The startup donated its digital currency (XRP) to public schools in the United States; Ripple shared it is the largest cryptocurrency gift to a single charity and will be used to buy materials at over 28,000 schools in all 50 states; Ripple currently owns 60 billion of the 100 billion XRP in existence and has a market cap around $35 billion; the cryptocurrency will be liquidated over a two period in order to not disrupt the market price. 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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Branch CEO Matt Flannery is not new in the micro-lending lending space having previously co-founded Kiva; Flannery realized that there was much more potential in lending across the globe outside of the non-profit space; Branch has an app that uses information from the phone to score credit in places like Nigeria and Kenya; the Series B round was led by Trinity Ventures and included other big names such as Andreessen Horowitz and CreditEase Fintech investment fund; the company also secured a $50 million debt facility from Victory Park Capital. Source
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news...
- Big banks on notice as tech groups ramp up pressure
- China: WeiyangX Fintech Review
- Landbay Returns to Seedrs & Quickly Raises £1.2 Million in Funding
- Why Marcus Has Changed Everything
- Ohio Insurtech Root Insurance Completes Series C Round With $51 Million in Funding
- Most people probably don't know Goldman Sachs offers a savings account with excellent perks — and anyone can use it with just $1
- Why borrower experience will be the principal driver of bank revenue in the lending market (Cloud Lending Solutions)
- Data-Driven Marketing – Data Management White Paper (IWCO Direct)
- Information and Data Integrity: A Two-Way Street (TransUnion)
- Small Business Confidence Is Up, What Does that Mean? (OnDeck)
- Here’s Why Millennials Are Choosing Personal Loans (ThinkWallet)
The LendIt Content Team discusses LendIt Fintech USA 2018 in San Francisco on April 9-11. Source
This week’s PeerIQ Industry Update covers the upwards revision of U.S. GDP growth to 2.9 percent from 2.5 percent; they provide a sneak peek into the PeerIQ Credit Facility Management Suite; Prosper announced 2017 results, former Avant founder John Sun raised $15mn for a new startup and the Arizona AG helped start the first fintech sandbox in a U.S. state in Arizona; Citi is building out their mobile app as the push by incumbent banks into digital becomes bigger. Source.
Anti-fraud and authentication specialist Pindrop has unveiled a new method for users, toungueprinting; tongueprinting is meant to stop fraudsters from taking over legitimate accounts by spoofing the call centre with automated bots, social engineering, and knowledge-based authentication questions according to Finovate; Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and cofounder of Pindrop, tells Finovate: “Tongueprinting not only adds an extra layer of security and authentication, it increases the opportunities to generate additional antibodies leading to a healthier user over time.” Source.
Dodd-Frank requires banks to disclose information about employee wages and the data shows a mixed bag for banks; banks like Goldman Sachs lie on the high end of the pay scale while small banks in locations like Houston are at the bottom of the spectrum; what the data also shows is banks are finding it hard to compete with big tech firms for talent as companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon tend to pay premium wages; wages overall look to be rising as lower skill, lower wage jobs are becoming less frequent across the industry. Source.
China will soon be rolling out new licensing requirements for p2p lenders; The system will kick off in April with approvals slated to come at the end of this month, but many lenders aren’t aware of the filing process; in 2016 and 2017 many p2p lenders shut down and according to data there are around 2,000 remaining; it is expected that many of the 2,000 will not pass the new requirements; the new rules won’t allow platforms to guarantee loan payments and also limit loans to individuals and businesses; it will also require that platforms use custodian banks. Source
Over half of China’s online lenders have run into trouble by failing to comply with data privacy rules; Renmin University and Nandu Personal Data Protection Research Centre conducted a survey of over 200 finance apps and found more than 110 to be in low compliance; the issues include collecting phone numbers from users’ contact lists which can be used to harass and shame borrowers who fall behind; most apps also lacked a privacy agreement when signup occurs, which doesn’t allows users protection from the company. Source.