Signals 2.4 (Q2 2020)

Legacy financial services providers and non-banking fintechs launching their own neobanks, including Klarna, Walmart, MoneyLion, Affirm, SoFi / Samsung, Green Dot / Remitly, and Commonbond.

New geo-specific and vertical-specific neobanks launching out of stealth, including Nestlums (kids), Lunar (teens), Yotta Savings (lottery savings), Wave Money (SMB), Shopify Balance (SMB), Remitly (immigrants), Stilt (immigrants), Jingle Pay (UAE), and Oxygen (freelancers).

New products added to neobanks, such as Miso (PFM), Revolut (account aggregation, Lithuania expansion), Illimity (scooters, account aggregation, fitness), Eversend (donations), and ZA (life insurance).

Walled payment methods: Facebook Pay in the UK, WhatsApp Pay in Brazil, Shop Pay as a form of payment on Shopify, and WooCommerce Pay on their eponymous e-commerce site.

Distributed / unwalled payments methods: Flutterwave and Ripple’s PayID collaboration, Worldpay’s account-to-account payments, Plaid’s Payment Initiation product in the UK, and Dharma’s Twitter payment system.

Competitive land-grabs: Square moving into online payments and Paypal moving into retail through QR codes.

New payment concepts: Finix Flex to allow merchants to process immediately and Spare to allow consumers to use merchants as ATMs.

Yotta Savings launched a lottery-based cash prize FDIC savings account.

Thought Machine, a banking core provider, launchedNestlums, a character-driven money management app for young children.

Miso launched real-time net worth tracking.

Revolut launched its open banking account aggregation feature in Ireland (while increasing its fees and fighting with customers over crypto custody).

Italian neobank illimity announced an open banking tool with a scooter-sharing and fitness app.

German neobank Vivid Money announced its partnership with licensed digital bank solarisBank and Visa to launch its consumer-facing mobile bank.

Klarna is the latest fintech pivoting into the neobank space. This week, the installment lender launched a digital bank in collaboration with German savings marketplace Raisin, boasting a 0.35% APY - seven times higher than the average German savings account. The Swedish fintech also launched a rewards program called Vibe, which provides points for every $1 spent at select retailers with cashback opportunities.

Wave Money launched the waitlist for its business neobank product, which features automated bookkeeping, reconciliation, and spend categorization.

MoneyLion launched the waitlist for its upcoming digital bank and rewards debit card.

Purchase installment lender Affirm is the latest to offer a high-yield savings account, joining the fray with a 1.3% APY.

Student lender CommonBond announced SmartCash, a checking account tied to student loan repayments.

SoFi and Samsung announced the launch of their joint mobile money management and credit card product. Cash management accounts combine services and features that are similar to checking, savings and investment accounts under one product. With SoFi, customers’ funds are swept into partner banks, where they benefit from FDIC insurance.

Scandinavian challenger bank Lunar launched its card and app for teens.

Green Dot launched banking access for immigrants with no credit scores, in partnership with Remitly.

Walmart launched a 2% APY savings account - up to a balance of $1,000 - and features like family accounts and lottery-based savings.

Eversend, the cross-border African neobank, launched Donations for its users to give money to their favorite charities.

Dubai-based fintech Jingle Pay plans to launch a neobank focused on the UAE.

Jiko launched a retail bank backed by Treasury Bills, which consumers can buy directly.

Oxygen announced the public launch of its bank for freelancers and small businesses.

Stilt launched its bank account and card for immigrants.

Hong Kong neobank ZA expanded its product set into digital-only life insurance with ZA Life.

The Financial Clinic, with JP Morgan Chase, launched a financial coaching Marketplace on Change Machine.

Revolut announced the launch of their licensed bank in Lithuania, which will cater to the 300,000 customers it services in the country.

Financial planning app Snoop launched a month early.

US neobank HMBradley, focused on savings with a 3% APY, launched this week.

Shopify Balance: A business banking account and loans for merchants. No fees or minimum balances. This will include a Shopify customized virtual and/or physical debit card and cash-back cards.

Shop Pay: Shopify’s foray into becoming a payments platform for their merchants. 40 million users have now used Shop Pay, which the company claims is 4x faster and converts 2x as well as traditional checkout.

Fintechs including Flutterwave and Ripple are teaming up to work on a PayID to enable customers to instantly send money between their networks, without using ACH or cards as an intermediary. The distributed network is positioned as a counter to walled payment networks like Libra, WhatsApp pay, and Alipay. Facebook Pay, meanwhile, is starting to roll out in the UK.

WhatsApp launched its payment platform in its first target market: Brazil. This is a big step forward for Facebook, which has not been shy about having its eye on controlling payments.

Worldpay launched open banking payments, to let users pay merchants directly from their bank accounts, circumventing cards.

Spare ATM network allows users to go to merchants as ATMs and pick up cash with QR codes, passing on ATM fees to merchants.

Astra announced the launch of Virtual Sub Accounts in its money routing product. Astra released the beta of their Routines product.

Finix and Fattmerchant announced the launch of Finix Flex, to let merchants instantly begin processing payments.

Square announced its move into online checkout, to rival Paypal’s dominance in online payment.

Paypal conversely announced its rollout of QR code in-person payments, moving into Square’s turf.

E-commerce platform WooCommerce launched WooCommerce Payments, a native payments option for shoppers, powered by Stripe.

TrueLayer launched a no-fee charity donation app in the UK that uses payments rails to enable direct account-to-account transfers.

Plaid launched instant in-app Payment Initiation in the UK.

Dharma, a decentralized finance startup backed by Coinbase, launched a Twitter-based payments system.

Flutterwave launched a SMB e-commerce portal: a smart strategy to boost its payment revenues via captive online sales (and echoing Shopify’s roadmap).

I’m late to the game, but just noticed that Quickbooks launched cash flow forecasting in March.

Neo.tax, which provides an R&D tax credit to give startups an extra month of runway, launched on ProductHunt.

Rho Business has launched a platform to connect SMBs with the Paycheck Protection Program.

Carta has launched a capital call line of credit for venture-backed startups.

Clearbanc, which uses data like AdWords and e-commerce sales to provide debt financing to startups, launched Clearbanc Runway to fund startups and debit the repayments out of revenue-share.

Shopify Capital: Lent $1 billion to merchants so far, in ticket sizes ranging from $200 to $1 million.

Verizon announced its new Verizon Visa Card, with cashback up to 4% on grocery store and gas purchases and Microsoft debuted the addition of real-time stock prices in Excel.

Tomorrow, a ‘green’ German neobank, announced the launch of its new eco-friendly card design.

Scandinavian challenger bank Lunar launched its card and app for teens.

Grand Reserve launched the waitlist for their wine enthusiast rewards card.

Brex launched a new corporate credit card with a 1-day repayment cadence for young startups. African payments infrastructure startup

Launching a shot across Marqeta’s bow, Galileo announced its Instant Issuance product, to let clients launch a debit card in 14 days.

Upstart released their Credit Decision API, to offer its underwriting for auto loans, personal loans, and student loans as a service to lenders.

Artis Connect launched a white-labeled lending solution to connect financial institutions and small businesses.

Stripe announced new features including card issuing services, more local card networks, and business “revenue optimization”.

German banking-as-a-service provider Finleap launched a white-label mobile banking application.

Plaid launched its API Exchange to provide open banking APIs “out of the box” to banks.

Swiss core banking provider SIX launched its open banking tool to standardize the sharing of account information between banks and fintechs.

Trade finance technology platform Surecomp has launched an open banking API sandbox for banks to build on.

Earlybird launched a platform for parents to invest in their childrens’ futures.

Russian neobank Tinkoff launched a micro-investing service to let users round up debit card transactions into ETFs.

Danish neobank Lunar is launching a simple, no-frills stock trading platform in partnership with Saxo Bank.

Following last week’s partnership with Flutterwave, Uber Cash launched in South Africa.

Curve is bringing its credit card consolidation and automation tool to the US.

Paypal and Venmo announced that they will add crypto buying and selling to their platforms.

Plaid has partnered with Microsoft to let users access their financial data in Excel, similar toTiller.

Satchel released their ‘store of money’ business banking comparison tool.

Payments fintech Contis launched the ability for vulnerable people to give ‘carers’ their money to manage.

Google Pay launched ‘nearby spot’ to help users find local stores selling essentials.

TrueAccord, which helps lenders create a more humane collections process, launched Engage, a direct-to-consumer portal for individuals to negotiate down their debts.

Installment payments via Shop Pay, with the option for users to break purchases into 4 even payments at 0% interest.

Shop App: Less fintech and more Amazon competitor, with better merchant features and 16 million users so far.