Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, or GAFAM as they are beginning to be know are continuing their move towards financial services; payments have become one area in particular where they have seen the tech giants making inroads; mobile wallets for in-store payments, money transfers between friends and even loans to small businesses; tech giants have only started to disrupt fintech as they look to become bigger players in consumers financial lives. 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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JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have joined IBM’s quantum computing network as they look to use the technology to assess risk and stay secure; Barclays is beginning to test potential uses and JPMorgan Chase is looking to leverage quantum computing for trading, portfolio optimization and risk analysis; there is a lot happening in quantum computing these days as big tech firms look to master the technology seen as potentially 100,000 times faster than classic computers; while there are clear benefits to quantum computing banks are also looking at protecting themselves from the cyber threat that hackers could exploit using the same technology. Source.
As the government cracks down on riskier lenders the more established brands of Ant Financial and Lufax look to become even more dominant; China’s top ten online lenders account for 36 percent of all loans and that number looks to continue to rise as smaller lenders look to be on their way out; the top lenders use spending analysis, AI and more to determine creditworthiness of borrowers; with the rise in wealth and spending power in China the dominant fintech firms are ideally positioned. Source.
Ant Financial’s Yu’e Bao fund has grown since launch in 2013 to become the largest money market fund in the world; JP Morgan’s fund, which launched in 1993, was recently passed by Yu’e Bao in assets and is still seen as the safer fund; according to a report by Fitch Ratings Yu’e Bao is a lot riskier in terms of market concentration, credit quality, liquidity and regulatory risk. Source.
The platform grew 104% year over year; its investor base includes banks, pension and infrastructure funds, family offices and private clients; According to the company, LendInvest has the largest institutional funding base of any European Fintech lender on record; the platform offers loans made to professional property investors and developers. Source
Startups like Salt Lending, Nebeus, CoinLoan and EthLend have all started a new industry by making loans to borrowers using bitcoin as collateral; with the world of bitcoin millionaires growing they will need to buy houses or cars and being able to secure a loan by putting up their bitcoin will allow then to make these purchases; securing a loan for $100,000 could cost a borrower 12 to 20 percent in interest and $200,000 in bitcoin as collateral; the loans could help bitcoin miners secure funding and potentially compete with P2P lenders; it is still early days but the potential is there as more byproducts are coming to light in the bitcoin craze. Source.
Bitcoin is the financial phenomenon of the year; Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy and Co-Founder of LendIt shares his thoughts on cryptocurrencies as well as a breakdown of his holdings. Source
IOTA has increased in value to $10 billion, up from $4 billion in about two weeks; the cryptocurrency though is different than most in that it is not based on blockchain; the article outlines how IOTA tokens work, which use a “tangle” to address the high cost of blockchain transactions. Source
Go-Jek is an Uber competitor and is now looking to lead in the payments sector in Indonesia; the company purchased offline payments service Kartuku, payment gateway Midtrans and a saving and lending firm called Mapan. Source
- Lendio Announces New Franchise in Detroit
- Goodbye Ethereum: Kik Plans to Move Its ICO Tokens to Stellar
- SBDA Group Closes Series A Investment Round
- Yirendai Makes $50 Million Strategic Investment in Finance Services Platform Lion Rock
- Financeit Recapitalizaton Gives Goldman Sachs Majority Stake
- Ablrate Launches Portfolio Loans Product After Topping £30 Million in Total Funding & Securing £3 Million in IFISA Funds
- Coinbase is now the No. 1 iPhone app in the U.S.