Marketplace Lending News Roundup – April 21

News

During the week I share the latest marketplace lending and fintech news on Twitter as it happens. Then every Saturday I take the most interesting news items and blog posts from the past week and share them here.

Goldman Sachs Comes to the App Store from The Wall Street Journal – Goldman Sachs continues their push into retail banking with the acquisition of mobile app Clarity Money.

Inside a Kabbagehead from Banking Exchange – Good piece on Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein’s LendIt Fintech USA 2018 keynote from last week talking about how online lending platforms need to evolve.

How US banks are preparing for the GDPR from Tearsheet – While GDPR is a European Union regulation any US company with EU customers will have to comply by May 25.

How fintech lenders give mortgage borrowers an edge from MarketWatch – The National Bureau of Economic Research released a report on mortgage lending this week looking at the impact fintech platforms have had on the mortgage process.

CFO Usama Ashraf Talks Borrowing and Investing with Prosper from LendEDU – Interesting Q&A with the CFO of Prosper on why he decided to move from a traditional bank (USAA) to a leading fintech platform.

This fintech partnership could serve as template for small banks from American Banker – The partnership between New Resource Bank and P2Bi is a very interesting one. American Banker delves into this partnership and what it might mean for other community banks.

Mid-sized P2P platforms taking bigger market share from P2P Finance News – In the UK the largest online lending platforms are showing slower growth than the mid-sized platforms.

Goldman finally reveals more of its big plans for consumer banking from American Banker – In this week’s earnings call the Goldman Sachs CFO made it clear they are looking at many different opportunities to grow their Marcus business.

Fintech lender raises $65M to expand in developing nations from American Banker – I am a big fan of the work Tala is doing to improve access to capital for borrowers in developing nations. Congrats to Shivani Siroya and her team on their new funding round.

Elevate Announces Partnership with Mastercard on Credit Card Product for the “New Middle Class” from Crowdfund Insider – There are more credit card options today for subprime consumers than ever before. This week Elevate announced a partnership with Mastercard on a new kind of credit card for this population.

Kabbage Quiet as Rumors Grow Over Potential Orchard Acquisition from Finovate – There was certainly talk of this last week at LendIt Fintech but the companies are not saying anything. Is Kabbage acquiring Orchard?

Australia is great for fintech, but consolidation is coming: OnDeck from AltFi – It has been a busy month for OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow. He is based in NYC but spoke at LendIt Fintech in SF last week then immediately flew to Sydney where he gave the keynote at AltFi Australasia on Monday.

Solar project lending startup Wunder Capital raises $112 million as renewable energy shines from Techcrunch – Great to see solar finance company Wunder Capital raising $112M in equity and debt to expand their business. Congrats to Bryan Birsic and his team on this funding round.

Affirm now finances small-ticket items, signaling growing competition in payments from Tearsheet – Leading point of sale lender Affirm continues to expand its product offering loans down to $100.

  • Peter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series.