FinTech Weekly - Fintech News Issue #355

Simon Taylor is joined by Nicole Perry (Strategy Director at 11:FS), Martin Haring (Temenos), Mary Agbesanwa (Seccl) and Josh Williams (Seattle Bank). They discuss the role of blockchain technology in the current financial system, the expansion of fintech firms in Africa and much more.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced that the company is working on bringing Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to Instagram. Zuckerberg said that he hopes that NFTs will be available for minting in the next few months.

John Collison, co-founder of the popular fintech firm Stripe, announced on Twitter that Stripe supports crypto companies and payments, as well as NFTs, which will be used for identification purposes.

Israel registered a surge in fintech investments in 2021. Fintech startups got 17% of the tech investments of the country. The segments that are growing faster are insurtech, trading, lending and payments services.

Gretel has just raised $1 billion in a pre-seed funding round led by RLC Ventures and Insurtech Gateway. The fintech company helps financial institutions to allow their customers to recover lost financial products.

The New York based fintech firm Baselane announced the introduction of a new banking platform. Baselane helps property owners to manage all the operations related to their properties like bookkeeping, rent collection and the analysis of data related to their activities.

The Launch Innovation Programme of Lloyds Banking Group is opened. The group opened this program for the second time to find new fintech partners from all around the world.

Toshiba developed an innovative system that will allow 7-Eleven stores customers in Japan to pay by using a holographic screen. The technology makes it possible to interact with the display to scan products and pay.

American Express wants to invest in the metaverse: the company announced that it’s working on a virtual marketplace for Non-Fungible Tokens and cryptos. The goal of the company is to make its services available also in the metaverse.