Digital Banking Weekly | 2021 #20
Hi, there! Welcome back to another Digital Banking Weekly Newsletter. In this newsletter, I cover all the major weekly news related to digital banking around the world. The newsletter begins with recommended articles, reports, podcasts, interviews, etc. I then cover the news highlights for that week before diving into a regional breakdown. Thank you for subscribing!
PODCAST
The podcast recommendation of the week belongs to Finovate Podcast’s Episode 62. In their latest episode, they are joined by Stuart Sopp, CEO of Current, to discuss financial inclusion through challenger banking, and fighting systemic wealth inequality.
👉 Listen here.
INTERVIEW
What competitive concern keeps Jarad Fisher, top strategist and head of operations at challenger bank Dave, up at night? It’s not the big banks, he says, even though they have been upping their digital game sharply of late.
Dave’s main market consists of Americans who live on tight budgets. In fact, the company began with a single concept, an app designed to help people avoid overdrafts and the fees that go with them.
👉 Read more here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S DIGITAL BANKING SPACE
NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Nubank is releasing its new visual identity.
Nubank says on its website that it is launching “a brand that reflects our new moment”.
👉 Read more here.
INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Wells Fargo has launched a 10-year commitment to improving financial inclusion among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families. The Banking Inclusion Initiative promises to help unbanked people gain access to affordable, mainstream, digitally-enabled transactional accounts. Link here.
⭐️ Is MoneyLion building the first open U.S. bank? Link here.
⭐️ Marcus is prepping the launch of its long-awaited UK app in a matter of weeks. Link here.
UNITED KINGDOM
Monzo Bank has introduced new and improved invoices on Business Pro. The team at Monzo notes that they’ve made in-app invoicing “better” in order to give users more time “for what really matters”. Link here.
Mambu has announced that Recognise Bank Limited, one of the UK’s newest SME banks, has gone live on its SaaS financial services platform. The bank’s proposition is unique in that it is a blend of relationship-led and technologically-enabled services. Link here.
Atom bank, the UK’s first app-based bank, is collaborating with Plaid, an Open Finance platform and data network that powers the digital financial ecosystem, to roll out open banking services to its customers, beginning with offering small business owners a streamlined loan application journey and speedier decisions. Link here.
Wise’s world this morning has scooped fresh capital from Silicon Valley Bank and been added to the Temenos marketplace to help bring its services to banks across the world. SVB has provided Wise with a £160m capital facility to help FinTech refinance its existing line of credit. Link here.
A smart banking app that encourages sustainable living is releasing a beta product in the coming weeks. After testing with early users, Novus will launch to the wider public this summer. Link here.
Moneybox has added another savings product to its ever-growing crop of savings accounts. Moneybox customers will have access to its new Simple Saver Account, which offers a competitive, but still low, interest rate of 0.25 percent AER. Link here.
Revolut Business has launched currency forward contracts (FX forwards) for its business customers in the UK. Business users can now set future exchange rates online, at any time, and are able to get a fixed FX rate for a set amount and date in the future through the Revolut Business web app. Link here.
Uncapped raised an $80 million combined funding round of debt and equity to launch a suite of banking services tailored to the needs of this new wave of tech-driven companies. Link here.
EUROPE
OMNIO, a leading innovator in Banking as a Service, has announced a 30m Euros funding lead by pan-European venture fund GrayBella Capital. Omnio is a fast-growth pre-IPO banking infrastructure leader based in London, England. Link here.
Mastercard unveiled the need for true names on a card in the U.S. at WorldPride in 2019. After a successful launch and rollout with major banks across the U.S., challenger bank bunq will be the first issuer to make True Name™ available across Europe in 30 countries. Link here.
Many businesses are having to wait longer for payments from other companies because of the coronavirus crisis. More than half say they are unable to pay invoices on time. ABN AMRO Bank N.V. is offering a new service that can solve this problem and can also help companies that need extra liquidity to grow. Starting this month, business owners can use the ABN AMRO internet banking environment to select and assign individual invoices to ABN AMRO. Link here.
Swiss core banking vendor Temenos is to deliver access to digital assets for its banking clients through a relationship with local startup Taurus SA. Link here.
Berlin-based FinTech Bitwala changes its name to Nuri and is launching a redesigned web and mobile app. With the product and brand relaunch, the company is taking the next step along with its development and growth strategy. Link here.
Deutsche Bank has announced a global partnership with Silverflow to support the banks’ payment strategy in the coming years. It includes the launch of two payment services which are expected to be launched in the Autumn of 2021. Link here.
Saxo Bank, the online trading and investment specialist, is launching a new cryptocurrency offering enabling clients to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin against EUR, USD, and JPY from a single margin account without the need to maintain a crypto wallet. Link here.
Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB) has inked a deal with nCino which will see the German lender deploy nCino’s Bank Operating System. The implementation forms part of an ongoing digital transformation at HCOB, which serves commercial clients in the real estate and shipping sector. It becomes nCino’s first client in Germany. Link here.
US
To mark AAPI Heritage Month Cheese, a new digital banking platform based in Pasadena and designed primarily to serve Asian and immigrant communities has identified and teamed up with additional independent Asian-owned businesses and restaurants in American cities. Offering 5% cashback to customers who support those businesses. Link here.
Former PayPal CEO, fintech entrepreneur Bill Harris is launching digital bank Nirvana Technology (Stealth). The organization has made the announcement in the official press statement. Link here.
Clair, a social impact embedded fintech startup transforming how America’s 82 million hourly workers and 57 million gig workers get paid, announced new partnerships with nationally-chartered MetaBank®, N.A., a subsidiary of Meta Financial Group Inc.® and API-based payment processor Galileo Financial Technologies, two firms known for providing the vital infrastructure that powers the global fintech revolution. Link here.
Amount, a company that provides technology to banks and financial institutions, has raised $99 million in a Series D funding round at a valuation of just over $1 billion. Link here.
Current, a leading U.S. financial technology company serving Americans who are working to create a better future for themselves, announced its partnership with Acala, a decentralized finance platform built on the Polkadot blockchain network. Link here.
To accelerate the automation decision process and provide a seamless way for lenders to extend credit, Experian and Temenos announced the integration of PowerCurve® decision solutions into Temenos Infinity, the leading omnichannel digital banking product. Link here.
Lance closed a $2.8 million seed round Tuesday, with investors including Barclays, BDMI - Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Imagination Capital, Techstars, and DFJ Frontier, among other angel investors. Link here.
Greenwood Financial’s digital banking platform plans to offer everything you’d expect from a bank: spending and savings accounts, a mobile app, a sleek card that’s heavy enough to make a good thwap sound on a table after a fancy meal with your parents while you say, “I got this.” Link here.
Treasury Prime, the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) upstart, wrapped up a $20 million Series B insider funding round that it will harness to gain momentum in go-to-market efforts and to grow its sales, marketing, and engineering workforces. Link here.
ASIA
tonik, a neobank in the Philippines, recently announced that it raised US$17M in Pre-Series B funding. The round comes on the heels of Tonik’s public launch in March 2021, which saw it secure over US$20M in retail deposits in under 1 month. Link here.
Canvas is a homegrown digital cashless solution for household finance management that’s designed for families and their household dependents in Singapore. They have pinpointed Singapore as a market to launch in because more retailers here are turning digital and choosing cashless. Link here.
Zaggle, a fintech company, has launched a neo banking initiative focused on the SME segment. This neobank foray is through Zaggle's group company, ZikZuk. The first product that is being launched under this initiative is the Founders Card – a curated credit card for SME owners to take care of their business expenses. Link here.
MIDDLE EAST
A newly launched neobank, Telda, is announcing a $5 million pre-seed round to digitize how Egyptians save, send, and spend money. Telda was launched last month by CEO Ahmed Sabbah and CTO Youssef Sholqamy. Link here.
Ripple partnered with the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), the North African country’s largest bank. NBE has connected with the UAE-based financial service provider LuLu International Exchange – part of the LuLu Financial Group – to process cross-border payments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Egypt, through Ripple’s global payments network RippleNet. Link here.
AUSTRALIA
A team based out of Sydney is building what it claims is the world’s first “Shariah-guided” decentralized finance platform to navigate a course between the advantages of DeFi and the beliefs of Islamic finance. The Marhaba Decentralized Financial Platform (marhaba means "welcome" in Arabic) is expected to launch in the coming months and seeks to offer the Islamic world a DeFi platform informed by the core tenets of Shariah. Link here.
AFRICA
Vodacom, the South African telco group majority owned by Vodafone, has launched its own ‘super app’ with the aid of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. The app, called VodoPay, offers users basic mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) and QR code payments alongside loans and an online shopping platform. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
Manchester-based SME banking service B-North has added five new senior members to its team as the world of SME banking continues to heat up. Link here.
This ends my weekly digital banking newsletter. Thank you for reading to the end! If you liked it, I invite you to like, share and/or leave a comment below. You may also subscribe here.
Let me know if there are any questions or news/insights worth mentioning in next week's newsletter. Until the next!
Regards,
Marcel van Oost