Hello Fintech Friends,

We're excited to partner with our friends at TLV Partners to host our first Tel Aviv Fintech Happy Hour on June 15th! I'll be flying there personally for it; who should I meet with while I'm there?

TLV Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in Israeli entrepreneurs that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Since 2015, the firm has backed some of Israel's most innovative fintech companies such as Next Insurance, Unit, Mesh Payments and Noble.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Looking for your next adventure in fintech? Come check out our job board and join our Talent Collective.

💬 Quote of the Week

"Alloy and Modern Treasury are starting at opposite ends of the same customer problem: How do I get users onboarded and sending/receiving payments quickly and securely? Payments and identity as the ouroboros of fintech." - Bruno Werneck

📖 Read of the Week

The Economist put together a great global overview of the fight around the world to build the next payment systems:

• Digital finance: As payments systems go digital, they are changing global finance
• Emerging markets: A digital payments revolution in India
• Techfin v fintech: The old bank/card model is still entrenched in the rich world
• Cryptocurrencies: The promise of crypto has not lived up to its initial excitement
• Digital money: Central-bank digital currencies are talked about more than coming to fruition
• International finance: Could digital-payments systems help unseat the dollar?
• The future: There are risks but also big potential benefits from digital payments
• Digital finance: Video: insights from the author

Elsewhere: are point of sale tip demands driving inflation up?

📊 Stat of the Week

“The value of noncash payments has increased nearly 10 percent per year since 2018, reaching almost $130 trillion in 2021, with staggering increases in both the value of ACH transfers and the number of card payments. The use of checks as well as ATM cash withdrawals continues to fall rapidly.” (Source: CFPB)

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

NatWest bank is planning to launch Tap to Pay on Android for businesses to accept payments via their smartphones.

Kuwait International Bank launched biometric cards using tech from Zwipe.

CaixaBank launched a mobile POS app.

📰 Other News

Consumer tax prep companies in the US like TurboTax have long lobbied to make it purposely difficult for people to file their tax returns for free. What is simple and universal in other countries is opaque and gated to tax prep softwares in the US. So the IRS is considering creating a government-run tax prep option in response, to let people file their taxes for free.

Visa and Mastercard agreed with the government of Canada to lower the average in-store take rate to 0.95%

Chase UK tripled its YoY customer numbers to 1.6 million.

The European Union, which recently passed comprehensive crypto legislation, passed a law requiring user identification for all crypto transactions. Meanwhile, the US Chamber of Commerce came out swinging against the SEC for its punitive, opaque approach to regulating crypto and digital assets.

Australian bank Westpac banned transfers to crypto exchange Binance, while the Australian government is rolling out legislation to treat buy-now-pay-later products as credit to fight mounting consumer debt. (Klarna just rolled out a 'credit opt out' feature in the UK.)

Truist is rolling out its financial wellness game, Long Game, which it acquired as a startup by the same name last year.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Monetary Authority of Singapore are exploring a central bank digital currency for US-SG cross-border payments.

The CFPB fined Citizens Bank $9 million for unlawful credit card servicing. First Citizens (no relation) sued HSBC over poaching its SVB staff.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

KYB platform TrueBiz* debuted its new UBO search feature to help financial institutions identify the key controllers of a business.

Investing platform Public launched Alpha, a “project to enhance your investing experience with artificial intelligence powered by OpenAI's GPT-4.”

Monese in the UK launched a coreless banking as-a-service solution, XYB.

Starling Bank launched a tool for businesses to split inbound payments and automatically determine the optimal acounts for storing funds.

Daffy launched a set of open APIs to help fintechs integrate charitable giving into their apps.

European payments firm Mollie launched its own POS terminal.

Moven rolled out new digital wealth management tools built on Atomic*.

Venmo rolled out accounts for teens that parents can open on their behalf.

Tassat Group launched multiple fiat currency functionality.

Income Lab launched a retirement stress test tool for financial advisors.

📰 Other News

Nubank, the public Brazilian fintech company, reported record first-quarter revenue.

Payment startup Kasheesh* is using AI to combine purchases from multiple cards.

Crypto provider Ripple is working on an end-to-end CBDC platform for central banks.

Revolut launched multi-currency accounts in Australia and signaled its intent to apply for a banking license.

Swedish credit scoring platform Qred received a banking license.

Hey Fintech Friends episode is out

Host @HelenFemix talks to @parsli Chief Product Officer at @usealloy & @jamesmirfin Global Head of Risk and Identity Solutions at @Visa

Apple https://t.co/2mHyks8Wwx

Spotify https://t.co/LDj1DaKeZE

Snippet from the news section 👇 pic.twitter.com/JKG7mK8dW9

— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) May 25, 2023

🤝 Partnership Corner

Bud Financial partnered with Google to use AI to derive financial insights from transaction data.

Fresh off its pay-by-bank partnership with Stripe, home booking platform Airbnb joined forces with Klarna to provide guests flexible payment options in the US and Canada.

👎 The Bad News

Neobank for the LGBTQ+ community Daylight announced that it will close down.

Anne Boden, Starling Bank's founder, stepped down from her role.

B2B payments provider Plastiq filed for bankruptcy.

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