Issue 321 · Jul 15, 2021 Weekly edition · 6 min read

Issue #321

Big tech is taking another bit of the banking pie by soon adding another service to their payment offering. After Apple Pay and Apple Card it's a logical next step to offer different payment options and enrich the

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Fintech Finder to Pursue Regional Growth Opportunities

The company, which purchased Singapore-based financial comparison platform GoBear earlier this year, has appointed a chief growth officer, who will play a critical role in its global expansion.

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In this issue · 19 items

Today’s bank transformation: moving beyond the incremental bank automation news — The need for greater operational efficiency has taken on new urgency Open story ↗ The Ultimate FinTech & InsurTech LIVE Event FinTech Magazine — FinTech and InsurTech bring you the virtual conference that can’t be missed, streaming live from London Open story ↗ CBI and Crif form Open Banking partnership Finextra — CBI, hub for technological innovation and digitalisation of the financial industry has partnered up with CRIF, global company specialised in credit bureau & business information, advanced digital solution for business development and open banking. Open story ↗ Chinese banks tell staff to recruit up to 300 new digital yuan users each Cointelegraph — Six of China’s top banks have tasked their employees with promoting digital yuan wallets to 200 to 300 people a year. Open story ↗ Bullish on Ethereum’s London hard fork? Here’s an options strategy pro traders use Cointelegraph — Ethereum’s upcoming London hard fork could provide a perfect entry point for bullish ETH options traders. Open story ↗ Russian insurtech and telemedicine startup BestDoctor raises $26M B from Winter Capital Partners TechCrunch — Last year we covered BestDoctor’s series A round when the Russian insurtech startup raised $4.5 million for its online medical insurance platform for corporates, which also offers telemedicine services to employees. Open story ↗ Insurtech in Europe: H1 2021 in review https://twitter.com/FGraillot — What a first half of the year in the European insurtech scene: over €1.7B was invested across 52 deals. That’s basically more than 2019 and 2020 (read more) combined! Open story ↗ China Plans Security Checks for Tech Companies Listing Overseas New Yorck Times — The proposed rules would close a gap that let the ride-hailing company Didi go public on Wall Street before assuring Beijing that its data was safe. Open story ↗ Nordic mobile wallets Vipps, MobilePay and Pivo to merge Finextra — Nordic mobile wallets MobilePay, Pivo and Vipps are joining forces to create a single payments app with a combined user base of 11 million consumers across Finland, Denmark and Norway. Glenn Söderholm, head of personal & business customers in Danske Bank, says: "It is very expensive to compete with global competitors in this space and in order to continue to develop the most attractive solutions for our customers, MobilePay must be part of something bigger to gain scale and pool investments for further innovation." Open story ↗ GitHub unveils AI coding assistant for Visual Studio Code Infoworld — GitHub Copilot is an OpenAI-powered Visual Studio Code extension that can suggest lines of code or entire functions as you type. GitHub cautioned that Copilot does not always write “perfect” code, and that sometimes the suggested code will not work. Open story ↗ Fintech Division Established by Booking.com to Improve Access to Firm’s Global Travel Marketplace Crowdfund Insider — Booking.com reveals that it has formed a new internal Fintech division in order to support access to the firm’s global travel marketplace for clients and partners. Open story ↗ Innovation and Cloud Constraints in Regulated Industries - Panel hosted by Ian Miell Container Solutions — In this panel with Ian Miell, Mark Schwartz, Kyle Brown, Barbara Eder and Jonathan Haines, looking bureaucracy in the face and talk about cloud-native, security challenges, automation (and issues with MBAs in todays enterprise world. Open story ↗ ECB starts launches new project on Digital Euro CNBC — The digital euro would allow consumers to pay electronically, without the need for banknotes and coins. However, it would “complement” the existing monetary system rather than replacing physical cash and erasing the business of commercial lenders. “Our work aims to ensure that in the digital age citizens and firms continue to have access to the safest form of money, central bank money,” Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s president, said. Open story ↗ Apple, Goldman Plan ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Service to Rival Affirm Bloomberg — Apple Inc. is working on a new service that will let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments over time, rivaling the “buy now, pay later” offerings popularized by services from Affirm Holdings Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. The upcoming service, known internally as Apple Pay Later, will use Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Open story ↗ Visa on using advanced AI such as unsupervised learning to fight fraud The Machine — Incorporating AI requires commitment and follow-through, McSherry said. Visa consistently sees a 20% to 30% lift for advanced AI methods over “more garden-variety technologies,” but this requires heavy investment. Open story ↗ The gender gap in science and technology, in numbers World Economic Forum — Women made up a third (33%) of researchers in 2018 and have achieved parity when it comes to numbers in life sciences in many countries, the report says. But women make up just 28% of graduates in engineering and 40% of those in computer sciences – skills vital for the jobs of the future, it added. Female workers also account for just 22% of people working in artificial intelligence (AI) worldwide, although there are regional differences, according to UNESCO. Open story ↗ Fintech Summit Latam Latin America and the world are embracing the fight against COVID-19. Despite this challenge, Fintech demand in the Region has been accelerated. More than ever, financial institutions are facing the need to provide digital financial services. Every day increasingly, it is becoming clearer the importance of solid cross-country digital financial strategies. Open story ↗ American Express rolls out ‘Digital Receipts’ feature for Amazon purchases Zdnet — The credit card giant initially rolled out the Digital Receipts feature in February, giving all card holders in the US more information about the things they bought from certain merchants, including store name, logo, order number, date of order, items purchased, details of cost and merchant description. Now, American Express will do the same for Amazon purchases, providing order numbers and delivery details. The company said the feature is part of a larger partnership with Verifi. Open story ↗ Tiger Global Launches New ‘Crossover’ Fund Institutional Investor — Tiger Global Management has launched a new hedge fund.The Tiger Cub founded by Chase Coleman earlier this month raised about $1.1 billion for Tiger Global Crossover and an equivalent offshore version.The new fund is designed to devote a much bigger portion of its assets to private investments than its long-short Open story ↗

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Fintech Finder to Pursue Regional Growth Opportunities

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