Historically online lenders have relied on a wide range of alternative ways of evaluating borrowers; the state-backed National Internet Finance Association of China which is aligned with China’s central bank has provided some details on developing a credit rating system; some industry participants question whether they will be able to overcome issues that have prevented similar plans in the past. Source
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ant Financial is putting plans on hold to go public and will continue to invest in a wide variety of startups; Ant is one of the world’s most valuable fintech companies and last raised $4.5 billion in April 2016 giving it a $60 billion valuation; the firm is focused on expanding Alipay beyond the 70 countries it is used and deploying artificial intelligence technology. Source
The strategic partnership is intended to increase funds available to smaller firms during the current pandemic; Starling is lending via...
UK’s ANNA raises $21M for its SMB-focused business account and tax app Aussie fintech Verteva lands $21.4m to digitise home...
In their first quarter earnings call yesterday PayPal revealed the scale of Venmo for the first time; in the past...
Railsbank is a leading UK Based open banking/regtech technology services platform and Cross River is a provider of banking services...
Alibaba’s Alipay was granted an eMoney license in Luxembourg to allow the company to serve customers across Europe; the eMoney...
Revolut recently launched their service in the US and has made some recent hires; Bruce Wallace previously served as chief...
Lending Club has hired Santiago Suarez, JPMorgan's head of new technologies; he will join Lending Club as the firm's head of strategy and mergers and acquisitions; at JPMorgan, Suarez was involved with testing blockchain and machine learning; he also worked in the bank's corporate strategy group, focused on managing top strategy issues for the bank. Source
One of the hottest things in the cryptocurrency world right now is GameFi. Its name reflects the combination of the old-fashioned thrill of winning prizes with new crypto developments in what’s known as DeFi. GameFi players can trade, lend or rent out their winnings or even borrow against them. You can’t do that with the stuffed kitty you scored at the county fair. As its popularity soars, there’s a debate over whether GameFi will remake gaming or just separate the credulous from their money. Re