FinTech News Issue #12 February 18th, 2015

FinTech Articles

    Cyptocurrencies, blockchain, alternative lending, and the tech payments wars have the financial services industry buzzing as technology merges with finance. To bring stakeholders and innovators together, MaRS has launched FinTech

    Fintech is on fire. Better, it’s white hot. According to an oft-cited study released by Accenture, global investment in financial technology ventures tripled from US$928 million to US$2.97 billion between 2008 and 2013.

    Seed thinks that business banking is opaque, expensive, and behind the times. The company, which is part of the Winter 2015 Y Combinator class, wants to shake up banking, bring it into the API era.

    Held in London, the Finovate Europe event is one of the most exciting fintech gatherings in the world. With 60 demos covering the best new innovations on the planet, here are our five ones to watch.

    Poland’s Idea Bank has launched an experimental branch aimed at corporate clients. The ‘Idea Hub’ bank branch was created to test the idea that innovative bank branches can attract customers and provide a complementary service to online and mobile banking services.

    Google and Square’s newly revealed brick-and-mortar payment collaboration, which is aimed at regaining the turf ceded to Apple Pay over the first few months of the platform’s rollout, falls somewhere on the above spectrum.

    Safaricom plans to introduce M-Pesa payment cards that will be used for settling government services and taxes, in yet another move that puts the telco in a head-to-head competition with commercial banks

    Bitcoin's public image may have taken a beating recently. However, there is evidence to suggest that bitcoin's popularity may be rising in the Czech Republic.

    PAY.ON, has released their Open Payment Platform based on open API architecture.

    Samsung just made a major move in its bid for the company's own version of Apple Pay. The South Korean-based company is acquiring the mobile payments platform and Apple Pay rival LoopPay, the two companies announced Wednesday.