The company has raised the money from investors which includes Draper Esprit Plc; Ledger sells USB keys that allow for secure storage of cryptocurrencies; funds will be used to expand the team and on research and development; they plan to sell between 3 and 6 million hardware wallets in 2018 and have sold about a million so far; total revenue in 2017 was $56 million; Ledger has offices in Paris and San Francisco. 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.
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Realty Shares Advisors and Amplify Trust ETF both launched blockchain ETFs yesterday; both focus on blockchain based companies and invest in companies with a market cap over $200 million; CoinDesk shares more details about the ETFs. Source
Zelle, the banking p2p payments app, saw an 84 percent jump in year over year growth with Bank of America; the app saw over 68 million transactions in 2017 through their Bank of America partnership; Zelle recently started a marketing campaign to provide more exposure to the brand as many users might not realize they are using Zelle since it is integrated with their banking app. Source.
Funding Circle’s SME Income Fund has closed a funding deal with Citibank; according to the AltFi, “Under the terms of the agreement Citibank London will provide £50m of funding into the transaction, by entering into a senior, floating rate loan. The fund will contribute a portfolio of existing UK small business loans at par, and in return shall receive ?the approximately £50m of cash to be deployed in accordance with its investment policy, and junior notes.” Source
Banking alternative Revolut is launching international medical and dental insurance for £1 a day; the company is using your phone’s location to automatically turn insurance on and off; there is a limit to the service if you are one to travel for months at a time but you can pay up front for the service annually; the company partners with Thomas Cook Money for their insurance product. Source.
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- The Top Ten Fintech Predictions for 2018
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JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo announced their earnings late last week and digital channels continue to be a growing force at the banks; JPMorgan Chase saw a 13 percent jump in active mobile customers to over 30 million; Wells Fargo’s growth was not as pronounced at 3 percent to over 21 million active mobile customers; this points to a broader industry trend where according to Business Insider’s Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study 83 percent of respondents use mobile banking; some recent trends the study has also seen include more attention to security, mobile transfers and users asking for more advanced features. Source.
While the recent revisions to the tax code were done along party lines, the newly proposed updates to Dodd-Frank have the backing of a bipartisan group of legislators; the bill is looking to target banks in the $50bn to $250bn range who many feel have been disproportionately effected by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law; changing the definition of the banks from systemically important financial institutions or SIFI’s will free up the banks from certain requirements; while their is optimism for a deal that crosses party lines, Congress has a ways to go as they look to get this done later in the month. Source.
While speaking on Business Insider’s podcast “Success! How I Did It” Affirm CEO Max Levchin shared the story about how he started PayPal; Levchin moved out to Silicon Valley after starting a business that didn’t succeed and was sleeping on his friend’s floor; he saw Peter Thiel deliver a lecture and stayed after to chat with the then hedge fund manager; they met the next morning for breakfast and Thiel liked one of his two ideas, he decided to invest and that was the company that became PayPal. Source.
Cumulative issuance for marketplace lending securitization now totals $28.2 billion across 106 deals; Q4 2017 issuance totaled $4.4 billion which was another record quarter; SoFi issued the largest consumer and student lending deals ever; PeerIQ shares other highlights in their quarterly report. Source