Buy Now, Apple Pay Later 😏; Facebook Pay grows up to walk alone 👣; FinTech funding soars like on steroids 💸
🚨ANNOUNCEMENT🚨 More value. Delivered daily. 1/30
Good morning Everyone,
I’m excited to announce that starting today I’m launching a daily newsletter on all things where Finance meets Technology. Delivered every morning, it will be the only newsletter you need to keep a pulse, and most importantly - make sense, on FinTech.
3 stories with 3 takeaways, things worth watching, and money moves will focus on the things that matter for the industry professionals and practitioners like myself. Easy to read, digest, and see the bigger picture, it will help you to save time and most importantly - stay ahead. Always.
Since this is a fresh start, the first 30 issues are free. Consider this as a free trial, where I will be able to improve the newsletter based on your feedback, while you will decide whether to join the community. Weekly newsletters and other premium content remain for subscribers only.
You can subscribe now for $7/month or $70/year, or join later. I must note though that after the first 30 issues, the price will be $17,90/month or $179/year (the price for current subscribers won’t change). It’s still a bargain as you will save at least 180 minutes. Every week.
That’s all about formalities, let’s hit the 3 stories! And I couldn’t have asked better ones for the start…
Buy Now, Apple Pay Later 😏
Apple is reportedly teaming up with Goldman Sachs to launch Buy Now, Pay Later solution called Apple Pay Later. The move seems natural as both giants have collaborated for nearly two years on the Apple Card initiative.
Here’s what Apple Pay Later should look like:
You will be able to spread payments interest-free over 4-month periods or apply for interest-bearing credit over the longer term.
Apple Pay Later members won’t need an Apple Card to participate, but potential customers will have to apply through the Wallet app to be eligible.
Goldman Sachs, which is already Apple Card’s partner, has been tapped as the service’s lender.
BNPL - a feature, but not a product? Following the initial announcement by Bloomberg, Affirm shares fell as much as 13% while Afterpay dropped by 10%. This makes you question whether BNPL can actually be a standalone product/service.
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
Apple’s late mover advantage 😎 Apple Pay is estimated to have more than 500 million users globally. Being in so many people’s pockets, it doesn’t make sense NOT to follow where the money is. And currently, lots of money is flowing into BNPL as people simply like the proposition better (vs. credit cards). The strategy is super simple - it’s all about the numbers. Apple currently earns a % of every Apple Pay purchase, so the more users buy, the more money it makes. BNPL service could lead Apple users to make more big-ticket purchases hassle-free and within the same ecosystem. Irrespective of how you look at it, it’s not good news for standalone BNPL businesses.
Facebook Pay grows up to walk alone 👣
Social media giant Facebook just announced that its Facebook Pay service will, for the first time, be available off of its own platform. The walk alone with be starting with Shopify vendors in August.
Competition tightening up? Well, Facebook is trying to tap into the lucrative payments space - in June, it promised to offer payment processing at a deeply discounted rate compared to rival offerings from Apple, Google, and PayPal (this is primarily geared towards creators and heavy platform users).
As of now, Facebook’s payment system upgrades are focusing on providing a fast and secure checkout experience that is appealing to both consumers and vendors.
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
Convenience is king but trust is the queen 👑 It’s clear that social media heavyweight wants to diversify its revenues from ads and have some sustainable income from financial services. This makes even more sense given FB has a massive 2.8 billion monthly active user base it could market its services to. Yet, would you trust it with your money? Many won’t, and that’s the big perception to change.
FinTech funding grows like on steroids 💸
🇬🇧 London is still on the map! FinTech companies based in London raised more funding from venture capital investors in the first 6 months of 2021 than in any other year. This shows that the City can still be a hub for digital financial services post-Brexit.
VCs poured $5.3 billion into London FinTechs in H1 2021, compared to $2.1 billion in the same period in 2020, according to Dealroom and agency London & Partners.
Same trends globally 🌎 FinTechs globally raised $54.1 billion between January and June, overtaking the total amount secured in the two previous years, according to the research.
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
First, it’s a vote of confidence for the UK and its thriving FinTech sector. Second, it illustrates investor appetite for innovative financial solutions and digitization, which was only accelerated by the global pandemic. It’s already clear that 2021 will be a record year for FinTechs globally (cheers to that! 🥂).
🔎 What else I’m watching
Crypto in Australia🇦🇺: Visa has approved Aussie startup CryptoSpend to begin issuing debit cards for their users so they could pay using their Bitcoin and other supported cryptos at retail stores and hospitality venues.
Square is focused on hardware 🖥: after recently confirming that it’s building a hardware Bitcoin wallet, Square now reportedly wants to make it easier for people to make payments with a new iPad point-of-sale terminal.
Goldman’s consumer banking traction 📲: Goldman Sachs reported June quarter earnings that showed a continued uptake in consumer banking (including its Marcus division). Consumer banking operations saw revenue growth of 41% with Marcus alone bringing home a record $1.8B of net revenues.
PayPal wants to crush the competition in BNPL space in Australia🇦🇺: PayPal Pay in 4 was introduced to Australia last month and has since dropped its required minimum purchase A$30 (approximately $22.44) from A$50 (approximately $37.40). With no late fees and 9M Aussie customers, PayPal wants to crush competitors like Afterpay, Zip, Splitit, and Sezzle.
JPMorgan is doing just fine 💸: Q2 results show that active digital customers grew by 4% Year-on-Year to 56.9M, while active mobile customers gained 10% YoY to 42.9M (i.e. Chime, the biggest neobank in the US, has >13M customers).
💸 Following the Money
Quantexa, a provider of network analytics tools for detecting and preventing financial crime, raised $153M in Series D.
Xtremepush, an online customer engagement platform, raised $33M in fresh funding.
Singapore-based Syfe, a digital wealth management company, announced it has closed a $30M Series B funding round.
Marco Financial, a trade finance company raised $7M in seed funding and $75M in a credit facility.
M1 Finance has hit a $1.45B valuation after raising $150M in a Series E funding round for its "super app" offering automated investing, borrowing, and banking products. SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led the round (Revolut to follow? 👀)
HelloFlow raised $1.6M in seed funding for the rollout of a no-code KYC and client onboarding platform.
👋 That’s it for today! Thank you for reading and have a productive Thursday! And if you enjoyed this newsletter, invite your friends and colleagues to sign up: