The company shared information about their loan business in a broader update about the company; total lending was $3 billion since Amazon Lending started in 2011; an article by PYMNTS.com in June 2017 reported that the company had surpassed $1 billion in loans; in 2017 over 300,000 small and medium sized businesses joined Amazon Marketplace. 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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The website for the new platform is chain.baidu.com; it is a project from the firm’s research on blockchain; they see early applications of the platform in asset securitization and asset exchanges; registration on the website is open to the public and users can deploy custom blockchain nodes. Source
Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced it has partnered with fintech firm CellTrust for messaging to clients; the new service will be focused on client to advisor text messages; the partnership will allow the bank to catalogue all communication with time and date stamps, tracking and logging activity; they plan to launch the new program over the next two months. Source.
UK based challenger bank Monzo announced what their plans are for 2018; three specific areas they wanted to highlight were launching a feature to help customers manage bills, ending their prepare program and helping customers to switch to their payments platform; as the company continues to build out new features they said they plan to keep updating clients on a month by month basis. Source.
Online near prime lender LendingPoint to boost expansion into point-of-sale with acquisition of LoanHero. Source
In recent months Jersey City has seen three more companies relocate to the area; companies recently relocating include Yellowstone Capital, World Business Lenders and Principis Capital; this is in addition to BlueVine and Funding Metrics recently opening up operations in the city; one of the main drivers behind the move is the Grow NJ tax program helping businesses save money by relocating. Source.
- Peer-to-Peer Lender Crowdstacker Joins P2PFA
- Tandem Closes on Harrod’s Bank Purchase, Receives UK Banking License with Acquisition
- Cardlay Secures $5M USD in Funding
- Mambu banking engine powers Kreditech’s lending leap to India
- How Banking-as-a-Platform Propels Cross River Bank (Podcast)
- Rocket Internet CEO Says Ready to Pounce With Cash Pile
- Bitcoin Can’t Be Valued: NYU’s ‘Dean of Valuation’
Since the financial crises banks, for the most part, have focused their time and effort on complying with new regulations and building up capital ratios in case another crisis hits; while they were doing this another industry, fintech, emerged and has eaten into some of the core profit making businesses of the banks; banks have started to catch up with technology and as countries like the US look to pare back some crisis era rules the banks see the next few years as the perfect opportunity to invest wisely in technology; the one thing the banks might not be able to handle is if Amazon, Facebook or Google begin to encroach further into fintech, potentially bring in competition who can immediately match up in size and strength. Source.
Open Banking, seen as a potential game changing regulatory change, is set to launch in the next few days in the UK; Open Banking requires banks to allow fintechs and other third parties to have access to customer data if the consumer agrees to grant access; the new law will allow for a safer data exchange, in the past consumers shared their login details and third parties scraped the data, and standardize access across the UK and Europe; while banks have pushed back on the coming change this will allow customers to better control their information and tailor services to their lifestyles. Source.
Real estate investing startup Cadre signed a partnership with Goldman Sachs to allow their private wealth clients access to the platform; Cadre has already been able to secure $250mn in commitments from Goldman’s clients and has said their is a steady stream still in the pipeline; private wealth clients will get a log in for Cadre and access to vetted deals in commercial real estate; in addition to the partnership Goldman Sachs also becomes and investor in the company. Source