Tech and Capital Markets Reform Fuel GCC IPO Boom

Digital bank Grasshopper has teamed with MANTL to provide clients with faster onboarding. The bank said in a Thursday (Jan. 26) news release that the partnership will see Grasshopper leverage MANTL’s commercial deposit origination solution “to strengthen its digital deposit origination platform for businesses and provide a superior customer experience.”

The FinTech IPO Index has enjoyed a rebound so far, despite the usual volatility. Year to date, the group is up 22%, buoyed by the past week’s rallies that saw the Index rise by 6.4%. Earnings season has shown that — as evidenced from the banks and the payment...

Smaller banks that sought to serve once-hot sectors like cryptocurrency are now exiting those verticals. This, as long-time crypto industry partner Silvergate Bank reports steep quarterly losses tied to $8.1 billion in withdrawals while it looks to reshuffle its digital asset business offerings, and Voyager Digital-servicing Metropolitan Commercial Bank and FTX-linked Moonstone Bank have both announced they are closing their crypto business lines and exiting the turbulent space.

Payments provider Mollie has named a former Klarna executive as its chief executive. Koen Köppen had been serving as Mollie’s chief technology officer since May, the Dutch company said in a Thursday (Jan. 26) news release, after holding the same role for five years at the Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) company.

Regulatory scrutiny post-FTX’s dramatic implosion has prompted a crisis of confidence in other industry actors. Perhaps no other firm has bee affected more so than rival cryptocurrency exchange Binance, itself in no small way responsible for the chain of events that led to FTX’s multi-billion-dollar evaporation in November of last year.

As European regulators crack down on unlicensed crypto exchanges, gaining approval is proving challenging. Last week, for instance, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, announced that it had fined the crypto exchange Coinbase €3.325 million (about $3.6 million) for operating in the country without a license prior to the firm being granted one in September of last year.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is helping increase access to financial services in Africa. In recent years, advances in machine learning, a type of AI, have had a profound effect on the delivery of financial services, helping to democratize access in Africa’s emerging economies. For example, it is being used to...

Smartphone sales fell worldwide last year as consumers grew more cautious in their spending. That’s according to a recent report by market research firm IDC, which found that worldwide shipments of smartphones dropped 18.3% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2022, the largest ever drop in a single quarter.

LendingClub’s results showed that higher interest rates are cutting into investors’ demand to buy loans. The company said in its earnings materials on Wednesday (Jan. 25) that marketplace revenue is down 28% as a result. Quarterly loan originations were $2.5 billion in the latest quarter, down from $3.1...

Tenable will invest up to $25 million in startups that can help its cybersecurity efforts. Those ventures will be part of the company’s new corporate investment Tenable Ventures, the firm said in a news release Thursday (Jan. 26). “Tenable Ventures will focus globally on early-stage startups developing novel capabilities...

Dubai Investments has acquired a 9% stake in Monument Bank. The Emirati investment company announced the news in a Thursday (Jan. 26) press release, with Vice Chairman and CEO Khalid Bin Kalban saying, “Investment in Monument Bank provides the Group a unique opportunity to foray into [the] digital banking space in one of the most advanced and regulated markets at an early stage.”

Total funding invested into African tech startups hit $6.5 billion in 2022. That’s according to a report published by venture capital (VC) firm Partech this week, which also showed that African firms largely escaped the global VC funding drought in 2022, with startup investment — spread across 764 deals — growing 8% compared to the year prior.

--- Across the world, insurance companies and InsurTechs are exploring how to use digital solutions to improve nearly all aspects of the insurance process. In Europe, for example, close to 90% of insurance firms have embarked on some sort of digitization initiative to improve the customer experience, especially for digital-first customers. The use cases are seemingly endless.

Cryptocurrency industry regulation in the post-FTX era has emerged as a pressing concern for the new Congress. It is no less pressing a concern for American consumers. This, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed in an interview Wednesday (Jan. 25) with the American Economic Liberties Projects (AELP) that the prior administration “essentially gave the green light” to a cryptocurrency market “full of junk tokens, unregistered securities, rug pulls, Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, money launderings and sanctions evasions.”

Atlantic Money has accused international money transfer service Wise of stifling competition. In a statement on its website on Friday (Jan. 27), the foreign exchange (FX) startup expressed its frustration at being delisted from Wise’s price comparison service, which allows consumers to compare the cost of cross-border transfers from different providers.

The B2B payment landscape is in the midst of a pivotal migration toward modern solutions. This, as decades-old legacy platforms and historically siloed finance office operations are creating a mounting technical debt that negatively impacts business planning and development cycles, hinders speed to market, as well as strains B2B ecosystem relationships with accounting and bill pay solutions that talk past each other.

Many FinTechs got walloped in 2022 for bloated valuations, which is increasing the focus on fundamentals and partnerships. PYMNTS’ Karen Webster recently discussed what that means for the industry with i2c CEO Amir Wain and Payoneer Co-CEO Scott Galit. Galit said it’s forcing a return to more rational valuations...

In a climate of economic uncertainty and consumer dissatisfaction, it is crucial that insurance companies understand what customers are looking for from their insurance providers. Companies that fail to meet consumers’ needs risk losing out to those that do — and competition is increasingly fierce. The funding of...

Unifiedpost and Munich Re have teamed up to provide invoice financing in Europe. The new strategic partnership will bring together Belgium-based Unifiedpost’s eInvoicing technology and customer base with Munich Re’s insurance expertise and financial capacity, the companies said in a Wednesday (Jan. 25) press release. The invoice financing...

Western Union has appointed interim Chief Financial Officer Matt Cagwin as CFO. Cagwin had served as the cross-border money transfer firm’s interim CFO since September and was named CFO effective Jan. 20, Western Union said in a Wednesday (Jan. 25) press release. “Matt is a talented finance executive with...