New York State Senators held a roundtable last week for NY based blockchain companies to give their opinions on the BitLicense; the BitLicense is seen as being too restrictive, especially for startups, and the listening session was meant to get industry points of view before making reforms; one of the biggest complaints is the current regulations are too one size fits all; it is a good sign to see legislators engage the community but NY’s Department of Financial Services was not invited and so there is skepticism that any change will actually occur. Source.
The WSJ reviews Goldman’s push into consumer finance; the company first started offering loans under the Marcus brand which is the new branding for their savings account; Goldman has higher aspirations though with more initiatives in point of sale, wealth management, budgeting tools, insurance, mortgages and car loans; the company is also working with Fortune 500 companies to offer bank accounts as an employee perk; beyond their internal efforts they have also been active in acquiring fintech companies. Source
The company is calling their strategy the digital everything model, which includes new mobile features and back office operations powered by the blockchain; “We’re not going to lose our financial discipline because we have to make an investment that we have to do or want to do,” CEO Jamie Dimon said when asked about their approach to the tech investment; branch expansions, investments in big data solutions and more were also discussed during the investor call as reported by American Banker. Source.
We are quickly approaching LendIt Fintech 2018 which will take place on April 9-11 in San Francisco. Lend Academy shares the three areas of fintech the agenda will focus on and some of the interesting speakers attendees will hear from. Source
Online lending data and analytics platform PeerIQ announced their latest offering, a consumer credit suite backed by TransUnion data; the suite includes TransUnion’s depersonalized consumer credit data from the year 2000 to present day; users of the suite can see credit trends, vintage analysis, benchmarking analysis and more. Source.
JPMorgan Chase and the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) announced their 4th annual Financial Solutions Challenge to help improve the financial health of underserved communities; for the first time the competition will focus on entrepreneurs of color, women and individuals with disabilities; "The FinLab believes that diversity among leaders and teams also leads to more inclusive products and services with the potential to scale to millions of customers,” explained the press release that accompanied the announcement. Source.
American Banker has published a rebuttal to a recent article about the “Madden fix bill” by Steve Astrada; article discusses how the bill will increase access to credit and benefit customers instead of increasing predatory lending; it also shares the consequences of the Madden decision and reviews the details of the case. Source
Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 is marketed as having a better camera and can take clear pictures in low light; the technology could solve one of the bigger facial recognition issues which is poor quality pictures in low lighting; thus far banks have been slow to adopt the new technology as they have yet to be comfortable wit the way it currently works; with Samsung and Apple continuing to improve their cameras and a younger generation of customers increasing, facial recognition will soon be an important piece for all banks. Source.
JPMorgan Chase is the only U.S. bank with scalable businesses in every payments vertical; the bank has been investing and partnering heavily the last few years into payments innovation; they see checking accounts as checking and payments accounts; they have made moves into digital wallets, p2p payments, order and pay ahead apps and recently partnered to allow customers to send an receive electronic payments and invoices; the bank sees payments and banking as one in the same and with the recent news of their heavy tech investment for 2018 more innovation looks to be on the way. Source.
“Bitcoin, for us, is not stopping at buying and selling," Square CEO Jack Dorsey told analysts on their earnings call as reported by Business Insider. "We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry and we want to learn as quickly as possible."; bitcoin has yet to effect Square’s earnings as they have only recently started crypto payments; they currently include a margin to account for the volatility of bitcoin; shares were down slightly after releasing earnings. Source.