Hello Fintech Friends,

🙄 In possibly the least surprising news of the week, (alleged, but not convicted) perpetual fintech fraudster and ex-Bolt co-founder Ryan Breslow is being investigated by the SEC over misleading claims made while fundraising.

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

💬 Quote of the Week

📖 Read of the Week

CB Insights released its State of Fintech Q2’23 Report, which highlights the continued multi-sector and multi-stage decline in fintech financing, but does also highlight a few surprising findings: fintech funding grew in LatAm and the Caribbean, and grew slightly in terms of IPOs last quarter as well.

The CFPB published a new opinion this week that the use of cash flow data – various inflows, outflows, and accumulated amounts in checking and savings accounts – may actually enable lenders to make better credit and underwriting decisions than just relying on bureau data and third-party credit scores.

Elsewhere, I enjoyed this writeup from Matthew Goldman this week, asking a question I’ve often wondered myself: Did Anyone Ask for In-Car Payments?

📊 Stat of the Week

🇧🇷 “In Brazil, the account-to-account payment option PIX saw transactions for Q1 hit 8.1 billion, compared to 4.2 billion for credit cards and 3.8 billion for debit cards.” (Source)

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

The country of Myanmar launched an entirely crypto-based bank, the Spring Development Bank, built on Polygon.

Mastercard launched Mastercard Receivables Manager, a new, automated solution that streamlines the way businesses accept and process virtual card payments.

JP Morgan partnered with wealth management platform TIFIN to launch… something. It’s unclear from the press release, but looks like an incubator or product studio.

📰 Other News

After a continued regime of interest rate hikes, the US Federal Reserve is now no longer predicting a recession in the country.

US senators are proposing a ban on lawmakers – who consistently outperform the market by trading companies they oversee – from holding individual stocks.

The US Federal Reserve released its initial list of banks enabled for FedNow, liquidity providers, and fintech service providers.

China’s central bank digital currency surpassed $250 billion in total transactions within one and a half years of launching.

India and Singapore linked their real-time payments systems for instant cross-border payments.

Banco Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank formed a network to tackle financial crime and fraud. Blackrock and Jio Financial are forming a joint venture to enter India’s asset management industry.

Turkey is entering into a strategic fintech collaboration with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.

Spain’s Mediobanca is investing €12 million into building out a London fintech venture studio and accelerator. Meanwhile, Bank of India opened three branches exclusively to serve tech startups.

The UK government will walk back plans to crack down on the country’s buy-now-pay-later sector, but the Financial Conduct Authority rolled out a digital sandbox for companies to test innovative new technologies.

Dutch police raided a criminal ring linked to 25 ATM explosions in the country.

Goldman Sachs and Apple are souring on their financial services partnership.

The chief executive of a supplier to National Australia Bank was jailed for eight years over a $19 million fraud scheme.

Virgin Money is joining other banks in leaving its branches - cutting 30% of its network and 260 jobs.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Meow, which provides fixed income treasury management products to companies, launched 5.25% yielding UK treasury bills, powered by Atomic*.

Plaid integrated FedNow’s instant money transfer service into its supported payment methods, one of the first fintechs to do so.

Crypto banking services platform Eco* launched Beam, a P2P crypto transfer service aiming to be a ‘global Venmo’.

The former LendInvest founder launched a UK based short-term property ‘fix and flip’ lender.

cSigma launched a debt capital platform to connect credit investors with wholesale capital borrowers.

Pebble Finance released a new product that allows traders to leverage a language model to create personalized ETFs.

Utopia Labs launched a new product to enable US-based firms to send USDC directly to domestic bank accounts.

Heron Data launched a product to underwrite a company for credit with three bank statements.

📰 Other News

Under pressure from angry restaurants and customers, point of sale provider Toast reversed course on its proposed service $0.99 fee to be added on top of all orders.

Alipay and WeChat Pay now allow travelers to China to add international cards like Visa and Mastercard.

Apple Card account holders, meanwhile, are losing their goodwill with the company after delays in moving money and patchy communications.

Robinhood hired the prior head of Freetrade in order to expand into the UK (where trading platform Webull Securities just launched), while JP Morgan expands its online digital bank to Germany.

Amazon plans to add automated palm scanning payment technology to all its Whole Foods stores by the end of the year.

Indian payments provider Paytm’s revenue climbed 39% year over year due to increased mobile payments demand.

UK neobank Atom Bank reported its first ever annual operating profit of £4 million.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Bank infrastructure provider Cross River partnered with Plaid to offer its end customers multi-rail bank payment functionality.

Crypto derivatives provider FalconX partnered with CF Benchmarks to price its contracts.

Nova Credit partnered with Canada’s Scotia Bank to enable underwriting foreign loan applicants.

👎 The Bad News

Bolt ex-CEO Ryan Breslow – who is no stranger to fundraising controversy – was subpoenaed along with the company last year by the SEC for violating securities laws when raising money.

Germany’s financial regulator BaFin extended money laundering controls at digital bank N26, alleging significant compliance deficiencies.

UK-based payment provider Global 365 is suing its rival PayPoint over anti-competitive practices that have shut it out of the market.

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