Alipay and Marqeta partner on real time payment processing for Chinese travelers visiting North America; Marqeta’s platform will facilitate payment processing at retail locations across the continent; Jason Gardner, CEO of Marqeta tells Crowdfund Insider, “The Marqeta platform will ensure a seamless user and merchant experience across the U.S. that Alipay’s customers need when traveling and shopping abroad.” Source.
The proposed relationship would allow Chinese consumers traveling to the US to use their Alipay Mobile Wallet; Pablo Simone, head of product and strategy for Chase Merchant Services stated, “We are always looking for ways to deliver more value to our merchants and bring them closer to their customers. A relationship with Alipay would create opportunities that enable Chinese tourists to transact in a way they are familiar with.”; it is estimated that four million Chinese consumers will visit North America this year. Source
There is a lot of talk about all of the different ways blockchain technology can impact financial services; the Financial Times sat down with bankers, consultants, and analysts to come up with five areas where we are likely to see the most impact; categories include clearing and settlement, payments, trade finance, identity and syndicated loans. Source
CircleUp facilitates equity investments in consumer good companies; Rory Eakin, Co-Founder and COO of CircleUp discusses how they conduct due diligence, their unique data analysis tool they have built in house and the new debt product they are piloting. Source
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While speaking at an event at Georgetown Law School Acting OCC Head Keith Noreika defended the proposed fintech charter; Mr. Noreika also took questions on the fear of commercial companies being granted banking charters; “A national bank charter is a special thing, and the OCC will not undermine its value by granting charters to companies that are not ready to meet our admittedly high expectations” said Noreika. Source.
The blog post comes from Chris Burniske who shares the early days of cryptoasset valuation, theory behind cryptoasset valuations and valuing a bandwidth token: INET. Source
Author and fintech expert Chris Skinner discusses the impact of fintech companies on banking services; the idea of free banking will essentially be gone as fintech companies are able to focus on transactional services the banks once dominated; he calls this the democratization of finance and it will help to bring more transparency to banking overall. Source.
Peter Ryan of the software provider Temenos believes PSD2 has the potential to offer banks the personal touch they have lost; allowing consumers to share their data via APIs can allow banks to learn more about their customers and offer tailored products; while some banks have been proactive there is a fair share of the market who fear open banking; better understanding of the potential in PSD2 will help banks embrace what’s ahead. Source.
There have been many recent launches of digital banks which was a result of regulatory changes in the UK; Metro Bank was the first having launched in 2010, but there are many new names since then; article highlights founders and investors in the space including Eileen Burbidge (Monzo), Sanjeev Gupta (Wyelands Bank), Jonathan Rowland (Redwood Bank), Nick Ogden (ClearBank) and the Pears family (Masthaven Bank). Source