Hello Fintech Friends,

It's been a big week at TWIF.

First of all: tonight is Fintech Formal! We're down to our last 20 tickets at fintechformal.com/rsvp

Even more importantly, we coauthored a new whitepaper with Visa, the world's longest-running fintech. This month's paper focused on the relationship between banks and fintechs, and what lies ahead for these sometimes-competitors, sometimes-collaborators. You can download it by clicking the link below, or view it online here.

Our NYC team also celebrated crossing 100,000 monthly readers (and 80,000+ subscribers) with Nasdaq in Times Square. The best is still to come :)

In fintech-land, there are two narratives that Simon Taylor and I have been drumming into our Twitter feeds regarding crypto and banking: (1) stablecoins are going to be the first 'killer app' of crypto, and especially relevant outside of the US, and (2) banks are going to be some of the earliest adopters of mainstream, scaled crypto use cases.

I mention these narratives because, just this week, NuBank partnered with Circle to bring USDC to Brazilian consumers, Brazil's largest bank, Itau Unibanco, launched crypto trading services, and Société Générale, France's third-largest bank, announced that they will bank and list their own stablecoin. Keep watching this space for developments.

And elsewhere in TWIF, hear from our Head of Community, Cristina Ciaravalli, on the Money Legos podcast:

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

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💬 Quote of the Week

"Fintechs have a critical role to play in creating inroads for displaced individuals into the global economy, offering digital solutions for wealth storage and efficient commercial payments. Special attention to supporting entrepreneurial endeavors among displaced women, through tailored credit products and educational resources, can unlock tremendous potential and foster long-term economic resilience." - Helen Femi Williams

Signals: Harnessing fintech for refugee empowerment

For globally displaced populations, financial inclusion intersects with a series of other challenges. What fintechs can do to help.

This Week in FintechHelen Femi Williams

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Mastercard launched a generative AI tool that helps shoppers with product recommendations - showing that, alongside Klarna, more payments firms are themselves getting into e-commerce (as e-comm providers roll out their own payments).

Standard Chartered bank rolled out its buy-now-pay-later loans across consumers in its Asian markets.

Itau Unibanco, Brazil's largest bank, launched cryptocurrency trading.

French bank Société Générale is set to launch its own fully euro-backed stablecoin on a cryptocurrency exchange. AXA Investment Managers this week completed its first live market transacation using stablecoins issued by SG Forge, the digital asset arm of Société Générale.

📰 Other News

Will Apple take its credit card program to Chase, the bank which (along with Citigroup and AmEx) previously passed on the program? The tech giant is reportedly working with Pismo in Brazil to bring banking services to its consumers.

The State Bank of Pakistan launched the country's real-time payment system, Raast, similar to UPI or PIX.

BlackRock is working on generative AI investing tools for clients.

A ransomware attack took at a cloud IT provider took a large number of US credit unions offline, while the London Stock Exchange suffered two outages on Tuesday.

Italian regulators ordered bank Intesa Sanpaolo to stop migrating 2.4 million customers to its new app-only bank unless it gets express consent from the users.

Barclays will shut down 18 more bank branches in the UK, while UK regulators take on the problem of creating 'banking deserts' due to branch closures (is it time for a public bank?)

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Decentralized finance lender and banking provider Warbler Labs* launched Heron Finance, an SEC-registered robo-adviser on a blockchain.

B2B payments and invoicing network TreviPay launched its new all-in-one payments solutionto reduce friction and build loyalty at all stages of the purchasing process.

Enfuce partnered with Visa to launch a new fleet mobility card, not restricted to specific fuel retailers or specific types of product like petrol or diesel.

Equities trading platform Public* launched access for members to invest fractionally in corporate and Treasury bonds, powered by Moment.*

Stripe launched Climate Orders, a product to let companies pre-order contracts that draw down carbon dioxide emissions.

Embedded payroll provider Check launched tools to help platforms with fraud management and detection, data migration, compliance and support when launching payroll products.

📰 Other News

Adyen, which – as a reminder – is not just a payments provider but also a bank, won the role of global acquiring bank for Klarna, meaning it will be responsible for collecting card-based payments from customers and their banks, and then delivering them to retailers and merchants

NuBank partnered with Circle to bring USDC stablecoins to 90 million Brazilian consumers.

Self Financial made it free for users to report rent payment data to all three credit bureaus.

Brex brought its corporate card and expense management platform to Canadian employees of US-based companies, while Robinhood brought its commission-free stock trading app to Europe.

X (formerly Twitter) is now licensed as a payment processor in a dozen US states.

Bluevine's business checking account deposits crossed over $1 billion.

Gr4vy partnered with Waave to enable pay-by-bank as a payment option in Australia.

Dlocal reported third quarter earnings, with revenues at the payment provider increasing 50% year over year, while Intuit reported 15% revenue growth to $3 billion.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Embedded banking software provider Treasury Prime partnered with anti-fraud platform Effectiv to leverage Effectiv's Transaction Monitoring solution, enabling customers to significantly reduce fraudulent transactions and enhance risk management.

UK open banking provider TrueLayer will use the payment infrastructure of Nordic neobank Lunar to extend its account-to-account payment services across Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Canadian fintech Nuvei partnered with Microsoft to provide customer payments in its Middle East and the Africa regions.

👎 The Bad News

ZetMoney, an Indian buy-now-pay-later provider that previously raised $130 million at a $450 million valuation, announced that it is shutting down.

Fintech partner bank Lineage Bank, a partner of Synapse and Synctera, was blindsided by an activist shareholder coup that threatens the bank's fintech program.

Expense management platform Navan laid off 145 employees (5% of its staff) ahead of a planned IPO.

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