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.
Robinhood pulls bank charter application as fintechs face hurdles to disrupting financial system from CNBC – Robinhood is no longer looking to become a federally insured bank but says this dis not reflect a change in the company’s road map.
The 5 Debates That Will Shape Fintech In The 2020s from Forbes – In his regular weekly column Ron Shevlin peers into his crystal ball to give us the big issues that will face fintech in the coming decade.
Citi Ventures MD Ramneek Gupta: “Fintech will soon become a native component of how companies operate” from Crowdfund Insider – Another prominent venture capitalist has come out saying embedded finance is the way of the future.
FDIC’s McWilliams ‘inclined’ to join OCC on CRA but still has concerns from American Banker – We keep getting closer to CRA reform with FDIC chairman Jelena McWilliams saying this week she is inclined to join the OCC in this effort.
Fintech Zopa raises £140m just in time for banking licence from Yahoo Finance UK – Zopa needed to raise £130m by Tuesday for their new digital bank. It came down to the wire but they raised £140m in a significantly down round.
Bad Credit? Regulators Back Ways for Risky Borrowers to Get Loans from The Wall Street Journal – In a joint statement the five US banking regulators have acknowledged that using data outside a traditional credit report could expand the access and affordability of credit for certain borrowers.
What Went Wrong at Chime? How Rapid Growth Became Its Own Challenge At One ‘Challenger’ Bank from Fortune – A look into what was behind the October outage at Chime that left millions of people unable to use their Chime debit card.
Start-up Robinhood tops 10 million accounts even as industry follows in free-trading footsteps from CNBC – Robinhood is becoming a force in stock trading as they cross the 10 million account mark.
Figure scores $1.2B valuation for Mike Cagney from Pitchbook – Mike Cagney keeps demonstrating that his fundraising abilities are second to none. Figure is now a unicorn after announcing a $103 million Series C this week.
Digital Bank Chime Now Has A Valuation Of $5.8 Billion from Forbes – This is a big deal, literally. Chime has closed a $500m funding round that values the fintech leader at $5.8 billion up from $1.5 billion in March.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events 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. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.