Much more news from fintech industry experts this week! This week’s updates touched upon PensionBee’s IPO, partnership between Afterpay and Adyen, Robinhood’s customers trading crypto, Prosus’s yield from stock selling, the joint venture between SAP and Dediq, Signal’s system testing, tools for reporting law for financial services companies and new outsourcing rules in Germany. Enjoy the reading!
PensionBee’s IPO to value fintech at £346m (Altfi)
PensionBee is looking to raise £55m in its upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO), implying a £346m valuation. The company will have a £55m pot of cash after the IPO to take its next growth steps for marketing as well investments in tech. Read more
Afterpay has teamed up with Adyen to offer its installment payments (PYMNTS)
Afterpay, a fintech company, has teamed up with payments platform Adyen to offer its installment payments to retailers around the world. Adyen merchants can now offer Afterpay’s pay-in-four installment service to customers in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Read more
Robinhood said 9.5 million of its customers traded crypto in Q1 of 2021 (Decrypto)
Robinhood, an online brokerage service, announced earlier this week that 9.5 million of its customers traded cryptocurrency on its platform in Q1 of 2021. The company chalked up the numbers to popularize crypto’s growth and the global market cap of all cryptocurrencies has doubled in the past three months to over $2 trillion. Read more
Tencent’s Biggest Investor Cashes In on Pandemic Rally (The Wall Street Journal)
Prosus, a global internet group and also one of Tencent Holdings’s largest shareholders raised $14.6 billion by selling stock in the Chinese internet and video gaming giant, cashing in on one of the most lucrative technology bets in history after the pandemic gave a huge boost to the sector. Prosus stated that it had cut its stake in Tencent to 28.9% from 30.9% to increase its financial flexibility to invest in growth ventures. It is also the latest attempt to narrow a persistent gap between the company’s market value and that of its stake in Tencent. Read more
Signal tests a payments feature that lets you send cryptocurrency to friends (The Verge)
Signal, a cross-platform centralized encrypted messaging service, is now testing a new P2P payments system in the beta version of its apps called Signal Payments. The new feature right now supports only one protocol: the MobileCoin wallet and its companion cryptocurrency MOB. The company says those interested in trying out the feature must live in the UK for now, and those who qualify can sign up for MobileCoin and access the feature through the Signal beta. Read more
New Zealand introduces financial sector climate reporting law (Finextra)
New Zealand has become the first country in the world to introduce a law that requires the financial sector to disclose the impacts of climate change on their business and explain how they will manage climate-related risks and opportunities. Climate-related disclosures mandatory for around 200 organisations, including most listed issuers, large registered banks, licensed insurers and managers of investment schemes whose assets of more than $1 billion. The bill, once passed, will see disclosure required for financial years commencing in 2022. Read more
Germany’s financial sector faces stricter outsourcing rules (Bird & Bird)
German legislators specifically target outsourcers through the proposed bill to strengthen financial market integrity to combat the evasive domestic regulatory requirements through outsourcing. This includes new competences for BaFin (The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) to directly serve orders to outsourcers, reporting requirements for institutions and outsourcers to create the necessary transparency and mandatory enquiries on the effect of outsources located in third countries. Read more
SAP sets up dedicated financial services unit (Finextra)
SAP, multinational software corporation, is setting up a dedicated financial services unit in a joint venture with Dediq, an investment firm to develop a new suite of products covering the full spectrum of commercial banking and insurance operations. Both SAP and Dediq will provide the new FSI Unit with the funding, technology, and development expertise. Dediq’s investment in the unit will be $500 million, while SAP intends to transfer a “high triple digit” number of staff to work in the business. Read more
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