Mobile bank N26 targets UK expansion with general manager appointment March 14, 2019 European mobile bank N26 has appointed a new general manager to drive forward UK expansion as it steps up competition against rivals such as Monzo and Revolut. Former Morgan Stanley investment banker Will Sorby has joined the Berlin-based digital bank, which operates in 24 markets across Europe, following its UK launch in October last year. Read [...]
AI’s success story still has a few missing chapters March 11, 2019 This article is not written by robots – we promise – but apparently the day when they could be is already upon us. We have just finished reading about the GPT-2 text generator which, according to this Spectator piece, “not only does text analysis and augmentation, but generates highly sophisticated content”. “It can effectively write articles,” [...]
Revolut fights back: Nik Storonsky on negative press, growing pains and what’s next March 11, 2019 Revolut has endured a torrid start to 2019. Drawing the City watchdog’s attention after causing concerns by temporarily shutting down its sanctions screening system last year, the fintech starlet was revealed to have lost its finance chief, and drew further negative publicity when a customer complained of a bungled £70,000 payment. Its woes were compounded [...]
Klarna rival Laybuy partners with Footasylum in UK launch March 10, 2019 Klarna rival Laybuy, which offers a “buy now, pay later” service, has launched in the UK today in a partnership with shoe shop Footasylum. Online Footasylum customers will be given the option to pay using Laybuy from today, and it will be rolled out in the brand’s 70 high street stores later this year. Read [...]
Draper Esprit leads £7m funding round in deep tech firm Hadean March 7, 2019 Venture capital firm Draper Esprit has led a £7m funding round in London deep tech firm Hadean. Hadean has created the world’s first cloud-first operating system to allow programmers to scale up their code and reduce the manpower and time wasted on engineering. Read more: London-listed Draper Esprit to double down on Europe with £100m [...]
UK and Turkey launch joint initiative to develop Islamic fintech March 7, 2019 The UK and Turkey have launched a new joint initiative to develop digital financial technology in the Islamic world. Firms hope to open financial services to the “unbanked population” through cooperation in the Islamic fintech market. Read more: Five fintech trends to watch in 2019 A report by the UK-Turkey Islamic Finance working group, which [...]
How to use an Isa to invest in peer-to-peer loans March 6, 2019 Since peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms began to enter the market in 2005, savers have used the services to hand out more than £10bn to borrowers. Aside from providing a significant boost to the UK economy, P2P offers attractive interest rates to lenders by cutting the banking sector from the borrowing process. The Innovative Finance Isa [...]
Revolut boss concedes to claims of ‘toxic culture’ at the startup March 5, 2019 The chief executive of London fintech startup Revolut said his firm “hasn’t always gotten things right” in an open letter late last night, after fresh allegations of a toxic culture at the company emerged last week. Former Revolut employees at both senior and junior levels described an environment of unpaid work, unachievable targets and high-staff [...]
KFC taps London fintech startup Flux for paperless payments March 4, 2019 KFC has launched a partnership with London fintech startup Flux which will see the US fried chicken chain go paperless. From today, users of digital banks Monzo and Starling, as well as select Barclays customers in the near future, will be able to receive digital itemised receipts for transactions in their banking apps when they [...]
Customers unable to access Revolut app after digital bank suffers outage March 1, 2019 Revolut customers were unable to use the digital bank’s app this morning after the firm suffered a technical glitch. The Revolut app was unable to process card top ups and money transfers for at least four hours today while the challenger bank attempted to fix the problem. Read more: Revolut pushes ministers for fast-track tech [...]