Republic First is the new First Republic (TWIF 5/3)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to another week of fintech news! You’re in good company, with 107,000+ founders, investors, and fintech leaders who subscribe to This Week in Fintech.

Today's writeup is brought to you by our friends at Finley.

I was recently reminded of a great perennial resource for founders. I'd strongly recommend a read for anyone starting their first fintech company:

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

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Visa partnered with Allium Labs to launch the Visa Onchain Analytics Dashboard in order to track global stablecoin usage:

Over the weekend, U.S. regulators seized Pennsylvania's Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank, marking the latest in a series of US bank failures that began last year with the collapse of Signature Bank and SVB. Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China, which regulates the financial sector, signalled its discomfort over the scale of Chinese banks’ move into long-dated sovereign bonds, which are vulnerable to moves in interest rates similar to those that affected US banks.

700 banks and financial institutions have so far connected to The Federal Reserve's FedNow instant payment system, but the regulator is aiming for 8,000 enabling institutions.

M&T Bank partnered with Sunstone Credit, a commercial solar loan platform, to give more businesses access to solar financing.

NatWest became the first bank in the UK to extend an Intellectual Property-backed loan to software company Sci-Net.

GM is considering moving its $2 billion credit card program from Goldman to Barclays.

Mastercard launched a new program for startups seeking to extend digital payments.The European Parliament voted to enact laws to strengthen its AML and terrorist financing, focused on the crypto industry.

Mesh* launched Mesh Ramp, a new on-ramp solution that streamlines the conversion between fiat and crypto for wallets and exchanges.

Nova Credit launched the NovaScore Cash Flow, which analyzes cash flows from income, expenses, debit transactions, and financial behaviors to provide lift in multiple use cases and across credit tiers.

Expensify, the financial management app for expenses and corporate cards, announced new expense-tracking features for self-employed professionals.

Kojo, a construction industry materials and inventory management platform, launched Kojo accounts payable - a suite of features built for commercial construction accounting teams.

Vita Wallet, a Chilean provider of cross-border payments and collections through a digital wallet, launched new functionality focused on trade and import payments.

📺

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.

CRED, a provider of credit products to Indian consumers, received approval from the Reserve Bank of India for a payment aggregator license to launch new products.

Buy now, pay later provider Sezzle is gamifying on-time payments with a loyalty programme designed to encourage financial responsibility.

Abound, a British provider of open banking-based technology to assess customer creditworthiness, announced that it is now profitable.

Cross River, a New Jersey bank and banking-as-a-service platform, originated $200 million in real estate loans in the beginning of the year.

Marqeta and Uber Eats expanded their partnership into into eight new markets: Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Costa Rica.

FastSpring, a Brazilian tech platform that powers payments for software companies, partnered with EBANX to expand the usage of the Pix payment in Brazil.

Ripple is partnering with SBI Group and HashKey DX to bring XRP-based supply chain finance to Japan.

Identity management solution Alloy partnered with Coris to automate SMB risk & fraud intelligence.

Federal prosecutors are examining financial transactions at Block, after internal documents revealed that Block processed crypto transactions for terrorist groups and Square processed transactions involving nations subject to economic sanctions.

The Central Bank of Nigeria directed Kuda Bank, Moniepoint, OPay and Palmpay to stop onboarding new customers.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao received a four month prison term after pleading guilty to violating US anti-money laundering requirements.