Digital Banking | 2022 #4
Weekly news up to Monday, January 24th, 2022
REPORT
App Annie’s State of Mobile 2022 Report gives you the most comprehensive look at the market and guides you in how to leverage mobile market data to propel your growth and delight your customers in 2022.
👉Download the full report here.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Tax-preparation giant H&R Block is launching its own mobile banking platform targeted at low-to-moderate-income Americans.
The Spruce platform includes a spending account with a debit card, along with a connected savings account that allows for budgeting for specific goals. FDIC member MetaBank will hold deposits and issue the Spruce card.
👉 Read the full Finextra article here.
😎 SPONSORED CONTENT
Fintech Meetup Is Almost Here! Get Your Ticket Before Prices Go Up On Friday! Don’t miss out on 30,000+ virtual meetings–it’s the easiest way to fill your pipeline, meet new partners and get business done! 1,000+ organizations have already signed up–your prospects, partners (and competitors!) will all be there! Virtual, March 22-24, discounted startup rate available for qualifying cos. Get Ticket Now
📰 ARTICLE
Revolut is rolling out stock trading in its app in the U.S. The company already lets you buy and sell shares if you’re a British user. And now, Revolut has received approval to become a licensed U.S. broker-dealer in the U.S..
👉Read the full TechCrunch article by Romain Dillet here.
💬 INTERVIEW
As a part of his series about the “5 Ways That Businesses Can Help Promote The Mental Wellness Of Their Employees” David Liu had the pleasure of interviewing Eytan Bensoussan.
Eytan Bensoussan is the CEO and co-founder of NorthOne. Eytan deeply believes that the success of the small business sector is one of the most important causes of our time.
👉 Read the full interview here.
💡INSIGHTS
Revolut, Tide, Starling Bank and Qonto, all have been able to build robust models that have accelerated their market share into the SME segment.
👉 Read the full article by C-Innovation here.
👀 Looking for funding news? We've moved them to their own special weekly newsletter here.
👉 Read all about M&As, VCs, Down Rounds, IPOs, Funding Rounds, etc.
Subscribe to our #DoneDeal Newsletter and never miss an important update again.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 DIGITAL BANKING HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Building a core banking system with Amazon Quantum Ledger Database. Link here.
⭐️ Robinhood began rolling out crypto wallets to 1,000 users from the top of the wallets waitlist. Link here.
⭐️ Vroon Modgill, CEO of Sokin talks to The Banker's Liz Lumley about meeting the needs of today's migrant workforce. Link here.
⭐️ Revolut is to block credit card payments to gambling sites in Ireland. Link here.
UK 🇬🇧
Tide says it’s hitting seven percent of all UK SMEs, after adding 100,000 new members last year. Link here.
Monese is now rolling out a Credit Builder service for all its existing customers. Link here.
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has found evidence of growing competition in financial services, driven in part by the pandemic and the rise of digital challenger banks. Link here.
It’s been a milestone week for Bank North, one of the challenger banks to hit the market in recent years, as it commences lending from its Manchester pod for the first time. Link here.
Former peer-to-peer lender Zopa has hit £1 billion in customer deposits, reaching the milestone eighteen months after becoming a bank. Link here.
Revolut, the global financial platform with over 18 million customers, has launched an update to it’s Saving Vault product. Revolut Metal customers in the UK can now earn 0.7% interest (AER) paid daily on their Savings Vaults in GBP. Link here.
EUROPE 🇪🇺
Benker is to become the first officially licensed blockchain neobank launched in Europe following approval by the Bank of Lithuania under the Electronic Money Institution (EMI) category. Link here.
ENTRIS BANKING AG, a new Swiss customer, has selected Bottomline’s SaaS-based payment connectivity platform to provide customers with an enhanced, more flexible domestic and international payment experience. Link here.
Tink and sustainability fintech Cogo have formed a strategic partnership to provide banking customers with personalised carbon footprint tracking services, following the successful launch of the NatWest carbon tracking feature which brought the two fintechs together. Link here.
Lunar has selected Thought Machine, the cloud-native core banking technology firm, to modernize its core systems and develop new services as it expands. Link here.
Bitmex has announced plans to snap up Germany’s 268-year-old Bankhaus von der Heydt to create a digital assets “powerhouse” in Europe. Link here.
USA 🇺🇸
Chime Financial Inc has asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc to help it with preparations for an initial public offering in New York, according to people familiar with the matter. Link here.
JPMorgan Chase will spend more than $12 billion on technology in 2022, contributing to an eight percent rise in expenses that could hurt the bank's profitability targets. Link here.
Mambu and Volante Technologies, announced a pioneering collaboration to help banks and lenders modernize their banking and payment infrastructures rapidly. Link here.
Google is planning to enter into the cryptocurrency space as the firm has hired a former PayPal executive to lead its payment division. Link here.
First Internet Bank announced a formal agreement with Synctera, a leading consultant, technology platform, and matchmaker for bank/fintech partnerships. Link here.
SoFi., the financial firm led by former Twitter Inc. executive Anthony Noto, surged after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted it a U.S. banking charter. Link here.
Acorns, the popular spare-change investing and checking account app, and Pioneer Merger Corp. are canceling their $2.2 billion blank-check deal for the app to go public. Link here.
Chime started spotting customers if they went overdrawn in 2018, as U.S. banks clung to revenue from overdraft fees. Link here.
ASIA
FINTECH BANK LTD (FBL), a Labuan-based commercial bank licensed by the Labuan Financial Services Authority (Labuan FSA), has started to serve a large and rapidly expanding international clientele. Link here.
Edge is a cloud-native platform that is modular, scalable, and designed around regulatory requirements in APAC to reduce the upfront cost and decrease risk. Link here.
Personetics raised $85 million, funding that will go toward expanding the tools that Personetics provides to banking customers, as well as expanding its base of users. Link here.
Invoid, a Y Combinator-backed firm, has joined Credenc, an online platform for education loans, to build a student-focused Neobank, a first in India for college students. Link here.
HSBC Malaysia has launched a multi-currency digital wallet that enables small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) to make and receive international payments from one single global account. Link here.
MIDDLE EAST
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will soon embark upon a journey toward an advanced banking system in the country by issuing licenses for setting up digital banks. Link here.
Zindigi, aimed at Millennials and Gen Z, has launched in Pakistan. Link here.
As an extension of its strategy that was launched in 2020 “Bank of the Future”, Al-Rajhi Bank obtains the necessary approvals to complete the acquisition of Ejada Systems Company. Link here.
AFRICA
South Africa has seen the launch of several digital banks in recent years, including TymeBank, BankZero, and Discovery Bank. Link here.
Venture capital bets from institutional investors in this class of fintechs is massive, and in the latest development from Africa, it seems individual investors’ appetites are increasing likewise. Link here.
From table banking to credit unions, the savings and credit cooperative organization (Sacco) sector in Africa is fast digitizing to bring financial inclusion to all Sacco members. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
ComplyAdvantage, a global data technology company transforming financial crime detection, announced two new executive hires. Link here.
Google has hired PayPal exec Arnold Goldberg to help reset its ambitions for banking and payments. Link here.
Airwallex says it has a “big year ahead” after recruiting executives who previously worked at Deliveroo and Revolut amid European expansion plans. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.