Stay up to date with the latest news from fintech! This week, we bring you updates and developments on partnerships, lending, banking, crypto, NFT and more. Enjoy reading!
Bloomberg EU Women in Finance (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg’s EU Women in Finance initiative brings together leaders from across the European Union to promote gender diversity and inspire the next generation of female leaders to consider careers in the financial sector. We work with senior finance leaders within the private and public sector, as well as political decision-makers, central bankers and regulators, as part of our ongoing commitment to promote an inclusive global economy by making the world of finance more accessible to women and other under-represented groups. Read more.
UK watchdog takes on card schemes (Finextra)
The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has put the card schemes on notice that it is investigating their fees and how to help merchants get better deals, including by promoting the alternative of account-to-account payments. Setting out its plans for 2022/23, the PSR has again raised concerns about the “high card fees” that merchants pay to Visa and Mastercard, noting that they have risen “significantly” in recent years. Read more.
Papaya Global to buy Azimo for (TechCrunch)
Six months after raising $250 million, Papaya Global is making a key acquisition to expand its cloud-based HR and payroll platform globally on the heels of major surge in remote working. The Israeli startup is acquiring Azimo — the London-based money transfer business that Facebook once tried to buy to spearhead its own remittance efforts — a deal that will see Papaya Global moving into more markets, and launching more services such as instant payroll payments. Read more.
EBA publishes final Report on the amendment of its technical standards on the exemption to strong customer authentication for account access (EBA)
The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Report on the amendment of its Regulatory technical standards (RTS) on strong customer authentication and secure communication (SCA&CSC) under the Payment Services Directive (PSD2). The changes introduce a new mandatory exemption to SCA that will require account providers not to apply SCA when customers use an account information service provider (AISP) to access their payment account information, provided certain conditions are met. The amendment aims to reduce frictions for customers using such services and to mitigate the impact that the frequent application of SCA and the inconsistent application of the current exemption have on AISPs’ services. Read more.
UK credit card borrowing surges amid cost of living crisis (The Guardian)
A surge in credit card borrowing to a record high last month has prompted concerns that low-income households are turning to expensive forms of lending to cope with rising costs of food, clothing and fuel. Figures from the Bank of England showed credit card borrowing jumped by £1.5bn in February to £59.5bn – the highest since records began in 1993 – pushing the total amount of unsecured lending up by 90% on the prior month to £1.9bn. Read more.
Amsterdam-based challenger bank bunq launches Easy Savings feature: Here’s how it works (Siliconcanals)
Amsterdam-based challenger bank, bunq, announced on Monday that it has launched bunq Easy Savings to enable people to get returns on their savings. bunq aims to bridge the gap between low-interest rates and stock/crypto market volatility. Founder and CEO Ali Niknam says, “Our users may invest some of their money in stocks, but they fully understand the risks, which is why they still have significant savings. By making it easy to get a higher return on these savings, they get the best of both worlds.” Read more.
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