By Gary Dempsey, Content Leader Money20/20 Europe

Welcome to the Fintech highFIVE! 🖐 Every day, I’m amazed by the sheer amount of news and innovation happening in the fintech industry. 🤯 Fintech truly has not stopped, even during these crazy times. I can’t help but notice common themes in this huge sea of news — so I’m trying something new to bring these headlines together. Bi-weekly, I’ll be hitting you with the biggest themes seen in the news — all counted down on just one hand. 👊 So gimme 5 🙏 as we celebrate 🙌 the best of fintech each week.

*We’re socially distant here. Virtual high-fives only 👏 Please don’t hit your screen.

The great Irish banking exodus! 🏃‍♀️

The Irish banking playing field is looking ripe for expansion for the challengers. While there are plenty of opportunities in the Irish banking space, major banks can’t seem to capitalize on them: NatWest’s Ulster Bank is shutting down operations, and KBC is preparing for an exit. These exits have caught the attention of Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), raising fundamental questions about how the banking sector in Ireland is regulated. The remaining Irish banks, including Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks and Permanent TSB, are currently working on a joint venture payments app called Synch. In the meantime, Revolut has already accumulated 1.3m users in Ireland (more than a quarter of the entire population!), while N26 has 200k users in Ireland.

The next generation of banking. 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦

The rise of teen, tween and family banking apps continues in the states, Step raised $100m in Series C funding and surpassed 1.5m users after just 6 months on the market and Greenlight raised $260m in a16z-led Series D, raising its valuation to $2.3b. These family finance apps are experiencing a real boom on both sides of the Atlantic, offering children their first introduction to financial services, they usually include features like parental control, debit accounts, spending controls, money transfer and allowances, and some even feature chore management and rewards.

DeFi is now a $100b sector... 👩‍🌾

Decentralized finance is booming with up to 1m users. It is the corner of the cryptocurrency industry that represents a wide range of lending, trading and betting activities carried out almost entirely on blockchain networks using tokens as proceeds and collateral. Its success may come down to the fact that It represents a much more credible narrative with more substantive businesses because it shows products with genuine returns and provides a way for people to earn impressive yields on deposits rather than making wild bets and hoping.

Gen Z hearts crypto. 🥰

The recent COVID recession has led to many big changes in consumer behaviour, one major trend is the adoption of cryptocurrency by Gen Z. Young people are now looking to the likes of bitcoin to secure their financial future, and why not? Cryptocurrencies have gone through the roof in recent months and I think it has something to do with terrible interest rates being offered in Europe (with the potential of negative interest rates) and economic stimulus in times of almost total lockdown in many parts of the world. Gen Z 2021 graduates are looking at a difficult year ahead for job prospects, maybe we’ll see a huge wave of crypto traders born instead?

Also in the crypto space, Coinbase users can now pay with PayPal, and Ether has broken through $3k for the first time.

Have you heard about EPI? 🙉

The European Payments Initiative is a group of 30 European banks who are hoping to build a pan-European payments network which would threaten the US monopoly of Visa, Mastercard, Amex and PayPal. The group plans to establish a cross border network for EU citizens to benefit from a fast, efficient and reliable payments solution. I am interested to see how this affects card payments, will new cards have to be issued, will every POS device need to be updated, there are so many questions!

🗞️ x5 big news

• GoCardless launches A2A payments: The fintech has launched an open banking feature integrated directly into its global payment platform and functional across all payment models
• Gemini + Mastercard! Cryptocurrency exchange has teamed up with Mastercard and WebBank for its upcoming credit card that lets users earn crypto rewards
• World reserve currency: China says it has no desire to replace dollar with digital yuan
• Barclays goes BNPL: The bank will be one of the first providers to offer merchants "white-label" branded point-of-sale solution to increase consumer loyalty as buy now, pay later options grow in popularity
• Nubank prepares IPO: Brazil's Nubank readies US stock market listing

📰 x5 interesting articles

• Darktrace IPO: A risky IPO?
• Quantum leaps: Goldman Sachs is claiming a quantum computing breakthrough, designing algorithms it says could be used on hardware that may be available in as little as five years
• Neobanks 2021: Shifting from growth to profitability
• Eek for Apple: Europe charges Apple with antitrust breach, citing Spotify App Store complaint and France's competition watchdog has warned of the dangers posed by the encroachment of Big Tech firms into the payments sector
• Partior: DBS, Temasek and JPMorgan have set up a joint venture company that will use distributed ledger technology to challenge the cumbersome hub-and-spoke model applied to traditional cross-border payment flow

⚠️ x5 funding announcements

• $5b valuation for Remitly: The digital remittance outfit has hired investment banks to lay the ground for an initial public offering at a $5 billion valuation
• $1.6b valuation for Divvy: Less than five months after vaulting to a $1.6 billion valuation, the expense reporting startup for small businesses, is in talks to be acquired by Bill.com
• +$80m for Viva Wallet: The pan-European neobank providing localised payment and credit services to businesses across 23 European countries, has secured additional financing from several technology
• +$50m for Persona: Identity verification company raises after seeing 10x YoY revenue growth
• +$300m for Paxos: PayPal crypto partner raises big at $2.4b valuation

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