According to Bloomberg, the company is in advanced talks for the latest round; the valuation would be about double of Affirm’s last round in April 2016; Affirm works with over 1,000 retailers and also recently rolled out a mobile app which includes a virtual credit card; the point of sale loans have annual percentage rates between 10-30%. 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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Sheltered Harbor began earlier this year and covers around 400 million accounts across banks and credit unions; members of the project are required to back up data so other banks can serve customers in the event that another bank becomes disabled; the project goes beyond concerns over customer data being stolen to address concerns that a cyberattack could destroy or lock data. Source
Acting CFPB Head Mick Mulvaney said he thought the payday lending rule was too far along for the agency to change but that he supports a congressional rollback; the Congressional Review Act gives Congress 60 days to nullify a regulation; Mr. Mulvaney is currently involved in a dispute over whether or not he can run the agency on an interim basis and he said he anticipates staying for 5 to 7 months. Source.
Lloyd’s Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland announce the closure of more than 100 branches; this is part of a wider trend for both banks who will now have closed more than 1,000 in the last few years; reasons for the closings include more UK consumers using mobile banking and the branch closures help to save significant costs. Source.
The new unit at the SEC was started in September to focus on potential illegal activities in the digital currency market; the ICO that was shut down promised returns of 1,000 percent; the SEC filed charges against Dominic Lacroix who they claim was trying to raise $15mn from thousands of investors. Source.
Banks of all sizes and core provider FIS have begun testing Amazon’s Alexa service to complete voice commands in banking; instead of customers logging into their banking app they would simply ask Alexa for a balance or to transfer funds; skills, as they are referred to, are constantly being refined as confusion over pronunciation still occur with the technology only being widely used in recent years; it is still early days for this type of technology to be used in a sophisticated way but the industry is showing that they are willing to test innovative ideas. Source.
The CBOE will launch bitcoin futures on Sunday December 10th and said that trading will be free for the first month; “We are committed to encouraging fairness and liquidity in the bitcoin market. To promote this, we will initially offer XBT futures trading for free,” commented Ed Tilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CBOE; CBOE’s bitcoin futures will trade on CFE un the ticker XBT. Source.
Last week LendingClub closed a whole loan transaction structured as a tradable, pass-through security called a CLUB Certificate; Lend Academy reached out to LendingClub to find out more and shares what benefits this structure has for some investors. Source
Prosper CEO David Kimball spoke at a conference last week stating, “Our main concern… it’s always liquidity, and I think most people in this room understand that the best way to get to liquidity is to have a lot of different options. And so I think you’ll see our toolkit expand [in 2018] versus where it is now.” Kimball also spoke about the challenges the company has had to overcome and the recent successes for the company including Prosper’s three securitizations and becoming cash flow positive. Source
- U.S. News magazine cites LendingPoint in ‘Best Personal Loans’ list
- Zopa zooms ahead to become the first consumer peer-to-peer group to lend out £100m in a month
- How an MBA entrepreneur made his multiple-account bank card add up
- Madden ruling was a step backward. Congress should fix it
- ConsenSys Ventures has made its first four investments
- PeerStreet’s Brew Johnson Named 2017 HousingWire Vanguard Award Winner
- Trulioo Recognized As a Global Leader in Digital Identity Verification