Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Digital, NEO, Open Banking, Open Finance
N26 Co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal talks growing one of the fastest-growing mobile banks in the world
McKinsey Digital | Feb 26, 2021
Setting a bold vision, adapting the business to respond to market feedback, and putting customer satisfaction first has enabled digital-banking start-up N26 to grow rapidly into a global bank valued at $3.5 billion.
Creating a new, global business in a regulated industry such as financial services is challenging. Setting the organization up for global scale and turning it into one of the most successful digital disruptors comes with even greater challenges. In a conversation with McKinsey’s Jerome Königsfeld and Lukas Salomon, N26 cofounder and co-CEO Maximilian Tayenthal reflects on learnings from the company’s rapid growth and rollout across 25 countries.
Ability to Adapt
Lukas Salomon (LS): You launched N26’s banking product six years ago and have scaled rapidly. Looking back to your early days, how did you come up with the idea for the business?
Maximilian Tayenthal (MT): We originally started with a different idea: we were offering a prepaid card for teenagers. The card was connected to an app through which their parents could control the card. But when we launched a beta version of this product, we quickly discovered that parents weren’t actually using this product for their kids—they were using it for themselves. We then realized that we might be able to play in a bigger arena, as our product had all the elements of a digital-banking offering: cards, an app, and accounts into which people could deposit money. If we could build a strong product, we’d be able to compete with large incumbents in their core business.
See: Banking on digital growth with Chris Skinner
LS: After identifying that opportunity, what were the first indicators that showed you’d actually be able to scale it into a billion-dollar business?
MT: There wasn’t one specific moment in which we really knew it’d be a success.
As soon as we launched the banking product, we saw strong excitement from customers and confirmed that there was a need for our product. We had a waiting list of 50,000 prospects. Once we understood that potential, my co-founder and I set our long-term ambition.
We knew we didn’t want a quick exit. Instead, we wanted to build a global financial institution, impact the lives of 100 million customers, and compete with the biggest banks worldwide. I think setting this level of ambition early on is what differentiated us from many other start-ups—we always follow our North Star target of 100 million customers.
Navigating rapid growth requires experienced leaders, scalable back-office systems and full transparency in reporting
Jerome Königsfeld (JK): What were the organizational measures you took to enable rapid scale-up?
MT: That’s definitely been challenging. We started as a team of two in our living room in Vienna and knew every tab and cell of our business-case spreadsheet. But eventually you realize that you’ve grown so much that you can no longer do that and need to delegate.
See: Versabank to Launch VCAD, World’s First Bank-issued, Deposit-based Digital Currency
In the beginning, you dedicate all your focus to the product, which means that back-office and organizational processes sometimes lag behind.
With our growth rates, it has been particularly hard to keep up with the pace. At times, we were doubling both our customer base and our employee count every six to eight months. This came with major challenges: new team members were sometimes onboarded by someone who had joined the company only four weeks before them. Somebody hired in a stand-alone role could find themselves managing a team of 20 direct reports six months later.
When you’re growing so quickly, it’s vital that your systems and organizational processes are scalable. Think about the situation you want to be in two years from now. Select systems that don’t just work for the 100 employees you have today but for the 500 or 1,500 you might have by then. Make sure that you also hire people who’ve seen big organizations before and who are able to lead others. We may be a young team, but today we’re hiring people with a lot of experience, especially for executive roles.
LS: While your role encompasses a broad set of responsibilities across the company, you also served as the CFO. How do you see the role of the finance function in a rapidly scaling business?
See: 3 Challenges of Scaling a Fintech Company Across Borders
MT: One of the key responsibilities is fundraising. At around $3.5 billion, we’re one of Germany’s highest-valued and most well-funded private start-ups, but we still have a very big vision and need to make sure that we find sufficient capital to fund our global expansion. We’ve greatly benefited from the liquid private markets of the past few years but are now also considering a potential IPO in the future.
JK: What about monitoring and reporting? How do you ensure you’re on track and establish transparency on plans and budgets when your business transforms so quickly?
MT: We’re passionate about data. We monitor dozens or even hundreds of key metrics such as sign-ups, churn, cross-sells, upsells, and subscriptions in real time. Live dashboards allow everyone to track progress every minute. On the financial side, we have a full P&L every month but monitor KPIs within the teams daily.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Edelman Canadian Trust Report: Trust declines in all sectors including 8% in technology
Edelman | Feb 17, 2021
Canada is facing a crisis in leadership
This year, after months of unprecedented disaster and turbulence – including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic crisis, the global outcry over systemic racism and political instability – the findings reveal widespread misinformation and mistrust of societal leaders in Canada.
See: Future Market Dynamics Part 3 – data sharing, trust and a world of choice
In fact, 50% of respondents worry that business leaders are purposely trying to mislead them, and 46% believe the same about government leaders – this is a wake-up call for leaders, who need to take action to build trust amongst their stakeholders, or risk falling behind.
Spring trust bubble bursts with no institution remaining in the trusted category
In the Spring, business, government and NGOs all saw a spike in trust, moving them into the trusted category among the Canadian general population. Since then, the trust bubble has burst, with all institutions giving back most (if not all) of the gains they saw and returning to the neutral zone. Government saw the biggest increase in the Spring with a 20-point increase; however, despite declining 11 points in the past six months, government remains the most trusted institution in Canada.
Societal leaders are not trusted to do what is right
Amid urgent problems and a year of crisis, leadership is failing. Government leaders, CEOs and religious leaders are not trusted to do what is right. Instead, we’re seeing Canadians look to experts and those that are local – like people in their community – to help tackle the issues that matter most to them. In fact, 50% of respondents worry that business leaders are purposely trying to mislead them, and 46% believe the same about government leaders – this is a wake-up call for leaders, who need to take action to build trust amongst their stakeholders.
Trust in most information sources at record lows
Not one information source – traditional media (55%), search engines (47%), owned (32%) or social media (22%) – is trusted in Canada and the latter three are distrusted. All four information sources have witnessed a decline in trust compared to last year.
Download the 37 page PDF report --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Review: Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) submission to Advisory Committee on Open Banking
FCAC | March 2021
Overview
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is a federal financial sector regulator, which oversees federally regulated financial entities’ compliance with consumer protection measures, promotes financial education, and raises consumers’ awareness of their financial rights and responsibilities. In addition, FCAC is responsible for monitoring and evaluating trends and emerging issues that may have an impact on consumers of financial products and services, as well as providing timely and objective information and tools to help consumers navigate financial products and services.
The Advisory Committee on Open Banking (the Committee) shared consultation materials with interested stakeholders, including the FCAC, in fall of 2020. FCAC welcomes the opportunity to participate in the development of a uniquely Canadian open banking solution that prioritizes the right of the consumer to control their financial data and puts in place safeguards to ensure they are protected from financial and non-financial harm. This submission has been submitted to the Committee for their consideration in the context of their consultations.
See: NCFA OpEd: Canada’s Open Banking Consultations: Let’s Get it Done!
FCAC is broadly supportive of a hybrid model for open banking that carves out specific roles for government and industry and sets out the building blocks outlined in the Committee’s consultation materials. FCAC supports the Committee’s advocacy of a framework centred on several core consumer outcomes:
- Consumer data is protected;
- Consumers are in control of their data;
- Consumers receive access to a wider range of useful, competitive and consumer friendly financial services;
- Consumers have reliable, consistent access to services; and
- Consumers have recourse and redress when issues arise.
We strongly recommend adding a sixth core consumer outcome: Consumers benefit from consistent consumer protection and market conduct standards. Based on experiences in other jurisdictions, consumer confidence is necessary for the success of open banking. A core outcome related to market conduct and consumer protection should be explicitly stated to provide assurance to consumers and as a signal to the industry.
This would include the following base level requirements: clear, simple, and not misleading language; no coercion or tied-selling; express consent; and a robust complaints-handling system which prioritizes a fast and seamless process for the consumer.
See: Digital IDs Help Open Banking Reach Its Fullest Potential
It is inherent in the Committee’s consultation materials that consumers will have meaningful protection; FCAC recommends that the sixth core consumer outcome be added to reinforce this foundational principle. This central focus on consumer issues is critical to enable adoption of open banking and also needs to be ongoing – consumer protection must be embedded in every stage of accreditation, implementation, and in the governance and maintenance of any open banking system. Consumers should continue to receive at least the same level of protection that they currently enjoy, including in terms of liability protection. For example, today consumers are not held liable for unauthorized transactions on their debit and credit cards, provided that they have taken reasonable care to protect their information. FCAC believes that similar protections should apply in the open banking framework.
FCAC recognizes that the time to act is now and acknowledges the positive role that open banking can play in the future Canadian economy. We agree that the risks of the status quo (i.e., screen scraping) will lead to adverse outcomes for consumers.
FCAC has already warned consumers of these risks through a consumer alert and will continue educating consumers on open banking as implementation moves forward. To that end, FCAC plans to publish additional consumer education web content on open banking and fintechs in early 2021.
Summary of Recommendations
FCAC’s consumer protection mandate is exercised in two principal ways: 1) we oversee regulated entities’ compliance with consumer protection provisions, and 2) we educate consumers to improve their knowledge, skills, and confidence in making financial decisions. As a result, FCAC is well-positioned to contribute to the design and implementation of an open banking framework. The following are the main recommendations and issues that FCAC believes would merit further consideration by the Committee.
FFCON21: 7th Fintech & Funding Conference and Expo: Breaking Barriers | May 11-13, 2021
Consumer protection / market conduct standards and consumer recourse
- Incorporate legally binding consumer protection and financial inclusion requirements into the accreditation criteria from the outset (e.g., fair access to financial products and services; the requirement and verifiable ability to provide financial redress; policies and procedures related to effective complaint handling; express consent for data sharing and how consumer data will be used; and, communicating product and system disclosures in a manner that is clear, simple and not misleading). These requirements should trigger enforcement actions when non-compliance occurs.
- Invest in a national awareness and education campaign focused on open banking to ensure consistent and unbiased messaging to consumers that does not select winners and losers. This campaign should be jointly funded by the industry and government and be coordinated by a respected authority who will employ evidence-based practices. FCAC has the experience and mandate to contribute to and coordinate such a campaign.
- Apply stricter accreditation and implementation programs for firms seeking write access. Write access carries greater risks for consumers than read access and therefore should only be allowed when the framework is established and operating effectively.
- Apply a liability framework that ensures a single, seamless consumer experience, which does not put the onus on the consumer to navigate the attribution of liability, and provides fast redress / reimbursement for consumers.
- Designate a single external complaints body (ECB) for open banking activities and afford the ECB binding resolution authority.
See: Global Risk Institute Report: Discussing Open Banking Regulation for Canada
Oversight
- Careful consideration must be given to the delineation of the role, scope and authority of both the accreditation body and the implementation entity.
- It may be appropriate for the accreditation body to be industry-led and responsible for technical standards, particularly in relation to accreditation criteria. It will be important to ensure that consumer issues are adequately represented within this body.
- The implementation entity should be a regulator or be under the oversight of a regulator or other appropriate government body. The implementation entity needs to be set up in a way that is transparent, prioritizes consumer interests and protection, and manages conflicts of interests.
- Appropriate government oversight of both bodies will be fundamental to consumer confidence, particularly if the accreditation or implementation entity is afforded the authority to establish and enforce rules. Close monitoring will be required to ensure that the rules and their application do not advance business interests at the expense of consumer protection.
Data access
- Given that open banking-type activities are already present in Canada (e.g., screen-scraping), immediate direction is required during the interim period while a framework is developed. This direction should include expected commitments/roles for government and industry, guidance on interim liability allocation and access to redress, how consumer protection will be incorporated, and a sunset date for screen-scraping.
- The open banking framework should include barriers to prevent firms performing similar functions from operating without accreditation and under different rules (i.e., by continuing to use screen-scraping).
- Reciprocity should be driven by consumer consent; firms should not require reciprocal data access in order to provide a product or service.
Continue to the full analysis --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Banking on digital growth with Chris Skinner
The Finanser | Chris Skinner
Chris Skinner:
Traditional banks tend to push products through channels to get greater share of wallet and cross sell. Whereas, digital banks start with the customer journey and need, and then build the user experience to be part of a relationship interaction digitally, rather than trying to actually sell them anything.
James Robert Lay:
Greetings and hello. I am James Robert Lay and welcome to the 67th episode of the Banking on Digital Growth podcast. Today’s episode is part of the Exponential Insight series, and I’m excited to welcome Chris Skinner to the show. Chris is an author, speaker, and troublemaker, according to his LinkedIn profile. I like that. And Chris has written 14 books, most recently Doing Digital: Lessons from Leaders. He also writes a daily blog and consults about the future of banking. Hello, Chris, and welcome to the show.
Chris Skinner:
Hi, James. Thanks for inviting me. Great to be here.
James Robert Lay:
Yeah. And I think you mentioned before you do a lot of thinking about the future and when we think about the future, particularly through the lens of financial services, it can be hard to let go of the past. This idea of being built on the cloud natively, it’s operational, it’s mindset. And you share in your book Doing Digital, that banks must create a burning platform to ignite change for transformation, to spark change of transformation. Can you expand on this thinking about creating a burning platform? Is this really about first principles thinking, starting over instead of duct taping something that’s really falling apart, or just trying to hold things together for the old world?
See: Are you measuring these 5 metrics of digital progress and success?
Chris Skinner:
Well, there’s over 30 lessons in the book that I sort of outlined from the interviews I made over six months with these five big banks. But you start with obviously working out what to do and how to do it and getting a vision around how to digitally transform. And then you have to disturb people and make the organization uncomfortable. This is what Jamie’s doing with this “I’m scared shitless about FinTech.” He’s been doing it for a number of years in fact. I think his first time was about 2014, “Silicon Valley’s coming to eat our lunch.” And there’s been regular mantra from Jamie around effecting change and disturbing people. That’s quite funny, because when you look and track what he’s been saying about Bitcoin, for example, it’s turned around from, “Bitcoin is just a Ponzi scheme for criminals” to, “It’s worth $146,000 by the end of this year and we should invest in it.”
So it’s interesting how things change. And I think the critical thing is it’s great to have a burning platform and say, “We’re all going to die unless we change,” which actually is another thing I heard from two of the banks. You know, if we don’t transform, we die. But you have to then say, “What are we transforming to?” And I use the quote often of Charles Darwin, which is “It’s not the fittest, the fastest, the most intelligent or the strongest who survive. It’s the ones who are most adaptable to change.”
See: Economic performance associated with digitalization in Canada over the past two decades
But the thing is, and my challenge to most banks, is are you adapting to change in the right way?
If you’re delegating digital transformation to a CFO or CTO, CIO, CDO, giving them a budget and a project to implement in a line of business that’s fragmented, you’re really not going to survive. Because you have to digitally transform as a company with a leadership team who are passionate about making the whole company change.
And you really have to adapt, not necessarily in a way that’s rigid. In a way that says, “Well, we have to have a vision of the way forward, so this is where we need to try and get.” It’s not a fixed destination. It’s a continuum of change to make this organization fit the 21st century based on the internet and born on the internet. And that’s the huge challenge for any bank leadership team, because most banks are led by bankers who don’t understand technological requirements.
James Robert Lay:
We’re burning the ships. We’re either going to survive or we’re going to die, and we have to keep moving forward.” But what’s holding bank leadership teams back the most, or maybe a better question is about specifically vision, is what’s blinding them to begin with in the first place?
See: Has fintech made banking better?
Chris Skinner:
Well, I think, and again, going back to Jamie Dimon’s comments. He points at Square, Pay Pal, but also Ant Group and Amazon and says, “You know, these guys are going to be taking all of our business.” And that’s the disturbance, but then you have to then say, “So how are we going to change? And what do we have to change into?” And it’s a metamorphosis. It’s not a reengineering. It’s a complete reinvention, renewal. And I think what blinds them and holds them back is the challenge of doing that is humongous. It’s really not easy.
There’s a couple of great books that I’ve used through my years of talking about this. One is How Do You Make the Elephant Dance? by Lou Gerstner, talking about turning around IBM in the 1990s. But more recently Satya Nadella’s book about Microsoft. When you look at Microsoft and the turn around there, you go,
“That’s amazing that you can take a company that’s stubborn, saturated, sinking, and suddenly make it nimble and quick and turn around.”
How did they do that? It’s really about recognizing the cultural needs. Digital transformation has nothing to do with technology. It’s about people. It’s about making people understand that they have a voice, and they have an ability to enable change. They’re not just being told what to do, but they can tell us what to do.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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FCA Consultation: Payment Services (Contactless Payments) and Electronic Money – Our Approach
FCA Consultation | Jan 28, 2021
We’ve identified barriers to the success of open banking and future innovation in UK payments.
To address these, we’re proposing amendments to our Technical Standards on Strong Customer Authentication and Common and Secure Methods of Communication. We’re also taking this opportunity to amend our guidance on prudential risk management and safeguarding in our Approach Document (AD), and make general updates to a number of areas and onshoring-related changes. We’re also updating our Perimeter Guidance Manual (PERG).
One section of the CP, relating to contactless payments, will close on 24 February 2021. The rest will close on 30 April 2021.
See: Accelerating winds of change in global payments
The payments landscape has grown and evolved in recent years, as business models adapt to user needs. The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has accelerated these changes. This consultation will help us make sure regulatory expectations keep pace with the changing landscape.
We want to remove identified barriers to continued growth, innovation and competition in the payments and e-money sector (including open banking), while making the sector more resilient and protecting consumers if firms fail.
Who this applies to
Payment service providers (PSPs) and e-money issuers, as well as trade bodies representing them, should read this consultation. Our proposals affect credit institutions providing payment services and/or issuing e-money, as well as payment institutions (PIs), e-money institutions (EMIs) and registered account information services providers (RAISPs).
It also applies to firms that are subject to the temporary permission regime (TPR) and the financial services contracts regime (FSCR) set out in Schedule 3 of the Electronic Money, Payment Services and Payment Systems (Amendment and Transitional Provisions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 (Exit SI). It also applies to Gibraltar firms providing payment services in the UK.
See:
It may be of interest to:
- retailers
- consumers and micro-enterprises
- consumer groups
- those involved in open banking initiatives
- credit unions
- businesses providing payment services under exclusions of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (PSRs)/Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (EMRs)
Background to our approach
In our 2020/2021 Business Plan, we identified the payments sector as a priority for the next 3 years. Our work intends to make sure: consumers transact safely with payment firms; payment firms meet their regulatory obligations while competing on quality and value; and consumers and SMEs have access to a variety of payment services.
In this consultation paper, we’re also proposing changes to the AD to reflect the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and the end of the transition period.
Continue to the full article and Consultation forms --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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FCA and City of London’s Digital Sandbox Pilot – Presentations and Use Cases
Digital Sandbox Pilot UK | Feb 20, 2021
The pilot ran from November 2020 through to February 2021. An evaluation process is currently being undertaken by an independent consultant. The pilot will be assessed against the 5 success criteria:
- Innovation – role played in encouraging innovation in financial services to the Covid-related challenges detailed in the use cases
- Speed – role played in enabling quicker testing and development of proof of concepts
- Collaboration – role played in fostering collaboration, facilitating diversity of thinking and creating an ecosystem of key organisations
- Pilot features – the effectiveness of the key features of the pilot (see below) in stimulating and accelerating innovation
- Sustainable future – role played in informing and assisting the design and future operating model of a permanent digital sandbox
See: UK Digital sandbox – coronavirus (Covid-19) pilot
Select Teams and Descriptions
Fraud & scams
Sedicii: An AML solution that allows financial institutions to securely share knowledge about clients or transactions without disclosing any underlying data or information.
EalaX Ltd: A solution that creates digital synthetic twins of real financial data which can then be used to detect fraudulent patterns and complex problems that are being experienced during Covid-19.
MPC4AML: A solution that uses a Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) known as Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to run risk scores on a transaction network data from multiple banks.
Norbloc: A solution that uses blockchain to allow for a secure and GDPR-compliant sharing of verified KYC files across multiple institutions in real-time to create a single profile per customer.
IT2 Fraud Signals - Trust Stamp, Cifas, Lloyds & OneBanks: A solution that uses biometric data to create an identity token that can be used to match, de-duplicate and verify across institutions while protecting the users personal identity information.
See: UK: Open Finance: The FCA Consults On How To Transform The Financial Services Market
Vulnerability
PrinSIX Technologies: PrinSIX is focusing on detecting vulnerability within credit applications, testing and deploying dynamic onboarding journeys that identify applicant vulnerability flags and trigger highly personalised digital assessments to improve customer outcomes.
Qpal: A digital assistant focused on financial wellbeing, powered by Open Banking, that automates financial decision for consumers.
Applied Blockchain: A solution to allow a range of lenders to assess the credit risk of a borrower without requiring direct access to private and sensitive financial data by using privacy-preserving technologies.
DirectID: A solution that uses transactional data to predict the probability of default based on an individual’s historical and predicted cash flow.
See: FCA Report (Feb 2020): Sector Views – Key Areas of Harm Identified
SME Lending
Fluence: A solution that uses natural language processing AI to interpret and analyse financial applications and claims handling processes in order to automatically interpret new applications and claims.
Company Watch Ltd: A solution to enable finance funding providers to predict, analyse and risk assess the ability of a small business to repay credit within certain time periods.
Fractal Labs: A solution that uses Open Banking to create a cashflow forecast in order to help assess the eligibility of SME’s for small working capital loans.
Untangled Finance: A solution using tokenised assets on a blockchain to enable simple, cost-effective and transparent ways to securitise SME loans and invoices.
Continue to the full list and to watch presentations --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Revolut to roll out QR code payments for business customers in 25 countries
AltFi | Aisling Finn | Feb 18, 2021
The fintech’s business customers will be able to take payments via QR codes, helping to maintain social distancing.
Taking one step closer to becoming a ‘financial super app’, Revolut is rolling out QR codes for its business customers.
From today, Revolut’s business customers across 25 countries will be able to take in-person, socially-distanced payments via a QR code.
The touch-free payment method allows for instant payments, with small business owners able to see if a payment has been successful right away.
For businesses interested in implementing this technology, they can generate their own QR codes.
Paulo Guichard, product owner for Acquiring at Revolut said: “The popularity of QR codes has increased as this payment method is quick, easy and allows people to make socially distanced payments which are increasingly important during the global pandemic.”
“We’ve removed the need for additional devices or hardware, as all business owners have to do is use their Revolut Business app and show customers a QR code to accept payments straight away through this efficient and touch-free method.”
See: QR Codes - the Tech that changed China is coming closer to home
Revolut Business customers can generate a QR code in the app which the customer can scan on their mobile phones from a safe distance.
The new feature will be rolled out to customers across Europe, including Croatia, Greece, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia and here in the UK too.
Revolut isn’t the first to introduce QR payments for its business customers.
Back in March 2020, ANNA Money, in collaboration with financial API provider TrueLayer, announced it would let its business customers settle payments using the method.
Similarly, messaging platform Whatsapp, which has extended its capabilities in several countries to include payments, allows customers in certain countries to pay using QR codes.
In China, the use of QR codes is far more popular, with social media platform WeChat launching WeChat Pay, which lets users pay via QR code, all the way back in 2013.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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