Ant Financial announced at Money 20/20 a partnership with payment processor First Data and hardware provider Verifone; new move will expand scope of their wallet product, AliPay, into North America and Europe for wealthy Chinese travelers; AliPay has 450 million active users, totaling nearly 70% of the third party payment market in China. Source
Rebuildingsociety is planning to partner with more local councils this year, after securing a funding agreement with Basildon Borough Council last month. The Essex-based council is providing the peer-to-peer lending platform with up to £10,000 for each suitable loan that supports small- and medium-sized businesses in the region that meet its green agenda, while earning
AIB and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a €65m three-year agreement designed to help deliver the bank's 2023 strategy by accelerating its ongoing digital transformation
Revolut has launched their open API for customers and they have increased their Revolut for Business service; Banking Technology reports that the company said “account owners can generate sandbox and production keys, and set whitelisted IPs as an “extra layer of security”; accounts allow users to send, hold and exchange up to 25 different currencies. Source.
Wellesley has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs; firm is seeking to raise 1.5 million British pounds; plans to use the funds for business expansion, marketing, human resources and technology development; in 2016, firm has raised 80 million British pounds primarily from multi-unit real estate property development loans; sources have also reported that the company has received a First Gazette notice for late accounts. Source
According to a new study by Accenture 7 out of 10 consumers would be reluctant to share their Information with third party providers; Citi recently published a study pointing to three main reasons that wide scale adoption will take longer; reasons include slow consumer adoption, fragmented market for new open banking services and the ability for payment providers to adapt to new rules; thus far open banking has been slow but big banks like Lloyds Banking Group and RBS have made big tech investments anticipating the change will happen over time. Source.
Christopher Woolard, the FCA’s executive director of strategy and competition, said he would like to see a collaboration of global regulators to encourage fintech growth; this would be in the style of a global sandbox and would be quite the undertaking but as Mr. Wollard stated, they are up for it; this would allow companies to better understand the regulatory limits and help to stop global issues like money laundering. Source.
Bitpanda, a crypto startup based in Austria, has registered in Spain as a virtual currency exchange and digital asset custody service provider.
A recent report from the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum elaborates on many of the main questions currency surrounding DeFi.
UK digital challenger bank, Starling, has raised £60 million led by Merian Global Investors; the funds will be used to...