Weekly Fintech Newsletter | 2021 #34
Q&A
ARTICLE
Why are startups suddenly sponsoring sports teams and festivals?
The sponsorship industry has shifted over the past few years. Tech startups’ sports and festival sponsorship, might overcome traditional companies. The trend is already apparent in the UK and picking up in the US.
It’s part of a “land grab” scenario that startups in competitive sectors often find themselves in, says Kris Mathis, founder of sponsorship database Sponsorpitch. “Sponsorship offers a unique ability to stand out from the crowd and build loyalty by association with some of the most beloved clubs.”
For example, 🇬🇧 YIELD App announced that it has become the Official Digital Asset Wealth Management Partner of Premier League football club, West Ham United FC. Link here.
Also, The Los Angeles Clippers agreed to a $300 million, 23-year, sponsorship deal with 🇺🇸 Aspiration, a Marina del Rey-based financial technology company, according to a source familiar with the terms. Link here.
BLOG
INTERVIEW
After working as an investment banker in Canada for a decade, Halima Iqbal moved back to Pakistan in 2017 and quickly realized how difficult it is for women to access financial services. She began researching how Pakistani women deal with money—for example, how do they save or take out credit?
Then she met product designer and entrepreneur Farwah Tapal, who had recently returned to Pakistan from Spain, and the two created 🇵🇰 Oraan in 2018 to help women access financial services.
Need to meet new partners or customers? Fintech Meetup has you covered! Join to meet:
Fintechs including Alloy, Autobooks, Dave, MANTL, Ripple, Sila, Socure & Synctera (and many, many more!),
Networks including Discover, Mastercard & Visa,
Banks including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan,
Investors like Bain Capital, General Atlantic & Point 72 Fintech Meetup,
Tech cos including Facebook, and many others.
Qualifying Startups can get special startup rate tickets.
FINTECH MAPS
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S FINTECH SPACE
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
🇲🇽 Konfío’s valuation has hit $1.3 billion after a fresh investment round, pushing the SoftBank-backed company into the elite “unicorn” category.
🇲🇽 Konfio, which helps small businesses secure loans, said in a statement its latest funding totaled $235 million and the funds will be used to broaden its reach in Latin America’s second-largest economy. The firm said it will also continue looking for acquisition and integration opportunities.
FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
🇬🇧 Wise co-founder, and CEO, Kristo Käärmann has been fined over £350,000 by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for deliberately defaulting on his tax bill. Link here.
The world's fastest & slowest internet speeds. Link here.
Which Latin American company will become the next unicorn? Link here.
Signals is the subscriber-only feature by Nik Milanović where he consolidates the FinTech events of the last quarter in order to better understand the trendlines, not just the headlines. Good stuff!
BNPL
Buy now, pay later platform 🇺🇸 Affirm is about to go toe-to-toe with a standard-bearer in the payments space: the good old-fashioned debit card. Link here.
Shariah-compliant payment gateway PayHalal has partnered with Buy Now Pay Later platform 🇸🇬 Atome, to enable seamless Murabaha buy now pay later (iBNPL) acceptance across the former’s merchant touchpoints in Malaysia. Link here.
Payment technology provider, 🇬🇧 Tribe Payments, announced it has been selected by 🇪🇪Amon.Tech as payment partner for the Amon Card. Link here.
Customer milestones are some of the biggest celebrations for fintechs and now buy now, pay later (BNPL) 🇬🇧 Zilch is celebrating its first big one. Link here.
Rapidly growing British fintech company, 🇬🇧 Fly Now Pay Later, which offers consumers a new and more flexible way to finance travel all across the world, has struck a deal with the worldwide hotels reservation network, HotelsOne. Link here.
CRYPTO
Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez has a plan to transform the city into the world’s “cryptocurrency innovation hub,” and one of the outcomes, he claims, could be a metropolis free from taxes. Link here.
With crypto and FinTech colliding at breakneck speed the pressure is on for many successful and established brands to play their hand. 🇬🇧 Curve, the card aggregating FinTech platform, is the latest. Link here.
Fintech company Bitfrost completed its first major acquisition, by acquiring 🇪🇪 OKONTO, a leading global institutional crypto OTC and lending provider. Link here.
🇺🇸 Visa is working on a 'universal payment channel' (UPC) that enables interoperability between different digital currencies such as CBDCs and private stable coins. Link here.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is going deeper into traditional financial services, allowing users to deposit paychecks directly into their online accounts. Coinbase said Monday that its U.S. customers will be able to use the direct deposit service for any percentage of their paycheck. Link here.
INVESTMENTS
🇧🇷 Nubank will add a stock trading functionality to its app that will allow users to buy and sell shares. Before this implementation is in place, it is hiring an army of digital influencers with more than 92 million followers to reinforce financial education among its users. Link here.
OPEN BANKING
🇬🇧 TrueLayer has launched its global open banking platform in Australia following its accreditation as an unrestricted Accredited Data Recipient under the Consumer Data Right (CDR). Link here.
🇳🇱 Yolt Technology Services has been chosen by 🇬🇧 KEEBO to deploy Open Banking data through the application of Account Information Services (AIS) into its business, delivering operational efficiency, enhanced simplicity, and a better user experience for credit customers. Link here.
PAYMENTS
🇬🇧 Payhawk announced a 3% cashback on all payments, and integration to Microsoft Dynamics 365, Single Sign-On for enterprise clients, as the company looks to disrupt the corporate payments and expense management market. Link here.
After two years of planning, 🇬🇧 Sokin is now out of stealth mode and looking to disrupt the money transfer market that has been dominated by Wise and challenger banks Monzo and Revolut. Link here.
🇿🇦 Ukheshe Technologies, a leading fintech enablement partner, has announced a new partnership with 🇺🇸 Chipper, one of Africa’s most valuable startups and the purveyor of the Chipper Cash app, to enhance and accelerate the rollout of Chipper’s digital payment offerings. Link. here.
🇫🇮 Enfuce, a Nordic payment service provider, launched its transaction-based carbon footprint calculator, My Carbon Action, in AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Link here.
FinTech 1099 payroll platform 🇺🇸 Gig Wage has announced its partnership with national nonprofit Commonwealth Bank in a new project aimed at addressing the financial insecurity of the growing non-traditional workforce. Link here.
🇿🇦 MTN’s new deal with payments technology firm, 🇺🇸 Flutterwave is set to deliver cash to mobile wallets of more Africans via MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) with the planned expansion in Cameroon, Cфte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. Link here.
🇺🇸 Mastercard has entered a strategic partnership with Lulu Exchange to enable UAE consumers to carry out simple, speedy, and secure remittances through the Lulu Money mobile app. Link here.
🇪🇪 Veriff, a global identity verification provider is partnering with SimpliFi, a Cards as a Service (CaaS) platform for MENA and Pakistan, to protect SimpliFi customers from identity fraud within their instant card issuance programs. Link here.
Leading digital brokerage, 🇦🇺 Stake has chosen Australian fintech unicorn 🇦🇺Airwallex as a global cross-border payment and FX partner. Link here.
🇺🇸 Square and 🇺🇸 TikTok announced a new integration that will make it easy for sellers of all types and sizes to reach new customers and grow their sales online. Link here.