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Happy Tuesday everyone and congrats to the Iggles for winning their first Superb Owl. Meanwhile, for
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| February 6 · Issue #18 · View online |
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Happy Tuesday everyone and congrats to the Iggles for winning their first Superb Owl. Meanwhile, for any following the market (whether that be the stock or crypto), it’s been a pretty rough start to the week.
One interesting side effect of crypto that I’ve observed is new people that historically have not been curious about financial services, rapidly getting up to speed and interested. Everyday, I talk to more and more people are that want to learn about the nuts and bolts finance, whether it’s retail investors trying to understand the what hodl means, to new day-traders learning about candlesticks and cloud trading, to developers building on top of (or replacing) legacy financial infrastructure. There’s a huge influx of talent across the world that are focusing their attention on financial services and learning how broken the experience has been. In some ways, this is the primary reason why I’m overall bullish on crypto. Some of the smartest people I know are spending 100% of their time on a variety of projects on the space and if I were an investor, I’m willing to bet that there are going to be a ton of interesting solutions developed. I think it’s going to be a huge positive for the future of financial services, crash or no crash :).
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After 15 years, eBay plans to cut off PayPal as its main payments processor
The shopping marketplace will instead begin working with Amsterdam-based Adyen. Big win for Adyen before their rumored IPO, on the flip side I wonder who else was in this deal…
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Japan's SoftBank hatches plan to take on PayPal
SoftBank, the Japanese technology colossus, is studying an audacious plan to create a global digital payments system that could take on PayPal, Apple Pay and China’s Alipay. Details are really vague and it sounds more like an interbank clearing system to me, but continue to keep an eye out here. Whenever SoftBank moves, the market seems to completely shift.
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Starbucks launches new credit card for coffee addicts
Starbucks has unveiled a Visa card that’s co-branded with banking giant JPMorgan Chase and also said a prepaid card will be rolled out later this year. JPMorgan Chase has a really strong co-brand portfolio and this is another big win. Everything becomes fintech.
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Fair funding of around $50M, acquires rental car delivery service Skurt
Just a week after we reported that Fair was acquiring the leasing portfolio of Xchange Leasing from Uber, the flexible car-ownership startup is making two more moves. Today, the company confirmed that it has raised another round of funding led by next47, the VC firm backed by Siemens; and it has made another acquisition, of Los Angeles-based Skurt, a service that lets you rent a car, and then delivers that vehicle to you. Flexible ownership of cars is an interesting twist on car ownership and auto-lending. I expect to see a lot more activity from newer companies in this space as traditional FI’s continue to reduce exposure to the subprime auto lending market.
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U.S. consumer protection official puts Equifax probe on ice
Mick Mulvaney, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has pulled back from a full-scale probe of how Equifax Inc failed to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, according to people familiar with the matter. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is pulling back on protecting consumers is how I read this one.
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China to stamp out cryptocurrency trading completely with ban on foreign platforms
China is to block all websites related to cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs) – including foreign platforms – in a bid to finally quash the market completely. Womp womp.
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‘Bitcoin is my potential pension’: What’s driving people in Kentucky to join the craze
He had invested in bitcoin almost two years earlier, so now Jacob Melin had a new house, a new truck, a new consulting business and a line of people coming into his office, trying to become wealthy as quickly as he had. I think people interested in financial services is net positive, but also DYOR.
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Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup All Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases on Credit Cards
Some of the world’s largest banks announced on Friday that customers are now prohibited from buying cryptocurrencies with credit cards, citing market volatility. I saw a lot of hot takes on this across Twitter, but I actually agree that this was probably the right move from the banks from a risk management perspective. Crypto is super volatile and if individuals are buying it on credit and then seeing the market crash, could create meaningful default risk across a credit portfolio.
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Alibaba is picking up 33% of Ant Financial, its fintech affiliate that’s valued at over $60B
Alibaba has added an additional angle to the announcement of its latest financial report today with news that it is taking a 33 percent stake in Ant Financial, its fintech affiliate that operates Alipay and other financial services. To be honest, I’m not really sure what this means. Alibaba and it’s subsidiaries seem unnecessarily complex to me, but Ant Financial is supposedly one of the largest private fintech companies at the world at this point.
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JPMorgan to Banking Clients: Joint Health-Care Venture Is No Threat
Some health-care companies have complained to JPMorgan Chase & Co. about the bank’s new health-care partnership with Amazon.com Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., worried that it could cut into their business…Mr. Dimon began making calls from his office atop the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters, these people said. In those conversations, Mr. Dimon told clients the planned health-care initiative is for JPMorgan, Amazon and Berkshire employees only. Some more hints around what the joint health-care venture looks like. Apparently looks like “a group purchasing organization, a type of setup used by hospitals to buy supplies, so the companies can get better deals for their employees.”
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