Another busy news week in fintech with the Celsius bankruptcy saga taking another turn. We also had news from Block’s Square small business unit, SWIFT partnering with Chainlink, JPMorgan’s UK bank celebrates one year and more. Here are what I consider to be the top ten fintech news stories of the past week.
Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky resigns from Fintech Nexus – The CEO of embattled crypto lender Celsius called it quits this week, saying he had become “an increasing distraction.” As their bankruptcy procedures continue the founder and former CEO will stay on the board. Their current CFO will become the interim CEO and Chief Restructuring Officer.
Square now supports Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhones from TechCrunch – After introducing this feature in June, Square is rolling out Tap to Pay for all merchants in the U.S. All a small business owner needs now is their iPhone and the Square POS app to process Tap to Pay card payments.
SWIFT Partners With Crypto Data Provider Chainlink on Cross-Chain Protocol in TradFi Play from CoinDesk – In the latest TradFi/crypto partnership the grandfather of international payments, SWIFT, is teaming up with blockchain data provider, Chainlink, in a proof of concept to help with cross-chain transactions.
JPMorgan’s UK Digital Bank Has More Than 1 Million Customers from Bloomberg – It has been a year since JPMorgan opened their digital consumer bank in the UK and they have made good progress. Over one million customers have deposited more than £10 billion into the current account, more than digital leaders Monzo and Starling but less than Marcus UK.
FTX Wins Auction for Bankrupt Crypto Broker Voyager Digital’s Assets from The Wall Street Journal – The bankruptcy process of crypto broker Voyager continues. FTX edged our Binance in the auction for its assets paying just over $50 million. The company still has crypto deposits worth $1.3 billion on its books.
HSBC deploys tech that helps it bank immigrants from American Banker – As an immigrant myself I have been a big fan of Nova Credit from day one. They are helping immigrants bring their existing credit data to their adopted countries and now they have an agreement with HSBC, along with a $10 million investment.
Banks Are About To Face The Same Tsunami That Hit Telecom Twenty Years Ago from Forbes – I have to admit I have only been paying peripheral attention to the Lightning Network, a layer two bitcoin protocol. In this op-ed, Caitlin Long, the CEO and founder of Custodia Bank, argues that it could well be a revolutionary force in finance and banks might miss out due to a new recommendation from the BIS.
Crypto Fugitive Do Kwon’s Firm Accuses Korean Prosecutors of Overreach from The Wall Street Journal – The founder of Terraform Labs and the creator of the infamous Luna token that collapsed in May, Do Kwon, maintains that he is not on the run although no one knows where he is. He is wanted by many countries although he says this is the result of prosecutor overreach.
Upstart says it’s improving AI models after report finds race approval disparities from American Banker – Upstart have worked hard to remove bias in fintech lending but their AI models are not perfect. They are working to improve them as a new report finds racial disparities in underwriting remain.
Fintech lending boosts credit access for US small businesses from Finextra – A new report out from the BIS this week found that fintech lenders loaned more money to small businesses in disadvantaged areas due to better use of alternative data. The report used data sets from Funding Circle and LendingClub.
Every Thursday afternoon, the Fintech Nexus 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 – click on the audio player below.
