Fintech Talents

Fintech Talents

Kallyas is an ultra-premium, responsive theme built for today websites.

T (212) 555 55 00
Email: sales@yourwebsite.com

Your Company LTD
Street nr 100, 4536534, Chicago, US


Content

STAY TUNED

FTT Bookmark – Embedding the power of partnerships

by FTT Team / Monday 19 July 2021 / Published in Blog, Community & Events, Content, Embedded Finance, Fintech, FinTech of the Week, FinTECHTalents, Innovation, Opinion
FTT-Bookmark-Embedding-The-Power-of-Partnerships

Embedding The Power of Partnerships – From the Middle East to Gig Economy

Your weekly resource for noteworthy news, fascinating features, and fintech titbits that caught our eye. Whether you live by your Twitter lists, save your Google Alerts or simply scroll through LinkedIn for insights and commentary – there is a wealth of content that weaves a global story around fintech.

Our job at Fintech Talents is to work within that global story – finding the news items, conventional wisdoms and hard data that aids us in bringing the industry the best content, community and experiences in the business. This week’s FTT Bookmark of timely resources and real time conversations that are shaping fintech is brought to you by Flora Pleguezuelos, Product & Content Manager at VC Innovations.

Discover-Settle BNPL $30 million partnership

Discover, the financial services firm that owns Discover Bank, has partnered with Settle, a buy now pay later firm. The Chicago-born bank has signed a partnership to invest $30 million in the BNPL start-up Settle. The agreement involving both firms is based on a referral programme that will encourage Sezzle users to acquire Discover’s products such as debit and credit cards, while additionally building a BNPL solution for Discover Global Network. Discover Card is currently the third largest credit card brand in the US, with nearly 50 million cardholders. This follows the recent boom in US banks entering the BNPL space. Barclays US Consumer Bank announced early this year that would be offering BNPL services for its merchant partners.

Sezzle is a start-up that started providing its services in 2016, and already has an impressive customer base of over 34,000 merchants offering BNPL services to over 2.6 million online shoppers.

According to Oliver Wyman, between $20 to $25 billion transactions were eased in the US in 2020 because of BNPL fintechs, a number that is expected to grow. Kaleido Intelligence fintech research firm predicted that point-of-sale (POS) instalment payments will reach $680 billion by 2025.

The partnership will allow Discover to expand its offerings and amplify its customer base. They will also challenge other banks to also offer BNPL services. Since Discover is seen as one of the industry leaders in retail banking innovation, this partnership could start a trend for other retail both digital and brick-and-mortar banks to start partnering with fintech to offer BNPL services.

High impact fintech trends in Emerging Markets – The Middle East

According to Jupiter AM’s last research paper “The Innovations Disrupting Financial Services in Emerging Markets”, that highlights the fintech trends with the largest impact in 2020, there are huge opportunities for investors to further enhance their fintech exposure.

The predominant fintech trends spotted in the research paper include e-commerce, the rise of super apps, cash-less society, financial inclusion, cryptocurrencies and digital banking. Fintech industry growth is quickly picking up in places such as the Middle East given that Emerging Markets are much more agile adapting to technological innovations (due to the lack of legacy infrastructure). Additionally, major economies in the region are devising supportive regulatory plans and projects to support fintech innovation.

Traditional financial institutions are already dramatically changing the approach to the ways in which they are offering and delivering their products and services. They will need to o continue to do so following shifts in customer behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic, or they will struggle to compete in the market. The low barriers to enter the industry mean that there is a massive number of fintech players entering the market, which has become a critical threat to established financial firms.

The reality of a cashless society is becoming a reality driven by the increased adoption of cashless payments in recent years and supportive e-commerce market dynamics. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has officially committed to achieve 70% cashless payments for all transactions.

Financial inclusion is likely to become a huge opportunity in the Middle East with the rise of fintech investment and innovation. The personalization distinctive trait of fintech solutions and products has the ability to secure a market that has not been penetrated by traditional banking.

Walmart and Green Dot partner to offer deposits accounts

Walmart and Green Dot have announced that they plan to turn Walmart’s MoneyCard (a prepaid card) into a deposit’s account. This has alerted the banking industry, that has been scared since the retailer’s customer base is of 240 million, larger than JP Morgan Chase customer base of over 50 million customers, the biggest retailer bank in the US. Walmart has been expressing its interest to enter the banking industry from a long time, which would become a significant threat for the banking industry.

This comes in times where traditional retail banks are already facing a strong competition coming from digital banks, credit unions that are expanding from their traditional offerings, and now the threat that other non-financial institutions, such as Walmart or Amazon that are starting to offer financial services to customers. It is a big concern for bank, particularly given that deposit accounts are their main source of liquidity.

Walmart owns some Green Dot special class shares, and it is Green Dot’s biggest retail customer, accounting for 27% of Green Dot’s operating revenue in 2020. Green Dot is both a bank holding company (since acquired Green Dot Bank in 2011) and a fintech. Walmart’s offerings jointly with Green Dot includes some website functionalities apart from Walmart MoneyCard. The two companies have had a longstanding partnership that also includes TailFin Labs LLC, a fintech accelerator. From this partnership, Walmart will receive a commission, but the deposit accounts will still belong to Green Dot Bank.

While banks and other financial institutions see Walmart and other embedded finance players as a big threat and competitor, for the retailer perspective, the benefit perhaps has more to do with picking up with their main retail competitors such as Amazon or Shopify.

Want to learn more? Join us September 1st, 2021 (09.00am PT) as we explore embedded finance trends and case studies, register now for FTT Embedded Finance North America.

$3.8 million seed round raise for Brazilian embedded lending fintech Dinnie

Dinie, Brazil’s pioneer API-first embedded lending fintech has raised USD $3.8 million seed round that will be used to accelerate the firm’s end-to-end embedded credit infrastructure, serve embedded products (such as business overdraft or BNPL for businesses) to over 15,000 MSMEs and further expose their APIs to the country’s largest e-commerce platforms.

The seed round, led by Accion Venture Lab and K50 Ventures, also accounted with the participation of Flourish Ventures, Domo Invest, Endeavor’s Fund Scale Up Ventures and Tribe Capital, to name a few. The company has also announced that has secured a further USD $20 million in debt financing raised from Empirica Investimentos, having managed to conclude Dinie’s securitization structure.

Brazil is home to more than 17 million MSMEs, there is a big pool of opportunities for the lending fintech firm. The German-born Brazil-founded start-up approach is to embed their services with existing platforms used by MSMEs, since it is a very simple process, the reach and opportunities that the company has are massive. Dinie leverages data from MSMEs platforms and quickly approves and underwrites credit, while monitoring cash flow and repayment behaviours that will later adjust such credit lines and approve future offerings. The fintech also enables MSMEs to fund their working capital and pay daily expenses.

Marqeta partnering with Payfare to enter the gig economy

Marqeta, a card issuing platform, is partnering with Payfare, a digital banking and instant payout fintech, in pursuit of opportunities in the gig economy. The gig economy connects freelancers with customers through digital platforms, and as reported by Mastercard, it is expected to grow to $455 billion in 2023.

Marqeta, which reached a $14.3 billion valuation earlier this year after being listed in the stock market, is currently operating in 36 countries and looking at entering new markets. The powerful partnership will blend Marqeta’s card and payment services with Payfare’s instant payouts to bring faster payment solutions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the on-demand services, that is also expected to grow as the world reopens, which will lead to bigger opportunities for Payfare.  Payfare partners with marketplaces offering digital banking and instant payout services. Some of their clients include DoorDash, Uber or Lyft.

Join us September 1st, 2021 (09.00am PT) to hear more case studies from Marqeta in the embedded finance space. Register now for FTT Embedded Finance North America.. Complementary passes are available until August 24th.


Tagged under: Deposits, Emerging Markets, fintech, Fintech Talents, Fintech Talents Festival, partnerships, Splash

Recent Posts

  • Lending’s pressure test: What’s holding the industry back and how to break through

    In a rapidly evolving market, lenders are facin...
  • FTT Chats: Anant Patel, CEO of Judopay, wired in Fabrick

    ...
  • FTT Chat, FTT Payments, BR-DGE

    FTT Chat: BR-DGE share expansion plans and orchestration success

    Behind the checkout curtain: Helen Owen talks p...
  • Empowering Members, One Loan at a Time: A Conversation with Ciara Davies, CEO of Metro MoneyWise Credit Union

    Who says that credit unions can’t innovat...
  • Lending through change: A conversation with Simon Taylor, Melton Building Society

    Data, niches, and AI: Simon Taylor on the evolu...


  • Home
  • Call for speakers
  • View all events
  • Fintech Talents events
    • FTT Financial Services Futures 2025
    • FTT Fintech Festival 2025
    • FTT AI Transformation 2025
    • FTT Mutuals 2025
    • FTT Lending 2026
    • FTT Payments 2026
    • Fintech Talents Road Trip 2026
    • Fintech Talents North America 2026
  • FTT Embedded Finance & Super-Apps events
    • FTT Embedded Finance & Super-Apps Europe 2026
    • Customer Alpha Europe 2026
    • FTT Embedded Finance & Super-Apps North America East Coast 2026
    • Customer Alpha North America East Coast 2026
    • FTT Embedded Finance & Super-Apps North America West Coast 2026
    • Customer Alpha North America West Coast 2026
  • Future Identity events
    • Future Identity Festival 2025
    • FID Fraud & FinCrime – Fall Europe 2025
    • Future Identity Finance Europe 2026
    • FID Fraud & FinCrime – Spring Europe 2026
    • Future Identity Customer Europe 2026
    • FID Fraud & FinCrime – Summer Europe 2026
    • Future Identity Finance North America 2026
    • Future Identity Customer North America 2026
  • Past events
    • Breakfast briefing: Lending with intelligence 2025
    • Fraud prevention & customer experience webinar 2025
    • Open Finance & Consumer Duty webinar 2024
    • FTT SME Banking 2023
    • Unboxing the Next Generation of Embedded Finance 2023
    • FTT AI Transformation webinar 2024
  • Content
    • All Content
    • Interviews
    • Opinion
    • Videos
    • Digital Reports
  • VC INNOVATIONS – Accelerated Marketing

GET IN TOUCH

T +44 203 835 2829
Email: marketing@vcinnovations.co.uk

LONDON
85 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TQ
Open in Google Maps

NEW YORK
477 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Suite 1033, New York, NY 10013
Open in Google Maps

QUICK LINKS

  • Home
  • About VC INNOVATIONS
  • Events
  • FAQs
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

RECENT POSTS

  • Lending’s pressure test: What’s holding the industry back and how to break through

    In a rapidly evolving market, lenders are facin...
  • FTT Chats: Anant Patel, CEO of Judopay, wired in Fabrick

    ...
  • FTT Chat, FTT Payments, BR-DGE

    FTT Chat: BR-DGE share expansion plans and orchestration success

    Behind the checkout curtain: Helen Owen talks p...
  • Privacy Policy

© VC Innovations 2018. All Rights Reserved.



TOP
 
SAVE £500 WITH THE EARLY BIRD BEFORE 5th SEPTEMBER
BOOK TODAY
 
 
SAVE £500 WITH THE EARLY BIRD BEFORE 5th SEPTEMBER
BOOK TODAY
 
 
SAVE £500 WITH THE EARLY BIRD BEFORE 5th SEPTEMBER
BOOK TODAY
 
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}
Media & Associations Pass


Get involved


FTT Payments 2025 - Download previous attendee list


Download now


Press & Media Pass


Get involved



FTT Mutuals 2025 - Download previous attendee list


FTT AI Transformation 2025 - Download previous attendee list


Get involved


Get involved