Chime raises $18mn in a series B fundraise from Cathay Innovation, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Crosslink Capital and more; Chime is a digital banking app focused on millennials by not charging monthly fees or overdraft charges; they make money on transactions and thus far have over 500,000 customers. Source.
Funding Circle announced they passed the milestone last year; CEO and Founder Samir Desai stated, “We were pleased with the result for the group. Overall we improved our loss margin. The UK business became cashflow positive in Q4 of 2016 and continues to generate positive cashflow in the first half of the year.” he added, "As we've said many a time, we believe that our business should be a public company as well because that fits with our values of transparency and being open, and allows us to take our service to more and more people as well."
Other highlights include:
- Operating expenses rose by 43% to £103.1 million;
- Losses dipped by 3% to £35.7 million thanks partly to a foreign exchange boost;
- £1 billion lent last year;
- Loans outstanding rose by 61% to £1.37 billion;
Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy provides a summary of the second annual Online Lending Policy Summit which covered a wide variety of topics around regulation for fintech companies. Source
China Construction Bank is working with IBM to develop blockchain-enabled “bancassurance” platform for its retail and commercial banking arm in Hong Kong; A ‘bancassurance’ endeavor typically sees sales of insurance products through banks; the blockchain platform, which is expected to launch in Q3 2017, is currently in its testing phase between China Construction Bank (Asia) and its insurance providers and their clients. Source
Fortress Alum Mike Novogratz is starting a $500mn hedge fund to invest in cryptocurrencies, ICOs and other companies in the blockchain space; he will start the fund with $150mn of his own money and raise the rest from family offices, fund managers and wealthy individuals; “This is going to be the largest bubble of our lifetimes,” Novogratz said to Bloomberg. "You can make a whole lot of money on the way up, and we plan on it.” Source.
- Orchard Publishes New Lendscape of the Online Lending Industry
- AutoGravity Surpasses $1 Billion USD In Finance Amount Requested, Launches Real-Time Dealership Inventory Nationwide
- Stockpile Raises $30 Million to Make Stock Investing Easy for Everyone
- Wunder Brings on Rich Mauro as Director of Capital Markets
- 1000's of investors funded more than €2 million in short-term loans - Robo.Cash
Envestnet | Yodlee discusses their recent webinar Leveraging Alternative Data to Energize Your Lending Portfolio; speakers included Jason O’Shaughnessy, Senior Vice President, EMEA & Australia, Envestnet | Yodlee; Phil Grady, CEO of Castlight Financial; Roger Vincent, Head of Banking & Innovation, Equifax; and Venkat Srinivasan, Head of Lending for Monzo; Gary Wright, Director of Content, Finextra moderated the webinar; the on-demand webinar is available for those that missed the live event. Source
Ant Financial will create a joint venture this year with CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd to operate its payment app in Hong Kong, ending Ant’s solo management of the service; Ant holds an electronic payments license in Hong Kong, which allowed it to launch its payment services without a local partner; the venture will allow Ant’s Alipay to offer services via companies under CK Hutchison; the companies expect the venture to be completed by the end of the year. Source
The collaborative paper between ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and developer Jason Teutsch, creator of smart contract scalability project TrueBit, would produce what CoinDesk says is a potentially transformative protocol for ICOs; the new protocol would allow buyers the option to analyze bids on token sales; they are still early on in their development. Source.