Like me, you might be able to buy solar energy from your utility.
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Personal Finance
Freedom Fighters: Introducing the TekSavvy comic book: story of a captured regulator and band of heroes
TekSavvy | Nov 30, 2021
[TechSavvy] proud to present the first issue of “The Intrepid Savvies,” which was created and distributed to shine a light on the state of the telecommunications sector in Canada.
This is the story of a captured regulator and an all-powerful telecommunications industry, and a small but mighty band of heroes who fight to make things better.
While the story may be exaggerated, it reflects a real and significant shift over the past few years in the Canadian telecommunications industry toward fewer companies increasing their market power, often with the encouragement of decision-makers such as the CRTC and the Competition Bureau.
If this trend continues, there will be no space left for smaller independent competitors and Canadians will lose.
Every Canadian deserves internet access at an affordable price, yet we continue to pay some of the highest prices for telecommunications services in the world.
You can read our latest blog post on the backstory behind why we felt the need to create and share this story.
Download the comic book --> 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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Scott Galloway: Red Friday
Scott Galloway | Nov 26, 2021
BNPL is one of the hottest trends in finance: 1 in 5 Americans used one of these services in the past year, with U.S. spending on BNPL increasing 230% since 2020. By 2025 global BNPL spending is projected to double to $680 billion. In August, Square acquired BNPL pioneer Afterpay for $29 billion in the largest-ever acquisition of an Australian firm. (We had the Founder/CEO of Afterpay on the Prof G Pod, and he’s an impressive young man.) Swedish BNPL giant Klarna is getting ready for a $50-billion-plus IPO, with a current valuation on par with ING or Lloyds Banking Group.
The target market is young people. Klarna’s frontman is rapper A$AP Rocky (who was paid in equity, not debt) — many BNPL brands rely on social media influencer campaigns. In the U.S., three-quarters of users are Gen Zers or millennials; it’s projected that nearly half of Gen Z will be using BNPL services by 2022. Their attraction to BNPL coincides with an aversion to banks and the credit they offer. This is a generation that came of age just before or in the wake of the Great Recession, a global economic crisis precipitated by … way too much credit. Young people love BNPL because, according to the former director of Afterpay, the vast majority of them “don’t want to be on credit.”
He’s not wrong. As Klarna reported in an investor factsheet, 1 in 3 millennials’ biggest fear is credit card debt. That’s more than name death or war. Deployment to Afghanistan is bad, but an unpaid balance on your Discover Card is (apparently) worse.
There’s one problem: Buy Now Pay Later is (wait for it) credit.
Hiding in Plain Sight
By most measures, BNPL services aren’t even good credit offerings. With a traditional credit card, you pay nothing up front, then you’ve got, on average, five weeks to pay without incurring any fees or interest. Closer to two months if you manage your billing cycles carefully. Carrying a balance will cost you, though, 1%-2% in interest per month. Miss a payment, and you get a late fee, about $30 — on which you’ll also pay interest.
See: Financial Consumer Agency of Canada publishes BNPL pilot study
In the short term at least, BNPL terms are worse. Take Afterpay. When you buy your new jeans, you have to come up with 25% of the money at purchase, then the lender gives you six weeks to pay off the remainder, in three installments. Miss an installment, and Afterpay hits you with a late fee. Continue in arrears, and the late fees increase, up to a cap of 25% of the purchase price. Also, you need a debit or credit card to make payments to Afterpay. Other providers have different fee and interest structures, but the basic model is the same. It’s credit.
Money Machine yet Vulnerable
So what’s the harm? Why not have a credit card with training wheels to ease young people into their journey toward a lifetime of debt? Especially as some of the costs are borne by the retailer in exchange for the consumer buying more sooner. Might Buy Now Pay Later even be training consumers to develop better purchase habits? Here’s a good reason to be skeptical.
See: Take home now, pay later with no interest fees
Buy Now Pay Later firms are quick to tell you that this is where they make most of their money — off merchants, not millennials. That’s true. But the business model only works by capitalizing on the instinct for immediate gratification. And younger neurons are more vulnerable to this marketing than older ones.
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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Ontarians will be able to use their digital ID cards to open bank accounts, apply for government programs, access vaccination records and more
The Toronto Star | | Nov 18, 2021
The program, now delayed until 2022, will give Ontarians access to an electronic version of their government ID — including driver’s licences and health cards — that can be stored on their mobile devices.
The province says physical IDs will still be issued and accepted but Ontarians will also be able to use digital cards on a voluntary basis to open bank accounts, pick up packages at the post office, apply for government assistance, access vaccination records and more.
The digital ID program was announced in October 2020 as part of a broader strategy to improve Ontarians’ access to government services during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Verify Ontario, the proof-of-vaccination app the province launched earlier this year.
See: Digital Identity Sins
Since the announcement, the province has held a series of roundtable consultations with businesses and think tanks to discuss and develop program standards. But the digital ID took a back seat to the development of Verify Ontario, delaying the program’s release to 2022.
The province, which is partnering with the private sector to develop the technology, says the ID program will not rely on a central database or tracking measures that could breach the privacy and security of personal information.
The identification data is supposed to be protected with strong encryption software and the ability to disconnect the ID card if the device is ever lost or stolen.
While digitization can consolidate key government documents for personal convenience, experts warn it can also present new-found security hazards and equity concerns.
Ann Cavoukian, a digital privacy expert who formerly served as Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, says the province will need to ensure the digital ID program does not rely on a centralized data system.
“The concern around a central database is that it can be subject to hacking, phishing and all kinds of unauthorized access if it’s not well protected,” Cavoukian said.
Ontarians’ physical identification card data is presently dispersed among ministries, from health to transportation. If that data is consolidated, Cavoukian says more personal information is at risk in the event of a security breach.
See:
Liquid Avatar Technologies Supports Ontario’s Approach to Technology and Standards for Digital Identity
Digital Identity Should Be A Big Business For Banks
According to provincial statistics, as many as 700,000 households and businesses still lack access to adequate broadband speeds or have no access at all. Ontarians in rural areas, particularly in Northern Ontario, are less likely to have substantive internet access.
In a survey of Ontarians, only 17 per cent said they were ready to adopt a digital ID card immediately. Nearly 80 per cent said they would opt into the program over the next five to six years.
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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In less than 10 minutes I bought a half-kilowatt of solar energy
CNET | Andrew Blok | Nov 17, 2021
Like me, you might be able to buy solar energy from your utility.
Solar panels are out of financial reach for a lot of people. Solar energy, however, is more accessible. So, after writing about how relatively easy it is to claim renewable energy for your own personal use, I set out to get some solar power for myself.
It took about 10 minutes and cost me $9, and it's likely just as easy for you.
Utilities often offer green power pricing programs in which their customers can pay a bit of a premium to buy renewable energy. It's a relatively simple way to satisfy your desire to use renewable energy. At least 1 million utility customers bought renewable energy this way in 2020. Not all renewable energy is created the same, though, and it's worth a bit of digging to make sure your purchase is making a difference.
See: El Salvador taps renewable energy from volcanoes to start mining bitcoin
To be fair, I did my digging after the fact.
Buying solar power was quick and easy
I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and my electric provider is Consumers Energy. I knew it had renewable energy programs and, from my recent reporting, had a pretty good idea of how they were likely to work. So I headed to its website.
It took me four clicks to get to a subscription form for a program called Solar Gardens. Solar Gardens allows customers like me to subscribe to solar panels that Consumers Energy has built in Michigan.
For an extra (yes, extra) $9 each month on my bill, I could subscribe to half of a kilowatt of solar production. I would get a credit of about $4 back for the energy my portion of the array produced -- and for the satisfaction of using solar energy.
Consumers Energy would also retire the renewable energy certificates on my behalf, which means I rightly get to say I used that energy. (I double-checked this with Consumers. The utility said that I get to claim the environmental benefits of the solar energy I'm paying for and that this energy doesn't cover its own renewable energy obligations under Michigan law.)
See: How Decentralized Technologies are Transforming Platform Economics
Solar production varies based on how much the sun shines. I bought a half-kilowatt block, which Consumers Energy told me is expected, on average, to generate about 750 kilowatt hours a year.
Consumers Energy says the average household would need 10 or 12 of the blocks to offset their annual energy cost. I use a lot less energy than the average household. Over the past 12 months, I used 4,376 kilowatt hours, so I would only need to buy six blocks to completely offset my energy use.
Next, I entered contact information and my service address. I certified that I was the account holder and that I had read the terms and conditions. (Truth: I had not.)
And that was it. I had bought some solar energy.
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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10% of China has already opened digital yuan wallets –> 20 million new retail wallets since June
The Block | Wolfie Zhao | Nov 3, 2021
The number of users of China's digital yuan, also known as the e-CNY, has increased by more than six times over the past four months.
That's according to Mu Changchun, head of the Digital Currency Research Institute at the People's Bank of China, who said in the Hong Kong Fintech Week conference that 140 million individuals in China have activated their e-CNY wallets.
That number is about 10% of China's total population and has sharply increased since July when the PBoC said in its first-ever e-CNY white-paper that 20 million retail digital yuan wallets were opened as of June 30.
See: China’s new digital yuan users soar as transactions hit $10 billion
In addition, Mu said the number of corporate e-CNY wallets has nearly tripled to 10 million from 3.5 million four months ago. The volume of transactions made through the e-CNY has jumped to 150 million with the total worth amounting to 62 billion yuan, or $9.7 billion, he added during the conference.
Since late last year, China has been making a wider push to roll out the usage of the e-CNY in major cities through lucky draws initially and then more widely available giveaways.
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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Zillow Shuts Home-Flipping Business After Racking Up Losses
Yahoo Finance | | Nov 2, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Zillow Group Inc. is pulling the plug on its tech-powered home-flipping operation, after an ambitious effort to transform the company collapsed when its vaunted pricing algorithms proved unequal to the task.
The company plans to take writedowns of as much as $569 million and reduce its workforce by 25% as it winds down the business in coming months, according to a statement Tuesday. Zillow shares plunged as much as 11% to $76.22 in late trading.
The decision to abandon home flipping comes as the company’s third-quarter results showed it lost more than $380 million in the operation, called Zillow Offers. The business hit a major snag in recent months as Zillow tweaked its algorithms to make more aggressive offers, causing it to overpay for houses just as the heated U.S. market began to cool slightly.
See: 3 Ways Fintech Is Changing Homebuying
With the company’s losses mounting, Chief Executive Officer Rich Barton said it had become too risky to scale the business in a U.S. housing market that has been running hot for well over a year during the pandemic.
“Fundamentally, we have been unable to predict future pricing of homes to a level of accuracy that makes this a makes a safe business to be in,” Barton said on an earnings call.
For most of Zillow’s 15-year history, the company has been known for publishing online real estate listings and home-price estimates -- called Zestimates -- and seeking to profit by connecting agents with potential clients. In 2018, Barton, one of the company’s founders, reclaimed the role of CEO and pivoted into the high-tech home-flipping business, called iBuying.
Zillow used pricing algorithms to buy homes from their owners, make light repairs, and put them back on the market. Barton set an ambitious goal, seeking to buy 5,000 homes a month by 2024.
Earlier this year, the company borrowed more than $1 billion through two bond offerings, making it the first iBuyer to tap the securitization market. It has also lined up $500 million credit facilities with Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.
See: BuyProperly Raises $2M to Bring Accessible Real Estate Investing to Canada and the US
As recently as August, Barton was boasting about the popularity of the service, telling investors that the traditional way of selling a home was so “dreadful and dreaded” that customers were willing to bypass potential bidding wars to sell to Zillow “in this sizzling-hot sellers market.”
Zillow bought roughly 9,700 homes in the third quarter, due to what it called “higher-than-anticipated conversion rates.” It also booked a $304 million writedown on inventory owned at the end of the period “as a result of unintentionally purchasing homes at higher prices” than the company now thinks it can sell them for.
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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US consumers agree trust in protecting assets is essential before they’ll share their bank credentials
eMarketer | Matthew Gaughan | Nov 4, 2021
A June 2021 survey from Klarna and Nepa found that 52% of US adults trusted banks, while just 17% trusted neobanks. The fragmentation of open banking in the US has led to slow adoption of the technology by consumers—55% of US adults have never even heard of the service.
See: Paying for coffee with crypto? Get ready, the future of payments is already here
According to a PYMNTS.com survey conducted in collaboration with MX, more than a quarter of US consumers surveyed said trust in their financial institution to protect their financial assets is the most important factor in sharing bank credentials with third parties.
- 16.0% said that trust in the third party they were connecting to was the most important.
- 14.4% picked the belief that the connections are secure as their top choice.
- 11.6% noted that transactions becoming much easier because the accounts are connected as their top factor.
Having said this, among survey respondents that connected third-party apps to their bank accounts, 29.9% were very or extremely interested, and 25.7% were somewhat interested in using an open-banking portal offered by their personal bank. The level of interest grew within certain groups—particularly younger generations or those already comfortable with sharing credentials.
See: Should the age of Nubank’s customer base worry incumbents?
- 47.1% and 37.2% of Millennials and Gen Z, respectively, were very or extremely interested.
- 59.8% of consumers that were very or extremely comfortable sharing credentials showed the same high level of interest for open banking as younger generations.
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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