UK based fintech firms helped push technology investment in the UK to all time highs in 2017; fintech firms accounted for almost half of the £3bn invested; leading fintech firms TransferWise, Funding Circle and Monzo helped push the investment number as they all raised significant rounds; Eileen Burbidge, Partner at Passion Capital, tells AltFi, “"It's a testament to our exceptional entrepreneurs that the UK tech sector continues to produce companies that are leading in the development of cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and fintech.” 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.
TD Bank surveyed 340 corporate treasurers and found that innovative technology is top of their mind for the coming years; 31 percent see automatics processes, 23 percent see blockchain and 15 percent see AI or robotics as the top disruptive technologies; while most respondents were keeping a close eye on technology there was 29 percent who said they would wait and see; seeing the results points to the fact that traditional finance professionals are starting to focus on technology changes, though not ready to fully jump in. Source.
Low wage workers have always had a difficult set of expensive options when they try to cash their paychecks; bank accounts are costly because they cannot maintain certain balances and check cashing shops are not exactly cheap; WiseWage, a North Carolina based non profit is looking to offer another option; the company has struck partnerships with Regions Bank and Varo Money, among others, to offer a lower cost direct deposit; the prepaid cards have set fees which can be waived if enough is loaded each month; the program is meant as a test to see if they can enlist those who have dropped out of the financial system because of a lack of options. Source.
In PeerIQ’s Weekly Industry Update they cover job growth numbers, the Fed’s planned rate rises and more fintech related stories that ended 2017; OneMain Financial received backing from Apollo Global Management and Värde Partners; GreenSky and MoneyLion completed fundraising’s; new regulation news coming out of Indiana that would cap the personal loan interest rates. Source.
After a number of high profile breaches in 2017 lenders are looking to better protect themselves against evolving threats; writing a column in Bankless Times Tom Donlea of WhitePages Pro looks at some key things online lenders can do to better protect themselves; lenders can start moving away from using social security numbers as a personal identifier, AI and machine learning will play a bigger role, more lenders will begin to bring fraud fighting in house and blockchain will become more widely adopted. Source.
As bigger breaches occur startups focusing on cybersecurity have seen investment double in the last year; globally there was $7.6bn invested in cybersecurity startups this past year after seeing $3.8bn in 2016; global spending on cybersecurity was estimated to be over $80bn in 2017 as companies look to protect their data and company systems from evolving threats. Source.
The Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau issued the year’s first fund sales license to Tencent Holdings; the company will operate as Teng An Fund Sales; WeChat adds a police certified facial recognition technology as part of a pilot program they hope to roll out to all of China in late January; some loans on HNA’s p2p platform JBH have dealt with deferred payments a since November. Source.
Visa notified WaveCrest that they were terminating their membership with the company for non compliance; WaveCrest is a third party processor where prepaid cards were being used for crypto based activities; the terms and conditions of their agreement with Visa stated that funds could only be loaded to the card via an employer on a regular basis; the termination note leaves a number of companies in limbo and looking for another option to service customers. Source.
Some of biggest bitcoin miners in China have reportedly been looking to set up operations in other Asian countries; there has been conflicting reports out of China is the last week as to what the country is doing when it comes to mining operations; the PBOC has not made official comments yet and the mining overall doesn’t look to slow down as other countries can fill the role of China. Source.
There has been talk about one the big tech firms becoming a bank and potentially forever changing financial services; event without a banking license big tech firms are making noise in the finance market; Amazon and PayPal have been extending billions in loans and banks have started testing technologies like Alexa; the tech firms have also amassed a trove of data that could end up being as important as banking data; as banks become more digitized we will begin seeing a further mixing of interests to help offer the best experience as possible to the customer. Source.