According to the Wall Street Journal, Elliott Management, a $50B hedge fund, is considering an activist-investor takeover of PayPal. PayPal’s valuation has slid from $350B to $89B over the past year.
Read MoreGuava, a banking platform for Black business owners, announced a $2.4M pre-seed round led by Heron Rock. Guava will officially launch in 2023.
Read MoreAfter interviewing the Episode Six founding team in 2020, The Financial Revolutionist sat down with CEO John Mitchell, revisiting Episode Six’s strategies and predictions for the future. Mitchell outlines the company’s steady course, shares the vision behind their business model, and hints at the future of hybridized, digital payments ecosystems.
Read MoreConsumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra said that Big Tech’s expansion into the BNPL space raises privacy and antitrust issues. To date, Apple is the only tech giant to launch a BNPL product, which is called Apple Pay Later.
Read MoreGoogle announced that it paused hiring for two weeks, stating the need “to enable teams to prioritize their roles.” Other major tech companies have also announced layoffs; Netflix, for example, has fired more than 450 employees since May.
Read MoreLast week, investors in Zillow filed a lawsuit against the Seattle-based proptech giant on the grounds that it made “false and misleading statements” about Zillow Offers, its house-flipping project. This is the sixth investor lawsuit filed since Zillow shuttered the unprofitable initiative.
Read MoreFidelity Investments announced that it’s launching employer-sponsored 401(k) plans that invest in Bitcoin. Fidelity administers retirement plans for approximately 23,000 businesses and manages over $11T in assets.
Read MoreIn a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra, Democratic lawmakers asked Chopra to clarify whether consumers who are defrauded into making a financial transfer on peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps like Zelle are “errors” or “unauthorized electronic fund transfers.” This shift could make financial institutions liable for repaying consumers who have fallen victim to fraud on P2P platforms.
Read MoreMeta, the parent company to Facebook and Instagram, announced the launch of its cross-platform payments system, Meta Pay, on Instagram. Meta said that 1 billion users message a business on one of its apps every week.
Read MoreAmazon announced that it’s acquiring 1LifeHealthcare Inc., the parent company of primary-care network One Medical, for $3.9B. The health practice has 180 offices and offers benefits to employees at more than 8,000 companies.
Read MoreIn an interview with The Financial Revolutionist, Ubiquity COO and Co-Founder Sagar Rajgopal describes the bidirectional benefits of outsourcing, provides examples of the insights customer-experience experts can offer fintechs, and outlines the future of outsourcing in the face of volatility.
Read MoreCryptocurrency trading firms Celsius and Voyager Digital crashed earlier this month, trapping clients' funds within their platforms. Voyager’s financials are unknown, but Celsius has $167M in cash on hand to repay over $4.7B in customer deposits.
Read MoreFlutterwave, Eversend, and other Africa-based fintechs discontinued use of virtual dollar cards due to the processor’s susceptibility to fraud. Scammers could contact the card issuer and fraudulently claim that they never made specific purchases.
Read MoreStarling, the UK-based challenger bank, withdrew its application for a European banking license four years after its initial application to the Irish Central Bank. The bank is now eyeing growth through its banking software subsidiary, Engine, and by expanding its lending initiatives.
Read MoreOn July 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that bans the use of digital assets like NFTs and cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services within the country. It is still legal to trade, buy, and sell those assets.
Read MoreThe Financial Revolutionist is weekly newsletter and blog focused on the torrid pace of financial innovation. Today, thanks to the exponential rate of technological change, explosion in global trade and new regulations ushered in by the Great Financial Crisis, a new financial revolution is under way. In this battle, virtually every aspect of the greater financial services sector is subject to rigorous challenge. With the Financial Revolutionist, we are aspiring to create a boots-on-the-ground and highly opinionated assessment of important financial innovation developments in the past week.
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