Coinbase has acquired Earn, a startup that allows for sending and receiving or digital currency for microtasks; Finovate reports the deal to be worth $100mn and Earn CEO Balaji Srinivasan will now serve as Coinbase’s first CTO. Source.
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.
Business Insider recently sat down with with Lori Beer, JPMorgan's chief information officer, about the bank’s strategy for working with companies in the fintech market; they have chose to work with fintech firms of all different sizes through a residence program for younger companies to partnership or acquisitions with maturing companies; the bank sees fintech as a core component of their offering. Source.
A new report by the global security firm G4S says that demand for cash is increasing, growing from 8.1 percent to 9.6 percent relative to GDP since 2011; reasons for the rise include cash cannot be hacked, it’s easy to use, confidential and more. Source.
Ant Financial has become a fintech giant in China and is currently valued at more than $150bn; while their successes are well known the company does have a number of pending issues; the company operates in legal limbo, their chairperson is leaving, regulators are becoming more active and competition is increasing. Source.
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a fact finding mission into 13 cryptocurrency exchanges; the information requested focuses on the use of bots, outages, consumer protections, and other issues. Source.
AltFi sat down with Revolut’s Rishi Stocker who is leading their effort to expand into Japan; Revolut has found the Japanese market to be more challenging than initially hoped; key issues include regulators want a local presence and for the fintech to hire someone with on the ground expertise; they also want to ensure their product targets the right customer in Japan. Source.
Orange Bank has already onboarded more than 100,000 customers since launch, only Revolut and Boursorama, Société Générale’s digital banking arm have made more progress in the same timeframe; this continues the wider trend across Europe as digital banking becomes a bigger part of the financial services ecosystem. Source.
BBVA has invested in Sinovation Ventures as the fund can help to strike partnerships for the bank and they see the potential for strong return on investment; the focus on AI is helping the bank to keep innovating and offer mor potential services across their different regions. Source.