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.
The Future Of Fintech: The New Normal After The Covid-19 Crisis by Forbes – In his regular Fintech Snark Tank column Ron Shevlin gives his perspective on what the new normal might look like for fintech companies and banks. He is quite optimistic (surprisingly) about the future of fintech.
Borrower, Beware: Credit-Card Fraud Attempts Rise During the Coronavirus Crisis by The Wall Street Journal – In April there was a 35% increase (year over year) in credit and debit card fraud as the fraudsters up their game during the crisis.
Payments Startup Marqeta More Than Doubles Valuation To $4.3 Billion by Forbes – I think Marqeta has become one of the biggest success stories in all of fintech. They just closed another big round ($150m) at more than double their valuation from 15 months ago. That would be impressive in normal times.
LendingClub Launches COVID-19 Focused Member Center to Help Members Regain Control of their Finances (press release) – This week LendingClub launched a new Member Center to provide “one centralized location where personal loan members can find assistance and support while managing their financial lives through the novel coronavirus”.
SoFi CEO says investor accounts have doubled in 2020, with 40% of stock trading in fractional shares by CNBC – In an interview on CNBC this week SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said that the number of SoFi Invest accounts have doubled since the start of the year and 40% of the trades are for fractional shares.
Mark Cuban and a bank CEO who first connected over Twitter built a free site to make it easier to apply for PPP loan forgiveness by Business Insider – It is impressive that Mark Cuban keeps pushing us all forward. Here is another partnership with Jill Castilla of Citizens Bank of Edmond that will help small business owners figure out the forgiveness part of the PPP.
Existing backers put another £40M into UK challenger bank Starling by Techcrunch – It was a good week for fintech fundraising with UK digital bank Starling Bank joining the fray with another sizable round.
Washington Warned: Launch Digital Fiat or Say Goodbye to USD Dominance by cryptonews – I have been following the Digital Dollar Project with great interest and they are now out with their first white paper with Accenture, it is a compelling read.
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.