Goldman Sachs continues to show interest in consumer finance; CEO of Final, Aaron Frank announced that the startup would be closing in December 2017 but did not provide further details; a dozen engineers and product managers will be joining Goldman Sachs; Final was founded in 2014 and offered consumers a credit card; users were able to generate virtual cards unique to a merchant. Source
News Roundup
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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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- BlueVine doubles invoice financing credit lines to up to $5 million
- BNI Europa makes €50m Funding Circle in Germany
- Banco Popular reboots Eloan for new era in online lending
- Santander Consumer USA And AutoFi Team Up To Provide Car Buyers And Dealers With Fast And Easy Online Sales And Financing
- SmartBiz Loans® Launches AI-powered Digital Advisor Tool for Small Business Owners
Senmiao Technology plans to raise $14 million in a US IPO; the company was founded in 2014 and plans to list on the Nasdaq with symbol AIHS; if the company has a successful IPO, they may be worth around $100 million. Source
Ping An Technology and SparkLabs Group will team up to form Ping An Fintech Accelerator; the program will encourage companies to apply from around the world and the first batch will target 10 companies; CEO of Ping An Technology, Ericson Chan, said to Crowdfund Insider, “We are excited to partner with SparkLabs to collaborate with FinTech companies from around the globe. Ping An Technology is the incubator of new technologies for Ping An Group. This accelerator forms a critical part of our incubation ecosystem.” Source.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked and saw the theft of $543mn worth of customer holdings; the Japanese regulator, FSA, said it was concerned that most of the funds were kept in hot wallets online, instead of cold wallets offline; seeing that this is not the first hack of a hot wallet model the regulators might start mandating customer funds be held offline; nothing has been passed yet but the more thefts we see the more regulators will look to try and mitigate future issues. Source.
Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others have launched or will launch their own robo products to compete with slicker startups; after seeing the success of startups in the space the banks realized they needed to improve their offerings to keep customers and attract newer, younger ones; the trend to move away from white labeling technology to building their own is a recent one as some traditional players like UBS, State Street and John Hancock are still using services from SigFig, Motif or NextCapital. Source.
Augmentum Capital, venture group backed by Lord Rothschild, is looking to raise more than $175mn for a closed end fund to invest in fintech startups; the company plans to take positions in p2p lending platform Zopa and crowdfunding platform Seedrs, both of whom are in the UK; “There are very few places you can go to right now to invest in fintech at the moment on the public markets,” said George O’Connor, analyst at Stifel, to the FT. “So [this] taps into the zeitgeist.” Source.
Goldman Sachs has been busy acquiring companies to boost its consumer facing business; they now have expertise across consumer lending, small business lending and real estate; Lend Academy shares their latest acquisitions, including the acquisition of Final, a credit card startup; it seems as though credit cards was the missing piece and it's possible Goldman Sachs will enter the credit card business. Source
SBI Group, owner of SoftBank is investing into the mobile-first bank; SBI Group will also get a seat on Moven's board and the companies plan to form a joint venture in Japan; Moven is also splitting its business in two; one side is the software provider that powers digital banking software and the other is the neobank, MovenBank; Moven also announced that it is in the process of purchasing a US bank. Source
Chinese lenders are moving into Southeast Asian countries to explore new opportunities in lightly regulated countries; according to Global Times, over 50 Chinese lenders have already launched overseas operations in countries like Indonesia and Cambodia; current entrants include well known names like CreditEase, Lufax and jimu.com; some lenders are opening up subsidiaries while others are focusing on partnerships with local companies. Source