Walmart has expanded their money transfer service to over 200 countries and all their U.S. locations; the expansion is through a partnership with Moneygram; Walmart’s move comes after recent news of Amazon expanding their financial services options for customers; “Money transfer services are like bread at the restaurant for Walmart; it’s negligible revenue for them,” said Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer at GBH Insights tells TearSheet. “The broader strategy is to build up that product arsenal on the consumer side — every Walmart customer globally is an Amazon customer that could be taken away.” Source.
A recent report by Bain & Company just shares how successful Amazon could be if it were to enter banking; according to the report: "We could imagine Amazon's banking services growing to more than 70 million U.S. consumer relationships over the next five years or so — the same as Wells Fargo, the third-largest bank in the US. Although many retail bankers and observers have pegged the nimble fintech start-ups as the likely disrupters, it has become clear that established technology firms pose a bigger threat.”; the CNBC article shares several of the advantages Amazon would have in banking, products they could expand into and some of the talks that are already taking place with banks. Source
The company securitized $2.6 billion in Q1 2018, representing a 35% increase over the prior year period; three transactions took place, two student loan deals and one consumer loan deal; medical residency loans were included for the first time in SoFi 2018-B Notes; SoFi is a top-ten ABS sponsor, coming in at seventh. Source
2018 has not been kind to the digital currency as it is down 50 percent against the dollar and the first quarter is the second worst on record; regulation, a clampdown in Asia hurting volume and the big price run up in late 2017 have all hurt Bitcoin; the prevailing thought about making fast cash has gone away as the price has dropped; the price today stand just below $7,000, down from a high of $20,000. Source.
Bo Brustkern, the CEO of LendIt Fintech and Co-Founder of NSR Invest shares his thoughts on the future of financial services. Source
The latest fintech IPO is likely to be GreenSky which focuses on point of sale finance. Source
As real time payments have begun banks are finding it a challenge to implement them; how much should banks charge corporate clients for the service and how best to handle legacy infrastructure are two of the main questions they are grappling with; “Banks need to understand how they monetize these services,” Vinay Prabhakar, head of markets strategy for payments at Finastra, said to TearSheet. “Most banks have lucrative credit card programs, so how do they roll out RTP without cannibalizing their credit card models?”; Christopher Ward, PNC Bank’s head of treasury management product management, believes progress is being made and 90 percent of banks will have implemented real time payments by end of 2019. Source.
The settlement totaled $2 million with a Massachusetts banking regulator stemming from claims of making unlicensed loans; LendingClub made over 46,000 loans in the state since 2011 after surrendering their small loan company license; according to a LendingClub spokesperson, “We worked cooperatively with the State of Massachusetts to resolve a licensing dispute. Resolving this is another step in putting the legacy issues behind us and moving forward to concentrate on building the business. There will be no disruption to any operations as a result of this resolution, and we look forward to continuing to provide attractive financing opportunities to residents, patients and students in the State of Massachusetts.” Source
Enterprise blockchain company Ripple was one of 14 companies top join the Hyperledger consortium last week; Ripple and NTT Data partnered on Hyperledger Quilt, a java based interledger protocol that they submitted to Hyperledger; Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf explained to Finovate that this growth is beneficial to the future of the blockchain. “The accelerating pace of growth and adoption of Hyperledger across industries and geographies underscores the power of our community and the technologies it is building,” he said. “It also reflects a global awakening to the impact of blockchain for business.” Source.
CoinDesk reports that an internal memo at JPMorgan Chase states that blockchain lead Amber Baldet is moving on from the bank to start her own firm; Christina Moy, senior product manager of Quorum, will take over Amber’s position; JPMorgan spokeswoman said in a statement, "Amber is extremely talented and helped build the outstanding team we have today. We respect her desire to start her own venture and we wish her nothing but the best." Source.