Tiger Global has led Wealthfront’s latest $75 million round; the capital will be used to further build out their Path platform which connects users to their other financial accounts; Wealthfront now has $9 billion under management. Source
There has been talk about one the big tech firms becoming a bank and potentially forever changing financial services; event without a banking license big tech firms are making noise in the finance market; Amazon and PayPal have been extending billions in loans and banks have started testing technologies like Alexa; the tech firms have also amassed a trove of data that could end up being as important as banking data; as banks become more digitized we will begin seeing a further mixing of interests to help offer the best experience as possible to the customer. Source.
The Senior Managing Director at Kroll Bond Rating Agency discusses trends in marketplace lending securitization. Source
Buying and selling of cryptocurrencies may be available as soon as June, but the bank is still working on how it will store them; Goldman remains one of the few banks who are leading the charge when it comes to trading cryptocurrencies and it remains to be seen whether other banks will follow suit. Source
Visa notified WaveCrest that they were terminating their membership with the company for non compliance; WaveCrest is a third party processor where prepaid cards were being used for crypto based activities; the terms and conditions of their agreement with Visa stated that funds could only be loaded to the card via an employer on a regular basis; the termination note leaves a number of companies in limbo and looking for another option to service customers. Source.
As bigger breaches occur startups focusing on cybersecurity have seen investment double in the last year; globally there was $7.6bn invested in cybersecurity startups this past year after seeing $3.8bn in 2016; global spending on cybersecurity was estimated to be over $80bn in 2017 as companies look to protect their data and company systems from evolving threats. Source.
After a number of high profile breaches in 2017 lenders are looking to better protect themselves against evolving threats; writing a column in Bankless Times Tom Donlea of WhitePages Pro looks at some key things online lenders can do to better protect themselves; lenders can start moving away from using social security numbers as a personal identifier, AI and machine learning will play a bigger role, more lenders will begin to bring fraud fighting in house and blockchain will become more widely adopted. Source.
In a Medium post, Lou Kerner, Partner at CryptoOracle.io shares why they are co-hosting the BlockFin Summit and what attendees can expect from the upcoming event in April; in addition to keynotes and panels, there will be a Vision Stage which will include TED-style presentations. Source
In PeerIQ’s Weekly Industry Update they cover job growth numbers, the Fed’s planned rate rises and more fintech related stories that ended 2017; OneMain Financial received backing from Apollo Global Management and Värde Partners; GreenSky and MoneyLion completed fundraising’s; new regulation news coming out of Indiana that would cap the personal loan interest rates. Source.
Low wage workers have always had a difficult set of expensive options when they try to cash their paychecks; bank accounts are costly because they cannot maintain certain balances and check cashing shops are not exactly cheap; WiseWage, a North Carolina based non profit is looking to offer another option; the company has struck partnerships with Regions Bank and Varo Money, among others, to offer a lower cost direct deposit; the prepaid cards have set fees which can be waived if enough is loaded each month; the program is meant as a test to see if they can enlist those who have dropped out of the financial system because of a lack of options. Source.