Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 2, 2023

Open finance platform Brankas has announced a new feature enabling instant bank account opening as an “embedded finance” experience on third-party applications.

The API is the “first” of its kind in the region, “launched first in Indonesia and the Philippines.”

As a bundle with Brankas’ data and payment solutions, any merchant or consumer app “can provide fintech experiences to their users.”

Using the new Account Opening API as part of Brankas’ wider banking API suite, companies offering financial management, e-wallets, brokerages and more can now “offer their users interest-bearing, regulated savings accounts as an embedded feature.”

HR platforms, ecommerce marketplaces and lenders can also “provide users with savings accounts for collections and disbursements.” The new Brankas solution also “helps small businesses to unlock new revenue by onboarding newly banked customers in hard to reach areas.”

#Fintech

Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 2, 2023

Tazapay, a Singapore-based cross-border payments provider, has partnered with leading global real-time payments gateway Volt “to add open banking to its growing stack of payment offerings, as it accelerates its international growth plans across the UK and Europe.

The partnership will enable Tazapay’s customers “to roll out and increase their cross-border sales, especially for APAC and MENA-based merchants who are looking to expand and increase sales in the UK and Europe.”

Volt’s real-time reconciliation capabilities “enable businesses to track payments from initiation to receipt, unlocking full visibility of the payment value chain via its data-driven insights and analytics – over 70% of all payments processed via Volt’s gateway receive instant confirmation of settlement, a significant feature for cross border merchants and businesses.”

#Payments

Crowdfund Insider, Posted February 28, 2023

Maybank, Southeast Asia’s fourth largest bank by assets, reported “a net profit of RM8.23 billion for the financial year ended 31 December 2022 (FY22).”

Profit before tax (PBT) meanwhile, “was 11.6% higher at RM12.15 billion from RM10.89 billion a year earlier.” The better results were “driven by improving regional economic activities that supported the Group’s higher operating income as well as lower net impairment losses.”

Net operating income “grew to a strong RM27.62 billion, which was achieved on the back of an 8.4% Y-o-Y increase in total net fund based income to RM20.69 billion as a result of stronger loans growth in its Malaysia and Indonesia markets, of 6.7% and 5.8% respectively as well as an expansion in net interest margin (NIM) of 7 bps on higher interest rates.”

#Fintech

Altfi, Posted March 2, 2023

Gen Z and millennial budgeting app Buddy is partnering with Klarna Kosma to enable automatic budget tracking.

The personal finance app, designed to help young people build and share budgets, track their expenses and learn about financial help, has more than three million users and has seen a 52 per cent increase in active customers with Klarna Kosma.

Users can now check their account balance in real-time, monitor their spending and set up payment reminders through the Buddy app, with Klarna’s financial technology platform adding another level of security.   “Buddy’s mission is to empower young people with the knowledge of how to spend and save sustainably,” Buddy founder and CEO Olle Lind said.

#Digital Banking

The Paypers, Posted February 28, 2023

The partnership will give the end-users of Citizen’s clients a simplified payments experience via OpenPayd’s BaaS platform, which offers plug-and-play banking and payments infrastructure through a single API.
Citizen harnesses Open Banking to provide simple and secure instant cardless payments for merchants. Citizen is transforming merchant acquiring and processing, bypassing traditional methods with no cards, no codes, and no apps, offering cost-effective payments that settle instantly. To deliver an even better experience to its clients, Citizen needed an embedded finance infrastructure provider that could facilitate instant payouts and offer a greater global reach than other providers in the market.

#Payments

Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 2, 2023

Wise, the global technology company building the best way to move and manage money is rolling out a new look and feel.

This comes as the company announced that it has “reached 16 million customers served worldwide, and revealed plans for further global expansion.”

The complete visual makeover “features a fresh green palette and a bold new font, and draws from global currencies, languages, alphabets and places around the world.”

Designed to make the Wise customer experience consistent regardless of the place or language they sign up in, the look also “underscores Wise’s mission to build money without borders and its ambition to create a fast, convenient, cost-effective and transparent global alternative to the traditional correspondent system.”

With around 6 million active customers moving over £25 billion each quarter, the company welcomes “around 100,000 new customers every week.”

#Fintech

Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 1, 2023

Klarna, a buy now pay later platform, posted 4th quarter and full year 2022 results yesterday. Pointing to a challenging market, Klarna shared that it had lost SEK 10.4 billion (about $1 billion) for the year and lost SEK 1.9 billion (about $182 million) during Q4 2022. The year-over-year numbers were a bit better as Klarna said it generated SEK 242 billion in Q4 2022 versus SEK 202.7 billion in Q4 2021. Klarna lost SEK 4.6 billion during Q4 2021.

Klarna stated in its report:

“2022 has been a year of significant change in the global political and economic environment. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the threat, and in some cases reality, of economic recession have impacted us all in some way. The accompanying shift in investor sentiment from a total focus on growth to profitability has also had wide-ranging effects. At Klarna, it has required some hard but necessary decisions. The most difficult by far was taking early and pre-emptive action back in May, re-evaluating our organization and our focus so we could meet our goals in light of the changes we were seeing externally. As a result, 10% of our committed and talented Klarnauts left our company, and we have since seen many tech companies sadly have to make similar decisions to adapt to this new environment. However, we are proud to have been recognized as a strong and resilient company with continued investor support, as evidenced by our ability to raise over $800m during one of the steepest drops in global stock markets in over fifty years. This is supporting Klarna’s continued growth, especially in the US. Despite the challenges 2022 brought, Klarna continues to deliver on our mission to accelerate commerce by putting customers at the heart of everything we do. We have continued to build and launch awesome products and services that address real-world problems consumers and retailers face, making us an intrinsic part of people’s daily lives, saving them time and money and reducing worry.”

#BNPL

Revolut reports first annual profit, but red flags raised over revenue

Finextra, Posted March 1, 2023

Financial super app Revolut has turned in its first annual profit after growing its revenues nearly threefold in 2021.

The much anticpated, and twice delayed, financial accounts reveal that Revolut hit a £26 million profit as revenues rose from £220m in 2020 to £636m in 2021.

The accounts were signed off by the company’s auditor BDO, but with a number of caveats. BDO flagged concerns that it could not verify £477m of revenue, nor vouch for their “completeness or occurrence”, due to the configuration of Revolut’s internal IT systems. The risk of material misstatements was most acute for the company’s foteign exchange, wealth and crypto business.

Revolut replaced its internal accounting systems after the Financial Reporting Council, a UK body responsible for regulating auditors, said the company’s audit for 2020 was “inadequate” and that “the risk of an undetected material misstatement was unacceptably high”.

#Revolut

Zopa-led fintech coalition launches financial education programme

Finextra, Posted February 28, 2023

The Zopa-led fintech coalition, Pledge2025, has partnered with The Money Charity to launch a programme of financial education for those hit the hardest by the cost-of-living crisis.

Launched initially by Zopa bank and ClearScore, the 2025 Fintech Pledge connects consumers to fintech platforms that make savings work harder, improve credit scores, consolidate debt, and lower utility bills.

The coalition is working towards a stated goal of driving 10 million consumer actions by 2025 that build up the financial resilience of UK consumers. To date, more than two million actions have been reported from all members combined.

The new financial education programme will start immediately and is expected to run until December 2025. Its first year of operations will be funded by Zopa bank and Clearscore.

#Fintech

Remitly ditches banking app Passbook

Finextra, Posted February 28, 2023

Digital remittance outfit Remitly is shutting down Passsbook, its online bank account for US-based immigrants.

Launched in 2020, Passbook will stop services on 1 May and will not accept new accounts, according to the app’s website.

At the time of Passbook’s launch, Remitly CEO Matt Oppenheimer said the account was the next step in the firm’s “mission to transform the lives of the millions of immigrants around the world”.

However, three years on Oppenheimer told analysts on Remitly’s fourth quarter earnings call that the company is refocusing on its core business.

“We believe it makes sense to redeploy our resources to higher returning investments, targeted at our core remittance customer,” he explained.

#Fintech

Intesa Sanpaolo signs strategic deal with IBM

Finextra, Posted March 1, 2023

Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, has signed a strategic deal with IBM to modernise its infrastructure.

Consumer demand for digital services and increasingly stringent security, compliance and sustainability regulations are making it necessary for banks to constantly review and upgrade technology infrastructures.

Intesa Sanpaolo has responded with a business plan that includes major investments in IT infrastructure optimisation, technological modernisation, and the introduction of leading cyber-security techniques. This includes the creation of a new digital bank Isybank using core banking technology from Thought Machine and the adoption of increasingly stringent ESG policies

Through the agreement with IBM, Intesa Sanpaolo will aim to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the Red Hat Openshift hybrid multi-cloud platform, and artificial intelligence. In ESG terms, the modernisation of the bank’s technology environment with the IBM z16 – designed with energy efficiency in mind to achieve greater performance with less energy used – will enable Intesa Sanpaolo to reduce its infrastructure energy consumption related to the z16 of around 20% and to contribute towards limiting its environmental impact.

#Intesa

USA

The Paypers, Posted March 3, 2023

This new Banking as a Service solution was created for a new generation of embedded financial service companies, and the first to employ it is Unifimoney, a multi-asset digital wealth management platform that allows community banks and credit unions to offer investment services to their customers through online banking. 

According to the official press release, there are around 100 sponsor banks that offer BaaS-type solutions, as well as a large number of intermediary platforms that act as a link between the bank and the client companies. The new BaaS solution developed by First Fidelity Bank and Episode Six can support embedded finance at a low cost, it has a quick-to-deploy architecture, and it offers real-time payments including RTP and OCT. Other noteworthy features include a sophisticated digital KYC/AML/IDV and fraud detection system, card issuing and processing capabilities, as well as controls including Astra Finance, Sardine, and Prove. 

#Payments

Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 1, 2023

Equifax is supporting financially inclusive lending with the availability of expanded U.S. mortgage credit reports.

The company is reportedly “the first National Credit Reporting Agency (NCRA) to make certain telecommunications (telco), pay TV and utilities attributes available to the mortgage industry to provide a fuller picture of consumers’ financial profiles – potentially enabling more than 191 million American consumers, 80 percent of whom have traditional credit files but may benefit from additional insights into their financial profile, to have greater opportunities for homeownership.”

Anonymized Equifax research into the potential benefits of telco, pay TV and utilities attributes found “that among 255 million U.S. consumers, 30 percent could potentially increase their traditional credit score if the attributes are included – helping to increase access to credit.”

#Equifax

Walmart partners Citi on digital lending platform for suppliers

The Paypers, Posted March 1, 2023

This phase allows for the sharing of personal data such as customer registration and movement related to products if the customers provide their consent. The General Coordinator of Projects at the Superintendence of Private Insurance (Susep) explains that this phase will begin with the sharing of registration data and home insurance data. This opening of customer data will reportedly enable the development of more assertive and customised products that cater to the customers’ needs and risks. Companies will supposedly be able to develop new tools and offer more solutions to their customers.

#Fintech

Belvo launches its payments initiation solution with Pix

The Paypers, Posted March 2, 2023

Belvo, a Latin America-based Open Finance platform, has launched its payment initiation solution as a Central Bank-regulated entity.

The solution intends to enhance the experience for businesses who take Pix payments, the immediate money transfer tool that has been the most popular payment method in the country, with over 26 billion transactions in its first two years of existence.

Bipa, a cryptocurrency trading platform, is one of the first Belvo customers to use the service. Bipa users can use Belvo’s Open Finance payments system to fill up their accounts and acquire Bitcoin without having to go through the typical Pix processes.

Users can initiate Pix payments directly inside third-party settings using this Open Finance payment option, which is less frictional than standard Pix methods such as QR codes or Pix Copy Paste. These enhancements provide higher conversion rates, a better user experience, and a lower chance of fraud.

Because of its account-to-account (A2A) nature and automated redirection, this Open Finance payments solution adds an extra security layer to the table.

#Fintech

Payments Fintech Thunes Boosts Executive Bench in Latin America

Crowdfund Insider, Posted March 1, 2023

Thunes, a payments and transfers Fintech, has announced a new head of Latin America. Victor Lucena will now lead the Fintech in its efforts to expand its services. As Head of LATAM, Lucena will manage all aspects of Thunes Latin American operations. He will be based in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

According to Thunes, Lucena previously worked for PayU, Binance, Worldpay, and Rapyd – so he has solid Fintech experience.

Thunes reports that it has established regional payout partnerships in 17 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay.

In 2022, it launched partnerships with Bexs and Daycoval to enable real-time business and customer inbound payments to Brazil and Banco Santander, Mexico to enable real-time payments.

#Payments