American Banker profiles Instant Financial which was founded in 2015; the company aims to shorten the time frame to when employees get paid; using the app employees can unlock portions of their paychecks which can provide an alternative to payday loans; they recently partnered with Sutton Bank in Ohio for their US expansion. Source
Blockchain consortium R3 and 22 partner banks are working to build a real time cross border payments solution on Corda; the project started last year and the banks are actively providing feedback; this is occurring while R3 and former partner Ripple are involved in a legal dispute over a previous agreement. Source.
Bitcoin has increased over 550% this year and many firms are taking an increased interest in the cryptocurrency; CME Group launching futures contracts for bitcoin is just one example; the WSJ looks at what futures contracts for bitcoin will potentially mean for the market. Source
Alexandra Villarreal O’Rourke from McGuireWoods discusses Project Catalyst and the no-action letter program from the CFPB in a Let’s Talk Payments interview; the first no-action letter was issued to Upstart, a consumer lender in the US. Source
The options for banks to compete in a changing financial services landscape are to either build, buy or partner; while we have seen a number of banks build their own technology or partner with fintechs, there has yet to be significant acquisitions in the market; an article in Tearsheet highlights how few purchases banks have made and how that compares to the amount of investments in fintech companies. Source
CME Group announced today that they plan to offer bitcoin futures by the end of the year which is a change from what they said just a month ago; others like Cboe Global Markets said earlier in the year it plans to do the same by early 2018; the move by exchanges will open up the bitcoin market to professional traders and institutional investors. Source
With the recent hack of Equifax still top of mind for regulators and consumers alike, there are individuals beginning to explore potential solutions including blockchain technology; Bloom and Open Identity Exchange are working on protocols and standards that could be used by any entity to create an ID system on the blockchain; having such a system would allow for more security from hackers and help to verify individuals; while there are current limitations to the technology there are many groups looking to solve these issues and a potential government led initiative could speed up development. Source.
Leading home solar financed Mosaic has partnered with PeerIQ on latest securitization; Mosaic used the PeerIQ platform to allow potential ABS buyers to have insight into their complete set of loan-level data; the partnership will allow for more transparency, streamline diligence and execution. Source.
Personetics Act will be offered to banks as a way to help their customers pay off their student loans ahead of schedule; the tool will use the Nudge Theory by identifying students who can repay loans quicker and helping them to do so or automatically pay more than the usual payment for them; David Sosna, Personetics’ co-founder and CEO tells Banking Technology, “we’re able to identify windows of opportunity for customers to make these extra payments with no effort on their end.” Source.
LendIt is returning to the west coast next year for LendIt USA 2018; it will take place on April 9-11 at the Moscone Center; this year we are focusing on three core areas: lending, digital banking and blockchain; new for 2018 is the BlockFin Summit which will take place in a dedicated space within LendIt; it will cover a wide variety of topics including: enterprise blockchain using digital ledger technology, global finance built on AI and blockchain, tokenized VC and investment banking, blockchain infrastructure for markets, trading, and back office, decentralized banking and insurance, and crypto-economics; early bird pricing ends this Friday, November 3.