Santander will acquire a controlling interest of 50.1% in Spanish trade finance...
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.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
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The Series A fundraising included both debt and equity capital; investment was led by K2 Venture Capital with participation from STI Financial Group and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper who made his first investment in an Indonesian startup; firm will use the funds to expand its lending and build its technology with plans for adding new research and development centers for machine learning and algorithm design; platform provides short term micro-loans of between US$75 and US$350 for a maximum of 30 days. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news...
A recent report by Startupbootcamp and PwC points out that startup trends in 2016 moved towards artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning companies compared to blockchain; the data shows that 16% of applications to Startupbootcamp are from artificial intelligence and machine learning companies, whereas blockchain applications account for only 6%; blockchain was certainly a bigger buzzword in 2016 but one reason that AI and machine learning has more startups is because companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have made significant investments in the technology; additionally, the report points out that as blockchain becomes more industrialized more startups will use the technology instead of being a blockchain startup. Source
Blockchain technology firm AlphaPoint has partnered with Scotiabank for a successful proof of blockchain technology; the test showed significant advantages for use of blockchain with FIXML trading communication; leading features of AlphaPoint's blockchain solution for financial trading include easily integrated communication with legacy systems and throughput of thousands of events per second with sub-second confirmation times. Source
FinLab aims to help fintech startups that are helping American consumers; it is funded through a five-year grant from JPMorgan; in total 26 companies have worked or are working with Finlab; TechCrunch profiles how the innovation lab works which includes programs to help startups understand how the banking industry works and meetings in Washington with regulators. Source
Here is the FDIC Small Business Lending Report All Fintech Lenders are...
Kabbage continues to look into how they can serve small businesses in...
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
While China's fintech market has been a global leader, online auto financing has lagged other countries; it is currently only reporting a 30% penetration rate compared to 85% for the US; despite the slower growth, the market is reporting some recent activity specifically from Guazi.com, Kkucar, Didi Chuxing and UCAR; overall the market is expected to grow from RMB1.1 trillion ($159.758 million) in 2016 to RMB1.85 trillion ($268.684 million) in 2018. Source