Ant Financial announced at Money 20/20 a partnership with payment processor First Data and hardware provider Verifone; new move will expand scope of their wallet product, AliPay, into North America and Europe for wealthy Chinese travelers; AliPay has 450 million active users, totaling nearly 70% of the third party payment market in China. Source
In an interview with PYMNTS.com, the head of network and partnerships for Bud, Alan Walsh, talks about the state of open...
Hidden Road, a global credit network, announced on Thursday that it had closed a $50 million Series A led by Castle Island Ventures.
Germany's central bank is testing the use of blockchain technology in securities settlement; the central bank has partnered with Deutsche Börse to build a prototype; the prototype system is expected to be able to transfer electronic securities and digital coins also performing functions for coupon payments and redemptions of securities. Source
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has granted full authorization to Proplend; the FCA continues to review authorization applications, primarily focusing on secured lending platforms; Proplend is a secured commercial real estate property P2P lender offering three tranches for investors; returns on the platform range from 5% to 12% with loans of 250,000 British pounds ($307,718) to 5,000,000 British pounds ($6,154,350); the platform has funded 11.5 million British pounds ($14.16 million) of loans since inception with zero defaults; it has plans to offer clients an innovative finance individual savings account however it will likely not be available until 2018. Source
The company may go public as soon as late autumn; sources state that the company will exceed a £1 billion valuation; investment banks are expected to be in place by spring; Funding Circle would be the first p2p lender in the UK to go public. Source
UK based fintech firms helped push technology investment in the UK to all time highs in 2017; fintech firms accounted for almost half of the £3bn invested; leading fintech firms TransferWise, Funding Circle and Monzo helped push the investment number as they all raised significant rounds; Eileen Burbidge, Partner at Passion Capital, tells AltFi, “"It's a testament to our exceptional entrepreneurs that the UK tech sector continues to produce companies that are leading in the development of cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and fintech.” Source.
The partnership will allow N26 to offer consumer credit in France; N26 currently has similar features built out in other European markets where users answer a few questions within the app; the app then provides a quote that allows users to adjust the term of the loan or the payback amount; users will not be required to signup through Younited Credit as everything is managed through an API. Source
RateSetter has hired Michael Hoare from PayPal as its new head of risk analytics and retail credit; Hoare was previously the chief credit risk officer at PayPal UK and also has experience at Capital One; Hoare and the risk management team will report to RateSetter's risk committee chairman as the company continues to build its risk team following the departure of Chief Risk Officer Cyrille Sallé de Chou who left RateSetter after six months for a chief risk officer role within HSBC's European retail business. Source
SMEs have been buffeted by the winds of COVID-19 and heightened inflation, and now comes the storm of political instability.