Venmo currently accounts for about 39 percent of PayPal’s digital p2p payments business; PayPal and Venmo only charge users a fee when they use their credit cards, though Venmo has started to diversify their offerings to help PayPal’s bottom line; Venmo has expanded Pay with Venmo and started a instant cashout service which both have fees associated with them; they have seen fast adoption with both and the hopes are that a breakthrough year is coming soon. Source.
JoinedNov. 30, 2016
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Todd is the host of PitchIt: the fintech startups podcast, a weekly interview show featuring emerging fintech founders and leading venture capitalists. He is responsible for leading the content team which covers fintech through daily & weekly email newsletters, editorial, virtual events, and in-person conferences. He has been covering fintech, banking, and venture capital for more than 15 years, including speaking regularly at industry events.
The Chinese government has stepped up their monitoring on payments, halted IPO approvals, issued new rules for online lenders and continued their crackdown on cryptocurrencies; China has been seen as an innovation leader, in particular in mobile, but the recent crackdown could set the country back as a leading fintech innovator; as the nation matures in certain fintech areas its regulators need to better handle how they react to the market; Michelle Evans, global head of digital consumer research at Euromonitor International, tells TearSheet, “The next stage of its development will require Chinese regulators to find the right balance that will be provide for consumer protection and fair operations while still enabling fintech the room to innovate.” Source.
Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, the heads of the SEC and CFTC said they are keeping an eye on the market but might need help from Congress; “We should all come together, the federal banking regulators, CFTC, the SEC — there are states involved as well — and have a coordinated plan for dealing with virtual currency trading markets,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton as reported by American Banker; CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said the technology behind cryptocurrencies should be considered differently that the currencies themselves; they also noted they are talking with global counterparts to learn their views on the market. Source.
Monzo has grown its customer base over five times in one year and used different methods that help keep that base coming back; they ask for community feedback, open the company for equity crowdfunding rounds so users can invest and they host small, intimate events; 80 percent of their growth is word of mouth, the remaining 20 percent is through ads on Facebook and Twitter; “The biggest challenge is that we’re growing very fast — our customer and employee numbers are growing fast — we want to keep the customer focus, how we operate a transparent customer growth approach, and how we do that at scale,” as Tristan Thomas, Monzo’s head of marketing and community, tells TearSheet. Source.
As stock market volatility increased the trading app Robinhood saw deposits jump 20 percent; "We saw a large spike in transaction volume and trading activity on the platform today," a spokesperson told Business Insider. "Retail investors deposited 20% more funds into their Robinhood accounts today than they did on Friday.”; this is a trend the company has seen before, in late 2016 the Dow dropped 8 percent because of issues in Asia and the app saw their biggest net deposits ever. Source.
Aspiration has taken their marketing aim directly at some of the biggest banks by offering what they see is a better product and experience; “We’re not going after these banks for the sake of it, we’re talking about their actions and their approaches versus ours,” said CEO Andrei Cherny to TearSheet; the company does not charge ATM fees or monthly service fees and investments are done on pay what is fair basis; Aspiration is going beyond just the user experience by donating 10 percent of revenue to charity and focuses on whether customers spend at companies that are ethical and sustainable. Source.
Lloyd’s Banking Group and Virgin Money recently banned customers from using their credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies; customers will still be able to use their debit cards to buy cryptocurrencies but for fear they could go into debt they do not want credit cards being used; other card issuers like Barclays and Mastercard say they are reviewing the crypto space but no decisions have been made. Source.
Citizens Bank of Edmond Oklahoma is a one branch bank who has begun turning their extra space into a co working space for business clients; the space is now called Vault 405 and includes wireless charging stations, conference rooms and a podcast studio; CEO Jill Castilla tells Tearsheet, “The office space will be just as beneficial to the bank beyond loans and deposits, it’ll make us a better small business.”; this isn’t the banks first foray into innovation as they were ahead of their time on social media, video teller machines and mobile payments. Source.
When Digital launched in 2015 the company used chatbots to help users save money; Ethan Bloch, founder and CEO of Digit tells American Banker “We think chatbots haven’t lived up to their promise,” he said. “So we are done believing they will.”; the company has started using graphical interfaces that users tap for information instead of having them type in queries; this is the second change to the app recently, following the recent decision to charge users. Source.
SoFi’s lending goal in 2017 was to lend more than they had in the previous 5 years combined; the online lender fell 26 percent short of the goal and instead lent out $12.9bn in 2017; the company had seen their share of issues in the last year with sexual misconduct claims and their CEO being forced out; SoFi spokesman Jim Prosser said the true goal for 2017 was closer to $13bn and the higher amount was a stretch goal. Source.