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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China-based, QuantGroup, has raised $73 million in a Series C funding round led by Sunshine Insurance Group Corporation, Fosun Capital, Guosen Hongsheng Investment Co., Ltd. and other undisclosed investors; QuantGroup is an online financial services platform offering credit products; it evolved from the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and is led by Zhou Hao with experience at Morgan Stanley, Capital One and Barclays. Source
Online lending platform, Capital Float, received the Fintech Startup of the Year award at the India Fintech Awards 2016, demonstrating its kirana loan app which it says gives instant approval with no paperwork; the award provides Capital Float with INR 500,000 along with many event partner benefits; within the industry the company has also been focusing on the country's demonetization which has been helping business growth for fintech firms. Source
A survey of 70 traditional UK financial services firms by Mayer Brown has quantified the benefits of fintech partnerships in the financial services industry; 100% of survey participants said they would purchase a product or work directly with a fintech company over the next three years and 49% of respondents said they were currently working with a fintech firm in a joint venture partnership; other highlights from the survey report found that 87% of respondents could reduce costs after a fintech partnership, 83% of respondents were able to refresh their brand and 54% of respondents increased revenue. Source
Off the recent news about Stripe's fundraising round, payment companies across the board are seeing growth and increased investor interest; Adyen BV, WePay, PayPal and Square are just a few of the other, well positioned names who are benefiting from the sector wide growth; Square's stock price rose on news of the Stripe fundraising; as online lenders have struggled, payment firms have only continued a pattern of growth, even more evident by the recent holiday sales numbers that showed 109 million people shopped online, more than the 99 million who went to the stores. Source
Germany's central bank is testing the use of blockchain technology in securities settlement; the central bank has partnered with Deutsche Börse to build a prototype; the prototype system is expected to be able to transfer electronic securities and digital coins also performing functions for coupon payments and redemptions of securities. Source
MarketInvoice has reached a 1 billion British pound invoice funding milestone; in the past 14 months it has financed 500 million British pounds of invoices; just recently reaching the 1 billion British pounds funding milestone, it reported invoices funded of 958,029,836 British pounds as of October 31 with a total loan amount of 765,451,443 British pounds; the company has been in business since 2010 with a total of over 20,000 transactions; it currently offers loans of 10,000 British pounds to 3 million British pounds for company invoices. Sources
In September, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry discussed his proposal for fintech regulation which he said would likely include a fintech charter; on Friday, Thomas Curry is expected to announce his plans for the fintech charter; potential provisions to be included with the fintech charter announcement include receivership powers which would provide support from the government if capital funding fails. Source
Chinese regulators have issued new guidance for P2P lenders in further efforts to regulate China's fintech industry; the new guidance requires P2P lenders to register with the government which will also help regulators to build an industry database for development of future regulation; regulators involved with the new guidance include the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. Source
Orchard has released its "Quarterly Industry Report" for the third quarter; origination volume was lower in the third quarter, down approximately 21% from the previous quarter and 50% from peak origination volume in the fourth quarter of 2015; the third quarter is the third consecutive quarter of decreased origination volume; charge-offs have also increased; average borrowing rate has decreased 79 basis points from the previous quarter. Source
Paxos has announced it will add former New York Stock Exchange CEO Duncan Niederauer to its board of directors as blockchain companies are increasingly testing new blockchain technologies for exchange trading and post-trade settlement; Paxos is a blockchain service provider for the financial services industry; Niederauer says blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize post-trade clearing infrastructure. Source
