Blockchain payments company BitPay has raised more than $40mn in their most recent funding round; the new funds will help the company to support B2B payments and expand to new markets; "We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand,” Stephen Pair, BitPay's CEO, said in a press release reported by American Banker. Source.
- U.S. Insurtech Oscar Secures $165 Million Through Latest Investment Round Led By Brian Singerman & Founders Fund
- Marlin Secures $300,000,000 Forward Flow Agreement to Expand Equipment Financing for Small Businesses
- The Lending Game: Streamlining Customer Experience (Whitepages Pro)
- Strengthen Your Fraud Prevention Strategy (LexisNexis)
- Technological Innovation and Anti-Fraud Technology in a Maturing Fintech Sector (Hexindai)
- Development Trends and the Future of Fintech (Hexindai)
Amazon has been in the news lately for their continued push into banking related services but they are not the only ones making the push; TearSheet looks into three big name retailers also pushing their businesses into finance; Rakuten is Japan’s largest e-commerce site as their footprint includes video on demand, mobile messaging and they also operate the largest online bank in the country; Overstock.com has been building a marketplace for financial services named the FinancHub; two of the U.K.’s largest grocers, Sainsbury and Tesco, have opened banks via joint ventures. Source.
Credit Karma is positioning itself to be more than just a place to check your credit score; the company currently has 80 million customers and currently has advantages in significant scale and the data it houses; they are now looking at using chatbots with their acquisition of “Penny” to further their relationships with their customers. Source
JPMorgan Chase ran a pilot last year which offered bonus rewards to customers of their Sapphire credit cards if they closed a mortgage; JPMorgan experienced significant demand from the pilot with homes purchased doubling for those who owned the Sapphire cards; the bank is now expanding the promotion to other credit cards they offer; Business Insider shares more on JPMorgan’s market opportunity and the millennial demographic. Source
Over half of China’s online lenders have run into trouble by failing to comply with data privacy rules; Renmin University and Nandu Personal Data Protection Research Centre conducted a survey of over 200 finance apps and found more than 110 to be in low compliance; the issues include collecting phone numbers from users’ contact lists which can be used to harass and shame borrowers who fall behind; most apps also lacked a privacy agreement when signup occurs, which doesn’t allows users protection from the company. Source.
China will soon be rolling out new licensing requirements for p2p lenders; The system will kick off in April with approvals slated to come at the end of this month, but many lenders aren’t aware of the filing process; in 2016 and 2017 many p2p lenders shut down and according to data there are around 2,000 remaining; it is expected that many of the 2,000 will not pass the new requirements; the new rules won’t allow platforms to guarantee loan payments and also limit loans to individuals and businesses; it will also require that platforms use custodian banks. Source
Dodd-Frank requires banks to disclose information about employee wages and the data shows a mixed bag for banks; banks like Goldman Sachs lie on the high end of the pay scale while small banks in locations like Houston are at the bottom of the spectrum; what the data also shows is banks are finding it hard to compete with big tech firms for talent as companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon tend to pay premium wages; wages overall look to be rising as lower skill, lower wage jobs are becoming less frequent across the industry. Source.
Anti-fraud and authentication specialist Pindrop has unveiled a new method for users, toungueprinting; tongueprinting is meant to stop fraudsters from taking over legitimate accounts by spoofing the call centre with automated bots, social engineering, and knowledge-based authentication questions according to Finovate; Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and cofounder of Pindrop, tells Finovate: “Tongueprinting not only adds an extra layer of security and authentication, it increases the opportunities to generate additional antibodies leading to a healthier user over time.” Source.
This week’s PeerIQ Industry Update covers the upwards revision of U.S. GDP growth to 2.9 percent from 2.5 percent; they provide a sneak peek into the PeerIQ Credit Facility Management Suite; Prosper announced 2017 results, former Avant founder John Sun raised $15mn for a new startup and the Arizona AG helped start the first fintech sandbox in a U.S. state in Arizona; Citi is building out their mobile app as the push by incumbent banks into digital becomes bigger. Source.