Grameen America wants banks and social impact investors to help fuel a doubling of their loan portfolio in the next 5 years; most of the new money to lend will come from their inaugural Small Business Fund and the remaining amount is where they will turn to banks and social impact investors; “It's a way to appeal to impact investors who are interested in this kind of concept as opposed to pure philanthropy,” says David Gough, CFO, to American Banker when talking about the company’s shift to impact investors to fuel growth. Source.
According to sources Amazon is talking with banks such as JPMorgan Chase to build a checking-account-like product; while it is still early and the product may not see the light of day it shows Amazon’s interest in working with banks to expand into financial services. Source
Kabbage is an online lender in the small business space; today they announced they would not fund “any business that we identify as a seller of firearms or ammunition to individuals under 21 or that sell or manufacture any form of assualt-style weapon.”; according to a written statement signed by the executives, “As parents and leaders of Kabbage we simply cannot imagine the grief of families who too often have been stricken by gun violence like the tragedy in Parkland, Florida. The technology community must work to prevent these horrifying and heartbreaking events from robbing our children of their future.”; Kabbage is also supporting the Parkland survivors’ March 14 walkout and also announced charitable contributions. Source
Venkatesh Bala from Biz2Credit shares new ways that lenders should think about risk management. Source
John Gerspach, Chief Financial Officer of Citigroup stated at an investor conference they are building the foundation which will support the launch of a national digital consumer bank launch in the next three years; the bank currently has around 700 bank branches which is far fewer than the three biggest banks. Source
U.S banks closed more than 1700 branches in the year dated June 2016 to June 2017, one of the largest drops on record; more than half of U.S. customers still prefer opening an account at a a branch, when compared to the UK market which shows more than half of customers would rather open accounts digitally; leading vendors like NCR and Diebold have seen revenues drop with the branch products pointing to a decline in the importance of the branch; while branches are still looked at as important to U.S. banks bottom line the trend still points to less branches and more digital in the coming years. Source.
According to Visa 96 percent of U.S. payment volume took place on chip cards, with the large majority being chip and signature cards; starting next month major card brands will look to move customers to the chip and PIN cards that have been widely adopted across Europe; Merchants will be able to turn cell phones into terminals instead of buying expensive POS terminals with pin pads; wide adoption will take time as smaller retailers might not see the benefits as quickly and large retailers have invested a lot in the current technology. Source.
BBVA has announced their Open Talent competition which is dubbed as the world’s largest fintech competition; the competition is in its tenth year and will focus on banking, data, money management and financial decision-making; the winner will take home $186,000 and finalists will take part in an immersion week which will show them how to work with a big corporate, become a customer of the bank and more. Source.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been hit with a class action lawsuit that alleges insider trading during their launch of bitcoin cash; the plaintiffs are accusing the exchange of tipping off insiders prior to the official launch; prices of bitcoin cash spiked ahead of the launch and Coinbase did say they would conduct an investigation into the matter, plaintiffs claim the results have yet to be revealed. Source.
News of Amazon in talks with JPMorgan Chase and Capital One to offer a checking account product has brought up a number of regulatory questions; key questions include who owns the customer, what is Amazon’s role in the accounts, who regulates Amazon in this instance and will Amazon need to become a bank; while details of the deal are not fully known regulators will be keeping a close eye on the partnership. Source.