FinTech Weekly - Fintech News Issue #351

Ross Gallagher and Deepa Anikhindi are joined by Kiaan Pillay - co-founder and CEO of Stitch - and Catherine Birkett - CFO at GoCardless. Fintech Insider hosts and their guests discuss some of the most important news in the fintech space.

Portugal is becoming one of the countries that are introducing more improvements for crypto investors. One of the most interesting aspects is the fiscal system, extremely favourable to crypto holders and investors.

JPMorgan invests in the metaverse: the blockchain-based world Decentraland hosts a virtual lounge of the bank. This market opportunity is worth $1 trillion. The name of the lounge is Onyx Lounge, and visitors can see a digital portrait of Jamie Dimon there.

Mary Ann Azevedo (TechCrunch) interviews 10 investors to know what they look for when investing in startups: Anish Acharya (Andreessen Horowitz), Christina Melas-Kyriazi (Bain Capital Ventures), Ethan Choi (Accel), Pete Flint (NFX), Munish Varma (SoftBank Investment Advisers), Nigel Morris (QED Investors), Tyler Griffin (Financial Venture Studio), Mark Fiorentino (Index Ventures) and Sheel Mohnot (Better Tomorrow Ventures).

Fintech firms and banks are cooperating to find more innovative solutions for merchants and to enhance security: one of these collaborations is represented by the partnership between Bank of America and Banked to reduce transaction fees.

Synctera provides its platform and tools to fintech creators, communities and entrepreneurs. The platform has recently participate in the partnership between Lineage Bank - the U.S. community bank - and GoGetr - the fintech platform that helps people with their savings and health.

The metaverse is becoming more and more popular and successful: entrepreneurs and investors are buying lands and houses in the metaverse, and now also people who have no money to invest are starting to get mortgages to buy their virtual houses.

Ripple is cooperating with the think tank DEA (Digital Euro Association) to create CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies). This can be a further step towards regulation and the creation of different stablecoins.

Finally, Klarna announced the launch of its physical card: the card will be launched in the UK as part of Klarna's “Pay in 30” program, so consumers will be able to delay payments also for purchases in physical stores.