API provider Currencycloud raises $80m in Series E funding
The round was co-led by Visa and SAP’s venture arm Sapphire.
Europe
UK’s Payzone rebrands to Takepayments
The fintech is also set to expand its headcount this year.
FCA appoints Christopher Woolard as interim chief
Former head of strategy takes over from BoE-bound Andrew Bailey.
Finma fines Swiss bank CEO $752,000 for insider trading
The executive used covert deposit accounts under his wife’s name.
Bank of England seeks public cloud technology partner
Regulator looking into benefits of SaaS and PaaS.
Finnish SME banking service Holvi launches in UK
The challenger already has 200,000 customers largely in Finland and Germany.
Heidelpay seeks acquisitions and eventual IPO
“An IPO is of course always an option for fresh capital,” says CEO Mirko Huellemann.
Greensill pledges to help SME suppliers after ombudsman probes
The lender says it needs to “think about the way that [its] capital is being delivered”.
Part two: Who is best positioned to provide marketplace banking?
Three strategies for standing out in a market: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.
Video: Top fintech stories this week – 24 January 2020
FinTech Future’s weekly news round-up.
Payments security: A year in review
Majority of the largest breaches to be reported in 2019 were caused by poor security protocols.
What does open finance mean for the wealth management sector?
Five opportunities that are both clearly beneficial for investors, and technically very feasible for FIs to develop.
Freetrade takes on Europe, starting with the Netherlands and Ireland
Germany and France are next on Freetrade’s list.
Liberis raises £32m to boost growth plans
The funding for the SME finance provider was led by investment firm FTV Capital.
Barclays signs tech partnership with invoice insurance firm Nimbla
UK bank to offer Nimbla technology to one million SME customers.
BNP Paribas extends open banking partnership with Tink
French banking group now deploys Tink in Belgium and Italy.
What the “decade of the data breach” can teach us
Organisations can simply no longer trust that an online user is who they claim to be.
Digital broker Stake releases UK beta app ahead of February launch
The app plans to expand across Europe “in the coming months”.
WorldRemit ties up cross-border remittance partnership with Alipay
London-based firm gives users green light to sent money to Alipay wallets.
Monzo bank accused of “freezing accounts for no apparent reason”
A private Facebook group, “Monzo stole our money”, has grown to 1,080 members.
Vodafone leaves Facebook’s Libra to focus on M-Pesa
M-Pesa is the telco’s digital payment service.
Switzerland’s Neon scraps abroad card fees to win more users
The challenger tries to win ground from UK’s Revolut and Germany’s N26.
Gig economy fintech SteadyPay raises £2.9m to tackle income volatility
Roughly a seventh of the 32.54 million employed in the UK are gig economy workers.
Cloud: Does it deserve a bad rap from the Treasury?
The Treasury Committee singles out the cloud as a “source of systemic risk”.
Monese becomes UK’s latest fintech unicorn
The challenger aims to close £100m funding in the first half of this year.
Goldman leads LumApps $70m Series C funding
The French start-up hits $100m in total funding.
RBS sees flurry of executives leave including BÓ’s CEO
The bank sees a major reshuffle under new chief Alison Rose.
Mortgage broker Trussle raises £7.5m
Fresh funding brings total investment in Trussle to £26.5m.
Qonto raises $115m round led by Tencent
The SME challenger bank says it’s the largest funding round ever for a French fintech.
Goldman cuts personal lending after launching Apple card
Its partnership with Apple has taken some of the momentum away from Marcus.
Central banks in Europe, Japan and Canada assess potential digital currencies
Central banks in Canada, the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and Sweden are teaming up.
UK challenger Vive gets restricted licence to help bad credit scorers
Vive aims to fully launch in the second quarter of 2020.
Health Insurance & Protection 2019/20 Report: Movers, Shakers & Opportunity Creators
Exclusive research, industry insight, opinion and predictions – free download available now.
Islamic banking app Niyah launches in UK
The challenger says the UK’s Muslim community has been “financially isolated”.
Greece’s major banks cancel 15,000 cards after travel website breach
“A few dozen” customers had been charged with transactions they never made.
FCA admits it does not track frequency of funds that block investor withdrawals
The UK financial watchdog has been severely criticised for its lack of oversight of several funds.
A thousand EU financial firms plan to open UK offices after Brexit
EY estimates that around 7,000 positions would be relocated from London to Europe.
ICAP founder to invest £25m in new fintech fund Element Ventures
It’s one of the largest investments Spencer has made since selling Nex to the CME.
For the sake of fraud fighting: how to secure online transactions on the Russian market
All the new forms of digital interaction are getting particularly vulnerable to fraudulent activities.
Lydia raises €40m in Tencent-led Series B funding round
Tencent-backed funding to be used to avoid “costly mistakes”.
