Fintech News Issue #141 November 9th, 2017

Robo-advisory, along with artificial intelligence and big data, is a top trending buzz-word. It is the Uber of the professional investment advisory world, eliminating the intermediate role and thus reducing fees for the end-user.

The biggest threat for the banking sector is not fintechs. No, according to a recent report by McKinsey, that would be non-banking companies such as Amazon and Alibaba.

Rather unusual language being used here and by far not a new thing. But be advised to watch the video on the page. This sums up the blockchain hype perfectly [editor's note]

The organizers of a controversial bitcoin scaling proposal are suspending an attempt to increase the block size by way of a software upgrade.

It is quite awe inspiring to see people make the exact same mistakes they made 17 years ago. Of course, today’s investors are likely different people who, for the most part, have not lived through the .com bubble.

"Mad Money" host Jim Cramer sat down with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, who spoke to sweeping changes in the digital payment space.

The way people make payments is changing faster than any area of financial services, impacted by the changes in digital technology, competitive forces and consumer demands. Understanding the trends in payments is important for any bank or credit union wanting to serve the complete financial needs of consumers.

Bitcoin is a system with many strict rules but without any rulers. This is made possible because the rules are enforced by each and every user of the system. Changing the existing rules is nearly impossible, but new rules can be added if consensus is achieved.

The GetLine Network http://getline.in/, a decentralized P2P lending platform, recently reached out to us with one of their infographics on FinTech, and we thought it was appropriate and timely for our audience.

Research findings presented at this year’s conference may raise some eyebrows.

ABN Amro, ING and Societe Generale are joining forces with oil giants BP, Shell and Statoil, as well as several trading houses to build a blockchain-based digital platform for energy commodities trading.

Wells Fargo’s head of wholesale Internet solutions, Secil Watson, believes that while the “magic” of fintech is in new customer interfaces, that’s just the tip of an iceberg. What lies beneath the surface are all the cultural and technological changes required inside an organization to facilitate that.

Regtech startups are saving firms billions in regulatory fines and displacing manual risk and compliance with cutting-edge technology.

One of the people most responsible for the creation of a dedicated cryptocurrency research effort at a major U.S. university is speaking out against initial coin offerings (ICOs).

For the past few years, fintechs have argued they need to access bank customer account data to provide services like online loans, personal financial management and savings apps. Banks have been cautious about providing such information and unhappy with how fintechs have grabbed it by logging in with customers’ user names and passwords.