Hello Fintech Friends,

For an upcoming Signals piece by Matthew Goldman, we're running a survey on which fintech products (if any) fintech operators use for their everyday financial lives. Please take a few minutes to share your fintech stack! Information collected in the survey is anonymous and will not be shared:

TWIF: How Fintech People Bank

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In this week's episode of the Weekly Briefing, we delve into the latest developments in the fintech world, highlighting key product launches and partnerships that are shaping the industry. The podcast also covers the critical role of luck and serendipity in career paths, as exemplified in our feature interview with Emily Luk, CEO & Co-Founder of Plenty. Join us as we navigate the exciting and ever-evolving landscape of financial technology in 2024:

The Fintech Guild, a group of mostly-product people I'm in on WhatsApp, is hosting its first-ever demo day event in London. If you're an early-stage founder, you can apply now to get real feedback from top fintech operators, angels and investors. Selected startups will be invited to pitch at the exclusive event in London in March.

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.

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💼 Fintech Job of the Week

Coast is looking for a Director of Sales:

Director of Sales @ Coast | This Week In Fintech

Coast is the modern financial services platform that provides solution for managing fleet’s expenses, and a smart Visa fleet and fuel card.

This Week In Fintech

💬 Quote of the Week

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

UK bank NatWest launched a digital tool to help the UK’s 5.5 million small businesses to save on their energy bills while reducing their emissions.

Mastercard partnered with B2B payments and invoicing network TreviPay to release a solution to expand supplier access to TreviPay’s payments and invoicing technology.

📰 Other News

Too big to fail? JP Morgan had its most profitable year ever in 2023, with $90 billion in net interest income alone. That’s the record profitability for any bank, ever (and the same as the entire assets under management of the US’ 31st-largest bank, Utah’s Zions Bank). JPM ended the year with close to $4 trillion of balance sheet assets.

The National Payments Corporation of India is partnering with Google Pay to export its UPI real-time payment rails and RuPay card network outside of India.

The CFPB proposed limiting bank overdraft fees, normally $30 or more, to a range of $3 to $14.

Nomura is parntering with fintech hub WebN to work on Libre, a tokenization platform for the asset management industry.

Barclays plans to close 20 more branches in the UK this year.

Already, the listed bitcoin vehicle market is heating up: ProShares disclosed plans to launch five ETFs, including one that would offer twice the daily exposure to a bitcoin-tracking index and others to provide inverse bitcoin returns.

Elsewhere: are we getting an ETH ETF?

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Pan-African payment facilitator Stitch* launched its WigWag API for African businesses to accept card payments.

German neobank N26 rolled out in-app stock trading.

Neobanks Varo and Current both this week launched a free tax prep and filing service through a partnership with Column Tax.

Hotel-focused accounting provider DataPlus launched an embedded payment solution for hotels.

Trading platform Broadridge launched a generative AI tool that uses transactions, settlements and positions data to provide clients real-time visibility into failed transactions.

Philippines neobank Tonik launched small business loans.

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📰 Other News

Binance has seen record inflows of $4.6 billion in new assets since its settlement with US authorities, presumably as customers read the settlement as an American endorsement that the exchange can continue operating.

American financial services giant Fiserv is looking into obtaining a special-purpose bank charter, which would allow it to own transactions from end-to-end, removing the need for a bank partner. Meanwhile, Coinbase is seeking a MiFID-licensed entity to expand its derivatives offering in the EU.

Vodafone reached an agreement with Microsoft to invest $1.5 billion over the next ten years to develop new digital financial services.

Nubank customers in Mexico can now receive money from the US via WhatsApp built on digital banking provider Felix Pago.

Cross-border payments firm Wise grew active customers 30% YoY to 7.5 million, and increased revenue 40% in Q3 to £375.1 million.

South African neobank TymeBank recorded its first profitable months.

Stripe employees begin taking electric boat to work.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Anti-money laundering platform Minerva* announced a new channel partner platform to access its services, in partnership with Equifax.

Financial infrastructure and integration provider PortX partnered with Plaid on a data access fast-track.

Embedded banking provider Treasury Prime is powering a new strategic partnership between FirstBank and High Circle, a banking and investment platform.

Oliu, a digital identification provider, partnered with financial data connectivity platform Flinks to enable frictionless bank digital ID verification.

👎 The Bad News

JP Morgan stopped providing payments services for its small business clients of WePay, the payment processing fintech it acquired in 2017.

Banking-as-a-service provider Synapse is now seeking $30 million from SMB bank platform Mercury, in a series of suits and countersuits related to Mercury's efforts to recover additional revenue that Synapse withheld.

Vetamer Capital, a $350 million hedge fund investing in public fintechs, shut down and returned capital to investors.

Come meet us in-person at thisweekinfintech.com/events