Last August Google announced a crackdown on short term lending apps offered on its Android platform; but it appears to...
The pilot occurs after a successful proof of concept in September with BNP, Commerzbank and ING; they hope to expand later this year with more banks, credit insurers and enterprise planning and logistics providers; they are looking to address risk mitigation, payables finance and receivables finance; “The technology ran fast and smoothly and the positive results showed us we are on the right track and ready to take the next step by entering into a pilot," said Ivar Wiersma, head of innovation at ING Wholesale Banking, to CoinDesk. Source.
Affirm announced they are partnering with merchants to make financing available in-store; Affirm InStore works similar to their online point of sale solution where customers can pay for purchases over time with fixed installments; the company also announced that consumers will be able to add a newly issued Affirm virtual card via Apple Pay. Source
The bank announced today plans to open 90 branches by the end of 2019 as competition from other top banks...
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo announced their earnings late last week and digital channels continue to be a growing force at the banks; JPMorgan Chase saw a 13 percent jump in active mobile customers to over 30 million; Wells Fargo’s growth was not as pronounced at 3 percent to over 21 million active mobile customers; this points to a broader industry trend where according to Business Insider’s Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study 83 percent of respondents use mobile banking; some recent trends the study has also seen include more attention to security, mobile transfers and users asking for more advanced features. Source.
Capital One’s chatbot Eno just turned one recently and the bank talked about what they learned this past weekend at SXSW; Carla Saavedra Kochalski, director of conversational AI products, tells TearSheet “We saw there was a huge need to build something smarter and more conversational, not only for those types of experiences but to allow customer service through texting.”; the technology is still limited and in most cases customers still interact on a simple basis like asking for an account balance or approving a questionable transaction. Source.
Morgan Stanley knows how important data is to the core of their business and in 2018 they created the data...
The Federal Reserve increased its federal funds rate by 0.25% following its March Federal Open Market Committee meeting; the rate is now at 0.75% to 1.00%; the Fed also alluded to plans for two more rate increases in 2017. Source
StackSource has launched an online lending platform for commercial real estate; the company provides a marketplace for connecting owners and developers with banks and non-bank lenders for credit financing; the multi-lending platform connects borrowers with lenders through the StackSource proprietary lender database; StackSource was developed from the TechStar accelerator program and was founded by Tim Milazzo. Source
Bank of America has struck a partnership with Samsung to start a pilot program that will allow Bank of America customers to login using a picture of their eye; the program will start with a group of 1,500 Samsung and Bank of America employees who will test the authentication for six months; according to a past report by American Banker, about half of Bank of America customers login to the mobile app using their fingerprint and the other half login with a username and password; according to Finovate, Samsung debuted this iris scanning technology at their Unpacked event in March and they claim it to be more secure than fingerprint scans. Source