Issue 323 August 5th, 2021

Interview with Martins Sulte who is the founder and CEO of Mintos. It’s the biggest P2P Lending marketplace in Europe and they started in 2015 and are headquartered in Riga. On mintos platform, there are currently around 50 companies that lend out loans in 12 currencies to borrowers in 38 countries worldwide. More than 40k investors fund loans in 9 loan segments. Like car loans, property, agriculture, small business, consumer loans and so forth. The episode covers how Martins Sulte experienced and managed the first real economic crisis due to Covid19 and discusses how the industry will evolve going forward e.g. with regulation. Other topics: - How regulation will make a difference for mintos - the marketplace model - how to attract quality Loan Originators - how martins invests - Social responsibility and ESG in P2P - New default strategies for investors

The infrastructure bill’s crypto provision had the industry scrambling to lobby for change. On this episode of “The Breakdown,” NLW covers the continuing saga of the bill, including:

• A recap on the bill’s crypto provision and subsequent backlash
• Crypto industry’s resistance going mainstream
• Regulatory battles to come

We cover a lot of venture capital news here at TechCrunch. New funds, partner changes, the funding rounds themselves — the list is long. Lately, we’ve had to touch on rolling funds, solo GPs and a faster-than-ever investing cadence that has rewritten the rules of venture investing. Gone are the days when investors can take weeks, let alone months, to get into a hot deal in today’s turbocharged private markets.

While historically, stablecoins were created for use in the crypto and blockchain realm, interest is expanding to the traditional financial sector where a growing number of financial institutions are attempting to find ways to integrate stablecoins into their businesses.

A number of insurtech startups are coming to market through blank-check companies. Here are valuations of several that have announced special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) plans.

BNPL has emerged as one of the hottest fintech areas over the last year, with the likes of Affirm and Klarna being joined by banks, PayPal and, reportedly, Apple. Visa has set up a website providing its credit card issuing partners with APIs to develop and pilot their own instalment payment programmes. Users can choose the duration of loans, the participating merchants and cards, and the interest and fees.

Banking co-operative Swift is moving into the low value remittance market with the launch of Swift Go, a service that enables consumers and small businesses to send near real-time payments anywhere in the world direct from their bank accounts.

The launch of Synapse's Credit Hub, which is designed to "democratize credit, so that the credit invisible can build, and get access to, credit" is a good example.

Between banks, credit unions, fintech companies, and other non-bank financial services providers, consumers have never had more choices for where to keep their hard-earned cash. The ongoing gentrification of the deposit product landscape has already transformed traditional checking accounts into mere paycheck motels and will, eventually, lead to more permanent relocation of consumers’ direct deposits.

It takes a lot of work, time and effort to build a product that's going to stand out, and solve your customers' job. There are great APIs and great Banking as a Service provider but they’re all a part of the solution. 11:FS Foundry is the new Core Banking platform by 11:FS

Square plans to buy Australian fintech company Afterpay as it looks to expand further into the booming installment loan market. Jack Dorsey’s payments company announced the $29 billion, all-stock deal on Sunday evening. The price tag marks a roughly 30% premium to Afterpay’s last closing price.

CEO B.C. Silver sat down with VIBE to detail how his team is working to close the wage gap in communities of color across the country.

Mercury, a San Francisco-based fintech startup which offers banking services for startups, announced that it has raised US$120 million during its Series B funding round and is now valued at US$1.62 billion.

The successful marketplace lender is one of the few fintechs to buy a bank. In an exclusive Banking Transformed podcast interview, Scott Sanborn, CEO of LendingClub, details the reasons — and advantages...

"My belief is that (a) a company has to have digital leadership to change the firm to a business model born for the internet; and (b) the company must be committed to do good for society and for the planet (ESG), not just good for the shareholder (ROI)."

61% of digital architects report that past technology decisions made completing digital transformation projects more difficult — yet 91% still rely on legacy databases to some extent, according to a new report by Couchbase.