Singapore Accepting Applications for Digital Banking Licenses The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will accept five applications this year, three of which for “restricted digital banks” and two for digital all-inclusive banks. The move is a historic one for Singapore, which has been slow to lay down a framework for financial technology adoption. Cielo Launching…
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Nebulous Closes $3.5M pre-Series A Led by Bain Capital Nebulous, the tech startup behind the data-decentralization blockchain Sia Network announced that it raised $3.5 million in July featuring investments from Bain Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Dragonfly Capital Partners. Nebulous has now raised $6.3 million since its launch five years ago. Sia Network was the…
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MoneyGram Partners Up With Ripple Ripple made waves in the equity markets this month when it committed $50 million in capital for equity in the money transfer company, MoneyGram, briefly sending the stock (MGI) up more than 100% in after-hours trading. Per FinTech Futures: With the aim of cutting the costs and timescales associated with…
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Bitcoin Comes to Whole Foods and Other Major Retailers Flexa recently announced the launch of its new mobile payment app, SPEDN, that will allow users to spend ETH, BTC, BCH, and the Gemini Dollar as easily as it is to use Apple Pay. Flexa revealed that SPEDN was created in partnership with Gemini exchange and…
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Mastercard Backs Out of Earthport Deal, Acquires Transfast Mastercard’s bidding war with Visa for payment-technology firm Earthport intensified in February, capped off by a $320m offer by Visa that forced Mastercard to drop out. One month later, Mastercard announced that it had agreed to acquire a different cross-border payment startup, Transfast. Transfast does not have…
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Signature Bank and JP Morgan Launch the First US Bank-Backed Crypto Tokens When JP Morgan announced its rollout of the “JPM Coin”, the dollar-backed token was hailed as the first of its kind. However, it seems that Signature Bank was the first US Bank to back a crypto token with its January 2019 launch of…
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Acorns lands $105M Funding Round On January 28, Acorns Grow Inc. completed a $105M funding round led by NBCUniversal and the Venture Capital arm of Comcast. Their investments were a surprise to many, but it appears CNBC will help produce personal finance videos for the Acorns app, which challenges the notion that millennials don’t save…
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