Santander takes big stake in UK FinTech
Spanish bank Banco Santander is acquiring just over 50 percent of the U.K. payments platform Ebury for £350 million ($453 million), Ebury announced in a press release on Monday (Nov. 4). The Ebury payments platform gives small and medium-size companies the ability to trade internationally. The acquisition is scheduled to close in the first quarter of next year and is intended to help boost Santander’s global payments business. “Small and medium-sized businesses are a major engine of growth around the world, creating new jobs and contributing up to 60 percent of total employment and up to 40 percent of national GDP in emerging economies,” said Santander’s Executive Chairman Ana Botín. […]
Amica Financial Technologies raises $24 million in funding
Amica Financial Technologies, an upcoming digital retail bank founded by Citrus Pay cofounder Jitendra Gupta, has received $24 million in its maiden funding round. The funding is backed by a long list of institutional investors including Greyhound Capital, 3One4 Capital, Germany’s Rocket Internet, venture capital funds Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. Gupta, a former PayU India managing director, is among a growing tribe of second-time entrepreneurs who have attracted big bucks from marquee investors even before officially launching their companies. The Mumbai-based startup, which Gupta cofounded along with Vishnu Jerome of law firm Jerome Merchant and Partners, has also brought on board a host of angel investors. To read more, […]
Dutch fintech to bring mobile payments to South America’s smallest country
Dutch fintech Move4Mobile has developed a mobile payments app for Hakrinbank, bringing online payments to Suriname, the smallest country in South America. The app, named Mopé, will enable anyone with a smartphone to make purchases and transfer money electronically in a country where the majority of transactions are performed using cash. Mopé provides a mobile wallet from which payment requests can be made using a QR code to receive funds in a number of currencies from elsewhere in the world. A former Dutch colony, one third of all Surinamese people live in the Netherlands, which would make Mopé a useful tool for sending funds to family back home. Large numbers […]
Jibrel wins Fintech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge
Jibrel, a multinational blockchain-based fintech company, won the 2019 Fintech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge. The award was given for the team’s work on Jibrel.com, a fully-regulated blockchain-powered private financing platform. Jibrel provides a vertically-integrated solution that connects startups and small-to-medium enterprises with investors of all genres to create capital formation. As an awardee, Jibrel will represent Abu Dhabi and the Mena region at the Global FinTech Hackcelerator in Singapore this month. Additionally, a panel of experts will help deploy Jibrel·com’s proof of concept in the UAE and beyond. Various other benefits of the award include a S$200,000 grant. Jibrel was one of two chosen from a pool of 14 startups. […]
Modulr invest £20m to supercharge Scottish FinTech
EDINBURGH-based FinTech Modulr has today announced it will invest the majority of £20m in the Scottish FinTech industry, to drive disruptive innovation and further boost Scotland’s growing prominence as a tech hub. The move is the latest step in Modulr’s ambition to radically transform SME banking, and its belief in Scottish tech talent to help achieve this vision. Having established its main development hub in Edinburgh, Modulr will use the funding to create an additional minimum of 53 highly skilled technology jobs in the capital. The FinTech will also nurture new technology talent in Scotland by committing to hire graduates from Scottish universities every year for the next five years. […]
Nubank surpasses Revolut, Monzo and N26 combined with 18 million app downloads over the past year
If there was ever any doubt, you best believe that Nubank is growing exponentially fast and won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Making this all the more evident is the fact that the Brazilian fintech unicorn has seen over 18 million app downloads this past year. Based on a report from Apptopia, that’s more than Revolut, Monzo and N26 combined. While these neobanks are prevalent in Europe, Nubank continues to show immense mobile banking potential in developing markets. This is particularly true in Latin America. Like other fintechs, Nubank’s target audience is the region’s population without bank accounts. Latin America’s unbanked population Compared to the U.S. and European markets, Latin Americans […]
How is India’s Fintech space leading in the Asia Pacific
India has been accredited as the world’s second-largest fintech hub, first being the US. This itself is a testimony to the fact that we contribute largely to the fintech boom in the Asia Pacific. As per the report by the Data Labs (Inc42), fintech startups in India raised $3.4 Bn across 174 deals in the first quarter of 2019. The global fintech market is expected to reach $305.7 Bn by 2023, which means that we would be making a substantial contribution to the world economy. There are several factors that help in the surge of fintech startups in a country, the top-ranking reason being the untapped space in the regional […]
Landbay says October was record month
Fast-growing Fintech Landbay says October was a great month for the real estate peer to peer lending platform. Without providing any details, Landbay tweeted out the news. Earlier this year, Landbay reported that a “leading financial institution” had committed to funding £1 billion in buy to let mortgages originated on the site. This may have something to do with its growth. Landbay offers investors the opportunity to invest in loans to buy-to-let landlords. All loans are secured by first‐ranking mortgages over tenanted residential properties across England and Wales. The P2P lender currently promotes up to a 3.45% return for investors. In a historically low interest rate environment, these returns are […]
