Mobile bill payment app Papaya has secured $50 million in Series B funding as it aims to help “reduce everyday Americans’ bill pay stress”.
Kathryn Petralia, co-founder and head of operations of Kabbage talks about their SoftBank deal, tech partnerships, culture and more. Source
Australian digital bank Judo Bank has officially reached unicorn status with the latest round of capital; the $230mn round included...
As the global leader in cognitive solutions, IBM's Watson is one of the top artificial intelligence offerings for financial services companies; Brian Walter is IBM's Global Leader of Watson Client Insights and Cognitive Experience for the company's Watson Financial Services Solutions group; Brian Walter gave a keynote speech on Tuesday at LendIt USA and also talked with Forbes about how artificial intelligence is changing the financial world; in his interview with Forbes he discusses the use of cognitive solutions for financial services compliance, customer service and customer acquisition; also talks about IBM's cognitive solutions for supporting banks, fintechs and developers. Source
Dozens of Coinbase users were complaining on Reddit regarding unexpected charges on their credit and debit cards; Worldpay and Visa issued a joint statement saying the issue was not cause by Coinbase; the Financial Times reports that the source of the problem was still not clear though it did seem related to merchant category codes that were assigned to Coinbase; the issues bring up concerns that regulators have been discussing, rules around the new digital currencies are not clear. Source.
Acting CFPB Head Mick Mulvaney said he thought the payday lending rule was too far along for the agency to change but that he supports a congressional rollback; the Congressional Review Act gives Congress 60 days to nullify a regulation; Mr. Mulvaney is currently involved in a dispute over whether or not he can run the agency on an interim basis and he said he anticipates staying for 5 to 7 months. Source.
CreditEase was China's first P2P lender, founded in 2006; since its founding the firm has been expanding its services to wealth management and robo advice; Ning Tang, CreditEase founder and CEO, provides his insight on the business and the online lending industry in an interview; highlights how the company plans to expand its business lines through partnerships while also managing regulatory controls. Source
The National Internet Finance Association of China has been tasked with the job of making the agency but has offered little details so far; the PBoC invited eight leading Internet companies in 2015 to help with this issue but have received eight individual ideas and rejected them all; the issue of sharing proprietary data still plagues the project and the current issues don’t look to be solves soon. Source.
Payments International is hosting the "FinTech and Future of Payments Forum" in London from November 15th to 18th; the agenda on Nov.18 includes their own version of "Shark Tank"-like business pitch competitions; finalists and judges have been announced in the areas of Identity (including blockchain), financial inclusion/personal financial management; the Internet of Things, and cross-border payments. Numerous "fresh face" companies and personalities in these sectors are noted, with judges covered on the Nov.18th agenda page and entrants covered in this LendIt News post.
In this Forbes op-ed Ron Shelvin shares his thoughts on how the Robinhood checking account was doomed to fail; besides...