RateSetter Australia was the country's first P2P lending platform for retail investors; it has now announced $100 million in funding; the firm has seen a significant increase in investment from millennial investors seeking yield alternatives to low rate savings accounts and volatile stock markets; concurrently with data on its origination milestone it also released research conducted among RateSetter's investors on millennial investing. Source
Ripple has struck partnerships with MUFG, BBVA, SEB, Akbank, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, SBI Remit, Star One Credit Union, EZ Forex and Cambridge FX; these new partnerships show Ripple's reach as they range from Japan, India, Canada and the US; banks were a big part of this new group, as Ripple vice president of product, Asheesh Birla, explained to CoinDesk: "The reason that we chose to work with banks is that they are experts in local regulation. A lot of them have that pull and understand the regulatory environment and we built our product in such a way that it fits within the different regulatory schemes around the world." Source
Blockchain technology would help to make data and privacy more secure as those aspects are considered central to the way blockchain technology works; the three main advantages of using blockchain are blocking identity theft, preventing data tampering and stopping distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks; each of these advantages are now beginning to be looked at for solutions in banking, storing government data and protecting consumer information from hacking attacks. Source
Alibaba financial services subsidiary Ant Financial says it is interested in expanding to Japan; the financial services firm has been expanding in the Eastern World with ventures in Thailand, Indonesia, Australia The Philippines and Korea; it already has plans to double the number of Japanese stores that accept Alipay to more than 45,000 this year; while further details on an expansion timeline have not been released, a spokesperson for the firm has said, "In Japan, there is a strong need of financial services from small and micro enterprises, and Ant is willing to share its standards and experience with local partners." Source
Ning Tang, founder and CEO of CreditEase, has received the China Financial Literacy Distinguished Contribution Award; the honor was awarded at the 2nd China Financial Literacy Annual Conference; as an institution, CreditEase was also honored with the China Financial Literacy Distinguished Contribution Award; the awards recognize Ning Tang and CreditEase for their broad commitment and contribution to financial inclusion, wealth management, fintech innovation and public financial education. Source
Quovo raised $10 million in Series B funding from existing investors FinTech Collective, Long Light Capital and they were joined by F-Prime Capital and Napier Park Financial Partners; "We're excited to see the continued traction and adoption of our services across the financial services and Fintech space," said Lowell Putnam, CEO and co-founder of Quovo; the capital will be used for growth of the platform and building out their bank API and Quovo Connect module. Source
Hyperledger has added seven new members bringing its total membership to 135; new members include CollectorIQ Inc., Korea Exchange, Shanghai Onechain Information Technology, Shenzhen Forms Syntron Information, The State of Illinois, The Netherlands Organization for applied scientific research (TNO) and 1worldblockchain; the new members will help to support the consortium's goal of developing blockchain solutions and creating an open standard for distributed ledgers. Source
Ethereum prediction market firm Gnosis has completed an initial coin offering with the firm's creators owning 95% or approximately $280 million and investors buying 5% of the project's tokens for a total of $12 million; skeptics say the high market cap for the project is an example of recent irrationality in token sales; however, as more initial coin offerings are successful, investors appear to be growing more comfortable with the investments. Source
MaiziJinfu, a Chinese Internet-based financial services provider, has raised funds in a Series B funding round; Huang Darong, CEO and chairman of MaiziJinfu, said, "The new fund will be used to incubate upgraded internet finance products as well as to further the company's talent development."; the announcement was made at the Internet Finance Development and Innovative Application Forum in Shanghai; MaiziJinfu has served over two million clients from diverse industries, with approximately 20 billion RMB of funding; it is also the parent company of UniFi which offers a financing product for international students in the US and Canada, supporting them with funding for various purposes that is difficult to obtain because they lack standard Social Security records. Source
Lending technology provider ReliaMax has announced $275 million in loan servicing on its platform; the firm's loan servicing level has increased 670% from the close of 2015; the platform's services are focused on the private student loan business and its Private Student Loan Platform-as-a-Service solution has supported lending for over 500 banks, credit unions, alternative lenders and investors. Source