It's Fintech Szn (TWIF 9/8)

Hello Fintech Friends,

📰 I hope you enjoyed your slow news week last week, because we're back!

🎉 Our first virtual Fintech Job Fair brought ~200 candidates and 6 employers together in Slack on Wednesday, but the recruiting must go on! Check out live session recordings, the directory of employers featured, and find latest open roles on This Week in Fintech’s job board. 

Special thanks to OppZo, Elementus, Basis, Yoh, and NayaOne for showcasing incredible job opportunities within the fintech community

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

📺

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Mastercard launched ALT ID, a custom tokenization capability developed by Mastercard to create an alternate identifier for the real card numbers.

Visa announced its next cross-border money movement product, expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain and working with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei.

LHV Bank partnered with UK fintech Raisin to move into the personal savings market.

Yes Bank in India added UPI capabilities to its eRupee app.

The London Stock Exchange Group is planning a new blockchain-powered marketplace.

Blackhawk is partnering with Visa to move from plastic to paper-based cards.

Financial messaging network Swift conducted a pilot to use its financial infrastructure in the transfer of tokenized assets by banks across multiple blockchains.

The Federal Reserve is warning Goldman Sachs over risky clients in its fintech unit. The Fed is also experimenting with electronic remittances.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission is suing Westpac bank for failing to respond to customers that filed financial hardship notices because of a problem with its online process.

Switzerland wants to shake its reputation for money laundering by introducing the t0ughest AML standards in Europe.

TaxBit announced a new machine learning-enabled rules engine for crypto accounting.

Payment processor Acquired launched its own hosted checkout solution.

ClimateAligned launched a UK climate investing app.

Hyundai launched an in-car payment service.

LatAm fintech Rosario launched a solution for collecting foreign payments.

Monzo launched a new feature to help users avoid phone scams.

Total stablecoin market cap declined in August, with Tether showing its first loss in nine months.

NuBank brought its personal loans product to Mexico.

The X social network received a new payment license from Rhode Island and six other US states.

PhonePe in India is getting into stock and mutual funds, while Reliance Jio plans to compete by offering insurance and merchant lending.

Sub-prime card issuer Upgrade moved into the auto loans business.

The Founders Arena WealthTech Accelerator announced its first cohort of new companies.

Rent Butter is helping landlords better screen tenants.

UK fintech Perenna received a banking license.

Ant Group brought its Alipay payment service to the Philippines and ZeroPay rolled out Alipay in South Korea.

European buy-now-pay-later provider Klarna reported its first profitable month due to growing GMV, as UK buy-now-pay-later platform Zilch passed 3.5 million customers.

Fiserv partnered with open banking provider Akoya on credential-sharing.

From enemies to frenemies? Amazon added its Buy With Prime payment app to Shopify.

Hallmark partnered with Venmo to make it easier to gift.

Nigerian fintech Float attempted to arbitrage Nigeria's currency by completing trades on behalf of businesses to buy the $USD with the local currency. It instead incurred ₦5 billion in losses.

Upstreet, an Australian fintech that lets shoppers earn fractional shares on purchases, shut down.

Short-seller research organization Hindenburg came out with a second litany of accusations against international agriculture fintech Tingo for committing fraud.