A Twitter user by the name “Burak” (
Key messages
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Payments, Transfers, Rewards
Buffet-backed Nubank to Launch ‘Nucoin’ Loyalty tokens on the Polygon Blockchain
Cointelegraph | Ana Paula Pereira | Oct 19, 2022
Image: Nubank
Nubank, a fintech bank in Brazil, announced the creation of the Nucoin token on the Polygon blockchain on Oct. 19, paving the way for a rewards program for its 70 million clients across Latin America.
- Loyalty tokens: The company said that the token will be available in the first half of 2023, and will recognize customer loyalty and engagement with the bank products without cost or fees for its users. The tokens can be redeemed for perks and discounts on selected products.
- Crowdsourcing Web3 features with customers: As of this month, approximately 2,000 clients will be invited to participate in a discussion of the project details, including the decentralized process of product creation and its Web3 features. "We decided to bring a group of customers into this co-creation process precisely to refine our product ahead of the public launch, to ensure we get to a program that truly resonates with our customers' expectations and needs," noted Czapski.
See: Founded in Canada, Fintech NorthOne Closes CA$92.1 Million Series B to Serve Small Businesses in the U.S.
- Buffett-backed: Earlier this year, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway dumped a portion of its Visa and Mastercard holdings and increased exposure in Nubank, purchasing $1 billion worth of stocks after selling $3.1 billion worth of Visa and Mastercard stocks combined.
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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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Anti-fragility: Single Lightning Transaction Sends Network into Turmoil
CoinDesk | Frederick Munawa | Nov 2, 2022
A Twitter user by the name “Burak” (@brqgoo) sent a large swath of the Lightning Network into turmoil on Tuesday morning, when he allegedly created a non-standard Bitcoin transaction that prevented users from opening new Lightning channels (connections between Lightning nodes).
- Anti-fragility: Burak’s shenanigans disrupted a good chunk of the Bitcoin and Lightning ecosystems. Nevertheless, one could argue the community’s anti-fragility was on full display. Core Lightning (CLN) nodes that rely on Bitcoin Core, the most popular implementation of Bitcoin, were unaffected (although this seems to have been by design). Additionally, the bug Burak exploited was quickly patched (thanks to Elle Mouton and Oliver Gugger).
- Bug handling going forward: Burak’s actions not only sparked lively exchanges on Twitter, but also raised a key question – how should the Bitcoin community handle similar exploits in the future?
See: Lyn Alden Analysis: A Look at the Lightening Network
- “It's always hard to prepare against a novel bug. I guess more review and bug bounty programs for responsible disclosure may help.” Pickhardt weighed in.
- “However, as I understand, Pieter Wuille thinks there may sometimes be a risk in fixing bugs, as that may raise awareness and attract potential malicious actors in the transition phase while nodes update."
- It'd be reasonable to assume that exploiting this needed cooperation from miners (or ones with non-standard mempool/relay policy at least), making it harder to pull off. And fixing this one-line without raising suspicion is hard,” Wuille tweeted.
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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The Latest Innovative Trends in FinTech
Oct 31, 2022
Image: Unsplash/Skye Studios
The Fintech industry has been home to some of the most interesting innovations over the past few years, with startups leading the way and disrupting traditional financial services. FinTech has been steadily transforming the global economy, allowing the bankless to gain access to banking services and offering new ways for consumers to get more out of their money.
Innovation has been key to change in this sector, bringing new technology and ideas to the table and changing how people do business. Innovation is a powerful tool for implementing new ideas and leveraging resources to create a competitive advantage. You can learn more about how it works with a corporate strategy course, which will give you the tools you need to drive innovation and boost your business’ performance.
Although we’ve seen many big changes in the FinTech industry, there is still room for growth. The global market for financial technology is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26.2% through 2030. These are some of the latest innovative trends that can help this sector continue to grow.
Buy Now Pay Later
Buy now pay later (BNPL) is hardly a new concept, but recent innovations have led to it taking off all over the world. Services such as ClearPay and Klarna offer consumers the chance to pay across interest-free instalments. Giving consumers more freedom over when they pay has proven to be a major hit, with a growing number of online retailers now offering this service.
BNPL companies might not charge interest on instalments, but they do charge if the instalments aren’t paid in time. Some have criticised these companies, saying they have the potential to trap the financially illiterate in debt. And when BNPL is offered for things like takeaways, it’s easy to see why people would think this.
In reality, it’s much more like a credit card. Only anyone can use it. Future innovations to BNPL services could include offering better guidelines to consumers on the risks involved in paying on credit and linking a bank account to make direct debits.
FinTech Super Apps
With the help of a payment system, super apps combine many programmes into a single user interface to offer an ecosystem of completely integrated third-party services. The idea is not brand-new. It’s also incredibly prevalent in apps throughout Asia and Latin America, and the concept is becoming more common in the West too.
Any existing digital platform with a sizable user base that has a shared lifestyle or business goal could benefit from developing a super app. It allows the organisation to combine the end user's existing data with fresh insights gleaned from a variety of behaviours and interests. Super apps have a lot of applications within the FinTech industry and could be part of the next wave of innovative ideas.
See: CPAs Are Seeing Fintech Innovation Across Many Canadian Provinces
The emergence of these apps could result in cryptocurrency trading while maintaining multiple savings accounts for fintech. This could also include quick and cost-free account opening alternatives, as well as cross-border payment capabilities and multi-currency possibilities. Already, platforms such as Monzo, Revolut and Starling are approaching Super app territory, offering several different services in one.
Mainstream Adoption of Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency has steadily seen increased adoption around the world since it first appeared in 2010. Every few years, the market grows, and hype builds around these digital assets. Although many dismissed them as a fad initially, they’ve become more widespread, and the potential use cases and applications are extremely interesting.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, sparking a lot of debate. Since then, no other countries have followed, but El Salvador offers potential insight into a world that fully adopts cryptocurrency payments.
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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McKinsey: Embedded Finance – Who Will Capture the Value? Risk vs Reward
McKinsey & Co | Andy Dresner, Albion Murati, Brian Pike, and Jonathan Zell | Oct 13, 2022
New Small businesses may never interact with a conventional bank to open a deposit account, order a debit card, and meet most of their financing needs.
- The operators of these platforms are not usually banks. Rather, they are software companies that partner with banks and technology providers to embed financial products into a single seamless, convenient, and easy-to-use customer experience.
See: Bain & Co Embedded Finance Report: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain
- This new form of partnership between banks, technology providers, and distributors of financial products via nonfinancial platforms underpins what has been hailed as the embedded-finance revolution.
- Sitting at the intersection of commerce, banking, and business services, payments has been one of the first use cases of embedded finance, and a large number of the aspiring embedded-finance providers originate from the payments industry.
- embedded finance reached $20 billion in revenues in the United States alone in 2021, according to McKinsey’s market-sizing model. According to our estimates, the market could double in size within the next three to five years.
- Digitalization: The digitization of commerce and business management has massively expanded opportunities to embed finance in nonfinancial customer experiences.
- As much as 33 percent of global card spending—50 percent in the US—now takes place online, with a large portion of small and midsize companies in the US relying on software solutions for managing their business
- Time has come: As digital natives came of age, they expanded the pool of consumers and businesses open to receiving all their financial services via digital platforms.
- Open-banking innovation, supported by mandates in the European Union and market-led adoption in the US, has helped unlock latent demand by enabling third-party fintech players to access consumers’ banking data and even conduct transactions on their behalf.
- For a nonbank company acting as a distributor, embedded finance offers a way to enhance the customer experience and create a new source of revenue without incurring the overhead associated with operating a bank.
See: McKinsey Global Banking: Revenue pools moving to customer-ownership with embedded digital financial services
- Risks: likely to remain a constraint on growth, however, as products that require case-by-case assessment, in-person touchpoints, or regulatory waiting periods, such as commercial real estate financing, are less susceptible to end-to-end digitization. Despite these constraints, we estimate that products suitable for offering via embedded finance could account for as much as 50 percent of banking revenue pools
- Adapt to B2B2C and B2B2B sales motions. Although some financial institutions operate with channel partners, many are accustomed to serving end customers directly. Those using direct channels will need to build a new set of capabilities to support distributors in selling embedded-finance products to their consumer or business customers.
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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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Deloitte: 2023 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook | ‘A new global economic order seems imminent’
Deloitte | Monica O'Reilly, Anna Celner, Deron Weston, Val Srinivas | Oct 17, 2022
Key messages
- The global economy is in a fragile and fractious state. While most banks are on sound footing, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ongoing supply chain and energy shocks, persistent inflation, and tightening monetary policy will be felt unevenly across the industry.
- Meanwhile, escalation of geopolitical risks, deglobalization, and fracturing payments systems are pushing the world toward a new economic order.
See: NCFA Open Banking Current State in Canada with Senator Colin Deacon and Mahi Sall
- These forces will likely have implications for global money flows: how, where, and when capital and liquidity are demanded; and the ways every actor in the financial system interacts with one another.
- To navigate through these uncharted waters, banks should reassess traditional product, service, and industry boundaries to create new sources of value. Such opportunities may exist in a number of areas, including embedded finance, tokenized assets, financial technology, digital identity, or green finance. Some banks have begun this journey, but many could fall behind.
- The pandemic tested banking leaders’ conviction, and it is about to be tested again. Nonetheless, banks
should not lose sight of their role as financial intermediaries in the new global economic order.
Retail banking: Envisioning new ways to serve and engage with customers
- Retail banking customers are also expecting more from their banks. In particular, they are clamoring for a superior cross-channel experience and hands-on guidance during challenging times. These heightened demands will require banks to go beyond a product lens and create customer experiences that are data-driven, consistent across channels, and complete with personalized advice.
See: Three ways open banking could impact wealth management
- In the long term, banks should develop inventive new applications for ESG, embedded finance, and digital assets. These efforts should prioritize empowering customers with initiatives targeting racial equity, decarbonization, and data security.
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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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Payments Canada Delays Launch of Real-Time Rails Again (without a timeline)
Betakit | | Oct 12, 2022
Payments Canada has delayed the launch of the forthcoming Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system (again, with no timeline), saying it needs more time to validate and test the system’s components and end-to-end integration.
- Delay: It’s the second time Payments Canada (PC) has delayed the system’s launch. It first promised to deliver the RTR in 2022, and then rescheduled the launch to mid-2023.
- No revised timeline was given by PC . CEO Tracey Black said that PC’s members, stakeholders, and the broader payment industry would need to be consulted first.
- PC called the RTR a fundamental part of its multi-year industry program to modernize the infrastructure, rules, and standards but PC needs to complete the work. Canada is playing catchup: more than 54 countries globally already use a similar system. And PC has been working on modernizing its system since 2015, consulting with more than 100 organizations within the ecosystem.
See: US-Euro Real-Time Payments Expected to Launch in 2022
- Tracey Black: “The Rogers outage on July 8 impacted consumers and businesses across Canada.” It’s not entirely unexpected that Black would raise the telecom outage given that Interac has been selected as the RTR’s exchange provider, and Mastercard’s Vocalink as its clearing and settlement solution provider. Following the outage, Interac posted that the system-wide Rogers outage caused “widespread impact,” including the unavailability of Interac Debit and e-Transfer services.
- No access: Currently, FinTech startups cannot directly access Interac’s e-Transfer rails, which is the peer-to-peer (P2P) method in Canada.
Alex Vronces of PayTechs of Canada:
The delay is “disappointing” but also “not a surprise. Things have been absurd from the get-go. We’ve asked banks to invest in and build a payment system that their competitors will use to compete with them. On day 1, if and when the RTR launches, there’s going to be no functional difference between Interac e-Transfer and the RTR
See: Wait and see approach for Fintechs as Payments Canada chooses Interac as Canada’s real-time payments provider
Michael Katchen of Wealthsimple:
Real change will only be realized if newer entrants like Wealthsimple are able to move in lockstep with legacy institutions.
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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BNY Mellon: Collaboration Between Banks and Fintechs Key to Avoid Client Disintermediation
BNY Mellon | Oct 10, 2022
BNY Mellon, in collaboration with Aite-Novarica Group, today released a report finding that financial institutions (FIs) servicing business clients are being disintermediated by fintech payment providers. But it also found that banks are slowing the trend by partnering with larger banks who have already built connections to fintechs.
- Survey: The findings of the report – produced in collaboration with Aite – are based on feedback from a survey of 790 employees of midsized and large organizations in seven North American and European countries.
- Innovation lag spurs disintermediation: With today’s capital constraints, regulatory burdens and cost pressures, it can be challenging for financial institutions (FIs) to keep up with the pace of change and abundance of choice in payments. Because of this lag, businesses can sometimes be enticed to circumvent their banks by engaging directly with fintechs to solve for points of friction in the payments process.
See: Canada’s Open Banking Journey: Interview with Huw Davies, Chief Commercial Officer OZONE API (UK)
- Collaboration enables opportunities: This so-called “disintermediation” is amping up the sense of competition between FIs and fintechs, but also enabling many opportunities for innovation and operation between them — with both sides having much to gain. The potential for collaboration is driving a surge in innovation as the industry races to meet new end-user demands. The future of payments should see a lot more synergies between banks and fintechs as they collaborate on new ways to drive growth.
- In this research, several supporting trends have been identified:
- Qualitiative:
- Many FIs are modifying their strategy roadmaps to partner and collaborate with fintechs to bring better, more robust capabilities to market quicker than they could by utilizing only internal resources and development teams.
- Overall, businesses report that they would actually rather partner with an FI than have to seek other third-party fintech providers.
- Some 62% of businesses are already working with a fintech provider and 28% are working with multiple fintech providers.
- Only 34% of businesses feel that their FI fully understands their needs when it comes to payments. This represents a large opportunity for FIs to invest and differentiate to meet the individual needs of their end clients, including by partnering up with other banks or purchasing white-labeled solutions.
- Qualitiative:
See: UK banks publish fintech collaboration toolkit
- Almost 60% of businesses report that the speed of payment and settlement is the biggest gap in their current payment strategy.
- An overwhelming 88% of businesses have already made a significant investment in improving their payment technologies or processes, and this number is expected to remain high.
View the original release --> here
Download the 13 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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