Apple hits $10B in user deposits and 12M cardholders (TWIF 2/2)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Lots of announcements to end the week -

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

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Visa reported significant growth in its first fiscal quarter, with a 20% boost in Visa Direct transactions, 6% more debit cards, and cross-border volumes up 16% year-over-year.

Shares of New York Community Bancorp fell 16% after the company swung to a fourth-quarter loss due to its purchase of the embattled crypto partner bank Signature Bank.

Mastercard is working on a new biometric authentication device to kill passwords once and for all.

The Bank of Ireland invested €60 million into putting ATMs in all its branches in the country.

Think tank The Atlantic Council warned that the US is falling behind other countries in CBDC research.

Lloyds Bank is shutting down its vans that provide streetside banking services.

Westpac was fined for unethical interest rate swap transactions, HSBC was fined £57.4 million for failing to accurately log accounts eligible for UK compensation, and the New York Attorney General is suing Citibank for failing to protect customers from fraud and scams.

Deutsche Bank plans to cut 3,500 jobs in an efficiency drive.

Klarna is introducing a $7.99 monthly membership for its buy-now-pay-later loans as it preps for IPO, and is reviving Money Story, a feature which enables customers to look back on their personal spending history over the past year.

Apiax, a regtech provider for banks, launched a GenAI policy assistant for compliance queries.

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Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is setting up its own AI unit.

Apple released metrics for its card program:

Figure is seeking SEC approval to issue an interest-bearing stablecoin.

Dutch neobank bunq reported €53.1 million in net profit in 2023, becoming Europe’s second most profitable neobank.

Germany's Auxmoney issued a €500 million social bond.

Nigerian payments processor Moniepoint announced that it processed 5.2 billion transactions in 2023.

The UK’s National Crime Agency published an amber alert that the art market has become a frequent vehicle for money laundering into the country.

Miden, a Nigerian startup that allows businesses to issue virtual cards to their customers through its API, joined Y Combinator, while Nigerian financial management app Kippa pivoted into edtech.

Real-time payments provider Volt signed a deal with Bumper to bring open banking to car dealerships in the UK and Europe.

Amazon enabled installment payments in Mexico through its partnership with Kueski.

This was quite a week for bad news -

Blue Ridge Bank received its second OCC enforcement action for its work with fintechs.

Securities lending fintech EquiLend went offline after hackers gained unauthorized access to its systems.

Terraform Labs, behind the bankrupt Terra stablecoin, finally filed for bankruptcy in the US.

PayPal started company-wide layoffs and Block laid off 1,000 employees.

RBI, India's central bank, imposed new curbs on Paytm Payments Bank following a critical compliance review by external auditors, effectively killing it off.

Biometric card provider Zwipe is leaving the payments market following disappointing uptake of its fingerprint-powered contactless cards.

The Bank of Lithuania fined Revolut €200,000 for amassing too many deposits.

UK open banking startup Kikapay closed down, Paysme, a financial super app for small businesses in the UK, is closing down, and fintech publication AltFi shut down after 10 years reporting on fintech.