This Week in Fintech

Week 1

Author

Daniel Feodoroff
October 05, 2023

Happy Friday!

Welcome to the first instalment of This Week in Fintech. Thanks for subscribing 🙌

Its been a busy week so lets get into it 👀

The low down ⏱️

Blossom App has launched business accounts, OpenHome helps Aussies buy a home with a 0% deposit, Stables is about to launch remittance services in the Philippines, Karta is about to launch gift cards in Big W, Apple starts offering Open Banking features in the UK and Revolut finds more trouble with their UK Banking license application.

This week in Australia 🇦🇺

Blossom App has landed for businesses

Sydney based micro-investing app Blossom has launched Business accounts with a 5.70% p.a. return. This now allows businesses to get access to a great rate with earnings posted and compounded daily, no sign up, transfer or withdrawal fees and fast deposits and withdrawals.

This now comes in next to Blossom’s personal account offering which also offers the same features at a 5.70% p.a. rate.

How is Blossom different to a Savings account?

Blossom isn’t a savings account but instead invests in things like corporate bonds, government bonds, foreign exchange and derivatives, asset backed securities, mortgage backed securities, and more. Traditionally, these types of investments have been reserved for hedge funds, financial institutions, superannuation funds, and high net-worth individuals.

CBA-backed OwnHome launches ‘Deposit Boost Loan’

Deposit Boost Loan is an Australian first that will help aspiring buyers secure a bank loan with 0% deposit.

OwnHome’s Deposit Boost Loan funds up to a 20% home deposit, which customers can then use to access an 80% loan-to-value ratio loan from OwnHome’s growing list of lender partners.

Instead of the hundreds of thousands required for a traditional 20% deposit, OwnHome customers just need just $88,070 upfront for the OwnHome Starter Fee of 2% of the property price (+GST) and government fees, such as Stamp Duty and transfer fees.

The loan is open to all first-time buyers and owner-occupiers who pass the lender's affordability criteria. Borrowers can use the Deposit Boost Loan to borrow up to 100% of the property value, across OwnHome and the provider of the first mortgage, up to a maximum home value of $3,000,000.

The Deposit Boost Loan is available in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria with imminent plans to launch in South Australia and Western Australia.

Sydney based Stables is about to launch remittance services in the Philippines

Soon Stables will be opening its waitlist to get access to fast, secure offramps - allowing anyone to instantly offramp USDC and USDT into Pesos directly to GCash, Grab, Maya and Shopee accounts.

Stables is moving fast, launching new features quickly. In September they launched Google Pay support for their USDC backed Mastercard and a USDC sending feature to send money to anyone using the Polygon network.

Karta Gift Cards is coming to Big W for Christmas

Source: David Anderson LinkedIn

Sydney based Karta gift cards has received its first delivery of their physical gift cards for sale in retail stores around Australia.

ANZ Worldline Payments partners enabled Alipay+ in Australia

ANZ Worldline has enabled businesses to accept payments through Alipay+ from at least six digital wallets including Alipay, AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR China), Kakao Pay (South Korea), Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia), TrueMoney (Thailand) and GCash (The Philippines).

Through the Alipay+ QR code on the Worldline Move 5000 Eftpos terminal, businesses can accept the Alipay+ enabled wallets as well as the other card schemes and wallets they choose to accept – no additional hardware or payment terminal needed.

Travel card / app Pelikin has hit 500 affiliate partners

Pelikin has reached 500 affiliates since its launch, marking a 255 per cent year-on-year growth.

Their affiliate program is centred around working with organisations like travel agencies, tour operators to promote Pelikin to their customers.

BOQ is closing ME Bank’s credit card product

ME notified mortgage brokers on Monday that their its award-winning credit card will no longer be accepting customers from the 2nd of October. Exisiting customers aren’t affected at this time.

Going Global 🌎

Revolut Continues their quest for a banking license

Scrutiny from the UK watchdog over red-flag accounts

Revolut notified the FCA of a problem in recent weeks where £500,000 was released from red-flagged accounts. The issues, which occurred in July and August, could have allowed up to £1.7 million to be released from the flagged accounts.

How this affects their 2.5 year application for a banking license is unknown.

Revolut strikes share deal with SoftBank to remove barrier to UK licence

After months of negotiations with investors they have apparently persuaded Softbank and other investors holding preference shares to agree to convert their holdings to common stock, removing one obstacle in the path to securing a UK banking license.

Revolut is rebranding 👀

Spotted by customers the bubbly Revolut logo will be changed to a more simple logo. This comes after the company has started testing a new redesigned ‘Revolut 10’ banking experience which is supposed to simplify the super-apps user experience.

The new experience so far adds:

  • New home screen

  • New bottom navigation options (moving several products from the ‘hub’ to the bottom bar)

  • Other small UX improvements like updated screens for Share/Crypto trading and money transfers/conversions

Apple launches Open Banking features in the UK

In the latest beta of iOS 17.1, Apple soft launched a new iPhone Wallet app integration that is powered by the United Kingdom’s Open Banking API. The Wallet app will now be able to show the user’s current account balance from a supported bank, as well as a history of deposits and payments. These balances will also be shown inline when buying something with Apple Pay.

At this time Apple supports cards issued from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Monzo, and Starling.

Apple is also rumoured to be launching this in the US also with a legal document on Apple's website explicitly mentioning that the Connected Cards feature will eventually be available to U.S. residents, with personal data to be processed by Apple Processing LLC:.

China will now let foreign visitors use credit cards to fund their central bank digital currency (CBDC) wallet

Tourists and other foreigners visiting China can now download an updated app allowing them to purchase the digital yuan called e-CNY using a Mastercard or Visa to top up their digital wallet.

Using the app they can create a wallet, load it with e-CNY and spend at locations participating in the Chinese governments ongoing digital yuan trial.

China became the first country in the world to integrate a CBDC using a large scale rollout. Since the launch counties such as Australia and the US have also started exploring how CBDCs can replace paper money.

US Based Ramp launches Flex

Flex (you guessed it, another BNPL), a new product from Ramp allows businesses to extend their payment terms when paying vendors through Ramp Bill Pay. With Ramp Flex, businesses can choose to pay vendors upfront and then pay Ramp back within 30, 60, or 90 days with one click in Bill Pay. This provides greater cash flow flexibility and simplifies payment workflows.

Costco has started selling gold bars

Costco has begun selling 1-ounce Gold Bars on its website in the US, CFO Richard Galanti said the bars are in hot demand and don’t last long when in stock.

CEO Craig Jelinek said Costco takes less than a 1% markup on the Gold and that it drives more people to the website.

Crypto ⚡️

Crypto.com and PayPal partnership

Crypto.com partners with PayPal and Paxos to establish their platform as the preferred exchange for PayPal USD (PYUSD).

This builds on PayPal and Crypto.com’s initial integrations, including being able to use PayPal to top up the Crypto.com Visa Card. Moving forward, PayPal and Crypto.com will continue to explore bringing more connected top up and commerce capabilities to market in the future.

What is PYUSD?

PayPal recently launched their own Stablecoin called PayPal USD (PYUSD) which is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents, and can be redeemed 1:1 for U.S. dollars.

PYUSD is the native token for PayPal’s Venmo app in the US. Currently the token is for select Venmo users and is rolling out to more over time.

Block (Square, Cash App) becomes the first US listed company to ship a Bitcoin Wallet

Block has been working on a Bitcoin storage program for a while now. Recently the company opened up registrations where selected customers are able to join a large scale beta of their Bitcoin hardware wallet - Bitkey.

Hardware storage of BTC allows people to hold their own BTC without relying on an app or exchange to host their money, taking away risk of the exchange going under or inappropriately using customers funds (think FTX).

Block has big plans for this project eyeing growth Africa and South America which has had booming in the use of BTC to service the underbanked communities.

If you are interested in learning more about Blocks Bitkey project follow their blog →

Feature Spotlight 💡

Monzo’s here for their customers social good.

In September UK based Monzo launched two new features aimed at helping protect customers when they are at their most vulnerable. A new Gambling Block experience and new tools for helping identify scams.

Gambling Support

Firstly they launched a new ‘Gambling Block’ feature which allows customers to setup a note to your future self and a cool down time period. Banks having tools to gambling addictions isn’t new, its the dedication from Monzo to help the customer make the best decision for them thats so great to see.

The flow to setup consists of the user first setting a note to your future self. This note is there to help remind the user why they decided to block gambling transactions and is shown if the user decides to unblock gambling transactions.

Then the user can set a cool down period. This time period gives the user a little time after choosing to turn the block off to make sure they are making the right decision. Once its on, it stays on until its turned off and time periods can last from 2 days to 1 year.

Phishing and Scam Support

With the rise of bank impersonation phone scams Monzo has created a new privacy & security setting to help let users know if they have been called by the bank.

How does it work? If a user gets a call from someone saying they work for Monzo, users can open the Monzo app and head to ‘Privacy & security’ in Settings.

The ‘Monzo call status’ will either show the team member from Monzo and the call duration or if Monzo isn’t on the phone with the user a notice showing that a member of the Monzo team isn’t talking to them. There is also ways to report the call by tapping the call status.

Thats a wrap for this week

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this issue, please let me know in the comments or tweet me.

If you have an idea for how I can improve or want to suggest something for next week’s issue, be sure to tag @fintechweekly_ on Twitter or message me on LinkedIn.

Have a great weekend

- Daniel Feodoroff