Business marketplace lender Loan Frame has announced a $2.25 million fundraise that will help the firm expand its business in India as demonetization and the Indian economy present new opportunities for growth; participants in the $2.25 million funding round included the co-founder of Vedanta Capital, the former chairman of Visa International and the co-chief executive of MIO Partners; the platform has stated it is seeking to build the largest small and medium-sized business lending marketplace in the sub-continent; expects to lend $150 million over the next two years with both secured and unsecured loans. 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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French bank BNP Paribas, along with Daon, has developed a new biometric login for their wealth management clients using their mobile device; the new service is called myBioPass and it allows users to login using a selfie; transactions are then authorized by fingerprint or voice recognition; the service is currently active for Luxembourg clients using iOS mobile devices; myBioPass will be added to desktops and Android devices later this year. Source
LendIt has announced its Lang Di Fintech 2017 conference which will be held on July 15 to 16 at the Kerry Hotel, Pudong, Shanghai; LendIt also announced a partnership with JadeValue Fintech who will co-host the second annual LendIt China PitchIt@LendIt startup competition and offer the winning company six months of co-working space as one of the many competition prizes; LendIt China will also be translating the daily LendIt News on its new Lang Di WeChat channel. Source
Mobile wallet technology firm YoYo has launched a new marketing platform for traditional merchants that is powered by artificial intelligence; YoYo Engage will provide marketing campaign recommendations to merchants through artificial intelligence suggestions derived from mobile wallet payment activity; the firm launched the new marketing platform at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Source
Scalable Capital has announced a partnership with Siemens Private Finance; Scalable Capital will offer wealth management options with daily rebalancing to individual risk profiles for Siemens employees in Germany; this adds to the services already offered by Siemens Private Finance which currently include insurance, pensions and mortgage lending. Source
Small business P2P lender Lendix has announced expansion to Italy; based in Paris the Italy expansion follows expansion to Spain in 2016; Lendix has hired Sergio Zocchi who will be the CEO for the new Italy business based in Milan; as of December 31, 2016 Lendix had originated 57 million euros ($61.01 million) in loans; it is also rumored that the firm plans to continue its expansion across Europe in 2017 with a new office potentially opening in the UK. Source
We had an all-star panel of the pioneer fund managers at LendIt 2016 to discuss how to prepare their portfolio for a market downturn. The managers were beginning to see greater dispersion in returns and started to question whether a downturn was coming. However, as we have seen, the bull market continued its historic rise throughout the year. Nevertheless, it was great to hear firsthand from these managers on how they stay prepared for a market correction. Source
You can view the video here:
Bitcoin market exchange CoinBase has received licensing from the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) to expand its business to New York; the bitcoin licensing process involved analysis of the company's anti-money laundering, capitalization, consumer protection and cyber security policies; along with CoinBase, the New York DFS approved four additional firms for virtual currency business operations including licenses for XRP II and Circle Internet Financial, and charters for Gemini Trust Company and itBit Trust Company. Source
Chinese P2P lender Dianrong has announced its 2016 financial results; loan originations increased 148% from 2015 to approximately RMB 16.23 billion ($2.36 billion) in 2016; the firm's investor base grew to 3.62 million investors; loan loss rates were low overall with a 1.17% cumulative non performing loans rate and 2.46% current non performing loans rate; average interest rate earned by investors was approximately 7%; the firm says new regulations in China have helped large firms with established brands like Dianrong and sees continued growth ahead for the business. Source
Motive Partners is launching a new venture capital fund this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos; Motive Partners plans to raise $150 million for the fund which will invest in fintech; LMRKTS will be one of the firm's first investments; LMRKTS is supported by ex-US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and is focused on technology for managing foreign exchange transaction costs. Source