The Nubank filing was the biggest news of the week giving us our first in-depth look at the digital banking behemoth. It looks like regulatory action is coming on stablecoins, Q3 was huge for fintech VC funding, Zillow shuts down ibuying and big financial institutions pledge action on climate change. Here are what I consider to be the top ten fintech news stories of the past week.
Nubank officially files for IPO on NYSE from LendIt Fintech News – We finally have details on the largest and most successful digital bank in the world and they are even more impressive than I expected. With 48 million customers and a customer acquisition cost of $5, they are in a league of their own.
Biden administration calls on Congress to take the lead regulating stablecoins from The Washington Post – The President’s Working Group on Financial Assets released their report this week on stablecoins and they recommend this new asset class have bank-like regulations.
Q3 global fintech funding smashes records from Insider – Fintech VC funding shows no signs of slowing down with the latest numbers from CB Insights. Fintech companies across the globe raised $31.1 billion across 1,185 deals in the third quarter bringing total funding this year to $94.7 billion which is almost as much as 2019 and 2020 combined.
Zillow Shuts Home-Flipping Business After Racking Up Losses from Bloomberg – Zillow became a little too aggressive in its ibuying operation and is closing the whole thing down leaving the door open to Offerpad and Opendoor to dominate the market.
Financial System Makes Big Promises on Climate Change at COP26 Summit from The Wall Street Journal – Many of the world’s largest banks and asset managers, with assets of $130 trillion, have made pledges to cut emissions that will also generate $100 trillion to fund investments in new technologies.
Klarna launches new super app, reduces reliance on partnerships from FinLedger – Fintech is becoming awash in “super apps” it seems as Klarna becomes the latest company to deem their offering that. It is a full featured shopping app to be sure with users able to shop, unlock deals, manage payments and loyalty as well as track deliveries.
Korean online payment service Kakao Pay surges nearly 114% on the first day of trading from TechCrunch – One of South Korea’s top fintech companies, Kakao Pay, went public this week in a strong IPO that resulted in a valuation of more than $21 billion.
DeFi — the ‘Wild West’ of crypto — is next on regulators’ hit list from CNBC – DeFi is still operating, for the most part, without regulation but this could change soon as an AML watchdog has released guidance that included rules for DeFi.
NerdWallet Price Jumps 90% in Wake of IPO from PYMNTS – Personal finance platform NerdWallet went public on Thursday and shares rocketed up early before settling to close at $28.30, still well above the $18 public offering price.
CBA partners with Gemini and Chainalysis to roll out crypto services from ZDNet – This news did not create the headlines that it should have but the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) became one of the largest banks globally (around US$750 billion in assets) to offer crypto trading natively within their app.
Every Thursday the LendIt Fintech News team and a special guest discuss the news of the week live on LendIt TV, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We have now made the show available in podcast format – just click on the audio player below.
