Digital Banking Weekly #49

📱 Facebook is now rolling out mobile payments in WhatsApp, allowing businesses and customers to carry out transactions. It’s coming to Brazil first 🔗 Read more

💰 Santander InnoVentures, the Spanish bank’s venture capital arm, has led a $200 million Series D round in US challenger bank, Upgrade, taking its valuation beyond $1 billion 🔗 Read more

🌐 TransferGo raises $10M additional funding, launches in 11 new markets 🔗 Read more

🇪🇸 CaixaBank is relaunching its mobile-only youth-oriented banking offshoot imagin as a lifestyle platform offering a range of banking and non-financial products 🔗 Read more

📄 Report: 10 trends in reshaping banking in 2020 🔗 Read more

📉 Shares in German payment processor Wirecard have crashed after auditors E&Y reported spurious cash balances reported by a third party and insufficient evidence of EUR1.9 billion in escrow accounts held with two Asian banks 🔗 Read more

🇫🇷 Société Générale has launched a new free account called Banxup for teenagers which connects to their parents’ pre-existing accounts with the bank 🔗 Read more

🏥 Starling Bank continues to beef up its business banking platform, adding health insurance, energy switching services and Slack integration to its range of third party marketplace offers 🔗 Read more

🇸🇬 Singapore’s OCBC is to hire more than 3,000 new staff to cope with upswing in digital 🔗 Read more

🇱🇧 The Fintech Times prepared that report about Lebanon’s fintech industry 🔗 Read more

🇵🇭 Philippines-based digital banking startup tonik has raised $21 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia India and Point72 Ventures 🔗 Read more

🇨🇦 American fintech Credit Sesame is moving into the Canadian market through the acquisition of challenger bank Stack 🔗 Read more

🇹🇷 Dubai-based Tpay, a mobile payment provider, has reportedly acquired Payguru, a Turkish payments company 🔗 Read more

🤳 Payfone raises $100M for its mobile phone-based digital verification and ID platform 🔗 Read more

🇰🇿 Kaspi, the ecommerce banking app which holds a 65% market share of digital payments in Kazakhstan, is expanding its offering into neighbouring commonwealth independent states (CIS), starting with Azerbaijan 🔗 Read more

🇮🇸 Icelandic neobank indó has charged Finnish fintech Enfuce with underpinning its payments, open banking and sustainability services 🔗 Read more

🇮🇹 Italian neobank illimity launches its open banking platform 🔗 Read more

🇨🇦 Mydoh, a start-up wholly owned by Canada’s largest bank RBC, has launched a banking offering for children and teenagers aged 8-18 🔗 Read more

🇱🇹 The Bank of Lithuania is to issue a batch of virtual and physical blockchain-based collector coins from a purpose-built LBCOIN e-shop from next month 🔗 Read more

🇪🇸 Square, the fintech payments giant valued at around $27 billion, has acquired Verse, a Spanish peer-to-peer (P2P) payments app 🔗 Read more