According to Abishek Gupta, head of BBVA Open Platform, BBVA, for the US to experience  progress when it comes to open banking, federal data protection needs to be implemented. “I agree there has to be some minimum standards across all of those principles to capture it all, and at the same time given how complex our Federal Reserve system is stateside, it needs to be national”, said Gupta. 

The “Fintech Pledge” was launched by Tech Nation, with the purpose of supporting the UK’s domestic and international tech community and nurturing bank collaboration. The five major banks involved so far are: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, and Santander, with backing also from HM Treasury. With this pledge, the aim is for transparency when it comes to banks sharing more insights on their onboarding procedures to third party fintechs.

Chip, an application that lets users seamlessly grow their savings, has raised £10 million in 48 hours via the UK government’s Future Fund, gathering 6,420 investors in the process. Chip offers an automatic savings app which it claims uses AI to calculate how much users can afford to put away. The app transfers funds from a customer’s current account to their Chip savings account every few days. 

According to Fintech Finance, a new partnership between Azimo and Alipay is in place. The new collaboration intends to bring instant money transfers to China. The process will allow Azimo’s users to make instant Yuan payment transfers with only needing the recipient’s Alipay ID. For Azimo this partnership provides a further reach expansion into the Asian market, especially in terms of remittance field. 

Klarna, a Swedish bank that provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts, direct payments, post purchase payments, announced a $650 million equity funding round led by Silver Lake, with participation from GIC, BlackRock and HMI Capital. With a post market valuation estimated at $10.65 billion, Klarna secrues the 4th position in the highest-valued private fintechs globally.

Wirecard and PayrNet Limited, a subsidiary of BaaS Railsbank, are partnering on an asset purchase deal in order to sell Wirecard’s technology and assets in the UK. In this sense, Wirecard will be transferring its client accounts and staff to PayrNet in order to finalize its last steps of the migration process in a phased and controlled manner.

Monedo, a German alternative online lending provider looking to bring services in credit and financial freedom to customers, has filed for bankruptcy. The fintech was primarily relying on gathering public data in order to determine risks of approaching potential clients. Due to the fact that these practices are legal in Germany, Monedo’s primary customer base was in Spain and Poland, countries severely hit by Covid-19 from an economic standpoint. 

Subaio, a Danish subscription manager, added earlier this week its first international client to the portfolio: ABN AMRO. With Subaio’s technology, ABN AMRO will offer its customers new services in which they can overview of all their recurring payments. Users will be able to cancel subscriptions from the Grip app and also be notified about any changes. 

dLocal, an Uruguay-based fintech payments technology platform for mass online payments and payouts in emerging markets across Latin America, APAC, Middle East and Africa, became Latin America’s latest fintech unicorn. With a current valuation at $1.2bn, dLocal counts Amazon, Nike, Uber and Spotify among its high-profile customers. “We are expanding access and helping those in emerging markets connect to ecommerce, building reliable payment technology tailored to specific local needs, constantly improving our products and growing our global footprint,” said Sebastián Kanovich, CEO of dLocal.

California takes action and implements a new state financial regulatory agency to protect consumers. With the new legislation framework, financial and fintech industries will need to readjust their practice policies. It renames DBO the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) and also empowers the department to have further authority, such as regulating almost any “financial product or service”.

Merchantrade, a money services business, digital payment service and mobile virtual network operator provider, based in Malaysia, acquired fintech Valyou From Telenor Group. The two companies will unite their offerings, e-wallet services (Merchantrade Money and Valyou’s app based e-wallet) in order to consolidate the local digital payments landscape. Furthermore, Merchantrade expects with this new merger a further increase in its Malaysian market migrant-worker customer base, which is predominantly using cross-border remittance services.

Santander, a large retail and commercial bank based in the UK and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the major global bank Banco Santander, now rebrands as Mouro Capital and has over $400 million in allotted funds. According to Santander, Mouro Capital will have the goal of expanding its  fintech services: “Mouro Capital  aims to bring its fintech expertise, global network and strong track record in successful investments to early and growth-stage startups globally. The fund will continue to deploy capital across Europe and the Americas, primarily leading investment rounds with initial investments of up to $15 million and further follow-on reserves”.

According to CNN Business, Snowflake, a cloud data warehousing firm, has managed to double their shares in the first day of trading and also to set the record for the biggest software IPO ever. Snowflake priced its initial public offering Tuesday night at $120 a share. However, the demand increased and on Wednesday afternoon the shares went for $245 further increase above $300, for a 150% gain. 

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Read here our other sections of this week:

• Weekly funding highlights 18 September 2020
• Weekly research highlights 18 September 2020
• Weekly analysis & opinion highlights 18 September 2020

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