And we’re kicking off the week with new details on banking, partnerships, funding, credit unions, open banking and more. Dive into the latest fintech insights and have a great start of the week!
Bank-Fintech Partnerships Are Under-Performing: What’s Going Wrong? (Forbes)
Bank-fintech partnerships are a hot topic in bank boardrooms. A new report from Cornerstone Advisors, titled The State of the Union in Bank-Fintech Partnerships, found that nearly nine in 10 financial institutions consider fintech partnerships to be important to their business, up from 49% in 2019. Overall, 65% of banks and credit unions entered into at least one fintech partnership over the past three years, and 35% invested in a fintech startup. Fintech partnership activity among banks has accelerated over the past three years. In 2019, banks that partnered with fintechs averaged 1.3 partnerships per institution. That number grew to 2.5 partnerships in 2021. Read more.
The state of start-up funding in Europe (Fintech Futures)
Tech is booming. It’s been booming for a while and the pace doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Regardless of whether you benchmark based on start-ups, funding or research, it’s a market that is surging, with every other headline seeming to announce new records in the world of tech financing. Although this is very much a global tech boom, the dynamics in Europe are different, and it has been a landmark year in the region in many respects, with the continent growing faster than any other major tech hub. Read more.
Green UX: How fintech app design can help the environment (Altfi)
Excessive electricity generation leads to air, water, and land pollution. Better UX can help, writes Comarch’s Dawid Stankiewicz. The numbers behind our day-to-day online activities are massive. Not many internet users actually realize it, but in fact, every time they post a tweet or visit their bank’s website, an energy-intensive process starts in the background. Your banking application may be able to open in a blink of an eye, but this action consumes a certain amount of energy, which generates a carbon footprint. Read more.
Credit Unions in Africa Switch to Fintech (Africa.com)
From table banking to credit unions, the savings and credit cooperative organization (Sacco) sector in Africa is fast digitizing to bring financial inclusion to all Sacco members. In December 2021, Kenyan fintech Kwar helped credit unions in the east African state shift to digital platform by raising $4 million in a seed round from Breega and the SoftBank vision fund, demonstrating the level of interest and opportunity that exists in the sector. “Members of a Sacco in far-flung areas are now able to transact without needing to visit a physical branch,” Kenya Police Sacco (KPS) National Chairman David Mategwa says. Read more.
Open banking – a new stage in financial inclusion (Fintech Futures)
In a constantly and rapidly evolving world where open banking has already begun its transition to open finance, it seems hard to believe that there is still a considerable number of people who don’t have access to online banking services, cannot make any orders or payments via the internet, or don’t even have a bank account. While in some parts of the world banks and clients form long-term relationships which persist even over generations, there are still a lot of people out there fitting under the qualificatives of “unbanked”, “underbanked”, and “underserved”. Read more.
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