Digital Banking | 2022 #15
Weekly news up to Monday, April 11th, 2022
REPORT
Monzo Bank: The Evolution of a Marketplace Model.
The team at C-Innovation has sifted through all of Monzo’s published financial reports from FY2015 to FY2021, as well as studies provided by the likes of Bain and Co., the UK Government, and S&P Global, in order to provide a 50+ slide report which reveals Monzo’s past challenges and future prospects.
👉 Download the full report here.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
This time last year Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, one of the world’s largest banks revealed he saw financial startups an “enormous competitive threat to banks”, having added that his bank should be "scared shitless" by fintech
Fast forward twelve months and, again in his annual letter to shareholders Dimon has indeed further supported the digital revolution in finance,
“The growing competition to banks from each other, shadow banks, fintechs and large technology companies is intensifying and clearly contributing to the diminishing role of banks and public companies in the United States and the global financial system,” he said in the letter published this week.
In particular, he argues that the bank should increasingly see the benefit to its bottom line through the adoption of blockchain bases trends such as decentralised finance, often dubbed DeFi, although made no direct mention of ‘crypto’.
👉 Read the full Altfi article written by Daniel Lanyon here.
🔦 Would you like to bring your company/service to the attention of tens of thousands of FinTech enthusiasts?
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😎 SPONSORED CONTENT
Contis helps organisations unleash their true potential with award-winning, cloud-based Banking-as-a-Service solutions. With Contis you can put next-generation cards, accounts, and apps in your customer’s hands
📰 ARTICLE
In February 2022, N26 surveyed 16,030 women and men from its 5 largest markets in Europe – Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
One of the most interesting findings is that cryptocurrencies are the third most popular investment product, with nearly 1 in 3 women saying they invest in crypto (28%).
Cryptocurrencies are the most popular investment product overall among women investors in Spain and among all European women aged 18–24.
👉 Read more here.
💡INSIGHTS
Men cashed bonuses that were worth almost what women cashed at Revolut last year, disclosures show.
Britain’s most valuable private tech business reported a 96% gender bonus gap in 2021, a reduction of one percentage point from the previous year.
👉Read more here
On that note, Berlin-based banking-as-a-service platform Solarisbank is launching a "women's network" dedicated to closing the gender gap in the fintech industry. Link here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 DIGITAL BANKING HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Last week, €300m was raised across 17 FinTech deals. Link here.
⭐️ Fintech company Brixo has chosen to partner with freemium open banking platform Nordigen. Link here.
⭐️ Check out the latest Singapore FinTech map by Fintech News Singapore.
⭐️ Profit First and NorthOne partner to fight small business poverty. Link here
⭐️ Contis and Ecospend bring instant payments and withdrawals to the online gaming website MrQ through open banking solution. Link here.
UK 🇬🇧
Jaja Finance Ltd (“Jaja”) announces that it has closed the strategic transaction announced in November 2021, resulting in a consortium led by KKR and TDR Capital LLP becoming the majority shareholders of Jaja. Link here.
Scroll Finance, a next-generation fintech providing smart financing solutions to homeowners, has launched its home equity loan and home equity line of credit products, powered by Mambu’s cloud banking platform. Link here.
Revolut, the global financial super-app with more than 18 million customers worldwide, has appointed Allianz Partners, a leading company in B2B2C insurance and assistance services, as its new global travel insurance services provider. Link here.
Zopa bank has achieved a rare feat among UK challenger banks, hitting profitability for the first time just 21 months after acquiring its UK banking license. Link here.
EUROPE 🇪🇺
Swedish based company Intergiro announced that the company Incharge, built to use Intergiro’s Banking as a Service solution Intergiro.3d, has created a banking services app specifically to aid Ukrainian refugees. Link here.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is planning to use its recently acquired stake in Greek payments firm Viva Wallet to support lending to small businesses across Europe, an ambition that would introduce a rare cohesion to the continent’s fragmented banking markets. Link here.
Piraeus Bank is to build a new online-only independent bank for customers in Greece and the rest of the European market, capitalizing on digital trends in banking-as-a-service and buy now, pay later. Link here.
Alpian SA, a highly innovative digital private bank that will address the needs of the Swiss affluent population, announced the granting by FINMA of a banking license and the successful closing of a Series B+ financing round of CHF 19 million. Link here.
Starting on Wednesday, it will be possible for refugees who arrive in the Netherlands from Ukraine to open a current account with ABN AMRO or another bank. Link here.
USA 🇺🇸
Bakkt Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BKKT), a trusted digital asset platform that enables consumers to buy, sell, send and spend a range of digital assets, announced that American Bank has selected the Bakkt® crypto connect solution to enable their bank customers to buy, sell and hold the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin, and Ethereum. Link here.
Set for launch in the second half of this year, US challenger Battle Bank has selected Temenos as a key technology partner, adding to the Swiss vendor's growing roster of neobanking clients. Link here.
Unifimoney Inc., a turnkey digital wealth management platform for Community Banks and Credit Unions, announced a $10m Seed round. Link here.
CANADA
What if the future of banking wasn’t a bank? The question posed in the slogan of Neo Financial’s new marketing campaign shows that the FinTech startup is clearly positioning itself against Canada’s big banks. Link here.
LATAM
A new digital challenger, Adapta Bank, has launched in Brazil offering consumers all the features of modern-day banking through a free mobile app account. Link here.
ASIA
The Reserve Bank of India on Friday mandated interoperable card-less withdrawal using the UPI platform across bank’s ATM network, to increase customer convenience and plug instances of fraud. The regulator is expected to soon issue detailed guidelines to NPCI, ATM networks, and banks, to operationalize the service. Link here.
Fintech firm FinAccel is plotting a move into digital banking and has acquired a majority stake in Indonesia’s Bank Bisnis Internasional as part of its strategy to build out its financial services offering. Link here.
Ahead of its intended launch in Q2, 2022, UNObank Inc., a digital bank licensed under the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) Digital Banking License framework, has rebranded UNObank to UNO Digital Bank. The new name highlights the digital nature of the bank’s business. Link here.
Philippines’ neobank Tonik marks its first year of operations in the country after securing a digital bank license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in June last year. Link here.
AUSTRALIA 🇦🇺
Almost two years since the consumer data right (CDR) launched in Australia, we can finally say it’s a viable option for fintechs. In some - but not all - cases it’s even a better option than traditional methods like screen scraping. Link here.
MIDDLE EAST
Saudi Arabia’s micro, small and medium enterprises continue to grow in 2022 on back of strong consumer demand, as is evident from the steady increase in MSME lending by the country’s banks and financial companies. Link here.
The Saudi Central Bank, SAMA, directed banks to halt the option of opening online accounts for individuals or institutions ‘until further notice’, local media reported. Under the new measures that will take effect starting April 10, accounts are to be opened through branches only. Link here.
AFRICA
Paysend, the UK-based fintech with over 6.5 million customers, announces a technology partnership with Afrimoney, the mobile money service provided by Africell, to enable money transfers to West Africa, specifically The Gambia and Sierra Leone. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
UK mobile-first challenger bank MoneeMint has hired banking veteran Kevin Guy as its new chief operating officer (COO). Guy has 36 years’ worth of experience across banking and financial services, having worked at Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest Group across wealth management, premier banking, and credit risk. Link here.
The co-founder of e-commerce platform Lazada and its former chief marketing officer Charles Debonneuil has been appointed to be the Asia-Pacific general manager of Revolut. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.