Mercury is now B2C, Pipe is now B2B, and Costco gold is now DTC (TWIF 4/19)

Hello Fintech Friends,

We have a few international events coming up for our communities in Berlin, Mexico City, and Bangkok:

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

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Visa's merchant acceptance program launched Developer Assist, an AI-powered tool to help partners develop sophisticated payment flows, a new small and medium-sized business platform, and Tap to Phone, which allows sellers to accept contactless payments using a certified smartphone in 121 countries.

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, the largest federal bank in Germany, partnered with crypto custodian Bitpanda to use its 'investment-as-a-service' infrastructure for customers to store and procure cryptocurrencies.

Mastercard launched a new mobile virtual card app to simplify travel and business expenses. The card network also partnered with DeFi platform 1inch and banking-as-a-service provider Baanx to launch a crypto-to-fiat debit card.

US megabanks' net interest income didn't meet analyst expectations in spite of high a Fed rate.

Fintech ❤️ Banks: JPMorgan is using Codat's Supplier Enablement data API product to drive adoption of its virtual card for B2B payments.

Romanian neobank Salt, owned by Banca Transilvania Financial Group, went live on Starling's new BaaS platform Engine, onboarding 100,000 customers in its first two weeks.

London mayoral candidate Brian Rose wants to give London resident £100 in a new crypto token called the LONDON token.

Sanctions be damned: Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank recently posted dozens of advertisements for Russia-based jobs indicating ambitious plans to grow in the country.

The UK's Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology is working on two open finance applications for providing financial advice to vulnerable consumers and to speed up credit assessments for small business loan applications.

Canada's continually-delayed Real-Time Rail payments system now won't launch until 2026.

The Bank of England was criticized by the former chair of the Federal Reserve for relying on outdated technology for its economic forecasts.

Source: Fintech Business Weekly

Business banking provider Mercury* announced that it passed 100,000 startup users and launched Mercury Personal, a consumer bank account with a 5% APY on savings, $5 million in FDIC insurance through its sweep accounts, virtual debit cards, and smart routing rules for money movement. (Sheel from BTV breaks down the product features more here.)

Swedish buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna is launching its credit card in the US, which lets users pay in installments and get up to 10% cashback from some merchants.

Pipe is moving from direct to embedded with their latest product offering, capital-as-a-service for small businesses.

Ferry, a platform that facilitates automated instant tip payouts and tax compliance for hospitality businesses, launched an advanced payroll card and instant tip payment solution for BJ's Restaurants.

Something new: Cherub launched a dating app for the an angel investing community that matches investors and founders.

Full stack payment processor Finix launched a Merchant Underwriting solution to automate underwriting workflows and streamline merchant onboarding processes.

Core banking, payment processing, and ledger provider Episode Six partnered with e-money institution Loop to power a new banking-as-a-service offering built for fintech in Saudi Arabia.

Uruguay Innovation Hub launched a funds-matching investment program for startups.

EquityBrix launched a new fractional investment market for real estate.

Aurora Payments launched its new ARISE Payment Platform, a cloud-based, payment-agnostic (?) payment system designed SMBs.

Forter launched a suite of tokenization, anti-fraud, and identity solutions.

📺

Sponsored Content

Raising debt capital is a crucial requirement for card, lending, and neobank startups, but most fintech operators don’t come from a capital markets background. That’s why Finley and Cross River Bank put together this comprehensive guide to raising debt capital. It outlines the people, processes, and partners you need to assemble to execute a debt capital raise. Download your free copy here.

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

Costco is generating an estimated $100 to $200 million per month (!) in gold sales.

Brazilian neobank Nubank announced plans to go beyond providing banking services by launching its own mobile phone operator company.

Payments app Kevin completed its first account-to-account (direct bank pay) NFC transaction on an iPhone. It will be interesting to see whether low-friction mobile tap payments take off as a form of payment to replace credit cards, if merchants + payment apps are able to compete with rewards.

Shares in core banking provider Temenos rose after it was revealed that an investigation commissioned by the company found that the accusations of short seller Hindenburg were "inaccurate and misleading."

German audit watchdog Apas found that EY's audits of collapsed payments firm Wirecard were – unsurprisingly – grossly negligent.

The CFPB issued an order against BloomTech, a fintech provider of income-sharing agreements and student loans, claiming that the startup deceived students about the cost of loans and making false claims about graduates’ hiring rates: