China’s central bank said they will open up the electronic payments market to foreign companies for the first time; international firms will be required to set up local units, establish infrastructure within China, and store client information within the country; China is one of the biggest and most competitive payments markets in the world; there are currently more than 260 companies with payments licenses and they processed more than $26tn in volume in 2017. 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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Santander has teamed up with Ripple to bring to market the first international money transfer app by a large retail bank based on blockchain technology; the project does not yet have a launch date but Business Insider reports the companies said in the next few months; the app will allow for transfers to be settles within 24 hours and customers will be able to understand all costs before making a transfer. Source.
- Shinnecock Partners Publishes an Investor’s Guide to Fine Art Secured Lending
- Sydney Angels funds QPay $570k to steal millennial students from banks
- Omnichannel and Short-Term Lending
- BBVA-backed fintech launches global bank account
- How blockchain is affecting banking (Bank on It Podcast with LendIt Co-Founder Jason Jones)
Penta is a German based fintech company that is looking to improve business banking with their Compass platform; Penta is streamlining the process to allow founders the ability to open up an account in less than 15 minutes; further features will be added in the coming months to assist founders with other registration and legal issues related to starting a small business. Source
TD Bank has signed a partnership agreement with nCino to digitize the bank’s corporate and commercial lending; the nCIno technology will allow for quicker lending decisions and more transparency; nCino’s Bank Operating system features CRM, loan origination, account opening, workflow, content management, business process management, customer engagement, and instant reporting all on a single platform according to Banking Technology. Source.
Data collected by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) showed that China applied for more than half of the 406 blockchain patent applications; patents specific to cryptocurrencies rose by 16 percent in 2017 to 602 overall, cryptocurrency patents are not included in the blockchain category; 6 of the top 9 patent filers from 2012 to 2017 were China based companies. Source.
Prosper originated $2.9 billion in 2017 and now has surpassed $11 billion in total loans. Source
Rishi Khosla, chief executive and co-founder of OakNorth, told CNBC that eventually the company plans to make the move into China; "It is going to be a market that we will go into. It's just a question of when and how rather than if," Khosla explained at a fintech event last week.; talk of a move comes after China’s new central bank head said he is willing to open the market to foreign companies; OakNorth has said they are in discussions with a variety of countries across the globe about expansion plan. Source.
Speaking at the Development High-Level Forum, CEO Eric Jing called Blockchain, “the cornerstone of trust for the digital society in the future.”; while Jing is bullish on the long term outlook for blockchain technology he also curbed enthusiasm stating that it isn’t ready for a “large-scale outbreak”, comparing the current speculation similar to the internet bubble; he also shared that the technology will be more applicable in the next 2-3 years and that there were still some challenges to overcome. Source
The new venture called Spring Labs will use blockchain technology in building a network which will allow lenders, banks and data providers to pay each other for access to consumer information; CEO Adam Jiwan gave insight into the problem they are trying to solve stating, “Utility companies or social-media companies or asset managers do not provide data into the existing credit-bureau system. In the existing ecosystem, financial institutions or lenders give up that information to a centralized party — a credit bureau — only for the financial institutions to buy it back in a synthesized form.”; the firm aims to have Avant, the online lender, be its first strategic partner. Source