Fathom4sight Newsletter: This week's FinTech news curated by Fathom4sight!
Payments
The partnership, gives Visa clients access to Prove’s Pre-Fill identity verification solution, which lets customers opt into pre-filling registration forms. “Today’s consumers expect signing up for a new account to take just seconds — any slower than that, and many abandon,” Prove CEO Rodger Desai said in a news release. “We’re delighted to be partnering with Visa to put powerful technology into the hands of more merchants and their customers. Our vision is to extend these capabilities into more consumer experiences to add trust to the digital economy.” | PYMNTS
Canada-based payment service provider Clik2Pay has updated its client portal to give businesses more control over their payments. With the new update, businesses now have easy access to the tools they need to track and manage customer payments. | The Paypers
PayPal focused on operational efficiencies in the first quarter as AI presented opportunities for the company to save money and improve workflows. During the quarter, PayPal reduced its technology and development spend 12% year over year to $721M, driven by an increased focus on cost control, according to the earnings presentation. | Bank Automation News
With the new Travel with Rewards program, Mastercard cardholders can redeem their points for travel bookings powered by Expedia. The solution is available to issuers in North America now and will be expanded to other markets soon, according to the press release. | PYMNTS
Mastercard has unveiled a digital account opening tool that uses open banking to integrate customer verification with identity insights into a single API. Open Banking for Account Opening verifies a consumer’s account ownership and their identity in real-time. It also prefills account and routing data to minimise errors. | Finextra
Building on the two firms’ existing fraud detection collaboration, Mastercard will be integrating Vesta’s iron-clad Payment Guarantee™ and Payment Protect risk scoring solution into its Mastercard Payment Gateway Services (MGPS) platform. | Finextra
Motive Partners potential acquisition of payments company ACI Worldwide has reportedly run into some roadblocks. The private equity firm is still working on the purchase, although talks have apparently slowed down due to recent upheaval in the banking industry and the cost of funding deals, per published reports. | PYMNTS
To improve that participation amid the continued great digital shift, Visa and TerraPay announced that they are working together to connect Visa solutions to the TerraPay network of wallet providers to expand SMBs’ access to commercial cards, bank accounts and mobile digital wallets across 26 global markets. It’s a fast track to financial inclusion as Visa rails connect seamlessly to a network of senders and receivers who are adept at using, and prefer to use, mobile and digital channels to send money across borders. | PYMNTS
Based on the information detailed in the announcement, the partnership is set to provide a single point of integration for credit card instalments by having Splitit’s instalments-as-a-service combined with Visa Instalments into a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment option. | The Paypers
Cryptocurrency’s shiny object appeal has been dulled by ongoing industry turmoil and regulatory scrutiny. But digital assets have always served as a lightning rod for consumers. “What happened through 2022 was a lot of layoffs, companies going under and consumer losses,” Brendan Berry, head of payments products at enterprise crypto provider Ripple. | PYMNTS
Crypto & DeFi
Binance says new regulations in Canada have forced it to exit that country’s crypto market. “We had high hopes for the rest of the Canadian blockchain industry,” the world’s largest crypto exchange said in a statement. “Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time.” | PYMNTS
For years, audits of crypto companies had been facing regulatory scrutiny in Canada. But Dustin Zinger, investor relations manager at Vancouver-based Neptune, said the November collapse of crypto giant FTX brought the issue further under the microscope. | The Logic
As the Financial Times reported, sources with knowledge of the deal say Worldcoin is in talks to raise $100M ahead of its launch, which comes amid a rough season for digital currencies. “It’s a bear market, a crypto winter. It’s remarkable for a project in this space to get this amount of investment,” said one of the sources. Founded in 2019 by Altman and Alex Blania, Worldcoin aims to use eyeball-scanning technology to launch a worldwide identification system that would let every person in the world access cryptocurrency. | PYMNTS
Financial Institutions
In the first case, the Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based bank has created a Visa credit card called TD Clear. It does not carry interest or late fees, and instead charges consumers a monthly fee of $10 for a $1,000 credit line and $20 a month for a $2,000 credit line, TD announced. | American Banker
Citi Retail Services has launched the first product of its new embedded payment suite Citi Pay called Citi Pay Credit. The Citi Pay Credit product is a digital credit card that can be offered by merchants at the point-of-sale. In addition to Citi Pay Credit, the company plans to offer merchants an add-on for installment lending options at a later date. Customers will pay in equal installments over a 6-to-60-month period based on the retailer. | PaymentsJournal
Wells Fargo Auto is looking to the bank’s enterprise-level AI for potential applications. “For the auto business, we have the benefit of being able to leverage those tools that are being developed at the enterprise level,” Head of Wells Fargo Auto Tanya Sanders said today at Fintech Nexus. | Bank Automation News
Lending
The credit agency hired by Mackenzie Investments to guard customers’ identities after a supply chain hack exposed their personal information is buckling under the demand. “We are experiencing higher than usual volumes and are doing everything we can to try to assist as many people as possible,” TransUnion told Mary Kate Williamson after she complained on Twitter, one of many responses to exasperated people trying to sign up for its services. | The Logic
Recommended by LinkedIn
Affirm is now working to shift more of its volume to loans offered at interest rates up to 36%, and simultaneously experimenting with offering "merchant-subsidized" lower-interest loans under 10%, the company said. As part of that shift, Affirm has formed a partnership with FICO, with which it's devising a "first-of-its-kind" approach for reporting its consumer loan activity to credit reporting agencies to be factored into industry credit-lending decisions. | American Banker
The company, which enables FinTechs and traditional financial institutions to quickly launch and confidently scale lending programs, shared the news alongside an announcement that it had partnered with Snaplii, a leading Canadian digital wallet and mobile payment fintech. “We have already built the industry’s most flexible servicing platform—one that can support virtually any asset class and can easily adapt as lending programs, regulations and borrower preferences change,” Peach CEO Eddie Oistacher said. | Fintech.ca
AI
According to Koïos, this funding would help it expand into new markets as it continues to develop its AI virtual assistant. Investors in this round included Propulia Capital, Canada Economic Development, Export Development Canada, Caisse Desjardins des Technologies, and other private investors that were not named. | BetaKit
Though venture funding has mostly slowed down for the technology sector, there are other channels available for Canadians to fund their innovation projects. | BetaKit
The firm is now migrating 100% of its traffic to APIs for financial institutions, including Capital One, J.P. Morgan Chase, USAA and Wells Fargo, Plaid Head of U.S. Financial Institution Partnerships Christy Sunquist wrote in a blog post. “Our goal is to remove the need to rely on screen scraping in order for consumers to use the apps and services they want, and the momentum across our API integrations will help the industry get there faster,” Sunquist wrote. | PYMNTS
FICO has debuted a pair of services to help lenders make better credit decisions. “As a longtime innovator in the use of alternative data in credit scores, FICO’s Inclusion Accelerator Program and Financial Inclusion Lab will be a catalyst in enabling the lender community to foster broader alternative data adoption, and enable a more inclusive lending system rooted in accessibility,” the company said in a news release. | PYMNTS
Challenger Banks
The new update to its profitable wealth and trading business will allow its European customers to invest directly in c.150 fractional ETFs, whereby retail investors are the legal owners of the underlying shares and securities. This means they are entitled to dividends and other shareholder voting rights. Upvest provides the brokerage, settlement and custody infrastructure as well as regulatory permissions through its German licenses. | AltFI
The Revolut Loans offering will be available exclusively to French residents with zero opening fees, and thanks to Revolut’s use of open banking, hardcopy paperwork will not be required to submit loan applications. Users will have almost instant feedback on their request. | Finextra
Insurance
Trufla announces the successful integration of its Broker AI data tools with PowerBroker. The powerful integration enables insurance brokers to provide PowerBroker users with enhanced real-time data insights and tools to improve their marketing, sales, customer retention, and operations. | Insurance-Canada.ca
Segic, a technology company specializing in developing a global platform for organizations’ group and individual benefits, is proud to announce the launch of new employee benefits through a partnership with Kaleido, a Quebec leader in education savings (RESP). Segic’s rapid growth in the Canadian market and its desire to quickly enter the global stage helped it target innovative suppliers that offer services to employees participating in a benefits or group insurance plan, self-employed workers or associations through the Segic platform’s Benefits Marketplace. | Insurance-Canada.ca
Wealth Management
"This partnership is another way we're raising the bar for our clients by giving them greater insights into their full financial picture and finding opportunities to help them reach their goals faster," said Paul Teshima, Chief Client Experience Officer at Wealthsimple, said in a press release. | Wealth Professional
US-based Wealth Management firm Citigroup Inc. plans new credit card for use with multiple retailers
Citigroup Inc. plans to debut a new credit card with multiple retailers that consumers will be able use for larger purchases. The new card, known as Citi Pay Credit, comes from the lender’s retail-services unit and will be digital only. | Bank Automation News
RegTech
Experian has launched a FinTech-centric version of its fraud prevention network in the U.S. This new iteration of the company's Experian Hunter data network is being rolled out in response to a rise in fraud in the FinTech sector. The company said in a news release that the network gives users "a line of sight" into borrower activity throughout the FinTech sector to identify potential fraud risks. Participants can share fraudulent activity in real time by contributing data that’s linked across the network. | PYMNTS
Others
While much remains the same for Montréal-based Diagram in the third iteration of its fund, one change is that the venture builder is moving beyond company creation. Through this latest fund, the firm will invest in both companies it helps create as well as companies it does not. | BetaKit