Caitlin Long recently stepped down as President and Chairman of blockchain startup Symbiont to help turn Wyoming into an ideal environment for digital asset businesses; she helped with the Delaware Blockchain Initiative and, along with her partners, recently introduced 5 bills in Wyoming; 3 of the 5 have passed and the Governor has indicated he will sign them into law later this month; American Banker interviewed Caitlin on institutional interest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin becoming financialized, the different between security and utility tokens and more. 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.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
To join our newsletter community please subscribe here.
Surveys by finance site Smart Money People and RFI Group both point to an important time for UK based digital banks; Starling Bank and Monzo were the top two banks in customer satisfaction according to Smart Money People; RFI Group found UK customers willing to use a digital only bank dropped from 78 percent to 54 percent in the past year; while the digital only banks please customers more they are beginning to run up against incumbent competition for a similar experience; digital only banks need to begin thinking about building long term businesses as the old guard catches up. Source.
WorldRemit recently entered the U.S. market and already expects it to be their biggest market by year end; remittances sent from the U.S. back to home countries have risen to $66bn from $50bn in the last 5 years; immigrants are becoming more tech savvy and companies like WorldRemit see big potential as apps like WhatsApp have helped move people to use their phones more and more; WorldRemit has been driven in large part by relying on a number of different partners to help set up their expanding network; tax issues are still a big concern and recently receiving the NY approval, a 2 year effort, sets the company up to focus on scale. Source.
Lend Academy shares information related to filing taxes with LendingClub and Prosper for the 2017 tax year. Source
- CFPB Issues Request For Information On Rulemaking Processes
- New consortium to tackle the problem of risky fintech innovations
- Fintech lender iwoca pledges £100m for Northern SMEs by 2020
- Folk2Folk Lenders Provide £200 Million to Rural Businesses in the UK
- LendingTree Mortgage Offers Report – February 2018
- QuantumReverse Expands Its Team
- Report: 2017 Real Estate Investment Survey (RealtyShares)
- iintoo Returns Net 15.95 Percent on Exited Deals, Outperforming Online Real Estate Investment Marketplace
- Why institutional investors are turning to marketplace loans (LendingClub)
News of Amazon in talks with JPMorgan Chase and Capital One to offer a checking account product has brought up a number of regulatory questions; key questions include who owns the customer, what is Amazon’s role in the accounts, who regulates Amazon in this instance and will Amazon need to become a bank; while details of the deal are not fully known regulators will be keeping a close eye on the partnership. Source.
Citi, Zurich Insurance, Kabbage and DTCC are working to develop the new standards for tech companies; while large institutions have invested significantly in preventing cyber attacks, there are risks with partnering with fintechs who may not have as robust as systems in place; these backdoor attacks pose a significant risk to financial institutions; Michael Bodson, president and chief executive of DTCC stated, “We all live and die by each other; the weakest link in the chain is the highest point of vulnerability”. Source
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been hit with a class action lawsuit that alleges insider trading during their launch of bitcoin cash; the plaintiffs are accusing the exchange of tipping off insiders prior to the official launch; prices of bitcoin cash spiked ahead of the launch and Coinbase did say they would conduct an investigation into the matter, plaintiffs claim the results have yet to be revealed. Source.
The bill is aimed at cracking down on illegal activity around cryptocurrencies and also reduce operational risk for fintech companies; the central bank will be responsible for the new regulations if they are signed into law; the proposed law also encourages open banking through APIs although other details are not known until the secondary laws are unveiled by regulators; Mexico is currently a fast growing market for fintech according to recent data from Deloitte. Source
BBVA has announced their Open Talent competition which is dubbed as the world’s largest fintech competition; the competition is in its tenth year and will focus on banking, data, money management and financial decision-making; the winner will take home $186,000 and finalists will take part in an immersion week which will show them how to work with a big corporate, become a customer of the bank and more. Source.