The Fintech Nexus 5 is our new fast-paced news show recorded every Thursday afternoon to bring you the top five fintech news stories of the week.
Here is this week’s episode:
The top five news stories this week:
- Why Visa is investing in artificial intelligence startups from American Banker – The AI race continues with Visa throwing their hat in the ring announcing a new $100 million fund for investment in AI startups. The leading payments network has probably the world’s largest dataset when it comes to payments and they already have an existing ecosystem of accelerators and incubators for fintech startups. This new fund makes it clear they want to stay at the forefront when it comes to AI.
- Long Take: Is Apple Wallet’s Open Banking integration a fintech extinction event? from Fintech Blueprint – The Apple story was our lead story last week but Lex Sokolin provides an epic long take bringing his inimitable style and unique insights into this move by Apple. You will read about sharks, ATMs, iPhones, neural implants, banking-as-a-service and more. It is must read for anyone interested in open banking.
- FTX Employees Found Alameda’s Secret Backdoor Months Before Collapse from The Wall Street Journal – The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried began in New York City this week and already we have seen some shocking new revelations. It appears that SBF’s venture arm, Alameda Finance, was allowed a backdoor into FTX’s system that allowed Alameda to siphon off as much as $65 billion from FTX. This was hardcoded into FTX’s systems and when an executive brought it to leadership’s attention she was fired.
- Monzo Picks Cash App Vet Conor Walsh for US CEO from PYMNTS – Leading UK digital bank Monzo has not given up on the US market. We learned this week of the appointment of a new leader for their US business. Conor Walsh was Head of Product at Cash App for several years and is now taking on the big challenge of making Monzo stand out in the competitive US digital banking market.
- WhatsApp in-chat payments launching in India from Fintech Blueprint – The world’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp, is bringing in-chat payments to the world’s most populous country, India. Users there will be able to pay within the app via their debit or credit card or via the ubiquitous digital payment method, UPI. WhatsApp has already rolled out this feature in both Singapore and Brazil.