Brokerage app Robinhood is unveiling a new web based platform; the company currently has over 3 million opened accounts and is growing daily; Business Insider reports that co-founder Baiju Bhatt said, "When people are buying stocks, they are comparison shopping and they want an experience that's built for that."; the company has reached the size of Etrade and are working on building additional features. Source.
Keith Noreika, the acting Comptroller of the Currency recently signed the first full-service de novo national bank charter since the financial crisis to Winter Park National Bank of Florida; Noreika believes there are still too few new banks and part of the problem is the onerous process; Noreika outlines the lengthy process and discusses his suggested changes in his testimony back in June. Source
In an interview with Business Insider Acorns CEO Noah Kerner talked about the investment app’s success to date and how he see the company moving forward; the company has seen strong growth with 2.2 million US accounts; the app allows users to invest spare change from purchases; the focus of the future is to try to get all households with income under $100K using the app. Source.
American Banker profiles Instant Financial which was founded in 2015; the company aims to shorten the time frame to when employees get paid; using the app employees can unlock portions of their paychecks which can provide an alternative to payday loans; they recently partnered with Sutton Bank in Ohio for their US expansion. Source
Blockchain consortium R3 and 22 partner banks are working to build a real time cross border payments solution on Corda; the project started last year and the banks are actively providing feedback; this is occurring while R3 and former partner Ripple are involved in a legal dispute over a previous agreement. Source.
- 6th Avenue Capital secures $60M from Merchant Cash Advance Funding
- CEO switch for online lender Patch of Land
- A new fund uses A.I. to invest in consumer and retail products with the best chance of success (CircleUp)
- Lendio Provides More Than $25,000 in Loans to Over 1,200 Small Business Owners Through Lendio Gives on Kiva
- Mintos Scraps Secondary Market Fees
- Amazon just bought three domain names related to cryptocurrency
- Alex Tapscott's Crypto VC Firm Going Public With $100M CAD Falsely Touted 4 Blockchain Stars As Advisors
- Foundation Capital Leads CoverWallet Series B Financing. Welcome and Congrats!
- One of the Most High-Profile Initial Coin Offerings Has Crashed 50%
- Another Chinese P2P lender! Senmiao Technology files for a $20 million IPO
- Small Business Borrower Sues Kabbage
- Citigroup Bets Millions on U.K. Mortgage Lender (LendInvest)
A new report from Numis entitled The State of AI in 2017 explains the potential AI and machine learning for wealth managers; as AltFi reports, “AI enables asset managers to deliver to the mass affluent a degree of personalisation and service quality previously reserved for high net worth clients.”; the technology can also help to improve quality, decrease cost and help to make most of the asset management industry into robo advisors. Source.
The VPC Speciality Lending investment trust sold it’s exposure to Avant loans and their equity stake as it continues a move out of the sector; the fund has been shifting to a balance sheet strategy for quite some time and this is another indicator of that move; they also sold their equity exposure in Australian point of sale lender zipMoney. Source.
Crowdfund Insider sat down with Karen Mills at LendIt Europe 2017; Mills is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School and was previously head of the US Small Business Administration; she believes we are between two phases in the market: the banks waking up and the platforms arriving, including Alibaba, Amazon, Square etc. Source
Bitcoin has increased over 550% this year and many firms are taking an increased interest in the cryptocurrency; CME Group launching futures contracts for bitcoin is just one example; the WSJ looks at what futures contracts for bitcoin will potentially mean for the market. Source