Many of the biggest names in fintech made news this week with PayPal, Coinbase, Robinhood and Revolut all making significant announcements. And then, of course, we have China who seem determined to stifle any new fintech innovation they don’t like. And JPMorgan Chase had not one but two big developments this week. Here are what I consider to be the top news stories in fintech this past week.
PayPal launches its ‘super app’ combining payments, savings, bill pay, crypto, shopping and more from TechCrunch – PayPal’s digital offerings now may well be the most comprehensive in all of fintech and they have a massive customer base to market these new services. They are going to be a force to be reckoned with in the neobank space.
China Cracks Down Harder on Cryptocurrency With New Ban from The New York Times – In some ways China is a real leader in fintech, with their work on CBDCs and the innovations around mobile payments but in other ways they seem determined to go back to the 20th century. This ban will only hurt innovation in China as crypto is here to stay and China will be contributing very little to its future.
Coinbase Won’t Offer Lending Product Questioned by SEC from The Wall Street Journal – Coinbase realized there was no point in fighting the SEC and decided to pull their planned lending product. The big question is what is the future of all the platforms, decentralized and centralized, doing that very thing.
Robinhood muscles deeper into Coinbase’s territory with new crypto wallet feature from TechCrunch – Robinhood are signaling they are getting more serious about crypto as they will be introducing their own wallet starting next month. This will allow users to send and receive crypto from external wallets.
Revolut, the $33 billion fintech player, is rolling out commission-free stock trading in the U.S. from CNBC – Revolut is going to start encroaching on Robinhood’s turf as the UK-based fintech will be rolling out stock trading in the U.S, and, yes, they will also be using the payment for order flow model.
Amazon announces partnership with Lendistry for SMB lending from LendIt Fintech News – Amazon has had a large SMB lending operation for many years but in this latest initiative, called Amazon Community Lending, they are focusing on underrepresented businesses in a partnership with Lendistry, a leading CDFI.
JPMorgan takes on British rivals with launch of digital bank Chase from Reuters – JPMorgan has launched their digital bank into the highly competitive UK market where they are hoping for a better result than their last effort. Finn was a dismal failure in the U.S. but at least this time they will not be competing against their own products.
JPMorgan Chase moving retail bank’s core system to cloud from American Banker – It is hard to overstate how big a deal this is for Thought Machine, a relatively new fintech startup based in the UK. The largest bank in the U.S. decided they couldn’t replace their core on their own. Penny Crosman has the scoopt on what JPMorgan is thinking here.
Shares in MoneyLion to Trade on NYSE on September 23rd as SPAC Deal Approved from Crowdfund Insider – Another neobank is now trading on the public markets. MoneyLion completed their SPAC deal and is trading on the NYSE under the ticker ML.
BNPL Company Affirm Rolls out Adaptive Checkout from PYMNTS.com – Affirm has launched a new product they are calling Adaptive Checkout which allows merchants to provide more choices for their customers at checkout including weekly and monthly payments options.
