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Devcon Austin Happy Hour with Method and Rutter · Luma

What: Fintech Happy Hour at DevCon Where: Anthem, 91 Rainey St Ste 120, Austin, TX 78701 When: Thursday, August 8th 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm CT Why: To celebrate…

This Week in Fintech

TWIF NYC Happy Hour with Codat, Finley & Taktile · Luma

Who: This Week in Fintech, Codat, Finley & Taktile and NYC Fintech’s best operators, investors, and founders What: NYC Happy Hour with an open bar & light…

This Week in Fintech

Thank you to everyone who came out to our São Paulo fintech happy hour with Ensemblex and our London fintech Summer Soirée with 13Books Capital this week!

Ramon Escobar on LinkedIn: What a great night yesterday at the This Week in Fintech x Ensemblex Happy…

What a great night yesterday at the This Week in Fintech x Ensemblex Happy Hour in São Paulo. What’s better than good food, drink, and insightful…

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

Historically, Know Your Business (KYB) has been a manual, disjointed, and complex endeavor — think manually collecting info, endless back-and-forths with customers, and piecing together multiple solutions.

But it doesn’t have to be. Check out this guide from Persona to learn how to streamline your KYB-KYC process and better meet ever-changing regulations, combat fraud, and build trust. Download the guide here.

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💼 Fintech Job of the Week

Senior Product Manager

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💬 Quote of the Week

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

You can now bank in 3D... again. NatWest launched its banking app on the Apple Vision Pro, which has reportedly sold less than 100,000 units.

📰 Other News

China's banking turmoil continues, as fallout from the real estate lending bubble threatens the stability of mainland banks. In the last week, 40 more banks disappeared, led by the collapse of Jiangxi Bank of China. Some banks revealed that 40% of their portfolios consist of non-performing loans.

French bank BNP Paribas signed a multi-year agreement with artificial intelligence firm Mistral AI to provide the bank access to all of the AI giant's commercial models and announced a partnership with China's Ant international to boost Chinese cross-border payment services for merchants and consumers in Europe.

A bipartisan group in US Congress is nudging the Federal Reserve to explain why it can’t speed up a plan to extend the availability of the its FedNow faster payments system.

Chase will ban customers from using their credit cards to pay for third-party buy-now-pay-later loans.

UK shoppers were hit with a payments outage last week that prevented them from making online and in-person card payments using Visa and Mastercard. The Bank of England also said that a 'global payments issue' was delaying high-value payments such as home purchases processed through its real-time settlement system Chaps.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Digital investing platform Webull launched Webull Savings, a product to provide users with access to a marketplace of savings accounts and the ability to move funds quickly between trading accounts and banks.

Expedia partnered with Hotels.com and VRBO to launch two new Wells Fargo-issued travel rewards credit cards.

UK neobank Monzo is launching a bank account for children between 6 and 15 years old.

Liquid Treasuries launched a new consumer fintech account that combines aspects of checking, savings and investment.

Singapore startup Qashier launched Treats, a payment loyalty program for consumers to build points with select merchants.

Micro-savings platform Acorns launched a new feature in their retirement accounts called Later Match as part of the Premium offering, featuring a 3% IRA match on new contributions kept for 4 years.

Atlas launched a premium credit card with concierge services mostly focused on NYC to a small waitlist of users.

Open Payment Technologies launched its digital wallet app, Kuady, in Peru and Chile. 

The Numun Foundation launched a real-world asset tokenization DeFi app for emerging markets.

Historically, Know Your Business (KYB) has been a manual, disjointed, and complex endeavor — think manually collecting info, endless back-and-forths with customers, and piecing together multiple solutions.

But it doesn’t have to be. Check out this guide from Persona to learn how to streamline your KYB-KYC process and better meet ever-changing regulations, combat fraud, and build trust. Download the guide here.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

📰 Other News

Apple agreed with the European Commission to open up its mobile wallet NFC payment technology to apps and developers in Europe, to avoid hefty fines, which should allow third-parties to build tap-to-pay features for iPhones.

UK banking-as-a-service provider Griffin* received certification as a B Corp.

🤝 Partnership Corner

After filing for bankruptcy in 2022, BlockFi expects to be able to start making interim distributions of crypto holdings to users via Coinbase later this month.

PLS, which operates over 200 community financial service centers across the country, partnered with embedded finance provider Green Dot to launch a new debit card and suite of online banking services.

Indian online travel agency ixigo partnered with AU Small Finance Bank to launch UPI-based payments and rewards on its travel credit card.

👎 The Bad News

Evolve Bank and Lineage Bank, both partners of defunct banking-as-a-service provider Synapse, are each pursuing their own separate reconciliation efforts, which Evolve estimates will take two months on their side, as $95 million of the BaaS provider's consumer deposits are still unaccounted for. (Some briefed on the matter believe that funds could be made available again within a matter of weeks.)

Better.com founder and CEO Vishal Garg was found liable for breach of fiduciary duty and ordered to pay $5.5 million to a partner.

A group of hackers stole $230 million in customer deposits from Indian crypto exchange WazirX.

Lloyds Bank terminated its commercial agreement with invoice financing provider Satago just two years into a five-year contract, sending its shares down 32%.

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