The two companies are both based in Berlin and will collaborate on SME loan financing; solarisBank has initially provided an eight digit investment for financing loans on the Lendico peer-to-peer lending platform; Lendico launched in 2014 and has total lending volume of over EUR100 million. Source
Money Platform has launched in the UK with full authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority; the platform provides short term personal loans and seeks to offer a more affordable solution than payday loans; it will include 3 to 12 week loans of up to 1,000 British pounds ($1,255) with interest rates ranging from 0.3% to 0.7% per day; the platform is targeting 12% net returns for investors and will retain 35% of the interest payments from each loan; overall the most a borrower will pay in interest on the platform is 165%. Source
The UK government has released a white paper discussing its real estate property development initiative; UK P2P lenders continue to support the initiative through alternative funding for real estate borrowers; the government will also manage a 1 billion British pound ($1.25 billion) fund for financing specialized real estate developers; the UK is targeting 200,000 new homes. Source
Nava Finance Ltd. has announced plans to launch a new marketplace lending platform in the UK in 2017; the platform will be called Nava and will focus on near-prime consumer credit loans with investment only from institutional investors; the founders believe their experience and credit underwriting models can provide competitively priced loans for borrowers and competitive market returns for investors. Source
Marqeta has hired its first employee in London as it aims for a 2018 European launch; the firm provides payment card technology and works with other fintech firms such as Square and Kabbage; they have raised a total of $76 million, which includes a recent $25 million investment which was led by Visa; CEO Jason Gardner stated in a Business Insider interview, “The use-cases we see here in the US and Canada are very similar to the use-cases we see in Europe. Since our inception [we] have always seen ourselves as a global issuer-processor and Europe is obviously an enormous market.” Source
Marqeta opened their office in London in October last year and today they have announced that they have signed up...
Mastercard Launches World-First “Buy Now, Pay Later” Commercial Card Solution for Small Business Financing in APAC.
Mastercard announced it has completed its acquisition of Aiia, a Danish open banking technology provider for an undisclosed sum.
Since Feb. 24, due to the war, 4 million Ukrainian people settled in Poland overnight. Of that, 97% are women with children.
Mastercard launched a set of open banking tools through Finicity, enabling b2c transactors to check user accounts before requesting an ACH.