The UK Financial Conduct Authority has granted Coinbase an E-Money License; Barclays is also allowing Coinbase to access the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme which is the core payment infrastructure in the UK; Coinbase’s Zeeshan Feroz stated, “There is no other exchange today that has access to domestic banking. UK consumers today have to jump through all sorts of hoops around sending money to European accounts using euros in order to get money in and out." Source
deBanked has collected originations figures from many of the top small business financing companies; according to data available, OnDeck led 2017 originations with over $2.1 billion; PayPal Working Capital and Amazon Lending are not included in the list. Source
Beginning in June ads promoting cryptocurrencies and ICOs will be banned on Google; this follows a recent ban from Facebook; both companies have a large share of internet ads and combined collected 60% of online ad spend in 2017; many cryptocurrencies fell on the news. Source
Speaking at EthCC, an Ethereum conference in Paris, JPMorgan’s Amber Baldet talked about the concerns of private and public blockchain builders; “These problems really aren't so far apart, it's just that people are trying to solve the problems in different ways,” says Baldet as reported by CoinDesk; she doesn’t think public and private blockchain need to be so different, what everyone wants is the ability to interoperate; CoinDesk went on to interview Amber about building connectivity, feedback loops and more. Source.
UK based Tandem Bank has acquired financial management app Pariti; the app has more than 95,000 users that will now be transferred to Tandem Bank; Pariti users will still be able to access their accounts through the Tandem app. Source.
Lend Academy digs in to the complex topic of valuation with this Q&A piece conducted with Houlihan Lokey. Source
- RateSetter celebrates 5,000 ISA account openings in first month
- Future Finance Closes €40M Funding Round
- Square Seeks BitLicense to Bring Bitcoin Buying to NY
- Fundbox wants to be PayPal for Small Businesses
- Binance Unveils Blockchain for New Crypto Exchange
- PayU, Kreditech launch instant cardless EMI with PayU Monedo in India
From the beginning of 2017 Ant’s consumer lending business has doubled; this is a result of growth in their Huabei and Jiebei business units; Chinese regulators have recently made it harder for companies like Ant to create ABS; according to data from Bloomberg, Ant Financial’s ABS Sales account for a third of issuance by all Chinese corporate issuers. Source
One of the co-founders of Funding Circle USA is stepping down and will become Chairman. Source
Leaders at the Federal Reserve, the OCC and the CFPB spoke at the Consumer Bankers Association annual conference about the need to be more flexible when applying oversight to bank & fintech partnerships; “We need to do a better job of educating our supervision staff, in some cases, in terms of interpretation of the guidance,” said Dan Quan, who leads the CFPB’s Project Catalyst, as reported by American Banker; they also talked about better coordination to ensure consistency in oversight. Source.