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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Robinhood announces Checking & Savings Accounts Cash Management Platform Earlier this month, Robinhood made one of its biggest announcements to date: Robinhood Checking & Savings, a new banking service built into the app that would pay users 3% annual interest, with no fees or minimum deposits, and it would all be protected by the SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Coorporation).…
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Coinbase Lists Basic Attention Token (BAT) Basic Attention Token is the latest coin to be integrated by Coinbase as they make a push to offer users more assets. Coinbase also allows users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, ZRX, and USDC So why did they pick BAT? Basic Attention Token…
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Deutsche Bank Opens its IT Systems This month, Deutsche announced it would open its API software and allow third-party providers, namely fintechs, to utilize their client data in application development. They actually began this program in 2016 when they hosted their API hackathon, allowing 14 teams to access their data for use in the competition.…
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JP Morgan Launches Trading App JP Morgan recently announced its new trading app, “You Invest”, focused on millennials that are interested in investing but don’t want to pay hefty fees. Whereas the Robinhood’s of the world offer a simplistic product at no cost, JP Morgan will leverage its equity research and integrate it into the…
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