Hello and welcome to the November edition of Fintech Monthly, We’ve partnered up with Braintree to bring you a special series of fintech articles on payments, ecommerce and more. Check out staging.uktech.news
In the news
The next-generation lending company Earnest has raised a whopping $275m in equity and debt financing, Earnest lends between $2m and $5m per day and the total dollar amount the company has loaned has increased 50 times over the past year. Of its products, Earnest’s student loan business is its largest followed by its lending business for personal loans.
A fintech trade mission, organised by UK Trade & Investment, headed to Switzerland this month to promote the UK’s fintech sector, attract investment and boost business opportunities. The fintech companies selected for the trip included Innovate Finance and its members Bankable, Clear Macro, Credits, and many more. Britain’s fintech market generates £20bn in annual revenue and over 44,000 people work in the sector in London alone
Visa Europe’s innovation hub is teaming up with distributed ledger specialist Epiphyte on a proof of concept project looking into how the blockchain and bitcoin can be used for international remittances.A report from the World Bank last year put the global amount of remittances in 2014 at $582bn and estimated that migrants paid an average of 7.9% in fees on these money transfers. Could Blockchain be the answer? Visa’s experience as the largest payments network in the world could help create the solution.
We asked Richard Goold of Wragge Lawrence Graham and Co whether big companies like Visa can overcome bureaucracy and drive innovation by working with startups to improve financial processes? Or is it better to let startups take the lead?
For more from Richard, check out his regular posts on staging.uktech.news
Regulatory issues are set to be the biggest hurdles facing financial technology firms over the next year, according to a survey by Silicon Valley Bank. Of 101 fintech entrepreneurs and investors surveyed by Silicon Valley Bank, 43% expect this growing tide of red tape to be their biggest problem facing developing fintech companies. This was backed up by the British Bankers Association (BBA) in a report called ‘Winning the Global Race’ which called for further support for fintech companies, which it called “an increasingly critical part of the banking ecosystem”.
That’s it for this month, tune in next month for your fintech news roundup.