The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) does the most in depth research on alternative finance across the globe; their...
Barclays has launched a new fintech focused unit to help develop new business lines for the bank; Barclays UK Ventures will work with fintech firms through partnerships or by taking equity stakes, helping the bank make further inroads into fintech. Source.
N26 is a smartphone only bank that was originally launched in Germany and has big backers like Peter Thiel behind it; Vincent Haupert, a PhD student at the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, told the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg how he and two colleagues found N26 security defenses riddled with holes that could have been used to defraud thousands of users; Haupert presented his findings to the bank and they have since stated that the issues found have been addressed. Source
European marketplace lender Lendix will offer loans to Italian SMEs; the platform will now support peer-to-peer loans from EUR30,000 ($32,175) to EUR2 million ($2.1 million) for Italian businesses; Lendix has originated a total of over EUR70 million ($75 million) in business loans from borrowers in France and Spain. Source
LendInvest's retail bond began trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) this week, with the offering raising GBP50 million ($65 million) and promoted as the first to be issued by a fintech company; the underlying assets in the bond portfolio include property loans issued by the LendInvest platform; Christian Faes, co-founder and CEO of LendInvest, said: "We launched the bond program to make our asset class available to retail investors through an LSE listed offering because it is a well-established, robust structure that offers customers considerable protections. However, whilst the bond was popular with retail investors, some of the city's largest institutional investors also made significant investments."; the retail bond is the first in a multi-year GBP500 million ($650 million) bond program for LendInvest. Source
Last month as Wirecard was unraveling the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority temporarily suspended Wirecard Card Solutions (WCS) from operating; this...
FinTech Tide is using open banking to offer additional capabilitie
Singapore's LATTICE80 fintech hub has announced it will expand to London; it has registered as an entity and is seeking a location with plans to open by 2018; the expansion builds on the "Fintech Bridge" agreement signed by the UK and Singapore in 2016 to promote cross border collaboration; LATTICE80 is owned and operated by Singapore-based private investment firm Marvelstone Group which is actively developing new fintech services and solutions for the Asian and UK markets. Source
One of the hottest U.S. based fintech startups is now live in the UK with their first two customers; Plaid...
