Global

December 30, 2021 @ 11:10 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Earlier this month, the team at digital bank Zopa made an important update regarding the future of their peer-to-peer business. After 16 years of handling P2P investments at Zopa, the team has taken the decision to close down their retail investing business (something similar to… Read More

December 30, 2021 @ 11:07 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Zhikai Chen, Head of Asia Equities at BNP Paribas Asset Management, notes that a number of factors justify their hopes for “a better year after the challenges that 2021 brought to Asian equities, and northern Asian equities in particular.” Chen writes in a blog post… Read More

December 30, 2021 @ 9:45 am By JD Alois  |  

Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, has acquired the remaining shares of Swipe, a Visa card platform that enables users to spend crypto. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Binance acquired a majority portion of Swipe in 2020. According to a… Read More

December 30, 2021 @ 9:01 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Freetrade‘s Head of People, Amy Gilman, has reflected on a “big” 2021 and an “even bigger” 2022. Gilman writes in a blog post that 2021 has been “an incredible year of growth for Freetrade.” She added that whether that’s growth to “over 1 million registered… Read More

December 30, 2021 @ 8:52 am By Omar Faridi  |  

On 21 December 2021, a special administration order was reportedly made by the Court in relation to Viola Money “under the Payment and Electronic Money Institution Insolvency Regulations 2021.” The Viola Money website explains its service as follows: Since 2012, we have been providing simple,… Read More

December 30, 2021 @ 1:12 am By Omar Faridi  |  

The team at LendInvest, a leading digital financing platform for the UK market, has commented on the importance of rates and technology, as part of their preview of 2022. LendInvest Sales Director Leanne Smith notes that in her role (as sales director for their internal… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 11:17 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Fintech firm Monzo notes that you can now choose to set your contactless spending limits “to levels you’re comfortable with.” Or you may choose to turn contactless off completely if you want to, the team at Monzo writes in a blog post. In October 2021,… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 9:28 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Team8, an Israeli venture group, recently revealed that it is extending its existing relationship with Deloitte to support the development of various technologies for financial services. Deloitte and Team8 will aim to lower the common risks associated with startups via early engagement with clients. As… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 7:21 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Coin Metric State of the Network Report #135 notes that decentralized finance (DeFi) has experienced tremendous growth during the past few years. At present, the most widely-used metric to measure DeFi adoption is called “Total Value Locked”, or TVL. According to Coin Metrics researchers,… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 5:00 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao or CZ notes that there are many “misconceptions” out there about crypto and that he will address a few of them. For example, many people say that “Regulation is bad for crypto.” According to CZ, we should not hold such a simplistic… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 3:55 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Anil Stocker, CEO at UK-based MarketFinance, a leading online lender that raised £280 million in debt and equity (earlier this year) and was approved for flex loans, notes that for most businesses in the United Kingdom, 2021 presented both opportunities and challenges (and that was… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 2:51 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

In May 2021, the team at digital assets firm Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) had announced the launch of Coinbase Giving. As explained in a blog post, Coinbase Giving is the operational “embodiment” of their ongoing commitment to Pledge 1%, which is the firm’s “promise to dedicate… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 2:45 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Ruby Datum, which aims to be a platform with a “credible” reputation for being intuitive, resilient, and rapid for collaboration, has raised 76% (£114,456) of its £150,000 target from 131 investors through its crowdfunding campaign via Crowdcube (with 16 days left in the campaign at… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 11:53 am By JD Alois  |  

Wefunder is one of the leading investment crowdfunding platforms in the United States. A FINRA regulated funding portal, Wefunder is frequently the top offering platform when it comes to Reg CF offerings in any given month. In 2021, Wefunder published an “Impact Report” that highlighted… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 10:56 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Nicholas Harding, Co-founder and CEO at Lending Works, noted that he established the firm with help from Matthew Powell,  Co-founder and CFO, back in 2014. Harding explains that they believed that technology could “transform customer experience in financial services.” Their aim was to “deliver this… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 10:18 am By JD Alois  |  

In December 2019, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers in France approved its first initial coin offering (ICO). France had previously pushed forward legislation that sought to regulate ICOs under the French Pact Law (or Loi Pacte). The Loi Pacte introduced an optional visa regime for… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 9:25 am By Omar Faridi  |  

The team at Molo Finance has shared some notable buy-to-let hotspots in 2022. According to Molo Finance, which focuses on reimagining mortgages, buy to let continues to be a “popular way for people to invest their money.” And as we get ready to enter a… Read More

December 29, 2021 @ 6:04 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Chainalysis reveals that scams were once again the largest form of cryptocurrency-based crime by “transaction volume,” with more than $7.7 billion worth of crypto taken from unsuspecting victims globally. As noted by Chainalysis, that represents an increase of 81% compared to last year, a year… Read More

December 28, 2021 @ 5:01 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

It was an eventful week for the Java Ecosystem and the Open Source communities: on December 9, 2021, a critical vulnerability was found in the widely-used Java Logging framework Log4j (version 2). The team at payments Fintech Adyen has shared details on some of the… Read More

December 28, 2021 @ 5:00 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

More than half a billion dollars worth of cryptoassets were stolen from exchanges in the first half of December, compliance firm Elliptic said in a recent blog post. On Dec. 11 and 12, close to $83 million was stolen from AscendEX, a cryptoasset exchange that… Read More