Hello Fintech Friends,

Is fintech overvalued or undervalued?

Please find another week of financings and transactions below.

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to nik@thisweekinfintech.com.

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💸 Venture Financing

• Mortgage lender Better is raising a $500 million round at a $6 billion valuation from SoftBank.

• Plaid raised a $425 million Series D at a $13.4 billion valuation.

• Indian credit issuance startup CRED raised a $215 million Series D at a $2.2 billion valuation.

• Ramp, the business spend management and CFO solution, confirmed its $115 million raise at a $1.6 billion valuation.

• Banking and crypto services provider NYDIG raised an additional $100 million to launch insurance products.

• Groww, an Indian consumer investment startup, raised an $83 million Series D at a $1 billion valuation.

• TipRanks, an Israeli stock investing financial analytics provider, raised $77 million.

• TrueLayer, the UK open banking platform, raised $70 million in funding.

• StashFin, a Singaporean neobank for Southeast Asia, raised $40 million in new funding.

• Blue Dot, a machine learning business accounting and tax prep platform, raised $32 million in funding.

• Cora, a Brazilian lending platform for SMBs, raised a $26.7 million Series A.

• Financial infrastructure provider Orum raised a $21 million Series A.

• Egyptian online and offline payments startup Paymob raised an $18.5 million Series A.

• Inbox Health, a payments platform for medical patients, raised a $15 million Series A.

• FinanZero, a Brazilian online credit marketplace, raised a $7 million round of financing.

• Financial planning software provider Abacum raised a $7 million seed.

• Spoko, an international money transfer startup, raised €5 million.

• Walnut raised $3.6 million to provide buy-now-pay-later for healthcare.

• Ark, an investment management portal for professional investors, closed a $3.4 million Series A.

• Finary, a social investing platform, raised a $3.2 million seed round.

• Ensemble, a family money management platform for divorced parents, raised $3 million.

• Tred, a UK carbon-tracking debit card, passed its £400,000 crowdfunding target.

• Friz, a Singaporean financial services platform for freelancers, raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding.

• MoneyLion made a strategic investment in Zero Hash to enable cryptocurrency features for its users.

• Greenlight, the maker of a debit card for kids, is raising at a $2 billion valuation.

💵 Debt Financing

• German lending platform Auxmoney raised $250 million in debt from lenders including Citigroup.

☯️ Exits and M&A

💻 Fintech

• Grab, the Singaporean superapp that provides financial services products across Southeast Asia, agreed to go public through a merger with Altimeter Capital’s SPAC at a $35 billion valuation with a $2.5 billion raise.

• Alkami, the US core banking software platform, is planning a $2 billion IPO with a $150 million fundraise.

• Wealthtech platform Allfunds is planning to list on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.

• Australia’s EML Payments entered the European open banking market through the acquisition of Ireland’s Sentenial for €70 million.

• Consumer investment app Acorns acquired AI-powered student loan management platform Pillar.

• Wealthtech platform Envestnet acquired personal financial manager Harvest Savings.

• Options Technology, a provider of global capital markets IT infrastructure, acquired Fixnetix, a front-office trading tech provider to banks.

• Online lender Avant acquired credit card provider Zero Financial and its neobank, Level.

• UK employee financial wellness platform Wagestream acquired Australian fintech Earnd.

• CeriFi, a training and education platform for financial services professionals, acquired insurance training platform CPMI.

• Secured financing provider IDS acquired asset finance solutions service White Clarke Group.

• Dutch money transfer platform CurrencyFair is merging with Australia’s Assembly Payments, using a strategic investment from Standard Chartered.

🏦 Bank

• French bank Société Générale is in talks to sell most of its asset management arm Lyxor to asset manager Amundi for €825 million.

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📚 Deeper Reads

Banks are shook and they should be

Fintech’s industry categorization and segmentation

YCombinator W21 Batch Fintech Breakdown 💸 (Part 2)

The Promise of Employment Data: The Devil is in The Details

Digging into the Alkami IPO

Nubank: The World's Biggest Digital Bank

Peter Thiel Calls Bitcoin ‘a Chinese Financial Weapon’

JPMorgan’s Dimon Says ‘This Boom Could Easily Run Into 2023’

How Goldman Sachs' Marcus is struggling to live up to its lofty consumer-banking ambitions

Why is a web browser investing in fintech?

In 70% underbanked Southeast Asia, startups push for open finance

Why Mastercard just made a $100 million bet on Africa’s mobile money market

How online scammers fooled one of Africa’s biggest fintech startups

Klarna’s path to Europe’s most valuable startup began with utter defeat

How David Vélez Built The World’s Most Valuable Digital Bank And Became A Billionaire

How Biden wants to make credit scores fairer

Do People Really Know Their Payroll Passwords?

Want a Piece of Stripe? Find an SPV

Chinese zoo embarrassed after attempting to pass off golden retriever as an African lion

Hello Fintech Friends,

Last week we published Signals 4.4, breaking down all the product launches of Q4 2020. This month, we get started on our next Signals series, breaking down funding and products from Q1 this year.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

💬 Quote of the Week

“Efforts to promote inclusion extend beyond hiring to include dramatic changes in the way meetings are conducted, the diversity metrics gathered and presented to the board, and even the use of software to ensure gender-neutral language in job descriptions.”

• Miriam Cross, American Banker (Source)

📖 Read of the Week

The Wall Street Journal this week runs an interesting profile of China’s central bank digital currency initiative (with an appropriate tie-in to China’s early move from hard to paper currency).

Apart from the political implications, the article does feature on many interesting product aspects of this particular CBDC: it can be accessed and transacted offline. It allows the government to airdrop direct financial assistance to citizens. Spending can be restricted to particular merchants or categories (like EBT in the US). It can be given an expiration date to incentivize consumer spending in an era of negative interest rates. These benefits don’t come without drawbacks: a government digital currency erodes the anonymity of traditional cryptocurrencies, and could give the CCP a direct view into users’ wallets. It will be interesting to see how other national experiments unfold.

📊 Stat of the Week

Roughly 38% of teens are turning to YouTube and one-third look to TikTok, Greenlight found. One-quarter go to Instagram for personal finance and investing advice. (Source)

Sponsored Content

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💼 Open Role Spotlight

Till, a collaborative family banking platform that creates smarter spenders, is hiring a Head of Brand.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

TSB Bank launched its Smart Agent chatbot in its mobile app.

Barclays launched FX products for its Barx trading platform.

Santander's consumer bank in Norway launched a new PFM app.

Mastercard released a request-to-pay framework.

📰 Other News

JP Morgan dedicated a lot of airtime to the risks to banks posed by fintech in CEO Jamie Dimon’s annual shareholder letter, saying “Fintech’s ability to merge social media, use data smartly and integrate with other platforms rapidly (often without the disadvantages of being an actual bank) will help these companies win significant market share.”

The CFPB is warning banks and mortgage originators to prep for a ‘tidal wave of distress’ when mortgage forbearance wears off and payments become due.

Credit Suisse and Instinet conducted the first trades on a real-time T+0 settlement system using the Paxos blockchain. Bank holding company State Street will provide tech for a cryptocurrency trading platform.

Contactless payments are surging in Europe, with “80% of in-store Visa payments now contactless.”

Visa selected five startups, Brankas, Curlec, DigitSecure, ModusBox and Open, across the Asia Pacific region for its first accelerator program.

Sweden’s Riksbank is testing a digital currency. Commerzbank will cut 1,700 jobs across Germany. Refinitiv had a five-hour outage.

(Source: Fintech Inside)

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Clubhouse partnered with Stripe to introduce payments for creators.

Dwolla released a real-time payments solution for banks in the US, in partnership with Cross River Bank.

OppFi, a credit provider to underbanked consumers, announced a new credit card in partnership with Mastercard, First Electronic Bank and Deserve. Instacart is the latest company throwing its hat in the ring alongside Doordash to launch a credit card. Revolut launched a glow-in-the-dark debit card.

Apple Pay launched in South Africa. Payflex launched its buy-now-pay-later services in South Africa. South African fintechs Ukheshe and Infobip also partnered to launch the country’s first WhatsApp payment gateway.

Elsewhere, secure messaging app Signal is also testing a payments feature using its own currency from MobileCoin, and Facebook is working on in-person QR code payments.

Digital money provider Privat3 Money debuted its iOS and Android apps. UK currency provider Sokin rolled out its enterprise platform.

Japanese digital bank SBI Sumishin Net Bank launched a blockchain supply financing solution.

Business communications platform Podium released a connected card-reader.

Zilch is adding a tap-and-pay buy-now-pay-later feature. Payments app Ziglu launched an interest-bearing bitcoin account.

📰 Other News

Nubank opened a seed fund for black entrepreneurs and put $70 million into its Mexican subsidiary.

Drivewealth partnered with Plaid to enable frictionless account-linking for trading. Canadian credit card issuer Brim partnered with Canadian Western Bank to launch a digital banking platform.

Crypto exchange Gemini partnered with Alloy to help KYC users of its new credit card. Core banking platform Advapay added KYC / AML functionality from iSpiral to its offering.

Self-checkout provider MishiPay partnered with Instore Solutions to expand into Germany. European mobile payments provider Settle partnered with Currencycloud to enable cross-border payments. Afterpay and Adyen partnered on British retailer payments.

Walmart filed for a trademark for its fintech unit, which will be called Hazel by Walmart.

Stripe announced its entry into the Middle East with a UAE launch.

SIM swap fraud is fast becoming a concern for mobile banking customers in the UK

Coinbase released annual revenue and it was through the roof at $1.8 billion. The Financial Data Exchange released the results of its annual strategic survey.

Revolut will allow employees to work abroad 60 days a year. Petal recruited a CFPB vet asgeneral counsel. Acorns for betting. StartNeoBank.Com.

(Source)

📜 Policy

In collaboration with Ben White.

• Nigeria’s government shut down a wide swathe of fintech startups overnight, including Bamboo and Trove, just for making foreign stocks available for Nigerians to invest in.

• The Bank of International Settlements published a paper highlighting regulatory responses to big tech’s entry into financial services. 

• Payments companies formed a new industry group, the Payments Leadership Council, set to focus on e-commerce and small business issues. 

• Fidelity, Square, and Coinbase launched the Council for Crypto Innovation, a new D.C. trade group lobbying for digital currencies. 

• The Bank Policy Institute published a paper warning of the risks of a central bank digital currency, focusing on the impact to fractional reserve banking. 

• The Federal Financial Institution Examinations Council published a Request for Information on the use of Artificial Intelligence in financial services. 

• Former Financial Crimes Enforcement Network chief Kenneth Blanco departed for a role at Citibank. 

• The Internal Revenue Service issued a summons to crypto provider Circle, seeking information on users who made more than $20k in transactions in a single year since 2016. 

• The Council of the European Union backed a plan to unify Europe’s payment rails. 

• Regulators in Latin America are launching fintech sandboxes, intending to provide pathways for fintech success in respective countries. 

• The Governor of Illinois signed off on a law capping consumer loan rates at 36%.

• Chinese regulators banned microlenders from giving consumer loans to students.

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Hello Fintech Friends,

Please find another week of financings and transactions below.

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to nik@thisweekinfintech.com.

Sponsored Content

Connect with the people you know and meet the people you don’t! Join Fintech Meetup to connect with 1,000+ industry professionals having 10,000+ 15-minute online meetings. Qualifying banks & credit unions can join free. June 15-17. Get your ticket now.

💸 Venture Financing

• HighRadius, an automated accounts receivable and treasury management platform, raised $300 million at a $3.1 billion valuation.

• dLocal, a Uruguayan enterprise merchant payment platform, raised $150 million at a $5 billion valuation.

• Pipe, a revenue-based financing alternative for cash flowing businesses, raised an additional $150 million at a $2 billion valuation.

• Paidy, a Japanese buy-now-pay-later firm, raised a $120 million Series D.

• Airtel Africa, the mobile money unit of telco Airtel, announced a $100 million strategic investment from Mastercard (weeks after a $200 round).

• Sightline Payments, a gambling payments company, raised a $100 million growth round.

• Capitolis, a financial resource optimization platform for capital markets, raised a $90 million Series C.

• Ajaib, the Indonesian investment platform, added $65 million to its extended Series A.

• Striim, a cloud data management company for financial services, raised a $50 million Series C from backers including Goldman Sachs.

• Ethic, an asset management personalization platform, raised a $29 million Series B.

• DotPe, an Indian offline commerce and payments platform, raised a $27.5 million Series A.

• Open Co, a financial access joint venture of Brazilian fintechs Geru and Rebel, raised about $27 million (R$150 million).

• Singaporean investment advisor Endowus raised an S$23 million Series A.

• Butter, a UK buy-now-pay-later startup, raised £15.8 million.

• Auditoria raised a $15.5 million Series A to build an autonomous finance solution for corporate finance teams.

• Spiral, which is building a banking solution for charities, raised $14 million and debuted its app.

• Velocity, an Indian business lender, raised $10.3 million in seed funding.

• Flobiz, an Indian SMB accounting platform, raised a $10 million Series A.

• Brightplan, an employee financial wellness tool, raised a $9.5 million Series A.

• Blaze, a point of sale software for cannabis businesses, raised an $8 million Series A.

• SadaPay, a Pakistani digital wallet and debit card, raised a $7.2 million seed round.

• Gro, a startup led by a former Revolut exec which pbridges decentralized and legacy financial services, raised a $7.1 million seed.

• NOW Money, a UAE digital bank account provider for migrant workers, raised $7 million in funding.

• Monavate, a UK card sponsorship platform, raised £5 million.

• IndiaLends, a digital lending platform with 8 million customers, raised $5.1 million.

• Financial research platform Unhedged raised $4.4 million.

• Tugende, a Ugandan lease-to-own asset financing startup, raised a $3.6 million Series A.

• ArifPay, an Ethiopian mobile POS system, raised $3.5 million in financing.

• KPI Sense, a strategic finance platform for SaaS companies, raised a $1.1 million seed.

• muvin, an Indian youth-focused neobank, raised a $1 million seed round.

• NextPay, a Filipino business-focused neobank, raised a $125,000 pre-seed.

• Gimo, a Vietnamese payroll provider for underbanked workers, raised an undisclosed round.

• Fundiin, a Vietnamese BNPL platform, raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

• Ramp reportedly raised funding from Stripe.

• Indian tax filing startup ClearTax is in talks to raise a $100 million round at a $750 to $850 million valuation.

• Hi55 Ventures, a working capital and salary company, is raising a Series A.

Source: Quartz

💵 Debt Financing

• Drip Capital, a California-based cross-border Indian trade financier, raised $40 million in a warehouse credit line.

• True Balance, an underbanked lending app in India, raised $10 million in debt.

💰 Venture Funds

• Clocktower Technology Ventures is raising a $25 million seed fund focused on Latin American fintechs.

☯️ Exits and M&A

💻 Fintech

• Nordic Capital agreed to sell Swedish trading software provider Itiviti to US-based  Broadridge Financial Solutions for €2.1 billion.

• Bairong, a Chinese financial data analytics provider, slumped 16% in its market debut, raising $507 million in a Hong Kong IPO.

• Embattled supply chain lender Greensill agreed to sell its Finacity subsidiary to the head of the division for $24 million.

• Khatabook, an Indian SMB accounting and payment solution, acquired Biz Analyst for $10 million.

• Early-stage UK fintech venture capital firm Finch Capital is acquiring the Turkish subsidiary of Wirecard to create an Irish entity called Nomu Pay.

• Banking neo-core provider Q2 acquired the original direct deposit swiching startup, ClickSWITCH.

• Payments technology giant Fiserv will acquire omnichannel business payments acceptance solution Pineapple Payments.

• Uphold, a crypto digital currency platform, acquired JNK Securities to offer access to fractional securities as well.

• Avantax, a wealth management platform, acquired GuideVine, a lead-gen and marketing tool for financial services.

• Crypto provider Ripple acquired a 40% stake in Asian cross-border payments specialist Trianglo.

• Tutuka, a virtual card development platform, and Paymentology, a cloud payment processor, were both acquired by SaltPay to enable issuer processing in 50 countries.

• Coinbase scheduled its direct listing for April 14.

• Wise (fka Transferwise) could IPO in May for a valuation up to $7 billion.

• Linklogis, a Chinese supply chain financing provider, is targeting a $1.1 billion Hong Kong IPO.

• PensionBee, a UK pension combination platform, plans to float (like a butterfly) on the London Stock Exchange in April and raise £55 million. 

• The private equity owners of Schufa, the German credit rating provider, are looking to sell the firm to other private equity firms.

🏦 Bank

• Private equity firm CVC Capital agreed to buy 90% of the insurance unit of National Bank of Greece for €505 million.

• Bank of America bought healthcare payments company Axia.

• Creval, an Italian regional bank, rejected a takeover offer from Credit Agricole Italia, arguing the price should be 23% higher.

💲 Investment Management

• European asset manager Arrow Global agreed to a takeover offer from private equity firm TDR Capital at a £563 million valuation.

• Wealth manager Quilter agreed to sell its international business to Utmost Group for £483 million.

• Euroclear, a Belgian securities settlement company, agreed to acquire fund management and distribution platform MFEX Group.

📈 SPACs

• We were so close to a week with no fintech SPACs... and then Galata Acquisition filed for a $125 million IPO focused on tech-enabled financial services in emerging markets.

Sponsored Content

Join the fintech community at the first big event of the year, LendIt Fintech USA. Hear the latest insights from the leaders in fintech including the CEOs of Afterpay, Brex, Figure, FT Partners, Varo Bank and more. And meet the people who matter to you through LendIt’s state-of-the-art matching software. Join me and other fintech leaders at LendIt Fintech, April 27-29 (and use the code THISWEEK to save 15%).

📚 Deeper Reads

The State of Open Banking 2021: Indonesia

Japan’s Zengin Payments System

Why are LatAm fintechs so attractive?

YCombinator W21 Batch Fintech Breakdown (Part 1)

A new online commerce and payments infrastructure is finally starting to evolve

Why the future belongs to banks, and not Fintechs

FinTechs Targeting Underserved Communities

Application Abandonment: A Challenge in Digital Banking

The Distinct Flavors of API-Enabled Employment Data Access

Fintech is Eating the World

The impact of NFTs on fintech

SNL NFTs

Nova Credit dating app

You can get paid to look at photos of puppies.

Hello Fintech Friends,

This week, we published Signals 4.4, our final installment of the Q1 Signals series, breaking down the product launches that took place in Q4 2020.

We also held our second round of fintech geo deep-dives. For those who missed them, you can find the recordings and presentations here:

• China (part one, part two, recording)

• Southeast Asia (presentation, recording)

• Middle East & Africa (presentation, recording)

• Canada (presentation, recording)

• Australia (presentation, recording)

I would like to take a second to thank our phenomenal presenters. If you would like to connect with them, please reach out through LinkedIn:

• Edith Yeung and Richard Turrin (China)

• Chia Jeng Yang and Sharon Lourdes Paul (Southeast Asia)

• Gaurav Dhar and Ronit Ghose (Middle East)

• Alex Tong and Ben White (Canada)

• Alan Tsen and Oliver Kidd (Australia)

Lastly, I’ll be moderating a panel at Lendit USA this April and would love you to join.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

💬 Quote of the Week

“When the pandemic forced businesses to speed up their usage of digital tools, including e-commerce and online banking, the demand for what is known as fintech exploded.”

• New York Times (The Start-Up Enemies of Wall Street Are Booming)

📖 Read of the Week

This week, I enjoyed author Erin Lowry’s article Personal Finance Has Failed to Reckon With Inequality. This is particularly resonant in a post-pandemic US where financial insecurity has spiked for many households. Some of the findings in Lowry’s article are staggering: 81 million American (38% of US adults) report that it is very difficult for their households to cover basic expenses. This shows the difficulty of giving one-size-fits-all financial advice and puts the onus on fintechs to better understand and contextualize recommendations.

📊 Stat of the Week

45% of all Square sellers now accept online payments, up from 30% a year ago (a shift in usage the firm estimates would have taken 3 years without the pandemic). In the MENA, contactless payments now make up 84% of face-to-face transactions. (Source, source)

Sponsored Content

Join the fintech community at the first big event of the year, LendIt Fintech USA. Hear the latest insights from the leaders in fintech including the CEOs of Afterpay, Brex, Figure, FT Partners, Varo Bank and more. And meet the people who matter to you through LendIt’s state-of-the-art matching software. Join me and other fintech leaders at LendIt Fintech, April 27-29 (and use the code THISWEEK to save 15%).

💼 Open Role Spotlight

Agricultural platform Seso is hiring a fintech intern to help them develop migrant farmworker financial products.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

KeyBank’s fintech brand Laurel Road launched Lorel Road for Doctors, a bank designed for doctors and dentists with tailored savings and sending products for their needs.

South African wealth management platform FNZ began the rollout of ChainClear, its blockchain-based fund trading and settlement system for the domestic funds market.

Marcus launched a 0.4% cash ISA in the UK.

📰 Other News

PNC Bank released details on its checking account for underbanked consumers, with no added charges and a $5 monthly cost, and won certification from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund.

Visa piloted its stablecoin transfer and settlement platform in partnership with Crypto.com and Anchorage. It used USDC to settle transactions over the Ethereum blockchain, sending crypto prices spiking. The network also expanded its Visa Direct platform globally to push business payouts to eligible cards.

NatWest is overhauling its bank to compete with fintechs. The bank is extending staff video hours, adding new investment products for low-income consumers, and partnering with Microsoft to help companies reduce their carbon footprints. Santander is rolling out cards made of recycled plastic across Europe. Nationwide is working on green supply chain.

Chile’s Banco Itaú and Colombian superapp Rappi formed a partnership to develop and distribute financial products.

Germany’s central bank is now exploring a central bank digital currency. Goldman is the latest bank offering a range of crypto investments to high net-worth clients. Valour launched an Ethereum ETF.

Santander UK (111 branches) and Australia’s Westpac (48 branches) are the latest banks closing down in-person locations. UK bank fraud also hit a new high last year, with consumers scammed out of a record reported £479 million.

Deutsche Bank overhauled its management board. Mastercard joined Fintech Australia.

The Federal Reserve released ISO 20022 specs for FedNow.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Fintech and crypto platform Circle launched an NFT marketplace and platform payments solution.

Walgreens is following 7-Eleven into consumer banking products, with an online bank account in partnership with InComm and Meta Bank.

African data API Mono launched MyPass, its consumer data portal.

Indian fintech platform Niyo launched NiyoX, a combination savings and investment account, with Equitas Small Finance Bank and Visa.

PayPal launched crypto payments to let users pay at millions of merchants online. (Something Nets is working on for Austria.)

Ant Group launched an investment consulting product to let Alipay users connect to five Chinese asset management firms’ roboadvisors.

Afterpay debuted a virtual card for in-store buy-now-pay-later payments. OneCard launched installment loans.

Indian financial services API infrastructure provider Yap launched a programmable credit-card-as-a-service platform with Visa.

Neobank Unifimoney integrated Gemini for crypto trading.

Payment initiation API Dapi launched in Mexico.

📰 Other News

Wise, the modern banking stack that instantly creates bank accounts & cards, rebranded to Solid.

India’s NPCIcapped the market share of individual UPI (real-time payments) companies at 30% of payment volumes. Meanwhile, Tata Group is planning to release its own payment ID system and universal point-of-sale payments network.

Brazil’s Central Bank approved WhatsApp to send real-time peer to peer payments in the country. 

BaaS startup Unit partnered with benefits API Abound to automate freelancer taxes. Anchorage Digital Bank - a chartered neobank for cryptocurrencies - partnered with custodian Prometheum to debut a public digital asset trading system.

Paysafe expanded its digital wallet Skrill’s cryptocurrency services to the US in partnership with Coinbase (and completed its SPAC merger with Foley Trasimene Acquisition).

SoFi plans to give clients with over $3,000 in their accounts a chance to buy into its IPO.

Digital payments company Wirex has paused new customer onboarding to strengthen its anti-money laundering controls. Robinhood nixed the confetti.

Starling, Wise, and other UK fintechs have banded together to fight iban discrimination, which “occurs when a bank or company doesn’t accept a payment instruction because it’s not from the same country in which the bank or company is based.” UK business banking platform Tide has proposed that regulators charge fees to banks dragging their feet on open banking data access.

The founder of German neobank Penta is launching a new fintech called Relio focused on SMBs.

The FTC shut down savings app Beam after users were unable to withdraw their funds from the bank.

Over-the-top credit card consolidator Curve created and auctioned off five NFTs for charity.

RioDeFi opened a decentralized finance incubator in Singapore. Novo moved to Miami. Slovakia launched a fintech hub. Miley Cyrus is giving away stocks on Cash App.

📜 Policy

• Mastercard is teaming up with SoftBank and IBM in calling on the G7 group of countries to form a Data and Technology Forum.

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reaffirmed its commitment to protecting vulnerable borrowers from lenders in the small dollar loan market, with an indication that it may re-establish a 2017 payday lending rule meant to safeguard consumers. The bureau also released warned mortgage servicers to take all necessary steps to avoid a wave of expected foreclosures this fall when emergency mortgage protections expire.

• The Reserve Bank of India formed a new three-year panel to review applications for small banks (including from fintechs).

• India’s Finance Ministry is asking the operator of the National Stock Exchange of India to look into issues that led to a site-wide outage on February 24th.

• The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is looking to expand Open Banking into Open Finance, to apply to a broader set of products such as savings, investments, pensions and insurance.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission established a Climate Risk Unit to understand, price, and address climate-related risk in exchange trading.

• The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator accused Mastercard, allpay, APS, PFS and Sulion of running an anti-competitive prepaid card cartel.

Sponsored Content

Connect with the people you know and meet the people you don’t! Join Fintech Meetup to connect with 1,000+ industry professionals having 10,000+ 15-minute online meetings. Qualifying banks & credit unions can join free. June 15-17. Get your ticket now.