While the banking system has been stable since that flurry of activity in mid-March it appears that another bank is going to fail. It is looking unlikely that First Republic Bank survives the weekend as regulators and other banks are circling. Also making news this week was Shopify announcing yet another fintech product, Cross River Bank being dinged by the FDIC, Wise adding interest and FDIC insurance and Coinbase suing the SEC. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 fintech news stories of the week.
FDIC Asks Banks for Final First Republic Bids Due Sunday from Bloomberg – With each passing day this week it began to look less and less likely that First Republic Bank would remain an independent entity for much longer. The rumors are that the FDIC will take over the bank this weekend with the agency reaching out to the likes of JPMorgan and PNC to submit their final bids for First Republic by Sunday.
Shopify adds direct bill payments in bid to be a single-stop fintech for merchants from TechCrunch – Last week it was Apple this week it is Shopify as the large tech companies continue to expand their fintech offerings. Shopify currently offers payments processing, lending, checking accounts, BNPL and now B2B payments. In a deal with Melio that will mostly free Shopify customers can now manage their bill payments from within Shopify.
Cross River Bank Gets FDIC Enforcement Order Over Lending from Bloomberg – Late on Friday it was revealed that major fintech banking player, Cross River Bank, received a cease-and-desist order from the FDIC over what the agency said were “unsafe or unsound” practices related to fair-lending laws. The order was the result of a standard review of the bank’s lending practices from 2021 and was unrelated to anything to do with crypto.
Wise adds interest, FDIC insurance option for cross-border accounts from American Banker – Wise (formerly Transferwise) is big in cross-border payments and its customers can keep their balances in a multicurrency account. Now, U.S. customers can earn 3.92% interest on these balances and FDIC insurance through Chase.
Crypto exchange Coinbase sues SEC over rulemaking petition from TechCrunch – Coinbase has had enough. In July last year, the company asked the SEC whether it would “propose and adopt rules to govern” digital assets and never received a response. So, this week Coinbase decided to file a petition to compel the SEC to respond.
Voyager Digital Says Binance.US Sent Letter Terminating $1B Asset Buy Deal from CoinDesk – Last December, just weeks after the FTX debacle, Binance US swooped in to buy Voyager Digital’s assets for $1 billion. Now, they are having second thoughts, citing the “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate” here. Now, it is likely that Voyager’s assets will be liquidated.
Fintech Klarna Offers New AI Powered Shopping Feed, More Features Designed to Boost Business from Crowdfund Insider – For more than a decade we have been scrolling through feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now, you can add Klarna into the mix. The BNPL leader is adding a shopping feed to its app, powered by AI, that will show personalized shopping recommendations. With 150 million consumers and 500,000 merchants Klarna might have the scale to pull this off.
Nubank reaches 80 million customers in LatAm, up 33% YoY from Fintech Nexus – The leading fintech in Latin America, Nubank, shows no signs of slowing down. The company announced this week that they crossed 80 million customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. This is up almost 20 million from a year ago. They are also expanding their product suite, adding payroll lending, to expand their revenue per customer.
Visa CEO downplays the threat of FedNow from American Banker – Visa reported earnings this past week, once again exceeding analyst expectations. But what was most interesting about the earnings call was CEO Ryan McInerney’s comments about FedNow. Visa has its own real-time payments offering, Visa Direct, and FedNow could eat into that business. But McInerney is at least publicly downplaying the impact, saying other countries like the UK have real-time payments system and Visa does well there.
Here is the List of Proposed Legislation to Improve Access to Capital, Including Accredited Investor Fix, More from Crowdfund Insider – There is movement in Congress when it comes to business capital formation as helping small businesses is one of the few areas of agreement between the two major parties. Along with that, there is discussion of changing the accredited investor rules (finally). A total of 15 different bills are currently going through the markup process.
Every Thursday at 5pm ET the Fintech Nexus news team and a special guest discuss the news of the week in fintech. Below is the video we posted to YouTube of this week’s show. You can also listen to the show in podcast format.
