Hello Fintech Friends,

You have to love slow weeks like the lead-up to Labor Day Weekend.

🚀 It was great to see that we've invested in 17% of Business Insider's 54 up-and-coming fintechs. Congrats to Themis, Ansa, Fragment, Equi, Method, Monarch, Tribal, Mercury, and Unit! If you're a fintech founder, come join us at The Fintech Fund.

🥂 We have a very exciting announcement coming next week, so stay tuned….

💼 In the meantime, will we see you at our job fair next Wednesday?

The Fintech Job Fair · Luma

The Fintech Job Fair is a virtual event hosted in This Week in Fintech’s Slack community (https://global-finnovation.slack.com/ #job-fair channel). Join us for webinar sessions hosted…

Beyond Two Percent: Building in Emerging Markets

“One of the biggest challenges is that we’re getting significantly less funding to do so. So you’re getting less funding, but you’re expected to build like five times more, and bring these products to market as quick as effectively as efficiently.” -Jihan Abass, CEO and Founder of Lami.

This Week in FintechJulie VerHage-Greenberg

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

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💼 Fintech Job of the Week

Atmos Financial lets you leverage bank deposits to provide low-cost loans for clean energy and electrification, and they’re looking to hire a Full-Stack Software Developer (Remote)!

“As a Mid-Level Software Developer, you will play a vital role in our team responsible for enhancing and maintaining our cutting-edge banking service platform. You will work closely with a talented group of engineers and collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and deploy scalable, secure, and high-performance software solutions. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will contribute to the continuous improvement of our systems, ensuring seamless operations, and delivering exceptional user experiences.” Learn more here.

💬 Quote of the Week

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Canada’s Bank of Montreal partnered with Mastercard and Extend to launch a product that allows clients to issue virtual cards to their employees’ mobile wallets.

Bank of America launched its global digital disbursements technology in Canada, which allows customers to process multiple B2C payments and C2B collections where the identifier is the person’s email address or mobile phone number.

📰 Other News

We are inching towards global payment rails – and this time, it’s not coming from the West. India is considering expanding its UPI payment rails into several African countries, including Namibia, Mozambique, and Kenya, to help establish better commercial linkages. Meanwhile, Safaricom’s M-Pesa went live in Ethiopia and the State Bank of Vietnam joined the Regional Payment Connectivity (RPC) initiative to create interoperable payments systems in Southeast Asia.

Visa and Mastercard are reportedly getting ready to raise fees charged to merchants in the US, which could result in merchants paying an additional $502 million annually (as a reminder, merchants are mostly not allowed to pass those fees on to customers).

Citi is abandoning its retail account packages and instead introducing “relationship tiers.”

The Digital Dollar Project is partnering up with Western Union to test faster, cheaper cross-border CBDC payments.

The London Stock Exchange is coming to Malaysia and Mastercard opened up an AI center in the UAE.

China is dealing with significant stress in its shadow banking industry, as real estate values continue to collapse, and loans with them.

The SEC is probing California mortgage lender The Change Company over its mortgage-backed securities.

The Treasury is setting out new rules to ensure that crypto exchanges and payment processors report all crypto transactions to avoid laundering.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Latin American stablecoin issuer Num Finance launched its nCop stablecoin, tied to the Colombian Peso and…. somehow, with yields of 8%. (Do your research here first.)

Swedish open banking platform Anyfin launched a credit overview product for consumers to see their loans and scores in one place.

Expensify launched enhanced insights and custom reporting.

📰 Other News

Starbucks is testing out a new scanless checkout at their drive-throughs that would leverage users’ geolocation from their phones.

The first spot bitcoin ETF could be coming to public markets soon, as a US court has ruled in favor of crypto fund provider Grayscale over the SEC’s objections.

Nigerian fintech Moniepoint surpassed $12 billion in monthly transactions.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Front Finance* partnered with Bags to launch a better embedded investing experience.

Cross-border issuer-processor Paymentology partnered with engagement solutions provider Moneythor to work on more event-driven digital banking experiences.

Brazil’s OZ Câmbio partnered with real-time payments firm Nium to send money abroad.

Engagement banking provider Backbase partnered with SavvyMoney to integrate its credit score solution, Credit Score Insights, into Backbase.

Deposit network ModernFi partnered with the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America to helps its members accelerate deposit growth.

Expensify partnered with SaaStr to provide a networking tool for its conferences.

👎 The Bad News

The founders of Tornado Cash, a crypto laundering tool, were charged with…. Laundering money and sanctions violations.

Binane is looking to crypto on-ramp MoonPay to help it move money onto and off the platform, after US banks began to cut ties. Relatedly, Mastercard is ending its fiat-to-crypto partnership with the exchange.

Come meet us in-person at fintechhappyhour.com, and join our angel investing syndicate.