Hello Fintech Friends,

I gotta say, the Tucci had me on the edge of my seat last night.

Big, big shout-out to all of our amazing partners who are making the Fintech Formal a reality. Have a great weekend.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

💬 Quote of the Week

“Most probably will start using crypto without realizing it (eg their bank issues a mortgage on-chain) - they'll just get better rate & faster processing. Eventually they'll realize a lot of apps & workflows they use & love today will be running on Web3 rails. That's the end game.”

• Santiago R Santos (Source)

📖 Read of the Week

The fintech team at Andreessen Horowitz continues to put out engaging primers on how different elements of financial infrastructure interoperate. This week, they published a short overview of how money moves (domestically and internationally) and the components of that process.

📊 Stat of the Week

Challenger banks and fintechs tripled their share of the UK credit card market and grew their personal loan books by 50% this year. (Source)

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🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Standard Chartered's venture arm launched letsbloom, a fintech that helps regulated firms get on the cloud.

National Australia Bank relaunched its online small business lending service.

CommBank's venture arm launched a machine learning shopping app for Gen Z.

📰 Other News

Mastercard signed up American Airlines, CSI, Fiserv and Tsys for its buy-now-pay-later program and opened a card program in New Orleans focused on financial inclusion.

CaixaBank is embarking on the tricky task of unifying its IT systems with the recently-acquired Bankia.

Singapore and Abu Dhabi collaborated on a 'breakthrough' cross-border trade finance program. The Philippines is accelerating its push to digital payments, in-line with the central bank’s goal of 50% of payments being digital by 2023.

Citi is opening a 7,000 square foot branch in Manhattan as banks are all moving into the clouds.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Google Finance launched the ability for users to link and track all their brokerage holdings on Google.

Euronet launched a real-time cross-border B2B payments solution and Roxe and Nium partnered to launch a consumer remittances product.

UK fintechs Mode and PayEscape are partnering to let people accept their payroll in bitcoin. Ripple launched a bitcoin and ethereum hub, and is working on a defi offering. Venmo launched a crypto price-tracking feature.

Online lender NewDay launched an instant-access credit account and Smartpay launched a no-fee buy-now-pay-later option in Japan. Klarna launched its pay-in-4 installment service in the US.

AcreTrader launched AcrePro, an online brokerage for farmland.

Nasdaq launched a dataset for tracking retail investment activity.

Fidel launched a transaction stream API. Open banking app TrueLayer partnered with Lightyear to launch instant account funding.

Yieldstreet launched a fund for small investors to bet on art.

Australian neobank Volt launched a white-labeled banking-as-a-service app. Core banking provider Nymbus launched a banking-as-a-service solution.

Voyager is launching the “first” crypto-based debit card (after all the other crypto debit cards…) with Mastercard.

📰 Other News

Amazon has stopped accepting Visa cards for payments made in the UK due to high fees and is in talks to switch its co-brand card from Visa to Mastercard.

LatAm fintech Divibank raised $5 million in debt through Goldfinch’s decentralized protocol. Uruguayan fintech Prex will let users purchase cryptocurrency starting December.

Rapyd is partnering with shopping app Nate on a global e-commerce platform. Canadian fintech Newt signed a deal to operate a SaaS platform for BBVA’s customers in Mexico. Banking-as-a-service provider Jiko signed a partnership with Euphoria to build a banking app for the transgender community.

Mercado Pago obtained approval to be a credit card issuer in Chile. N26 made its exit from the US official with the closure of 500,000 bank accounts.

3% of users left Binance after it implemented mandatory KYC. Plaid, MX and Flinks are setting up a new data security framework.

UK neobank Starling bought a £1 billion mortgage book.

Ikea is accepting open banking payments through Trustly.

And in very sad news, Brandon Dewitt, the co-founder of MX, passed away from cancer at age 38.

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🇪🇺 Europe

• Starling Bank is to offset its carbon emissions starting this year which is estimated to cost around $40,000. They also added support for its multi-currency accounts into Xero in real time.
• Klarna has finally launched in Ireland and also launched “Money Talks”, a card game to encourage people to talk about money.
• Truelayer has signed new neobroker Lightyear as a customer for its payments product, to be use to fund accounts at the investment platform.

🌏 Asia

• PhonePe crossed 2 billion monthly transactions milestone.
• In India, Velocity, a revenue based finance startup, raised $20 million. GoKwik, a commerce enablement startup, raised $15 million. GuardianLink, an NFT marketplace, raised $12 million.
• BSP, the Philippine Central Bank, plans to build a regional instant bank transfer network. It's already integrated with Singapore.
• Arbo Works, a Singaporean fintech startup founded by ex-Google employees, raised an undisclosed amount.

📜 Policy

In collaboration with Ben White.

• The Biden Administration signed into law the infrastructure bill, including a crypto tax amendment.
• Democratic Senators issued a letter pushing the CFPB on credit reporting errors.
• Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said stablecoins need not face identical rules to bank deposits, countering the Presidential Working Group’s recommendations last week.
• OCC Comptroller nominee Saule Omarova testifies in front of the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
• The SEC issued a risk alert for electronic investment advisers, after examinations found deficiencies in internal policies related to information security and investor best interest.
• The SEC rejected a Bitcoin ETF proposal from VanEck.
• US prudential regulators are expected to release a crypto regulation framework, according to Politico (paywall).
• The SEC is reportedly scrutinizing BlockFi’s high-yield crypto accounts.
• Ripple accused the SEC of “picking winners and losers” in a March court filing.
• Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Ademayo spoke about the opportunities and risks of crypto, and called for a regulatory framework.
• The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is pushing back a key open banking initiative by 6 months.

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