Apple + Credit Kudos proves tech giant has serious ambitions in FinServ 🍎💳; Robinhood’s fresh quest to attract new users💳; New venture funds from crypto all-stars to supercharge Web3 🌊

Good Morning FinTech, March 24

Good day Everyone,

And happy Thursday! The week is approaching an end but it seems that it’s getting even more exciting out there. Yesterday’s issue was a blast, but today’s one is even hotter… Check it out yourselves as we dive into 3 great FinTech stories:

Apple acquiring Credit Kudos just proves tech giant has some serious ambitions in financial services🍎💳

The deal 🤝 Apple, the most valuable company on the planet, has acquitted UK Open Banking startup Credit Kudos that helps lenders make better decisions.

The deal was reportedly closed earlier this week bringing the value of the startup to about $150M, an uplift in valuation.

The USP 🥊 The startup offers insights and scores on loan applicants drawn from bank data — specifically transaction and loan outcome data — sourced via the UK’s Open Banking framework. Its API can offer lenders faster decision-making, less risk, and increased acceptance rates, according to its website.

It’s huge. Here’s why 👉 Credit Kudos' APIs make it easy for any institution to perform real-time credit checks, so having this in-house could make Apple's banking & card systems significantly more agile.

Think here about bringing Apple Card to the UK (and later - Europe) as well as launching a BNPL proposition aka Buy Now, Apple Pay Later.

Also, Apple's recent move into POS payments - where Apple’s software point-of-sale (softPOS) solution allows merchants to accept contactless payments without the additional hardware - means that it can now enter the POS financing too.

In order to understand the broader impact of this acquisition, we have to think holistically here. Here’s the takeaway: