Prime Minister Theresa May announced the start of the R5-SHCH Connect Partnership between London and China; the partnership will allow banks in China to have access to London’s foreign exchange market; the partnership is between London's R5 and the Shanghai Clearing House; companies involved include HSBC, LSE, BP, Standard Chartered and Standard Life Aberdeen; Jon Vollemaere, CEO of R5 commented to Finextra, “The new service offers benefits for all institutions trading FX. It provides Chinese banks with increased access to the global FX market, it enhances liquidity in major currencies, and it advances the internationalisation of the RMB.” 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.
PayPal saw payment volumes grow by 29 percent and they added 8.7 million new accounts in Q4 2017; the recent announcement that eBay was replacing PayPal with Adyen for processing overshadowed what was another strong quarter by the company; while the Adyen news was not positive for PayPal it could be seen as that in the long term as the company has been diversifying more in recent years; PayPal has seen growth through more partnerships with card networks and banks globally. Source.
Ally Bank is launching an augmented reality game during the Super Bowl to help customers visualize and think about savings; Ally Big Save can be used during Super Bowl commercials to drag bills in a digital piggy bank and they are granted points during the game; the goal is to make people have fun but think about saving money; “While the game is a lot of fun, it’s also a way for Ally to help consumers focus on saving for something bigger to make a more meaningful impact on what matters most to them and those they care about,” said Andrea Brimmer, Ally’s chief marketing and public relations officer, to TearSheet; Ally is not the first bank to experiment with augmented or virtual reality, other banks have started to use the technology as means of innovative marketing to engage customers. Source.
This week’s PeerIQ Industry Update covered the strong job growth reported and the chances of a rate hike in March; Marcus made key hires in an effort to launch a credit card as it builds out their consumer banking businesses; Marlette completed its largest securitization for $464mn and saw the senior tranches of the deal rated AA by Kroll; PeerIQ also highlighted key points from testimony by Nat Hoopes of the Marketplace Lending Association when he testified before the House Financial Services Committee. Source.
Alibaba announced it was taking a 33 percent stake in their fintech affiliate Ant Financial; the agreement allows for Alibaba to pick of shares of Ant Financial and also ends the revenue share agreement they had in place; TechCrunch reports the deal was focused on “certain intellectual property rights owned by Alibaba exclusively related to Ant Financial.”; Alibaba saw their shares drop after the announcement and many think this is a prelude to Ant Financial’s IPO. Source.
American Banker takes another look at 7 failed fintech ideas that might have been thought of too early; the ideas include Blippy’s social payments, Pay By Touch’s point of sale hardware, Cybercash by Beenz and Digicash by Flooz, the early days of mobile payments and more; with fintech being as fast paced as it is today new innovation is happening more now than it ever has been. Source.
The digital push at BBVA has helped the company to a 20 percent rise in profits; the changes have helped the company to lower costs while boosting profits; “The strength of recurring revenues and the improvement in efficiency show that we are advancing decisively in our transformation strategy,” said Francisco González, the group’s executive group chairman to the Financial Times. “2017 was a good year and 2018 will be an even better one.” Source.
BBVA Compass, Capital One, Silicon Valley Bank, Citi, CBW Bank are some of the early adopters of open APIs that are beginning to transform how banking operates; the big question is how open will banking become and will it be mandated by legislation or will banks work with only those they trust; the one thing all banks are starting to do is make bigger investments into digital products, whether through partnerships or development as they see that the old way of banking will not survive. Source.
Ebay dropped PayPal and turned to Adyen to be its primary processing partner; Banking Technology reports that eBay users “do not need to take any action at this time” as the “transition to full payments intermediation will be a multi-year journey”.; the deal will begin with a move in North America in the second half of 2018 before expanding in 2019. Source.
The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance released their 3rd annual European Alternative Finance Industry Benchmarking Report showing the market grew by 41 percent in 2016; the report uses 344 financing platforms across 45 European countries; the UK’s market share dropped from 81 percent to 73 percent and the rest of Europe grew by 101 percent; consumer lending led the way with 34 percent, followed by business, invoice trading, equity crowdfunding and rewards crowdfunding; institutional funding comprised 45 percent of consumer lending and 29 percent of business lending. Source.