Digital Banking | 2021 #50
Weekly news up to Monday, December 20th, 2021
REPORT
More than 170 million U.S. consumers say they’d like a single app to consolidate at least three of the 10 distinct activities that represent their digital lives today.
A few highlights from the report:
⭐️ 27M: Number of U.S. consumers who want to integrate their entire lives online into a single app
⭐️ 45%: Share of millennials who want to integrate all aspects of their online lives into one app
⭐️ 40%: Portion of U.S. consumers who use sites or apps to track their personal health information
👉 Download the full report here.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Only around 40% of SMEs are satisfied with their banks' digital offerings. In addition to better basic digital functions, they would like to see an optimized user experience. This is according to a market study by CREALOGIX in Switzerland, Germany, and the UK.
The results of the study emphasize the current challenges facing banks in their cooperation with SMEs. A total of 466 SMEs and 157 banks were surveyed between April and May 2021.
👉Read the full Market Screener article here.
📰 ARTICLE
Ethereum, the largest altcoin has a massive ecosystem of decentralized finance use cases with rapidly growing adoption. More institutional investors are seeing ether as a store of value.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria or BBVA – Switzerland has announced that it is going to widen its cryptocurrency trading service offering by adding Ethereum to its portfolio.
👉 Read the full article here.
💬 INTERVIEW
In an interview with the German Börsenzeitung N26’s CFO, Jan Kemper revealed that N26 made the second closing of their Series E round, at the time their funding has been announced.
Read the full startuprad article here.
💡INSIGHTS
DeFi is beginning to expand beyond a niche market. The high interest available via saving and lending products, and multiple investment opportunities have begun to motivate people to enter the space.
While the 2010s will be remembered as the decade where decentralized finance was born and developed, regular innovations teased a future that was more connected, open, individual, and filled with opportunities.
👉 Read more here.
🎤 PODCAST
Episode 5 of the second season of The Future Of Banking podcast is now live. The discussion named "Taking FinTech international" was joined by:
And luckily for us, this episode was again hosted by Kimberley Waldron MCIM MPRCA.
👉 To listen to the episode, click here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 DIGITAL BANKING HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Razorpay has more than doubled its valuation to $7.5 billion from $3 billion in April as one of India’s largest fintech giants demonstrates fast growth and aggressively broadens its product offerings. Link here.
⭐️ Following the proposal of the Bank of Lithuania, a specialized bank license of Revolut Technologies UAB has been changed to a banking license by the European Central Bank. Link here.
⭐️ Jan Kemper, CFO of N26, expects a wave of consolidation within the next three years. Link here.
⭐️ MoneyLion is to buy embedded finance marketplace Even Financial for a total consideration of $440 million. Link here.
UK 🇬🇧
Atom Bank has kicked off its final fundraising before floating on the stock market. The bank, which is backed by fund giants Schroders and Toscafund, is holding talks with investors in an attempt to raise at least £40million. Link here.
Cashplus is launching a credit builder tool for small and medium-sized businesses aimed at helping the 65 per cent of UK startups that are refused credit. Link here.
Penfold has launched the pilot scheme which it hopes will “level the playing field between self-employed savers and the wider working population”. Link here.
Chime customers can now deposit cash at Walgreens locations around the country. This service is available at more than 8,500 Walgreens at no fee. The company noted that 78% of Americans live near a Walgreens location. Link here.
OakNorth is to make its first acquisition, taking a 100% stake in cashflow forecasting app Fluidly. Founded in 2016, Fluidly’s software is designed for small business owners and currently counts 1300 accounting firms as subscribers. Link here.
EUROPE 🇪🇺
SEBA Bank, a fully integrated, FINMA licensed digital assets banking platform, announced the launch of its Gold Token, a regulated digital token for investment in and delivery of physical gold on-demand. Link here.
FINOM has acquired an electronic-money license in the Netherlands, via full subsidiary FINOM Payments BV, laying the foundations for even stronger growth across all EU markets. Link here.
Thought Machine has signed up Polish bank, ING Bank Śląski, with over four million retail customers to its cloud-based core banking services platform. Link here.
SweepBank announced it is using Tuum’s next-generation core banking platform to deliver what it calls the “Netflix experience” to the banking industry. Link here.
Bnext and FIDO-certified biometric authentication provider LoginID have partnered on the integration of LoginID’s FIDO2 SDKs into the Bnext mobile application. Link here.
Zelf has taken a big step toward becoming the first 'neobank of the metaverse.' The digital bank is going right to the heart of the next generation of banking customers through a new partnership with a social messaging server that Gen Z gamers and 'creators' already use in droves. Link here.
Tinkoff’s Centre for AI technologies has unveiled ETNA – the first service on the Russian market that helps to analyze and predict a wide range of data-driven processes, ranging from precipitation levels in upcoming winter months to a company’s recruitment needs. Link here.
USA 🇺🇸
Avant, a FinTech focused on getting credit access for middle-income consumers, announced Thursday that it has expanded its portfolio with the launch of Avant Banking. Link here.
Andrei Cherny, Aspiration co-founder and CEO, joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss the shift in sustainability and how Aspiration fits into the fold. The ESG-focused, sustainability-as-a-service fintech company, Aspiration, secured $315 million in new funding. Link here.
Athletes Unlimited and Aspiration have entered a historic multi-year partnership, setting the stage for Athletes Unlimited to run the first U.S.-based carbon-neutral professional sports leagues, beginning with the inauguration of Athletes Unlimited Basketball in January 2022, and continuing through its volleyball, lacrosse, and softball leagues. Link here.
Coconut has now stopped opening new current accounts and is doubling down on bank statement feeds through open banking. Link here.
Dave Inc. will use $450 million it’s expected to raise in its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) to make acquisitions, launch new products and possibly invest in cryptocurrency. Link here.
LATAM
Brazilian fintech Stark Bank has secured a $13 million Series A round (about BRL 74 million) to back its product portfolio expansion and consolidate itself as the “first digital bank for enterprise accounts.” Link here.
The largest Brazillian digital banks total 82 million accounts. Considering the 6 fintechs that released data from past years, there were 14.8 million accounts in 2019. The number is up 299% so far. Link here.
ASIA
This Christmas, customers of Aeldra, the U.S. Silicon-valley and Bangalore-based Neobank, can share the festive cheer with their loved ones across borders with 'Aeldra Pay'. Link here.
Friz, the Singapore-based financial platform for freelancers in Southeast Asia has partnered with embedded finance platform MatchMove, to power their users’ wallets with seamless and convenient financial services. Link here.
Finastra announced that Tinkoff, one of the world’s largest digital-only banks serving over 18.5 million customers, has selected Finastra’s Fusion Essence Cloud core banking solution to power its planned expansion into the Philippines. Link here.
Open Financial Technologies has acquired consumer neo-banking startup Finin for $10 million as the Bangalore-based, Google-backed business-focused neobanking platform looks to broaden its offerings and deepen relationships with banks. Link here.
The Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas has approved Singapore headquartered, UNOAsia to launch its full-spectrum digital bank, UNObank, in the Philippines. Link here.
MIDDLE EAST
Visa launched a new installments service that will help consumers with eligible UAE-issued Visa cards access “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) financing for regular purchases at the point of sale when buying goods. Link here.
Israel’s first new bank in more than four decades has won the backing of investors including Julius Baer Group and China’s Tencent as it mounts a challenge to take business from the country’s biggest lenders. Link here.
AFRICA
Bettr.App and Access Bank Plc partner to back the creator economy. Bettr has also been awarded full regulatory approval and is on the road to public beta in March 2022. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
86 400’s chief product and marketing officer, Travis Tyler, has become the new chief product officer at payments group, Zip Co. Link here.
The chief executive of NatWest's digital bank for businesses has departed after two and half years to join a blockchain foundation based in Switzerland as CEO. Link here.
Challenger bank Revolut announced that it has hired banking veteran Deepak Khanna as its Head of Wealth and Trading effective from today onwards. Link here.
OPPORTUNITIES
Tide, the UK’s leading business financial platform, with operations and an imminent launch in India, has announced a hiring spree of more than 600 tech professionals by the end of 2026. Link here.
JPMorgan is to ramp up recruitment for its new UK digital bank, outlining plans to take staff numbers above 1000 next year. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.