Google, Stripe, Plaid, & Visa all launch new fintech products (TWIF 5/24)

Hello Fintech Friends,

The fintech events for New York Tech Week are multiplying as we get closer to June! I love what the a16z team has done with the event. Kudos to Katia Ameri and the organizer team.

I hope I'll run into you at one of our mixers that week:

No time to read? Catch up on all this week's fintech news with our Weekly Briefing:

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

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Visa launched new tech to share more information about customers’ preferences with retailers based on their shopping history. The feature uses Visa’s proprietary tokens, which provide security between a consumer’s bank information and the merchant.

Italian / European payments giant Nexi and its subsidiary orderbird, a point-of-sale system, launch the Nexi Partner Portal, a payment platform for Independent Software Vendors across different industries in Germany.

Six months after approving bitcoin ETFs, it looks like the SEC will approve ethereum-based ETFs for investors as well.

A federal judge in the US temporarily blocked the CFPB rule that was meant to go into effect this week to cap fees on late credit card payments at $8 a month (the bureau estimated this would save American households $10 billion per year), citing it as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the UK's Payment System Regulator took the opposite approach to its American counterpart – backing off from imposing financial penalties on Visa and Mastercard’s processing fees.

Australia passed its landmark digital ID bill, paving the way for a nationwide online identity that financial services providers can reference.

Mastercard is using generative AI to double the speed at which it can detect compromised cards on the dark web.

JPMorgan Chase allocated £40 million in new investments to help young people and underserved communities in the UK connect to economic opportunities, bringing its total to £90 million.

The US's upcoming Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act hopes to (finally) establish a regulatory framework for crypto and digital assets, covering areas like consumer protections and money laundering, but (of course) the White House and SEC are opposed.

Core banking provider FIS launched the newest version of its embedded banking app to allow its financial institutions customers to offer digital banking experiences to their end customers without having to build their own mobile apps.

Payroll connectivity provider Atomic launched a subscription management tool to help account-holders view, update and optimize their recurring payments directly within their financial institution’s app.

Diebold Nixdorf, a manufacturer of self-service payment and transaction systems, launched its seventh-generation multivendor, self-service software.

Google (disclosure: where I worked) announced that it is launching new Gemini-built AI features to help alert users to call scams. Phone scams, particularly elder fraud, are a massive problem in the US; the Internet Crime Complaint Center last year received 880,000+ complaints with potential losses exceeding $12.5 billion.

Stripe launched open banking-powered Pay-By-Bank payment options in the UK and new capital financing for small businesses. (The company also opened up a new, larger London office.)

Mercury launched a new Doc Center with all corporate docs stored in one place (a hack week project).

Jaja Finance in the UK launched a generative AI assistant.

Plaid added more features to its Beacon identity product, including bank insights to help customers strengthen their fraud defenses.

Zeal launched a DeFi digital wallet with an adjoining Visa debit card that allows users to spend at any merchant, at which point the card draws down from the wallet and converts to fiat.

Singaporean fiat-to-crypto payments provider Alchemy Pay launched a Web3 digital banking platform for enterprises.

📺

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.

News emerged that global neobank Revolut forces users – who would like to send money to probable scammers – to take identifiable photos with handwritten papers saying that they are probably falling for a scam.

Google Pay (disclosure: where I worked) will now show your credit card benefits at the checkout in Chrome, as well as fill in your full card number for you using just a fingerprint and let you use buy-now-pay-later at checkout.

The CFPB is taking action to regulate buy-now-pay-later loans like credit cards, including letting consumers dispute charges and obtain refunds.

Apple released new data about its anti-fraud measures, revealing that it stopped $1.8 billion in ‘potentially fraudulent transactions’ in its App Store in 2023.

Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre is talking to the Mexican central bank about getting a payments license. Meanwhile, Mexican education payments startup Mattilda expanded to Colombia.

PhonePe is bringing India’s UPI payments to Sri Lanka through its QR code-based partnership with LankaPay.

Southeast Asian payments, ride-hailing, and superapp giant Grab grew Q1 2024 revenue grew 24% year over year to $653 million; the company's adjusted core profit hit a record high of $62 million.

UK buy-now-pay-later provider and ad-supported payments network Zilch passed 4 million customers.

Revolut made its internal job recruitment tool available on LinkedIn.

Online marketplace lending provider Funding Circle (disclosure: where I worked) announced that it has now lent £16.9 billion to over 150,000 small businesses globally.

563 professional investment firms have reported owning a combined $3.5 billion worth of Bitcoin ETFs.

Payroll and HR platform Deel partnered with equity management provider Carta on equity tax withholding features to calculate the amount of taxes a worker owes based on the region in which they’re based and handle payments to local authorities.

This week brought more fallout from the collapse of banking-as-a-service platform Synapse:

European insurance unicorn Wefox – which last raised funds at a $4.5 billion valuation – also warned investors that it may soon face insolvency due to financial losses and regulatory charges.

And the CFPB is suing SoLo Funds, which provides peer-to-peer loans, alleging that the company used “dark patterns” to deceive borrowers and illegally took fees while advertising that there were no fees.