Fintech News Issue #45 December 10th, 2015

[german only] Auch wenn ihr es vielleicht nicht glauben mögt, aber wir hatten das Thema schon vor dem Handelsblatt Artikel zu Lendico auf der Liste und auch für gestern geplant. Aber so passt es natürlich noch besser, dass Jochen und ich gestern mit Sebastian Rumberg über PR bei FinTech StartUps sprachen.

For ages, our signatures have been our identifiers with banks, but in the mobile age, signatures are risky, slow, and far less secure than other methods of identification. Between fingerprints, iris scans, biorhythms, and many other bodytech apps, there are better, faster, and more secure identifiers that banking can use.

Jeff Lynn, the CEO of crowdfunding platform Seedrs, has laid into minibonds, the debt instruments startups are increasingly turning to when they want to raise cash on crowdfunding platforms.

Fintech companies can bring our financial system to the next level, but only if they disrupt finance on the regulatory level as well. Here is how they should proceed. Story by Jürg Müller and Jonathan McMillan.

Another day, another robo-advice headline. It’s a human truth: we love to dissect a new trend and debate its merits. Internet communication amplifies this and we risk developing a distorted view of priorities; in particular, how to fill the growing mass-market advice gap.

Philanthropic investment firm backed by eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar, Omidyar Network, announced today in a press release on PE HUB its investment in eCurrency Mint (eCM), a Dublin-based company that has pioneered a new technology to enable central banks to issue digital fiat currency, called eCurrency.

Simply put, Forbes describes the companies on the list as “small firms destined to have a big impact on your financial future and possibly upend your portfolio.” This year, 20 Finovate and FinDEVr alums made the cut:

There is much talk about disruption and challenger banks. But there is currently little evidence of anything disruptive in the pipeline.

Australian federal police have raided the Sydney home of Craig Steven Wright, the man who—just a few hours ago—was named by Wired and Gizmodo as the probable creator of Bitcoin. Reuters reports that there are police at an office that's listed as the registered location of two of Wright's businesses, too.

Investors and founders hope that technology can help them revolutionise everything from lending and payments to bond trading, letting them do things faster, better, and cheaper than big banks have traditionally.

So we were having a conversation about rules-based versus principles-based regulation. The UK is an advocate of the latter, which some say caused the global financial crisis. I disagree.

Chris Skinner crunches the numbers where it relates to fintech dominance, and who’s spending what and where.