Banks ❤️ Crypto (TWIF 10/4)

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Hello Fintech Friends,

I keep saying 'stablecoins' and they keep happening.

In other news - we are going to be everywhere in the world in the next couple months. I'll be speaking at the AI in Banking Summit and MX Money Experience Summit in Utah next week, and we'll be hosting events in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and more – check them all out here.

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to network with us at Finosummit in CDMX! You can watch the recap movie here:

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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A Message From our Partner

Public launches the Bond Account, offering a 6.5%* yield

You may know Public as the all-in-one investing platform where you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, and more. Now, Public has taken another step in making fixed-income investing more accessible with the launch of its Bond Account.

At a time when bond yields are at their highest levels in years, the Bond Account allows you to lock in a 6.5%* yield. In just a few clicks, you can now invest in a diversified portfolio of ten investment-grade and high-yield bonds that generate 20 interest payments annually.

With the Fed preparing for what many expect to be a series of rate cuts, the Bond Account offers a timely opportunity to lock in today’s historically high bond yields.

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Europe's big banks, including BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and Worldine, partnered to launch wero, a European payments network and digital wallet meant to challenge Visa and Mastercard's market dominance.

Bank of America launched an account designed to help parents teach their kids about money.

HSBC partnered with global trade network Tradeshift on a joint venture to offer embedded finance solutions to businesses.

Crypto is back in banking -

First Abu Dhabi Bank and JP Morgan are piloting programmable payments using using JP Morgan's JPM Coin Blockchain Deposit Accounts, BBVA plans to launch a stablecoin in 2025 using Visa's stablecoin support network, banks around the world will start piloting digital currency transactions on Swift's payment network...

...and just about every big bank and central bank is partnering with the Bank for International Settlements on a blockchain-based project that aims to overhaul cross-border payments worldwide.

JP Morgan plans to open around 100 new branches in low-income areas. (And is also prepared to sue the US government over the liability for Zelle scams and losses.)

Fidelity is slashing its mobile deposit limits following a wave of account fraud.

The Bank of England is forming a consortium to monitor the use of AI in financial services.

Trinidad and Tobago became another country to roll out India's UPI payment rails.

Wells Fargo and Fiserv are ending their long-running merchant acquiring joint venture.

Latin American KYC provider Zenpli* launched their AI-driven KYB platform.

Corporate card platform Brex launched a wave of new features: a new Impact Dashboard that shows you detailed metrics on how your company spends, a smarter search experience, and new local-currency bill pay.

Galileo launched a secured credit card with dynamic funding.

European payments giant Adyen launched a raft of new in-person payments products (more on that below).

Transaction insights platform Bud launched AI agent banking capabilities.

Zambian pre-paid card issuing and acquiring business Kazang Pay launched its card acceptance solution for merchants.

European embedded finance provider Paynetics and MyMonty launched a digital wallet in EU and UK, while embedded finance platform Liberis launched Flexible Cash Advance to fund eBay sellers up to $2 million.

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Sponsored Content

Public launches the Bond Account, offering a 6.5%* yield

You may know Public as the all-in-one investing platform where you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, and more. Now, Public has taken another step in making fixed-income investing more accessible with the launch of its Bond Account.

At a time when bond yields are at their highest levels in years, the Bond Account allows you to lock in a 6.5%* yield. In just a few clicks, you can now invest in a diversified portfolio of ten investment-grade and high-yield bonds that generate 20 interest payments annually.

With the Fed preparing for what many expect to be a series of rate cuts, the Bond Account offers a timely opportunity to lock in today’s historically high bond yields.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

Sima Gandhi, previously the CEO of Creative Juice, started the Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards, an industry coalitions for fintechs to join forces on compliance and monitoring. Companies like Stripe, Brex, Block, and Mercury have already joined.

In a first, an Israeli AI chatpot was given regulatory clearance from the securities authority to provide financial investment advice.

Payments firm TrueLayer saw its revenue grow from £4.1 million to £12.3 million over the year, despite netting a £55.6 million pre-tax loss.

French neobank Qonto will open new offices in Austria, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Social media giant Meta launched an anti-fraud information-sharing partnership with the largest UK banks to fight financial scams.

Crypto-to-fiat on-ramp MoonPay made it possible to purchase the PayPal stablecoin, PYUSD, across its platform.

Adyen added checkout loans from buy-now-pay-later provider Klarna to its payment terminals across Europe, North America, and Australia.

The UK Post Office will no longer offer MoneyGram services in the wake of a serious cyber security incident at the money transfer giant.

HSBC wrote off its stake in Monese two years after investing $35 million in the mobile banking provider.

Canadian publicly-listed earned wage access provider Payfare saw its shares fall 75% after losing Doordash, its biggest customer.

UK neobank Starling was fined £29 million for lax AML screening policies, while also in the UK, a man pleaded guilty to illegally operating a network of crypto ATMs without FCA registration.

All investing involves risk. Brokerage services for US listed securities, options and bonds in a self-directed brokerage account are offered by Public Investing, member FINRA & SIPC. Not investment advice. 

*This yield is the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across all ten bonds in the Bond Account, before fees, as of 10/02/2024. Because the YTW of each bond is a function of that bond’s market price, which can fluctuate, your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here and your YTW is not “locked in” until the time of purchase. A bond’s YTW is not guaranteed; you can earn less than that YTW if you do not hold the bonds to maturity or the issuer defaults.

A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. The 6.6% yield is the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across all ten bonds in the Bond Account, before fees, as of 10/02/2024. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. 

Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. You should evaluate each bond before investing in a Bond Account.  The bonds in your Bond Account will not be rebalanced and allocations will not be updated, except for Corporate Actions.

Fractional Bonds also carry additional risks including that they are only available on Public and cannot be transferred to other brokerages. Read more about the risks associated with fixed income and fractional bonds. See Bond Account Disclosures to learn more

While corporate bond yields should fall in reaction to a Federal Reserve rate cut, we cannot know whether that will be true of the bonds in the Bond Account, how quickly bond yields will respond, or how much they will decline.