After raising $17-million, Toronto fintech firm eyes global expansion
Sensibill Inc., a Toronto-based startup that offers digital receipt technology for banks, has raised $17.3-million to supercharge its global expansion and dig deeper into artificial intelligence. It’s one of the largest series A early-stage financing rounds for a Canadian technology startup and signals the growing quality and influence of financial technology (fintech) companies in the market. “Generally, anything over $10-million has been a bit of a challenge in Canada,” says Salim Teja, executive vice-president for Ventures at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District. “To me, what this signals is that the quality of our ventures and the problems they’re trying to solve are important and being validated. … This is a very […]
App-only bank Monzo’s crowdfunding is almost three times oversubscribed after less than 24 hours
App-only startup bank Monzo has attracted enough initial interest in its £2.5 million ($US3.1 million) crowdfunding campaign to fill it close to three times over, after less than 24 hours of pre-registration. Monzo opened pre-registrations for its crowdfunding at 10 a.m. GMT (5.00 a.m ET) on Tuesday, allowing users of its app to register interest in investing and pledge an amount to invest. Pledges hit Monzo’s £2.5 million target within 4 hours and, just after 8 a.m. GMT (3.00 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, the startup bank has £6.78 million pledged. CEO and cofounder Tom Blomfield says in an emailed statement: “The response to our crowdfunding campaign has been mind-blowing. Our […]
A fintech veteran spent 3 years and ‘a huge amount of money’ secretly building a new bank
Financial technology entrepreneur Nick Ogden on Tuesday unveiled the UK’s first new, purpose-built clearing bank in 250 years after 3 years secretly working on the multi-million-pound project. ClearBank is a “bank for banks,” Ogden told a crowd in central London at Tuesday’s launch event. It will not offer any services to consumers, instead offering payment processing and core banking services to fintech startups, credit unions, building societies, and other challenger banks. ClearBank has two key propositions. Firstly, it is what’s called a “clearing bank,” meaning it can process payments across all major schemes in the UK, including Swift, MasterCard, Visa, CHAPS, BACS, and Faster Payments. It is only the fifth […]
Silicon Valley tried to upend Banks. Now it works with them.
In 2011, Brett King was promoting his book, “Breaking Banks,” and creating a start-up that he hoped would do to the banks what Amazon did to the retail industry and Facebook did to media. “We had grand ideas of being the Facebook of banking, and being a new form of bank account,” Mr. King said recently. Six years later, his company, Moven, has opened only 60,000 of those new bank accounts. Mr. King has now transitioned to selling his software to the banks he once scorned, who use it as a component of their mobile apps. “We realized that if you want millions of users as a bank, it is […]
Japan’s largest bank is testing digitized checks on a Blockchain in Singapore
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, has chosen blockchain technology as the core infrastructure toward testing the digitization of checks using Singapore’s Fintech-friendly regulatory sandbox installed by the country’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. First announced last year, the Proof of Concept (PoC) testing is the result of a joint endeavor between the bank and major Japanese conglomerate Hitachi. The two companies developed a blockchain-based infrastructure to issue, transfer and collect electronic checks. With the PoC testing, the bank issued and settled checks while the Hitachi Group’s companies in Singapore received the electronic checks and then deposited the funds. “The project is to digitalize entire check […]
Fintech is driving growth and opportunities in Asia Pacific
According to analysis by KPMG International and CB Insights, US$4.6 billion in venture capital-backed fintech funding went to the Asia-Pacific region at the end of Q3 2016. Much of this investment went to China, driven by high mobile internet adoption rates and a tech savvy-millennial user base. Asian fintech sectors predicted to get VC interest this year include payments, regtech, data & analytics, and mobile. Adoption of mobile money and mobile payments in Asia will see the market encompass a range of demographics, from Chinese millennials with WeChat, to Sri Lankan retirees receiving pensions onto their Dialog eZCash mobile money account. Across Asia, fintech driven by regulatory ‘sandboxes’ are enabling financial institutions […]
4 Reasons to use a Digital Wallet
Are you using a digital wallet? If not, you are not alone. Only about 13 percent of smartphone users have adopted digital wallets, the relatively new technology that allows our mobile devices to execute a myriad of financial transactions. But digital wallets are coming of age at a lightning pace. Companies like Due offer digital wallets that have streamlined the way we pay for things and get paid, and are changing the world of commerce itself. So if you have been slow to adapt to the word of digital wallets, here are four reasons to change your mind, and get a digital wallet today. Security Losing your wallet, or worse, […]
Australian FinTech launches International FinTech platform
The team behind the highly successful AustralianFinTech.com.au, this week launch their International platform, InternationalFinTech.com, aimed at connecting the FinTech industry on a global scale. Founder and CEO, Cameron Dart, says International FinTech has been born on the back of the highly successful Australian FinTech platform and growing demand from the global community to have a dedicated online presence for their sector. “International FinTech mirrors the Australian FinTech platform, including a dedicated industry newsfeed and a comprehensive directory of FinTech companies globally. “The site also aims to educate users of new financial technologies such as peer to peer lending and cryptocurrency, all presented in simple terms with no financial jargon” says […]
