Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS) launched with their first deal in Europe to serve as the custodian to store London-based crypto...
Credit bureaus in the US have become integrated with fintech companies in different ways; Forbes talks with Alex Lintner about Experian's business initiatives and the solutions the company is providing for the fintech industry; Alex says the company is focused on digital technology solutions for credit data that help improve the loan application for consumers; Lintner also notes the availability of full file reporting which can meet the growing demand for alternative credit underwriting and the company's development of APIs for startup businesses. Source
Hu Liang, former director at State Street Bank and Trust's Emerging Technologies Center, tells CoinDesk he is building "the first large-scale institutional infrastructure specifically targeted towards crypto assets"; the company will be an infrastructure platform to provide software and hardware to connect with institutional order and execution management systems; he is looking to eliminate large buyers of cryptocurrencies having to create on the fly technology solutions to make their orders; Liang tells CoinDesk, "I am building a traditional financial services application that can serve the needs of anybody looking to be involved in crypto assets, whether that's holding it for the long term, whether that's trading it for the short term, whether that's transforming it or using it for a rail for something else." Source
Blockchain payments company BitPay has raised more than $40mn in their most recent funding round; the new funds will help the company to support B2B payments and expand to new markets; "We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand,” Stephen Pair, BitPay's CEO, said in a press release reported by American Banker. Source.
Ramp is a credit card startup focused on corporate cards; the company is New York based, founded by a team...
A consensus over the upcoming bitcoin split was not reached and the plan was cancelled; the hope was for a new version that could handle double the number of transactions; upon hearing the news bitcoin’s value shot up to over $7,800; the current version can only handle about five transactions per second and to compete with names like PayPal and Visa that will need to change at some point in the future. Source.
The partnership announced today will allow Synchrony’s small business merchants to apply for a line of credit through Fundbox; borrowers...
Opposition to the OCC's fintech charter continues with a new lawsuit filed by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors which says the OCC does not have the legal authority to issue the fintech charter that it has proposed; the lawsuit says the OCC will need "specific congressional approval" for the charter and that nondepository companies are not considered to be engaged in the business of banking; preemption of state consumer protection laws has evoked strong opposition to the OCC's fintech charter and the lawsuit by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors is the first court action taken by an opposing party; the OCC's financial inclusion provisions, lack of clarity on state mandated requirements such as interest rate caps, default rate limitations and underwriting standards, and lack of detail on business factors including capital requirements and other balance sheet measures have caused decreasing support for the charter overall. Source
Low wage workers have always had a difficult set of expensive options when they try to cash their paychecks; bank accounts are costly because they cannot maintain certain balances and check cashing shops are not exactly cheap; WiseWage, a North Carolina based non profit is looking to offer another option; the company has struck partnerships with Regions Bank and Varo Money, among others, to offer a lower cost direct deposit; the prepaid cards have set fees which can be waived if enough is loaded each month; the program is meant as a test to see if they can enlist those who have dropped out of the financial system because of a lack of options. Source.
Cumulative issuance for marketplace lending securitization now totals $28.2 billion across 106 deals; Q4 2017 issuance totaled $4.4 billion which was another record quarter; SoFi issued the largest consumer and student lending deals ever; PeerIQ shares other highlights in their quarterly report. Source