This Week in Fintech (11/27)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving! Wherever this Friday finds you, I hope you’re doing something more interesting than reading this newsletter.

Please find another week of fintech and banking news below.

Quote of the week

“Everyone has gaps in their financial knowledge. But for migrants and others who are socio-economically disadvantaged, those gaps are [more] significant. Filling them in will help avert individual misery, maximise individual potential and boost economies.”

Patrick Jenkins, Deputy Editor, Financial Times (Why financial literacy matters more than ever)

Read of the week

This week, Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib introduced the Public Banking Act, a bill which would create “public nonprofit banks to address the needs of the millions of underbanked and unbanked Americans.” I have shouted from this soapbox for long enough, so rather than belabor the point, I’ll recommend US News’ great coverage of the proposal. (If you are a congressperson reading this, my DMs are open.)

Financial Services & Banking

Product Launches

American Express, in collaboration with PayPal and Venmo, launched its new Send & Split service to let its customers send money, split purchases and manage their expenses.

NatWest launched its Housemate app for renters to share bills and build their credit. Credit Suisse introduced open banking APIs to provide financial counterparties with real-time data access. UBS launched credit cards made from corn...

Other News

Payments giants Worldline and Nets both took stakes in the European Payments Initiative, which aims to build a rival payment system to Mastercard and Visa.

Visa, meanwhile, is partnering with Conferma Pay on a B2B payment virtual card and partnering with the NFL to make the Super Bowl cashless. Finland’s largest financial services group, OP Financial, is partnering with TietoEvry to pilot biometric fingerprint cards.

Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings has offered to pay clients 1% to lend the bank their bitcoin.

Australia is looking into using credit card transactions to trace coronavirus. The Bank of England said coronavirus transmission risk from cash is low.

Fintech

Product Launches

Quadpay launched a buy-now-pay-later Chrome extension for all online purchases. Clara is building BNPL for Brazil.

Finicity announced the launch of Finicity Pay, its open banking solution for payments, account creation, and fraud.

Other News

CVS will be the first national retailer to support PayPal and Venmo’s QR codes at checkout.

Starling Bank announced that it is the first neobank to achieve profitability. Revolut added Google Pay functionality in ten new markets. European shopping platform Joom was granted an e-money license to launch its instant cash transfer app, JoomPay, across Europe.

Circle partnered with the Republic of Venezuela to deliver aid to Venezuelans using USDC.

Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt stepped down as co-CEO ahead of a rumored IPO. Fintech advisor firm Oranj will close down at the end of 2020.