Staying on the beat; 28 June – 5 July 2021
Big Beats
Industry Clouds – the next Mega-Trend
The next mega-trend in financial services is Industry Clouds – collections of cloud services, tools, common data models, APIs, and applications optimized specific use cases. Multi-cloud environments also benefit organizations needing to share data and access with partners in their supply chain, which may all work across diverse applications and data standards.
Coinbase Planning Decentralized App Store.
The end goal is self-custody – listing all legal assets and putting decision-making into the hands of the users and digital citizens.
As more economic activity moves onto the blockchain rails “We’re seeing crypto quickly mature from its initial use case of trading bitcoin to the trading of thousands of new assets, and the adoption of new use cases like Decentralized Finance (DeFi), NFTs, smart contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and more,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
Startups to Unicorns – Mergers to Acquisitions
Codat raises $40M and expands its API infrastructure for SME data
Codat, the technology company enabling small businesses to seamlessly share business and financial data with financial and other service providers, secured $40 million from investors. After significant revenue and headcount growth, it has also announced the expansion of its APIs to include payroll and commerce data – further broadening its data flows.
Rapyd to acquire Valitor Payments.
Rapyd, the UK-based ‘fintech as a service’ company, has announced that it would be acquiring the Valitor payments platform for $100 million from the Arion Bank.
Valitor is an Iceland-based company that is also into payments solutions and facilitates card processing services for its merchants across Iceland, UK, and Ireland. This comes close on the heels of the consolidation of the payments industry in the Nordic countries with Vipps, MobilePay, and Pivo combining their services to form a single payments platform.
Nordic mobile wallets Vipps, MobilePay and Pivo to merge
Nordic mobile wallets MobilePay, Pivo and Vipps are joining forces to create a single payments app with a combined user base of 11 million consumers across Finland, Denmark and Norway.
The new joint wallet will form the foundation for a cross-border payments network across the Nordic countries, processing 700 million transactions and comprising 300,000 merchants.
Regulatory Moves
EU’s New MiCA Regulation for Cryptocurrencies
This regulation will form part of the EU’s Digital Finance Strategy and is likely to significantly impact the operation of the crypto market in the EU. It is a complex (and 168-page-long) regulation whose effects require extensive discussion.
South Korea Tightens Regulations on Cryptocurrencies
Concerned about the potential for financial crimes, Seoul is tightening its rules.
Critics say it could force cryptocurrencies out of the market altogether.
Useful Reports:
Fintech Funding Trends During the Pandemic
According to its most recent “Pulse of Fintech” report, KPMG Global found that global investment in financial technology in 2020 through venture capital (VC), private equity (PE) and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) routes was $105 billion, significantly lower than the $168 billion recorded the previous year. The general uncertainty that has pervaded investor sentiment since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic led to a retreat in funding for fintech. And yet, there have been plenty of signs of resilience…Read more
The Building Blocks of Fintech 2.0.
After a decade of being at the core of the financial services industry, having thousands of conversations with the brightest minds on our stages, hosting hundreds of workshops, and getting in the trenches with leaders solving real-world challenges, for the first time in our history, Money20/20 is proud to release our expert predictions in a thorough report about where our industry is headed over the next five years – find it here!
More from PCN
Top 8 Amsterdam and Berlin Fintechs to watch in 2021
Amsterdam and Berlin – Two of the most promising fintech hotspots of Europe and the home of PCN’s HQ and DACH office.
The two cities’ young, enthusiastic and creative energy and business mindset is nearly unmatched.
With more than 2.500 active startups, Berlin is attracting more young minds than any other city in the EU. And Amsterdam – home of the world’s first publicly traded company – is by no means a newcomer to the financial sector.
Read about what makes these cities so attractive for fintech ventures – and which ones you should look out for.
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