Digital Banking | 2022 #29
Weekly news up to Monday, July 18th, 2022
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
LATAM’s largest digital wallet with over 62 million customers in Brazil, PicPay, has become an official bank.
A financial institution already part of a J&F Participaçōes holding company that controls both organizations asked the Central Bank of Brasil to change its name to PicPay Bank.
👉Read the full The Paypers article here.
😎 SPONSORED CONTENT
At MoneyLion we believe you should get more from your money. Our mission is to rewire the American banking system so that we can positively change the financial path for every hard-working American. Our products offer no hidden fees, and few barriers to entry. Accessibility is what we’re all about. There are no credit checks for cash advances and no hard credit checks for our loan products. Everyone is welcome.
📰 ARTICLE
The price of bitcoin has been in freefall in recent weeks, but that doesn’t seem to bother the most conservative of financial institutions – the banking arm of the Swiss post office.
PostFinance is stepping up its drive to grant customers access to cryptocurrencies within the next couple of years.
👉Read the full Swissinfo.ch article here.
💡INSIGHTS
Top 3 States by # of BaaS Sponsor Banks: Utah, California, Missouri.
👉Read the full article here.
👨💻 BLOG
Small and Medium Businesses make up an essential value pool for the banking and financial services industry, accounting for more than 90% of all companies and more than 50% of jobs worldwide.
👉Read the full article by Salil Ravindran here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🔦 DIGITAL BANKING HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Revolut as it celebrates its seventh anniversary by surpassing 20 million retail customers worldwide, processing over 250 million transactions a month. Link here.
⭐️ Nubank Crypto: You can now buy and sell cryptocurrencies in the Nubank app. Link here.
⭐️ Neobank for Latinos in the USA Pana joins Y Combinator's S22 batch. Link here.
⭐️ Fundof has partnered with Onfido and Intergiro, to launch a free Visa™ debit card and payment account conceived for creators, enabling them to spend and transfer their earned donations instantly. Link here.
🌎 REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
UK 🇬🇧
Kroo has chosen to partner with ClearBank as its technology provider, both for access to the UK payment schemes as well as to provide accounts for its customer funds. Link here.
Enfuce has brought its cloud-native Card-as-a-Service platform to the UK, following its €45 million Series C funding round led by Vitruvian Partners. Link here.
Monzo has vowed to press ahead with scaling up the business, defying the retrenchment forced on many fintechs by slowing economic growth and a downturn in markets. Link here.
EUROPE 🇪🇺
Penta could be about to be sold to its French competitor Qonto. Link here.
Soldo is rolling out open banking-powered account-to-account top-ups for its European customers, with the help of Yapily. Link here.
OPER CREDITS raises €11M in series A funding to shake up the European mortgage market. Link here.
Credi2 is working on a payment project with Deutsche Bank. Link here.
Banking giant Santander planning an awards ceremony that is going to take place in the metaverse. Link here.
Monneo is leading the way for Banking as a Service as it launches a new application programming interface (API). Link here.
Swift gears up for innovation around digital currencies. Link here.
USA 🇺🇸
MX announced that Kinly, a digitally native neobank building generational wealth for Black America and its allies, uses financial data aggregation and enhancement solutions from MX to power Kinly’s custom-built financial tools. Link here.
Finxact has been chosen by Chicago-based start-up BetaBank to power its product ecosystem ahead of its upcoming launch. Link here.
Luvleen Sidhu, chair, CEO and founder of BM Technologies Inc., a digital banking platform, has been recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Greater Philadelphia region for 2022. Link here.
CANADA
EQ Bank partners with Flinks to deliver on open banking. The new product partnership enables EQ Bank to allow digital banking customers to securely share data with Canada's fastest-growing network of third-party fintech applications Link here.
LATAM
Swap has rolled out a new Banking-as-a-Service solution, called Corpway, aimed at managing and controlling corporate expenses, according to Startups. Link here.
Itaú Unibanco, has announced plans to roll out a new asset tokenization platform, which will turn regular finance products into tokens. Link here.
ASIA
KASINKORNBANK (KBank) announced a Bht 100 billion strategic programme aimed at boosting access to banking services among Thailand’s unbanked and underbanked population. Link here.
The Philippine Postal Corporation has partnered with UBX, a fintech unit created by the Union Bank of the Philippines, to launch a capacity development project which will allow the postal agency to offer financial services. Link here.
BANK Islam Malaysia Bhd will be officially launching its digital bank aimed at the younger generation in mid-July, for which it hopes to attract between 350,000 and 400,000 downloads and users within the first 12 months. Link here.
Sewa Grih Rin raises $20 million in funding led by Norway-based NMI and Women's World Bank Asset Management. Link here.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas gave the go-ahead for UnionBank of the Philippines' digital banking arm to start operations. Link here.
Many of Malaysia’s incumbent banks are actively looking at beefing up their digital strategy. This is in part thanks to the 5 new digital banking licenses dished out by Bank Negara Malaysia. Link here.
BigPay introduces Stashes to help you save money with every transaction. Link here.
AFRICA
Attijariwafa Bank has entered a strategic partnership with global cross-border payments company Thunes. Link here.
PatrickGold Micro Finance Bank has launched a digital banking platform, GetriPay, to promote the ease of financial inclusion for the populace. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Revolut has announced the appointment of Saleem Arshad as the Chief Technology Officer for India. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.