Kabbage is an online lender in the small business space; today they announced they would not fund “any business that we identify as a seller of firearms or ammunition to individuals under 21 or that sell or manufacture any form of assualt-style weapon.”; according to a written statement signed by the executives, “As parents and leaders of Kabbage we simply cannot imagine the grief of families who too often have been stricken by gun violence like the tragedy in Parkland, Florida. The technology community must work to prevent these horrifying and heartbreaking events from robbing our children of their future.”; Kabbage is also supporting the Parkland survivors’ March 14 walkout and also announced charitable contributions. 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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- Startup, Rentlender Revolutionizes the Rental Market, Offering Finance Options for Renters
- Solving the Pain Points of Digital Asset Trading Using An Open Source Platform (LendIt Blog post)
- Peer to Peer Property Lender Blend Network Boosts Management with Hire of former Morgan Stanley VP
- The European investors financed 330 thousand short-term PDL-loans (Robo Cash)
Venkatesh Bala from Biz2Credit shares new ways that lenders should think about risk management. Source
John Gerspach, Chief Financial Officer of Citigroup stated at an investor conference they are building the foundation which will support the launch of a national digital consumer bank launch in the next three years; the bank currently has around 700 bank branches which is far fewer than the three biggest banks. Source
U.S banks closed more than 1700 branches in the year dated June 2016 to June 2017, one of the largest drops on record; more than half of U.S. customers still prefer opening an account at a a branch, when compared to the UK market which shows more than half of customers would rather open accounts digitally; leading vendors like NCR and Diebold have seen revenues drop with the branch products pointing to a decline in the importance of the branch; while branches are still looked at as important to U.S. banks bottom line the trend still points to less branches and more digital in the coming years. Source.
According to Visa 96 percent of U.S. payment volume took place on chip cards, with the large majority being chip and signature cards; starting next month major card brands will look to move customers to the chip and PIN cards that have been widely adopted across Europe; Merchants will be able to turn cell phones into terminals instead of buying expensive POS terminals with pin pads; wide adoption will take time as smaller retailers might not see the benefits as quickly and large retailers have invested a lot in the current technology. 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.
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
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.
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