Fintech News Issue #132 September 7th, 2017

Karen Mills, former head of the Small Business Administration, says the glut of online lenders can be a boon for entrepreneurs by helping them obtain funds quickly. But the lenders still need to be more transparent about their rates and fees, and regulations would help.

Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer, Jason Maude, Head of Customer Analytics and Sarah Guha, Product Director at Starling are joined by David Brear and Simon Taylor for a round table discussion about all things Starling Bank!

European Union banks facing increasing competition from financial technology firms could find it easier to invest in software under rule changes being discussed with regulators.

The Bitcoin blockchain records data of transactions only. This means that if a block contains the information “Bob transferred 10 BTC to Alice”, this information authorizes Alice to make a transaction of at least 10 BTC, which, again, will be secured in a future block. To know how much BTC someone “owns”, you will need to track down each and every transaction ever made in the blockchain. Phew.

This article identifies and defines the FinTech industry and unfair competition law, examines the impacts that the law of unfair competition will have on this emerging industry, and provides guidance to minimize risk and exposure to unfair competition claims.

This guide explains how you invest in cryptocurrencies. Why should you invest in them? Which cryptocurrencies should you put in your portfolio? Where can you buy them, how can you store them, and how do you need to tax them? We try to give answers to the most urgent questions about investing in cryptocurrencies.

As the digital currency space has evolved and matured over the past several years, U.S. regulatory agencies have, for the most part, sat back and observed – none purporting to exercise jurisdiction over the digital currency space in any meaningful way.

The majority of consumers would gladly trade a few transactional bells and whistles on their mobile banking application for an interface that's easier to use. So why do financial institutions focus more on improving functionality instead of usability?

Sixty-three percent of countries have favorable or mostly favorable regulation of cryptocurrencies out of 60 states studied as of July, 21st 2017. This is a very good sign for the industry. Still there is a lot of room for growth and diligent work with regulatory bodies to make cryptocurrencies widely acceptable.

There is no escaping the fact that the majority of the financial services we consume daily have become indistinguishable commodities to most of us.

A cashless society remains a distant prospect for most of Europe, says Samuel Murrant, particularly in Italy, Germany and Spain.

Many executives in the banking industry aren't just out of touch with consumers and the external market. They are out of touch internally, with each other.

Eric Jackson interviews Balaji Srinivasan, an early crypto investor. He says, "The SEC has made clear that there are some forms of tokens that are not securities. I think tokenization eventually means everyone becomes an investor, once all the regulatory issues are worked out — from your computer itself to a kid in India messing around with $10."