Hello Fintech Friends,

🗣️ This Thursday, in our Slack community, we’ll host an Ask Me Anything with Art Chang, one of the 2021 Candidates for Mayor of New York City, Chair of the Board of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, and Founder & CEO of Allie, a builder of critical infrastructure for the volunteer economy!

Please join us and 7,000+ other fintech enthusiasts on Thursday June 8th in TWIF’s community.

💡 Elsewhere, while I normally write on fintech and financial inclusions, there are some topics that transcend the importance of fintech – one of them is the need to start thinking seriously about universal basic income as the next support in the social safety net in an age of artificial intelligence. I wrote about it this week in Technology Will Change The World - Will The World Change With It?

👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

💬 Quote of the Week

📖 Read of the Week

I thought it was interesting to see Standard Chartered and the Singapore FinTech Association partner on a blockchain paper to drive sustainability in supply chain payments. More and more, it looks like decentralized ledger innovation in finance may actually come from the incumbents, alongside or instead of the upstarts.

Relatedly, in Wall Street prepares to take on established crypto companies: “Some of the finance industry’s best-known names are building their own digital markets trading platforms, betting that fund managers will prefer familiar and trusted brands to the opaque cryptocurrency exchanges that dominate the sector.”

Also this week, the NY Fed and MAS are working on stablecoins, Visa is testing out digital currency account abstraction on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet, BNY Mellon committed to “initiatives for digital assets that extend beyond today’s cryptocurrencies,” and Deutsche Digital Assets is rolling out a new physically-backed crypto ETP.

📊 Stat of the Week

“Two-thirds of all online shopping scams now start on Facebook and Instagram.” (Source)

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Never one to sleep on a trend, JP Morgan launched their own ChatGPT rival, IndexGPT.

BNP Paribas and NatWest went live with CobaltFX Dynamic Credit, which provides an allocation of credit for FX transactions between banks and improve access to liquidity.

HSBC launched an index that uses AI to measure companies’ ESG ratings.

📰 Other News

Indonesia is kicking out Visa and Mastercard to lessen its reliance on US payment networks.

Standard Life is partnering with Moneyhub to launch an open finance-powered tool, Money Mindset.

The Bank for International Settlements is looking to work with banks to harmonize APIs for cross-border payments.

The proposed debt ceiling bill in the US includes a potential 30% tax on crypto mining and the new Securities Clarity Act looks to codify digital assets as not securities.

The Nigerian Central Bank revoked the licenses of 132 microfinance banks. 😒

The SEC fined a former Wells Fargo banker $3 million personally for illegally cross-selling products. Vanguard was fined for sending statements with misleading yields to customers. JP Morgan laid off 500 people in tech roles.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Savings app M1 launched a new high-yield savings account with a 5% APY.

UK startup Elifinty launched a “socially conscious" debt management platform for consumers and creditors.

SpotOn launched SpotOn Restaurant, an in-person restaurant point-of-sale solution lineup.

Gembot launched an AI-powered investment platform.

Kasisto launched a banking-specific large language model.

Stripe launched charge cards on Stripe Issuing.

📰 Other News

Apple savings customers report having problems withdrawing money from their Goldman Sachs accounts.

Amazon won't just verify your ID from your palm - it'll verify your age.

Crypto giant Binance is in hot water for reportedly co-mingling customer funds and revenue, but its Gulf Binance was granted digital asset licenses in Thailand.

US Congress is demanding that PayPal end its ban on Palestinian businesses.

Ritzholt Wealth Management is working on a new roboadvisor called Good Advice. Meanwhile, wealth management platform Zoe partnered with BridgeFT on its WealthTech API.

UK neobank Starling's CEO Anne Boden is stepping down, after founding the bank and bringing it to profitability, with 3.6 million customers and a $3 billion valuation.

Meanwhile, wealth tech app Chip recorded its first profitable month, Klarna halved its losses and expects to become profitable, neobank Monzo reported a full-year profit and 2.3x growth in revenue, and neobank Tandem reported its first full-year profit.

Tether has recovered the $20 billion in value it lost during last year’s crypto market crash.

🤝 Partnership Corner

GMO Aozora Net Bank in Japan partnered with Wise on cross-border payments.

Standard Bank, Africa's largest bank by assets, partnered with DP World on trade finance.

👎 The Bad News

DCG shut down its institutional crypto trading platform.

The Bank of Lithuania revoked Transactive Systems UAB's electronic money licence and fined the payments firm €280,000 for AML failures.

Looks like another neobank, Unifimoney, is calling it quits: pic.twitter.com/wryv0BjtZ2

— Jason Mikula (@mikulaja) May 30, 2023

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