The Economist magazine's intelligence unit (EIU) has published a report on regulatory support for financial inclusion in developing countries and it is now gaining traction with press and analysts; the report scores countries on having an inclusiveness strategy and building governmental and private sector expertise, then provides in-depth details in areas including credit markets, non-regulated lenders, payments and insurance; Colombia ties Peru this year for the most progressive country; India has shown the most improvement; Latin America and East/South Asia are leaders regionally while Africa and the Middle East remain behind; the EIU performed the research in conjunction with the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and the Multilateral Investment Fund at the Inter-American Development Bank. 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.
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At the Ethereum Developer Conference on November 9, Microsoft announced that it would offer blockchain building blocks as part of its Azure cloud hosting platform; the Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) offering allows developers to quickly launch an Ethereum environment which includes code building blocks for SmartContracts and a semi-private testing environment with a blockchain which then can be migrated to the public Ethereum environment; the offering is in partnership with development house ConsenSys. Source
Deutsche Bank has released a report sharing that three out of four capital market participants believe distributed ledger tech will see widespread use within the next three to six years; of 200 surveyed, 87% reported they believe it is likely to have an impact on securities services; respondents believe cost savings and protection against system failures are key benefits to the new technology. Source
Citi customers will now have a simple and fast option for online, in-app and in-store payment needs with the new digital wallet Citi Pay; this will be viewed as a digital expansion of their current bank and credit card accounts; Citi is also partnering with Mastercard to leverage their digital payment service, Masterpass, which will give Citi customers access to hundreds of thousands of merchants in 33 countries. Source
Georg Ludviksson, the head of Meniga, a digital bank that was started in Finland back in 2009, says that banks are at risk of losing the top spot among their customer base; tech giants like Google, Facebook and Alibaba are placing themselves between banks, and their customers are no longer seeing their traditional bank as the go to place for financial services; Georg Ludviksson also points out that the coming PSD2 regulation will shift the balance of power from banks to the customer and that the regulation has the potential to transform banking in Europe. Source
As two new banking applications come to market this week, the question that comes to mind is can all of these startups survive and disrupt the banks?; there are questions surrounding business models and how each company intends to make money in a market that is becoming more crowded each day; each of these new startups has different challenges that lie ahead, some will need to be approved for a banking license and others will need to understand the regulatory framework behind PSD2. Source
According to Hong Kong regulatory officials, two banks have applied to trial biometric technology under a recent fintech sandbox initiative; Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan notes that the companies want to use biometrics to authenticate securities trading; the fintech sandbox was launched in September; other banks are considering utilizing the sandbox for other areas such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. Source
A new fintech hub has opened in Copenhagen, Denmark; the Financial Services Union Denmark, City of Copenhagen and Danish Bankers Association provided support for the new fintech hub, Copenhagen Fintech; the membership association will focus on five areas of fintech including 1) fintech entrepreneurship 2) platforms, payments, and usability 3) cybersecurity in finance 4) digital processes and 5) financial computation; Thomas Krogh Jensen will lead Copenhagen Fintech as the CEO. Source
The Central Bank of Russia has created a working group with experts from the country's crowdfunding platforms in order to develop a regulatory framework for the crowdfunding industry; the working group will develop regulatory proposals for submission to regulators during the regulatory framework development process; the Russian market appears to be taking a proactive approach as the industry is emerging with 500 million rubles (USD 7,748,755) in total liabilities. Source
Real estate crowdfunder, Fundrise, has made its investment division into an independent company, RSE Capital Partners; the goal was to separate and focus on the two functions of capital raising - via Fundrise with its eReit platform - and capital providing to real estate projects; RSE will focus on financing real estate deals from $20 million to $100 million, while they examine ways to make terms more flexible. Source