Aug 13, 2021

Global FinTech News - 13th August 2021

By Holland FinTech • Issue #111 • View online

Dear reader,

The world is on fire and the IPCC has made it clear that climate change is inevitable and our Carbon emission reduction efforts need to step up big time. At the same time, football fans are concerned about the transfer of Lionel Messi from football club Barcelona to Paris Saint Germain.

We are zooming into the fintech industry as usual, and provide you with the latest insights, varying from digital currency, mobile wallets, crypto, banking, retail, fraud, digital banking, insurance, economic sectors and more.

From the Holland FinTech team, we wish you a sunny weekend!

Highlights from last weeks news related to fintech

Weekly News Highlights - 12 August 2021

Find out the latest fintech news for this week and dive into topics regarding banking, digital currency, mobile wallets, crypto and cooperation deals.

Circle has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a US Federally-chartered national commercial bank
The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, has been working toward a full launch of a digital version of the yuan - and now the cyber currency is available to use even for foreign residents
Multinational gaming company Razer is to shut down its e-wallet and card services to focus on B2B payments
Venmo credit card users can now automatically buy cryptocurrency using the cashback they earn on purchases
Apple is reported to be working on a service that will let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in instalments in direct competition to other BNPL offerings (Buy Now, Pay Later) together with Goldman Sachs
BitMEX, a crypto exchange company, agreed to pay $100 million and block American users in a settlement with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission
Consumer cybersecurity firms NortonLifeLock and Prague-based Avast announced earlier this week that the two firms have agreed to merge in a deal valued between roughly $8.1-$8.6 billion
Vemanti Group, Inc. announced that it has signed a Fintech and BaaSbusiness cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with Vietnam Public Joint Stock Commercial Bank to jointly develop financial products and banking solutions for the underserved consumers and small businesses in Vietnam

Read more about this week’s news HERE.

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The largest funding rounds we found from across the world

Title Weekly Funding Highlights - 11 August 2021

We explore the most prominent rounds and transactions of the week including various sectors such as AI, crypto, payment solutions, retail, social banks and mobility fintech, selected from 4 to 11 August:

Dataiku (New York, NYC, US), a platform for Everyday AI, raised $400M (€341.5m) in Series E funding
Rapyd (London, GB, UK), a fintech-as-a-service company, raised $300m (€256m) for its expansion plans in a funding round led by longstanding investment partners Target Global
FalconX (San Mateo, CA, US), a platform that is seeking to draw major investors to the cryptocurrency market, announced earlier this week a Series C funding round that clinched its unicorn status with a valuation of $3.75 billion (€3.2b)
PayFacto Payments (Montreal, Canada), a provider of payment solutions and point-of-sale technologies, received an equity investment of up to C$150m (€128m)
Bluecore (New York, NYC, US), a retail technology company, closed a $125m (€106m) Series E funding round
Nozomi Networks. (San Francisco, CA, US), an OT and IoT security company, raised $100m (€85.3m) in Series-D, pre-IPO-funding
Other interesting funding rounds for this week: SentiLink $70M (€59.6m), Octane Lending $52M (€44m), Jupiter $45 million (€38m), Reserve Trust $30.5M (€25.9m), Kroo £17.7M (€20.9m), Moove $23M (€19.5m), Messari $21M (€17.8m)

Read more about the funding news HERE.

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A selection of recent research reports and papers worth reading

Weekly Research Highlights - 10 August 2021

Dive into the latest research pieces on recruiting, fraud, digital banking, insurance, economic sectors and contactless payments.

“2021 Recruiting Report: The Future of Remote Work Post-COVID-19 (Recruitment.com) ” - This report highlights the ongoing trend that today’s all-star candidates are focusing on remote roles that offer flexibility
“Banks ‘failing’ to provide fraud support (FS Tech)” - This work investigates the fact that some UK banks are failing to offer satisfactory support for fraud victims.The consumer organisation found that some customers struggled to contact their bank after they had been a victim of a scam
“Mambu Finds 80% Gen Z Muslims Want Access to Their Digital Banks at All Times (The Fintech Times) ” - This publication explores results of the research done by cloud banking platform Mambu, that more than half of young Islamic finance customers would adopt Islamic banking if it were more accessible
“US banks and insurance companies slow down ad spending to compete with fintechs (eMarketer) ” - This paper analyses the financial services industry’s digital ad spending. While financial service’s digital ad spending has historically outpaced the digital ad market, a slowdown is still expected in 2021 and beyond as incumbents in both banking and insurance focus their budgets on technological innovations to compete with emerging fintech companies
“Contactless Heading Towards $2.5 Trillion Transaction Valuation in 2021; Juniper Research Finds (The Fintech Times) ” - This reading investigates a new report from Juniper Research which found that global contactless card transaction values will reach $2.5 trillion in 2021, increasing from the $1.7 trillion previously recorded in 2020
“Chip shortage threatens vital economic sectors: Payment systems and electronic identities (Payments Cards and Mobile)” - This article highlights the fact that the global chip shortage is causing bottlenecks in numerous industries
“Half of global population to use digital banking by 2026 (Payments Cards and Mobile)” - This publication analyses results of a new study which has found that 53% of the world’s population will access digital banking services in 2026; reaching over 4.2 billion digital banking users, from 2.5 billion in 2021

Read more about these research papers HERE.

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Background information and insights from opinion leaders and experts

Weekly Analysis and Opinion Highlights - 9 August 2021

Explore the latest voices from the industry on topics such as cybersecurity, digital currency, GDPR, credit unions and payments.

“Security is a Big Data Problem, and It’s Getting Bigger” via SecurityWeek - Marc Solomon, Chief Marketing Officer at ThreatQuotient, elaborates on the fact that, solving security’s big data problem is about prioritized data flow, continuously processing data for analysis and translating and exporting it to create a single security infrastructure
“Could the Boston Fed and MIT digital currency displace crypto in the US?” via Payments Cards and Mobile - Alex Rolfe, writer at Payments Cards and Mobile, highlights the fact that five countries (South Korea, Sweden, China, the Bahamas and US) have now fully launched a digital currency: Bahamian sand dollar
“The tension between the GDPR & NFTs” via LEXOLOGY - Veronika Wolfbauer, featured expert at LEXOLOGY, highlights the role of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to protect fundamental privacy rights
“The Case for Credit Unions” via Andreesseen Horowitz - Anish Acharya, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explores the fact that in the last 10 years, as neobanks emerged and consumer financial services came online, the prevailing assumption was that credit unions and community banks would slowly die off
“Is data the new currency for banks?” via FintechFutures - Dharmesh Mistry, CEO at AskHomey, states that banks have huge amounts of customer data. Furthermore, there is a lot that can be deduced from spending data alone. However, the remaining question of whether they have enough or the right data is still in place
“Humanising Cybersecurity: Why Your Employees are the Best Defense” via MEF - Writers at MEF examine the importance of remembering the human element of cyber security and share key takeaways as to why this is even more essential in the post-Covid landscape
“The payments landscape in the UK after Brexit” via Payments Cards and Mobile - Writers at PCM explore the UK payments industry and the fact that it highly values the work of the European Payments Council (EPC)