Payments company Venmo has grown significantly from its founding by Iqram Magdon-Ismail and Andrew Kortina; it was acquired for $26 million by payment processor Braintree and is now owned by PayPal after an $800 million acquisition in 2013; through acquisitions the firm's payment processes have evolved; in 2016 the firm transacted $18 billion; now as a PayPal company it has been plugged into PayPal's compliance infrastructure for tracking fraudulent payments and settlements; as a PayPal company it has also been able to offer new services and its executive team has been integrated with PayPal helping the company to develop new market positioning. Source
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
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Cross River Bank is leveraging its fintech customers to grow its payment transaction services; the firm has digital lending partnerships with 17 companies and is the issuing lender for some of the industry's top marketplace platforms; the firm's business relationships have helped to expand its payments system customers with many of its customers naturally migrating to Cross River Bank's payments system; the firm's CEO Gilles Gades says its payments activity could double next year with help from existing relationships with Stripe and Google Wallet providing access to Mastercard Send; in payments, Cross River currently manages approximately 2 million transactions per month and it sees a substantial opportunity for gaining more market share; industry participants are also watching Cross River Bank's plans for developing a newly branded bank called Almond Bank, which it has recently been investing in. Source
Wealth advisor Snowden Lane has partnered with Artivest to offer investors easier access to private equity and hedge fund investments; Snowden Lane is an independent wealth advisor with no proprietary product offerings; through the partnership, Artivest will now be the firm's main provider of private equity and hedge fund investments; Artivest provides a curated platform of hedge funds and private equity investments. Source
In December 2016 real estate P2P lender Wellesley began a fundraising campaign on Seedrs and also received a First Gazette notice for late accounts; a recent report from the Financial Times says the company is dependent on raising new capital in order to stay in business; its Seedrs campaign is targeting 1.5 million British pounds ($1.85 million) and has raised 195,000 British pounds ($240,280). Source
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Moody's has released a report commenting on the new FDIC guidelines for bank lending through third-party lenders; guidance from the FDIC is proposed and seeks to potentially improve controls on bank lending through marketplace loans; the new FDIC guidance will help to improve the overall quality of loans on marketplace lending platforms, according to Moody's; the new controls focus on greater analysis and oversight by banks of marketplace lenders' credit underwriting models to ensure that they align with the bank's lending terms. Source
On November 7, China passed data control laws that had been put on the table in August; the laws include government security checks on companies in finance, telecommunications and other critical data industries as well as mandatory in-country data storage; also, individuals will have to register with their real names on messaging services; businesses are concerned that information flow will be curtailed in industries where this is critical to be effective and corporate security checks have the potential to be invasive rather than simply regulatory; the law will go into effect next summer; some aspects of the law will need clarification over time from the government. Source
A report on China's consumer credit finds that consumers are increasing their use of debt with 94% of consumers using credit or a loan in the past year; consumers are borrowing more from internet-based sources with consumers increasing their borrowing from P2P loan providers while also borrowing more for car loans and mortgages; consumers in their 20s appear to be the leading borrowers as a trend towards living in the moment is motivating their spending habits; the report expects the rise in debt to continue, projecting household loans to increase at a rate of 14% for the next five years. Source
Zopa provides 2016 year end stats; in total they lent 680 million British pounds ($830 million); helped 20,000 people improve their home and 29,000 buy a car; the company also highlights several awards they won including Most Trusted Loan Provider by Moneywise for the seventh year in a row; the company struck many partnerships including offering phone finance with Unshackled, loans through personal finance app Pariti and a partnership with Airbnb; company also launched three new lending products for investors with varying risk and return profiles; in 2016 we also saw the first securitization of Zopa loans and learned of Zopa's plans to apply for a banking license. Source
The cryptocurrency space is a space we believe in,” CBOE’s chief operating officer told analysts in a call on Tuesday according to the FT; they also noted that the CBOE is in talks with the CFTC to offer futures on bitcoin; this move follows what the CME said last week that it planned to add bitcoin as well. Source.