We are making a change this week in how the weekly news roundup is presented. What we will be doing from now on is sharing what I consider to be the top 10 most important news stories of the past week (in no particular order).
Upgrade raises $40 million at a $1 billion valuation from Techcrunch – You have to hand it to Renaud Laplanche and his Upgrade team. Raising money at twice the valuation of the previous round, during an economic calamity, is very impressive.
Credit Sesame acquires Canadian digital bank Stack from PYMNTS – The fintech M&A deals continue with Credit Sesame
acquiring their Canadian bank partner Stack as they look to roll out more banking products and grow internationally.
These are the 2020 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies from CNBC – the annual CNBC Disruptor list has, as usual, many leading fintech players including Stripe, Klarna, SoFi, Better, Lemonade, Affirm, Kabbage, Tala, Marqeta and Robinhood.
‘Banking While Black’: How Cashing a Check Can Be a Minefield from The New York Times – While banks require employees to complete annual diversity programs there are many examples of negative experiences at banks for black customers.
Wirecard CEO Resigns After Banks Say Missing $2 Billion Doesn’t Exist from The Wall Street Journal – The story of the missing $2 billion at Wirecard feels like a Hollywood movie and the mystery keeps deepening.
Small Businesses Get Easier Path to Relief-Loan Forgiveness from The New York Times – With less than two weeks remaining until the PPP expires the forgiveness rules have changed again, making it an even better deal for most small businesses.
Metro Bank in Talks to Buy RateSetter from AltFi – UK peer to peer lending pioneer RateSetter is in exclusive talks to be acquired by Metro Bank in what would be the first acquisition of a major platform by a bank.
Americans Skip Millions of Loan Payments as Coronavirus Takes Economic Toll from The Wall Street Journal – More than 106 million loans have been enrolled in some kind of forbearance program, with the vast majority being for student loans.
Kabbage lets Uber drivers apply for PPP loans from their phones from American Banker – Kabbage continues to innovate around the PPP, this time with a special app for Uber drivers.
LendIt Fintech Launches New Fintech Job Board from Lend Academy – We launched our fintech job board this week to help the industry recover from the crisis.
