bank

“Staff Reductions at Synctera: The Newest Player in Banking-as-a-Service Industry”

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Banking-as-a-service startup (BaaS) Synctera has conducted a restructuring that has resulted in a staff reduction, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. While Synctera did not share how many employees were impacted, a report in Fintech Business Weekly pegs the number to be about 17 people, or about 15% of the company. Synctera built a platform designed to bring together fintech companies and sponsor banks. Treasury Prime slashed half its 100-person staff in February, a year after it announced a $40 million Series C raise. Meanwhile, Piermont Bank reportedly cut ties with startup Unit, FinTech Business reported.

Onyx Private, the YC-backed digital bank, announces the closure of customer accounts.

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Miami-based Onyx Private, a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that provided banking and investment services for high-earning Millennials and Gen Zers, is terminating its bank operations. Y Combinator has listed the company as “inactive” on its on its website, something Santos could not explain. Santos claimed that Onyx had been exploring the idea over the past year and had made developments with some partners. Santos today declined to disclose how many banking customers Onyx had. Although a source told TechCrunch that regulatory issues may have played a part in this decision, Santos dismissed that, telling us that no regulatory issues caused the startup to shut down its direct-to-consumer banking operations.

Fisker Halts Production Despite $121 Million in Reserves

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EV startup Fisker is pausing production of its electric Ocean SUV for six weeks as it scrambles for a cash infusion. The company said in a Monday morning regulatory filing that it had just $121 million in cash and cash equivalents as of March 15th, $32 million of which is restricted or not immediately accessible. Fisker finished 2023 having shipped roughly 5,000 of the 10,000 cars that its contract manufacturing partner, Magna Steyr, produced. Automotive manufacturing is incredibly expensive, even for a company like Fisker which is outsourcing much of the work to suppliers like Magna. In the near-term, Fisker said Monday it is trying to raise $150 million through the sale of convertible notes.

Zone, the decentralized payment infrastructure of Nigerian fintech, secures $8.5 million in seed funding for expansion

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Appzone is one of the standout local fintech software providers for banks and fintechs, providing better pricing and flexibility. As such, it rebranded to Zone, a licensed blockchain-enabled payment infrastructure company–and carved out its original banking-as-a-service business into a separate standalone company, Qore. Today, Zone, its blockchain network that enables payments and acceptance of digital currencies, is announcing that it has raised $8.5 million in a seed round. Therefore, the fintech is developing an interoperable payment infrastructure using blockchain technology — known for its ability to scale infinitely — to connect banks and fintech companies, facilitating transaction flow without intermediaries. “We are excited by the potential for Zone’s technology to be replicated across borders to advance payment innovation globally.

Griffin Bank: Licensed to Thrill!

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This week, we look at Griffin Bank getting its license ahead of some heavy hitters, and we go inside Stripe’s annual letter, some funding rounds, and more! The banking-as-a-service company managed to do something that even the region’s most valuable fintech company, Revolut, hasn’t been able to do yet — obtain a banking license. Granted, as Mike Butcher writes, banking licenses are difficult to come by (Griffin’s took a year), but Revolut has talked about securing a banking license for the past three years. Now that Griffin has a banking license, it offers a full-stack platform for fintech companies to offer banking, payments and wealth solutions via automated compliance and an integrated ledger. In a new SEC filing, Reddit’s IPO involves around 22 million shares, priced between $31 and $34.

India’s Paytm Obtains License for Third-Party App Following Restrictions Imposed on Bank Unit

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The third-party application provider license will enable Paytm to offer payments through the UPI network even as Paytm’s parent firm One97 Communications’ banking unit — Payment Payments Bank — is scheduled to cease operations on Friday. The Reserve Bank of India ordered Paytm in late January to cease operations at Paytm Payments Bank, an affiliate of the financial services firm that processed majority of its transactions. The move created shockwaves through the industry, and also meant that Paytm needed to secure the third-party application provider license to continue many of the Paytm app’s operations. Axis, HDFC, State Bank of India and Yes Bank will serve as payment system provider to the Paytm app, NPCI said Thursday. The RBI had advised NPCI to swiftly issue the third-party application provider license, or TPAP, to Paytm to help mitigate disruptions for its customers.

Griffin, a Fintech Startup, Raises $24M and Secures Full Banking License

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Founded by former Silicon Valley engineers, UK-based Griffin Bank bills itself as an API-driven ‘Banking as a Service’ platform. But Griffin isn’t likely to offer banking accounts directly to consumers, but to other businesses needing to offer embedded financial solutions such as savings accounts, safeguarding accounts and accounts for holding client money. Last year in North America, Treasury Prime secured a $40 million Series C, Synctera $15 million and Omnio raised $9.8 million. So they’re leveraging an existing financial relationship to bundle additional financial services in an embedded way. All of that needs to sit in specially marked bank accounts.” Griffin’s aim, he says is to pick up as much of that business as possible.

“Monzo: Leading the Way in the UK Banking Market – $430 Million Raised and 9 Million Loyal Customers”

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London-based fintech company Monzo raised a late stage funding round of $430 million (£340 million), confirming a report from the Financial Times from a few weeks ago. Founded in 2015, Monzo provides UK current accounts, debit cards and several financial products with a digital-first approach. That’s why Monzo is sort of defying the odds with this new funding round, with Google playing a big part in this investment. Monzo reached a post-money $4.5 billion valuation in 2022. Now, Monzo has nine million retail customers in the U.K.

Dump Third-Party Data: Lenders Embrace Solo’s Revolutionary Credit Bureau Concept

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Credit bureaus relying on outdated third-party data are only getting a small piece of the puzzle, Georgina Merhom says. User-permissioned data sources, that consumers provide with their permission, come from a variety of places. In addition, user-permissioned data sources replace the self-reporting process, brokers trust between the institution and consumer and identifies opportunities that the bank would have otherwise overlooked, Merhom said. Building a better credit bureau or finding new ways to verify data from people without a lot of credit is not a new concept. “It costs banks $29 billion a year to process applications, and that’s not even including the money they pay credit bureaus,” Merhom said.

Wagely: Revolutionizing FinTech in Indonesia Through Empowering the Unbanked

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In 2022, Walmart acquired earned wage access provider Even to offer early pay access to its employees. Other big U.S. companies, including Amazon, McDonald’s and Uber, also offer employees early wage access programs. Like other earned wage access providers, Wagely charges a nominal flat membership fee to employees withdrawing their salaries early. “This is something that no other competitor is even close to because other earned wage access companies are focusing on different things,” he said. One of the areas where global earned wage access providers have shifted their focus nowadays is lending — in some cases, to lend money to employers.