The CEO and Co-Founder of Nav talks small business finance and how his company is helping small business owners become more successful. Source
Amazon is speaking with the Bengaluru-based company; the company is focused on small businesses but is also looking to lend to consumers on Amazon’s platform; According to sources Amazon may invest $5-10 million; Capital Float recently raised $45 million in a Series C; Amazon has recently done other deals with fintech companies in India. Source
- BFS Capital Names Former BankUnited Executive, Mary Harris, as Chief Marketing Officer
- Ranger Direct Lending makes further $9.1m provision for Argon Credit
- Marlette Funding Appoints Sabrina Basht Chief Strategy Officer for Best Egg
- Octopus Choice passes £100m AUM
- Loot Secures £2.2m in Funding
- Australian Fintech Airwallex Secures $8 Million Investment From Square Peg
- Overstock.com CEO aims to sell or reorganize e-commerce biz so he can focus on blockchain
- National Personal Credit Platform Appoints Chairman
- China: WeiyangX Fintech Review
- China’s war on risk hands US$121b loan market to big firms
- China’s Wild Bunch: Startup Investors Are Cashed-Up Cowboys
- Goji Adds to Team
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, or GAFAM as they are beginning to be know are continuing their move towards financial services; payments have become one area in particular where they have seen the tech giants making inroads; mobile wallets for in-store payments, money transfers between friends and even loans to small businesses; tech giants have only started to disrupt fintech as they look to become bigger players in consumers financial lives. Source.
JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have joined IBM’s quantum computing network as they look to use the technology to assess risk and stay secure; Barclays is beginning to test potential uses and JPMorgan Chase is looking to leverage quantum computing for trading, portfolio optimization and risk analysis; there is a lot happening in quantum computing these days as big tech firms look to master the technology seen as potentially 100,000 times faster than classic computers; while there are clear benefits to quantum computing banks are also looking at protecting themselves from the cyber threat that hackers could exploit using the same technology. Source.
As the government cracks down on riskier lenders the more established brands of Ant Financial and Lufax look to become even more dominant; China’s top ten online lenders account for 36 percent of all loans and that number looks to continue to rise as smaller lenders look to be on their way out; the top lenders use spending analysis, AI and more to determine creditworthiness of borrowers; with the rise in wealth and spending power in China the dominant fintech firms are ideally positioned. Source.
Ant Financial’s Yu’e Bao fund has grown since launch in 2013 to become the largest money market fund in the world; JP Morgan’s fund, which launched in 1993, was recently passed by Yu’e Bao in assets and is still seen as the safer fund; according to a report by Fitch Ratings Yu’e Bao is a lot riskier in terms of market concentration, credit quality, liquidity and regulatory risk. Source.
The platform grew 104% year over year; its investor base includes banks, pension and infrastructure funds, family offices and private clients; According to the company, LendInvest has the largest institutional funding base of any European Fintech lender on record; the platform offers loans made to professional property investors and developers. Source
Startups like Salt Lending, Nebeus, CoinLoan and EthLend have all started a new industry by making loans to borrowers using bitcoin as collateral; with the world of bitcoin millionaires growing they will need to buy houses or cars and being able to secure a loan by putting up their bitcoin will allow then to make these purchases; securing a loan for $100,000 could cost a borrower 12 to 20 percent in interest and $200,000 in bitcoin as collateral; the loans could help bitcoin miners secure funding and potentially compete with P2P lenders; it is still early days but the potential is there as more byproducts are coming to light in the bitcoin craze. Source.
Bitcoin is the financial phenomenon of the year; Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy and Co-Founder of LendIt shares his thoughts on cryptocurrencies as well as a breakdown of his holdings. Source