Stripe’s big announcement led the week’s news and we witnessed the reaction from Plaid’s CEO in real time. Also making news this week was changes to the CRA have finally been proposed, Yuga Labs almost crashed Ethereum, Robinhood starts a stock lending program, Affirm teams up with Fiserv and more. Here are what I consider to be the top ten fintech news stories of the past week.
Stripe flexes its fintech muscle with Financial Connections to pull banking data automatically from TechCrunch – Stripe has decided to move in on Plaid’s turf with a way for Stripe’s customers to connect bank account data directly with their customers. Plaid’s CEO was not happy about this (see our piece here) but he has since deleted that tweet and acknowledged a misunderstanding.
Fed, Biden Administration Float New Lending Rules for Lower-Income Areas from The Wall Street Journal – We are finally seeing the proposed new rules for modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act that now takes into account digital banking. The government is seeking public comments though early August on the proposal.
The Yuga Labs Catastrophe Could Have Been Prevented from CoinDesk – It was a crazy Saturday a week ago for Yuga Labs and for Ethereum users. There was an NFT sale on Otherside (a metaverse) that caused already high Ethereum gas prices to spike 10x or more and also caused many transactions to fail.
Robinhood Launches Stock-Lending Program from The Wall Street Journal – Robinhood is joining the likes of Charles Schwab, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade with a stock lending program for eligible customers.
Payments Startup Affirm Teams Up With Fiserv in Latest Expansion from Bloomberg – Fiserv enterprise clients for credit card processing will soon be able to offer Affirm natively within their software in yet another big win for the BNPL leader.
California Gov. Newsom Issues Executive Order for Crypto Business Rules from The Wall Street Journal – California’s governor has issued an executive order for crypto that says very little but shows general support for the crypto industry. Industry groups lauded the news hoping to work with the governor to create a commonsense regulatory framework.
SEC nearly doubles crypto unit staff to crack down on abuses in the booming market from CNBC – The SEC announced this week that they will be adding 20 people to their Crypto Assets and Cyber team to bring their enforcement team to 50 people. The new staff will include investigative staff attorneys, trial lawyers and fraud analysts.
NFT Sales Are Flatlining from The Wall Street Journal – In the same week that we had the record breaking NFT sale on Otherside the WSJ took a look at the broader NFT space and noticed some decidedly bearish indicators. It is probably too early to draw any long term conclusions but some people who jumped in early have seen the value of their NFTs plummet.
Fed raises rates: inflation hurting non-prime consumers from LendIt Fintech News – With the Fed raising interest rates this past week we took a deep dive into a TransUnion study on consumer lending and rising default rates.
Fintech Point Raises $115 Million Series C, Will Boost Home Equity Platform from Crowdfund Insider – It was a pretty quiet week on the fundraising front with Point announcing the biggest raise, a $115 million Series C funding led by WestCap.
Every Thursday, the LendIt Fintech News team and a special guest discuss the news of the week live on LendIt TV, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We have now made the show available in podcast format – click on the audio player below.
