Some big fintech funding rounds, of course, the stunning Q1 metrics from Coinbase, Jamie Dimon continues to be concerned with fintech and we now know what Walmart’s fintech initiative will be called. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.
Plaid raises $425M Series D from Altimeter as it charts a post-Visa future from TechCrunch – Breaking up with Visa is the best to happen to Plaid shareholders as the company is now worth $13.4 billion after their Series D raise.
SoftBank to Invest $500 Million in Mortgage Startup Better from The Wall Street Journal – Upping the ante on Plaid is mortgage platform Better with the biggest round of the week, a $500m round led by SoftBank, that values the company at around $6 billion.
Riding Bitcoin Surge, Coinbase Active Users Grew by 117% in Q1 2021; Revenue Tops $1.8B from Coindesk – The numbers Coinbase released this week for Q1 were insane reflecting the huge growth in the popularity of crypto. Probably the most impressive stat of all: profit for the quarter was between $730m and $800m. Get ready for a huge IPO this coming week.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: Fintech is an ‘enormous competitive’ threat to banks from CNBC – In 2015 in his annual letter to shareholders Jamie Dimon said that “Silicon Valley is coming” and in 2021 he now says that fintech is an “enormous competitive threat” to banks.
Walmart Files for Trademark for Fintech Unit: ‘Hazel by Walmart’ from Bloomberg – We now know the name of Walmart’s new fintech initiative, it will be called Hazel by Walmart as someone keeping a close eye on trademark filings discovered this week.
These 12 New Billionaires Are Riding Fintech’s Rising Tide from Forbes – Fintech has minted a dozen new billionaires recently, this is an impressive list led by David Velez, the co-founder of NuBank with a reported $5.2 billion net worth.
China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy from The Wall Street Journal – This is going to be the most important trend of the decade, the launch of sovereign digital currencies, and China has an impressive head start.
PayPal is building a ‘super app.’ Should banks be worried? from American Banker – Great in-depth piece by Kevin Wack on the fintech behemoth that PayPal has become with a vast array of banking services.
Afterpay, Adyen Team On Installment Payments from PYMNTS.com – Global payments platform Adyen has team up the Afterpay to offer their four installment payment option in the U.S., U.K, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Avant completes acquisition of Zero Financial from FinLedger – Avant is boosting their digital banking offerings with the acquisition of Zero Financial and their Level banking app.
