Banks speaking at the BankAI conference this week talked at length about what artificial intelligence means in consumer banking; “We have to keep up and we have to stay ahead,” said Diane Morais, president of consumer and commercial banking products at Ally Bank according to American Banker; the banks also talked through current use cases for AI and what the future might look like for banking. Source.
PayPal has helped to secure the ability for Venmo payments to be accepted at over 2 million retailers; users will be able to make purchases in store and online using the Venmo app; the move will help PayPal to get merchants interested in other products and allows them to begin monetizing Venmo; the strategy is another piece of good news for PayPal as just this week they surpasses Amex in market cap. Source.
JP Morgan Chase made their first fintech acquisition with the purchase of payments company WePay; financial terms were not disclosed but the WSJ reports the price was above their 2015 valuation of $220mn; this deal points to a larger trend in the payments space with 2017 seeing deals for 166 companies worth $29.3mn. Source.
The shared platform uses distributed ledger technology and focuses on domestic and cross-border commerce; the consortium of banks includes Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Societe Generale, UniCredit Banco Santander; you can use the platform from any connected device for managing, tracking and securing trade transactions. Source.
Blockchain capital is a venture firm focused on bitcoin, blockchain and other crypto projects; according to SEC filings they are raising $150 million between their two funds Blockchain Capital IV and Blockchain Capital Parallel Fund IV; the funds have raised $60 million and $25 million respectively to date; the funds are similar when it comes to deploying capital, but in the parallel fund investors will contribute cryptocurrencies to invest. Source
Invoice finance platform BlueVine secured $130mn in debt financing; the financing comes from Silicon Valley Bank, SunTrust Bank, Bank Leumi and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp.; BlueVine founder and CEO Eyal Lifshitz tells Bankless Times, “Business owners have diverse needs, and by augmenting our product offering, we are able to offer the solution that fits best.” Source.
Lending Club has a new deal for investors to earn United miles; last year the initial program awarded 1 mile for every $2 invested; now investors will earn 1 mile for every $1 investors; the program is open to new and existing investors and is valid until January 9, 2018. Source
While announcing earnings for Q3 Wells Fargo and Bank of America both revealed how important digital channels are to their bottom line; BofA saw mobile banking users jump 11 percent, mobile usage grew at 19 percent and digital payments grew 9 percent in the past year; Wells Fargo saw digital usage grow 2 percent and digital sessions grow 6 percent; the digital trend shows how much banks businesses are changing. Source.
Person to person payments growth was about 67% and accounted for 13.6 million transactions; According to CEO Brian Moynihan the bank processed half a billion dollars in a single week; other banks including Wells Fargo are also reporting increases in person to person payments; Bank of America is also planning to release a mobile offering for auto and home loans along with its AI assistant; Bank of America spent $2.25 billion on tech initiatives in the first nine months of 2017. Source
The blockchain startup has now raised a total of $110mn after taking in $40mn in a series B round; Jefferson River Capital led the funding round, which also included new and previous investors; in addition to the fundraising they hired Clyde Rodriguez, a former Microsoft executive, as chief information officer and chief technology officer for engineering. Source.