Hello Fintech Friends,

Lots of announcements to end the week -

• SF 🌉 We can't wait to throw our first event of 2024 with Taktile and Mercury: For all our Bay Area folks (and those in SF next week), sign up here and we'll see you there! 
• Survey 📝 We're looking for a few more fintech experts to help us with our How Fintech People Bank survey. What fintech tools do you use in your day-to-day? One lucky respondent will win a full year of free TWIF premium.
• NYC 🗽 Next Thursday, we're back to our next NYC Fintech Coffee with the great Rise team.
• Nairobi 🇰🇪 And the week after that, we're coming back to Nairobi for our 3rd Annual Nairobi Fintech Meetup! Come meet the Opareta team building mobile money agents, as well as our partners Asilimia, Turaco, Peach Payments, Onafriq, HoneyCoin, and DCG.

TWIF Nairobi Fintech Happy Hour Feb 2024 · Luma

Get ready to mix, mingle, and raise your glasses at the most electrifying fintech gathering in Nairobi! This Week in Fintech is thrilled to invite you to the TWIF Nairobi Fintech Happy Hour,…

This Week in Fintech

• Briefing 🎧 Lastly, our TWIF Weekly Briefing is back! Listen below, or here on Apple Podcasts.

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

Fintech Meetup (March 3-6) is less than 60 days away! Don’t miss Fintech’s new BIG show with “the highest ROI” for attendees & sponsors. Ticket prices go up Friday 1/12 at midnight. Don’t miss out. Get tickets Now!

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💬 Quote of the Week

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

Visa reported significant growth in its first fiscal quarter, with a 20% boost in Visa Direct transactions, 6% more debit cards, and cross-border volumes up 16% year-over-year.

Shares of New York Community Bancorp fell 16% after the company swung to a fourth-quarter loss due to its purchase of the embattled crypto partner bank Signature Bank.

Mastercard is working on a new biometric authentication device to kill passwords once and for all.

The Bank of Ireland invested €60 million into putting ATMs in all its branches in the country.

Think tank The Atlantic Council warned that the US is falling behind other countries in CBDC research.

Lloyds Bank is shutting down its vans that provide streetside banking services.

Westpac was fined for unethical interest rate swap transactions, HSBC was fined £57.4 million for failing to accurately log accounts eligible for UK compensation, and the New York Attorney General is suing Citibank for failing to protect customers from fraud and scams.

Deutsche Bank plans to cut 3,500 jobs in an efficiency drive.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Klarna is introducing a $7.99 monthly membership for its buy-now-pay-later loans as it preps for IPO, and is reviving Money Story, a feature which enables customers to look back on their personal spending history over the past year.

Apiax, a regtech provider for banks, launched a GenAI policy assistant for compliance queries.

Signals: Why is there so much idea recycling in fintech?

Once or twice a quarter, for the last half-decade, I’ve opened my inbox to the same email: “I’d like you to invest in my new app, a financial advisor that will put people’s money on autopilot.” This email has come from 50 or so different people, working

This Week in FintechNik Milanović

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📰 Other News

Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is setting up its own AI unit.

Apple released metrics for its card program:

• 12 million users
• $1 billion in Daily Cash rewards earned
• $10 billion in deposits
• 30% make two or more payments per month

Figure is seeking SEC approval to issue an interest-bearing stablecoin.

Dutch neobank bunq reported €53.1 million in net profit in 2023, becoming Europe’s second most profitable neobank.

Germany's Auxmoney issued a €500 million social bond.

Nigerian payments processor Moniepoint announced that it processed 5.2 billion transactions in 2023.

The UK’s National Crime Agency published an amber alert that the art market has become a frequent vehicle for money laundering into the country.

Miden, a Nigerian startup that allows businesses to issue virtual cards to their customers through its API, joined Y Combinator, while Nigerian financial management app Kippa pivoted into edtech.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Real-time payments provider Volt signed a deal with Bumper to bring open banking to car dealerships in the UK and Europe.

Amazon enabled installment payments in Mexico through its partnership with Kueski.

👎 The Bad News

This was quite a week for bad news -

Blue Ridge Bank received its second OCC enforcement action for its work with fintechs.

Securities lending fintech EquiLend went offline after hackers gained unauthorized access to its systems.

Terraform Labs, behind the bankrupt Terra stablecoin, finally filed for bankruptcy in the US.

PayPal started company-wide layoffs and Block laid off 1,000 employees.

RBI, India's central bank, imposed new curbs on Paytm Payments Bank following a critical compliance review by external auditors, effectively killing it off.

Biometric card provider Zwipe is leaving the payments market following disappointing uptake of its fingerprint-powered contactless cards.

The Bank of Lithuania fined Revolut €200,000 for amassing too many deposits.

UK open banking startup Kikapay closed down, Paysme, a financial super app for small businesses in the UK, is closing down, and fintech publication AltFi shut down after 10 years reporting on fintech.

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