Digital Banking Weekly | 2021 #31
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!
INTERVIEW
Adnan Ahmed, Head of Strategy at Starling Bank, outlines the fintech’s plans to keep setting the pace for the banking industry:
Our main competition isn’t other fintechs, it’s the big banks. As each fintech continues to grow and evolve over the next 10 years we expect to make huge inroads in this respect, as we’ll collectively continue to change the industry at a rate that the big banks won’t be able to keep up with.
👉 Read more here.
REPORT
More than half of young Islamic finance customers would adopt Islamic banking if it were more accessible, according to a report from cloud banking platform Mambu.
According to Mambu’s research, 74% of young Muslims said they want banks to make investments that align with their religious beliefs, while 75% want them to make investments that ‘do good in the world’.
👉 Read more here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S DIGITAL BANKING SPACE
INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ gohenry brings its customers Apple Pay, a safer, more secure, and private way to pay. Link here.
⭐️ The demand for freelancer banking may be heating up. Link here.
⭐️ MoneyLion an 8-year-old New York-based neobank, wants to become a destination for all of its customers' financial needs, including banking, lending and investing. Link here.
⭐️ UK-based digital bank Monzo Bank is currently facing a civil and criminal money-laundering investigation that is being carried out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Link here.
UNITED KINGDOM
Over a year after Jaja Finance had paused the onboarding of new customers, it appears the challenger credit card is starting to resume the process. Jaja stopped onboarding new customers in June 2020 in order to deal with a huge influx of accounts migrating over from its £530m acquisition of the Bank of Ireland’s UK credit card businesses, which included Post Office and AA-branded credit cards. Link here.
Despite summer being well and truly in flow, FinTech funding is not slowing down. Money management app Snoop has reportedly closed a £15m Series A in a round led by leading US hedge fund Paulson&Co. Link here.
EUROPE
Italian neobank illimity has just finished one of its most profitable periods yet. In the first half of 2021, Illimity turned over a profit of €14.9m, up 18 percent from the previous quarter. Link here.
Penta has renewed its offerings and now features three different account models: Starter, Comfort and Enterprise. The Enterprise model is completely new, costs 49 euros per month and is aimed at larger companies with higher business volumes. Link here.
Banking Circle is seeking to raise new funding at a valuation of around 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion), according to people with knowledge of the matter. Link here.
Temenos announced that Silkbank Limited, a commercial and Islamic bank in Pakistan, has gone live with Temenos Infinity, a digital banking platform, to power up its digital banking for retail, corporate and SME customers. Link here.
US
Digital banking technology developer Nymbus has raised a further $3m in funding, coming just months after it closed a $53m investment. The fresh equity injection was supplied by OFG Ventures, a subsidiary of Puerto Rico-headquartered financial holding company OFG Bancorp. Link here.
California-based MovoCash, Inc., a neobank that launched in 2017, released a new cryptocurrency service for its users last week. The technology, called MOVO Chain, acts as an off-ramp for cryptocurrency investments and allows customers to quickly convert 10 different cryptocurrencies into fiat currency stored on a debit card. Link here.
Greenwood, the digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and business owners, announced the launch of Greenwood Studio. Greenwood Studio will produce essential personal finance content targeted at the Black and Latino community in an educational and entertaining way. Link here.
Citibank will become the latest entrant into the buy now, pay later sector when it begins to trial its pay in four feature ‘Spot’ in Australia from October. Customers will be able to use the feature anywhere Mastercard is accepted and will be able to link it to any bank account of their choice. Link here.
Synctera, a new solution for partnership banking at scale, announced the signing of Marqeta, Inc, and Mastercard as FinTech partners, launched its Card API, and added Regent Bank as a new banking partner. Link here.
Eco is raising another $60 million to propel its early hit stablecoin crossover as regulators turn up the pressure on the sector. The fiat-input, cashback-granting digital wallet and stablecoin platform is not even five months removed from its $26 million pre-seed. Link here.
CANADA
Equitable Bank, Canada's Challenger Bank™, announced a new lending arrangement with Foresters Financial™ that will allow qualifying Foresters members to access funds through an Equitable Bank Cash Surrender Value (CSV) Line of Credit. Link here.
AUSTRALIA
Alex, Australia’s newest digital bank, goes live on The Temenos Banking Cloud to create a hyper-efficient cost structure and offer better value lending products and services to retail customers. Temenos technology simplifies Alex’s loan application journey, facilitating 3-minute application times and the delivery of nearly 10,000 loans in the last six months. Link here.
LATAM
In the six years since launching Credijusto.com, a Mexican FinTech lending to small businesses, David Poritz credijusto and Allan Apoj Pascal delivered more than 250 per cent annual revenue growth and managed to turn Covid-19 into an opportunity. But when the co-chief executives decided to go mainstream by buying a bank, even one of their biggest backers baulked. Link here.
AFRICA
Kuda Bank raised another round of funding. Kuda closed, via its London entity, a Series B of $55 million — money that it plans to use to double down not just on new services for Nigeria, but to prepare its launch into more countries on the continent, and in the words of co-founder and CEO Babs Ogundeyi, to build a new take on banking services for “ever African on the planet.”Link here.
ASIA
Digital bank aspirant BigPay | Challenge Banking announced that it has finalised up to US$100 million in financing from South Korean conglomerate SK Group. This is the first time any portfolio company within AirAsia Digital has secured financing of this size. Link here.
Shares of 카카오뱅크 Kakaobank shot up nearly 80% during its market debut in South Korea on Friday. Kakao Bank is South Korea’s first digital bank to go public and is the country’s largest IPO since 2017 when Netmarble went public. Link here.
SME Neobank ZikZuk Technologies Pvt Ltd, from India, is eyeing to raise $5 million in series A round funding. The company - a leading FinTech firm, is in talks with investors to raise significant capital to further develop products and services for the SME ecosystem, said a top executive from the company. Link here.
Industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s neobank for consumers in India — Jupiter — has raised $45 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore and Mumbai-based startup gears up for its platform’s public launch in about a month. Link here.
Viva Republica (Toss) will not charge commissions for transfers, choosing to lose money on every transaction ahead of the opening of Toss Bank. All Toss app users will get free transfers for life. To date, up to 10 transfers were offered for free, and after that they cost 500 won (43 cents) per transfer. Users who press a notice on the app are eligible for the benefit. Link here.
Mortgage finance startup Easy Home Finance Limited has announced that it has raised $15 million as part of a Series-A funding round which was led by private equity firm Xponentia Capital Partners. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
Modularbank, the next-generation core banking platform, has today announced the appointment of Julien Douve as Head of Alliances and Partnerships. Following its €4million round of late Seed Funding in December last year, the appointment is part of Modularbank’s wider expansion strategy to further strengthen its customer base in the UK, Nordics and Continental Europe and increase commercial breadth in new markets such as Latin America. Link here.
While many traditional banks and financial institutions are navigating their return-to-office procedures, fintechs like Dave have instead implemented company-wide changes to their operations such as a virtual-first model and a national pay scale for all employees. Link here.
Sponsored Content: Meet, network, and partner at Fintech Meetup, the world’s largest fintech meetings event! Join 30,000+ meetings with 4,000 participants from 2,000+ organizations including Startups & Established Fintechs, Processors, Networks, Large Banks, Community Banks & Credit Unions, Investors, and more! Discounted early bird tickets are available for a limited time only, qualifying Banks and Credit Unions eligible for FREE tickets.
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
Follow me on Twitter, Linkedin, and Telegram.
Discover other newsletters by MVO.