involves only a handful of banks and a particular problem

LinkedIn Post

Car Breakdowns Are Making More People Fall Behind on Their Loans

“…Borrowers have big monthly payments for older cars and face steep bills when the vehicles need repairs”

Key takeaways:

• Cars are staying on the road longer, reaching an age where they need substantial repairs or break down. It is a key reason more people are falling behind on their auto loans
• Another example of the long-lasting effects of the pandemic, which transformed the auto industry by making new and lightly used vehicles hard to come by
• The delinquency rate on subprime auto loans recently rose to its highest level in more than a decade

LinkedIn Post

Millennials Just Love Their Digital Wallets

"...When it comes to payment preferences overall, millennials show an affinity for digital wallets. Although trailing behind Gen Z among consumer demographics willing to try new methods overall, 67% of millennials have adopted digital wallets. This makes them the demographic most likely to have done so over the year previous to being surveyed.”

Key takeaways:

• In line with this affiliation with innovations such as digital wallets, 44% of millennials surveyed believe mobile wallets can replace most or all features of a physical wallet
• Millennials, while not exactly digital natives, are the first generation as a whole to have technology integrated into their daily lives, and their comfort shows

LinkedIn Post

Treasury Yields Climb After Strong Jobs Report

“…Investors now think there is a roughly 70% chance that Fed will raise rates by 0.25 percentage point in May.”

Key takeaways:

• Yields, which rise when bond prices fall, climbed after the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs last month, almost exactly what economists had been anticipating
• The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% from 3.6%—undershooting estimates—while average hourly earnings for workers matched expectations by rising 0.3% from the previous month

LinkedIn Post

Visa+ Gives Consumers Option to Send P2P Payments to Anyone

"...We’ve all done this dance… You want to send money to another person — you have a Venmo account, but they don’t. They have a PayPal account, but you don’t. Your bank is connected to the Zelle? network, and they don’t know if theirs is or how to quickly check.”

Key takeaways:

• To address those pain points, the payment network Visa today (April 11) is launching a new service that allows P2P payments to be sent and received across different platforms
• The service will initially link Venmo and PayPal and then branch out to include other Visa partners, essentially unbundling the act of moving money to and from a P2P network from any P2P network

LinkedIn Post

UK payments startup Ryft wins FCA license

"...Ryft's platform processes marketplace payments and then automatically diverts funds to merchants and sub-merchants the next working day. The API-based package handles everything from accepting online payments, verifying, and onboarding merchants, to splitting up the payments however a business wants.”

Key takeaways:

• UK startup hoping to emulate the success of Stripe, has received an FCA license following its ￡1.2 million seed raise in September
• Ryft is to expand its inhouse compliance team with the objective of facilitating more complex payments, enabling B2B digital and marketplace platforms to monetize payments across their technology as well as independently broker relationships with other organizations

LinkedIn Post

CFPB director wants some payments firms labeled systemically important

"...Instead of just moving money from place to place, many consumers maintain balances on apps like Cash App, PayPal and Venmo, he said.

“Many people think of this as a bank account, a place you can store funds. But the reality is, it’s not like a traditional bank account, and there are certain circumstances where those balances may not be fully insured,” he said.”

Key takeaways:

• Chopra said he is in favor of allowing the Financial Stability Oversight Council, through a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, to designate certain payment firms as systemically important
• Chopra said he advises consumers who use digital wallets to limit the amount of money they hold on their account balances, and to move funds to a bank account as quickly as possible

LinkedIn Post

Apple Card’s new high-yield savings account feature may be about to launch

"...Apple Card Savings Account, a new integration for the Wallet app first announced back in October, may finally be about to launch. Apple is reportedly making changes to its back-end code in preparation for a full launch of the new feature…”

Key takeaways:

• Apple Card Savings Account will allow you to automatically deposit your Daily Cash rewards into the account. So, as you earn Daily Cash with your Apple Card, that money can be automatically deposited into the high-yield savings account in the Wallet app
• In addition to depositing Daily Cash directly into the savings account, Apple Card users can also deposit additional money using a linked bank account or their Apple Cash balance

LinkedIn Post

Check this out:

Curinos (F)insights: The Boom in Unsecured Lending: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-15-the-boom-in-unsecured-lending/id1632067596?i=1000608621047