Hello Fintech Friends,

We've got good news.

We've been waiting all year to tell you.

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Because Fintech Formal is back.

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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If you're going to Money2020 this year, there's only one way to kick things off:

Money2020 Kickoff · Luma

Who: Activant, Shearman, MethodFi, Column Tax, Vartana, and Taktile What: Money2020 kickoff with an open bar & light bites Where: TAO Asian Bistro & Nightclub When: Sunday, October…

💼 Fintech Job of the Week

Confido is hiring a Customer Success Lead.

Confido is a next-generation financial automation and intelligence platform that helps fast-growing CPG brands operate and scale more efficiently. Despite advances in technology, the tools to run and grow a business in retail haven’t changed, leaving brands bogged down with manual, repetitive work.

💬 Quote of the Week

"Fintech" as a category doesn't exist: it's a hodgepodge of many different products and business models." (Source)

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

There were a lot of product launches from banks and fintechs this week. Interestingly, much of it seems to be centered around open banking, blockchain / crypto, and large language models.

Morgan Stanley is launching an AI chatbot to swap golf jokes with its private wealth management clients.

BNY Mellon launched its own open banking payments service, in partnership with fintech Trustly. NatWest, meanwhile, partnered with PayIt to debut its own open banking payment links.

Visa launched its new global cross-border money movement service for banks, fintechs, FX brokers, corporates, and other payment institutions, built from its CurrencyCloud acquisition.

JP Morgan is stepping into the arena against Square and PayPal by offering its own digital payroll processing services.

Microsoft is teaming up with Barclays and Mastercard to launch the first-ever Xbox rewards card in the US - interestingly, the card will not only give bonus points on Microsoft purchases, but will reward users with in-game credits for spending, at no cost to Microsoft.

HSBC launched a dedicated digital portal which allows business and corporate customers to open accounts for multiple business entities.

📰 Other News

As a result of digital payment options, India took just six years (!) to reach its financial inclusion target of 80% - 41 years earlier than originally anticipated. I cannot stress how impressive this is.

Visa partnered with Plug and Play to launch a fintech accelerator for diverse founders!

JP Morgan is working on blockchain-tokenized deposits for payment settlement.

UK banks are all leaving the metaverse as the hype fades 👋

(Dutch bank ABN Amro registered a green bond on a public blockchain though.)

The CFTC wants to set up a US regulatory sandbox for crypto.

The CFPB is coming after Apple for restricting access to its phone's NFC chip from payment apps.

 Barclays will cut 450 jobs and Truist plans to cut 100s more.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

PayPal announced the launch of its on- and off-ramps for crypto payments.

Ant Group (which now has 1 billion Alipay users) launched an investment-focused large language model.

Intuit launched subscription-free Quickbooks Money, an all-in-one payments and banking solution with no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements and a Generative AI assistant for small businesses. But also...

Flutterwave launched CBN-backed swaps and expanded to India.

Fund analysis provider CapIntel launched OMNI, its new wealth management product.

Matera launched a digital solution to sit on top of its core software for real-time payments.

Monzo launched a new investments product that lets customers start with as little as £1.

Crypto custodian Fireblocks introduced a non-custodial wallet service.

PayPoint launched a new pay-by-bank open banking solution.

Tofu launched new invoicing, tax, and payment management products for businesses.

And... Cash App dropped a clothing line.

📰 Other News

Payments giant Adyen received its own banking license from UK regulators.

Coinbase announced a new crypto lending service geared towards large investors.

Alza came out of stealth to offer affordable and inclusive financial tools to immigrants.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Cross-border payments provider Inpay partnered with the Red Cross in Denmark to enable emergency funding across more countries.

Mastercard and the UK's Paysend partnered on cross-border payments for small and medium enterprises.

👎 The Bad News

Australian home loan marketplace Joust laid off staff as it looks for a buyer.

Square suffered from a day-long outage that shut down its service to small businesses.

The CFPB announced it will be looking into big tech's increasing role in payments.

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