I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. Even though it was a short week there were several really big fintech stories, just as many, if not more, than a regular week. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.
Justice Department Clears Intuit to Buy Credit Karma from The Wall Street Journal – After Credit Karma agrees to sell its tax-preparation business to Square, the DOJ has cleared the $7.1 billion acquisition by Intuit.
Payments Startup Stripe in Talks for Funding at $70 Billion Valuation or More from Bloomberg – This country’s most valuable private fintech will soon be even more valuable with a new round in the works that could value the payments leader at between $70 and $100 billion.
LMI lender Oportun applies for national banking charter from Banking Dive – Oportun, the publicly traded fintech that serves lower and middle income Americans, wants to brings it offering nationwide by applying for a national bank charter.
It is Almost Becoming a Flood: Fintech Companies Want to Become Banks from Lend Academy – I write about the trend of fintechs applying for bank charters and argue that this will be the future as fintech and banking converges.
Visa-Backed Marqeta Targets $10 Billion Valuation in 2021 IPO from Bloomberg – The wave of fintech IPOs shows no signs of abating with Marqeta being the latest to throw their hat in the ring. They have reportedly hired underwriters in preparation for a 2021 listing.
This de novo wants to be the go-to bank for fintechs from American Banker – Penny Crosman interviews Wendy Cai-Lee, the CEO and founder of Piermont Bank as it looks to take on established players like Cross River and Evolve Bank & Trust.
GM Plans to Seek Banking Charter to Grow Auto-Lending Business from The Wall Street Journal – It is not just fintechs applying for bank charters, General Motors is looking to get back into the banking business with plans to apply for an ILC charter.
Mobile banking app Current raises $131M Series C, tops 2 million members from TechCrunch – Another digital bank continues to grow and is now approaching Unicorn status with this latest funding round.
PayPal Is Winning The $24 Billion Buy Now, Pay Later Battle—For Now from Forbes – Ron Shevlin writes about a new survey conducted by Cornerstone Advisors on the Buy Now Pay Later space, looking at who is using it, how many and their repayment history.
Ripple Is Cashing Out a Third of Its Stake in Surging MoneyGram from CoinDesk – With MoneyGram’s stock surging this year Ripple has decided to take some profits on its large stake, selling one-third of its investment (you can learn more details about the partnership between Ripple and Moneygram in my latest podcast with Ripple’s SVP of Product, Asheesh Birla, published yesterday).
