Coinbase and Stripe Partner to Boost Global Crypto Adoption

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

Stripe and Coinbase have teamed up to enhance onchain adoption and provide faster, cheaper financial services. This partnership includes three main integrations:

1. Stripe's Crypto Payouts: Stripe will integrate USDC on Base into its crypto payouts, allowing for faster, cheaper money transfers to over 150 countries.
2. Fiat-to-Crypto Onramp: Stripe will also incorporate USDC on Base into its fiat-to-crypto onramp, enabling quicker conversion of fiat to crypto for U.S. customers.
3. Coinbase Wallet Integration: Coinbase will add Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp into Coinbase Wallet, enabling instant crypto purchases using credit cards and Apple Pay.

These integrations aim to provide a seamless and cost-effective financial infrastructure, leveraging Base's secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly platform.

This collaboration marks a significant step towards creating a more efficient global payments system.

Have a great start to the week!

Cheers,

Marcel

FINTECH NEWS

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🇺🇸 FinTech company Clair partners with Check to seamlessly offer On-Demand Pay, empowering employers to offer free, compliant wage advances to their workforces. Clair is Check’s first Earned Wage Access (EWA) partner and represents a milestone in its commitment to offering financial benefits. 

PAYMENTS NEWS

🇩🇪 Amazon Pay will soon be discontinued for Shopify shops in Germany. Continue reading

🇧🇷 Onnipro partners with Euronet to enhance card issuing and payment processing in Brazil. Onnipro will use Euronet’s Ren payments platform to expand its card issuing capabilities for Visa and Mastercard networks as part of this multi-year agreement.

🇨🇦 Buy Now, Pay Later Sezzle expands payment streaks program to Canadian users. This program empowers Sezzle users by introducing a gamification approach to responsible payment behaviors. Each successful payment made on or before its scheduled due date contributes to the user’s payment streak. 

🇩🇰 Trust Payments powers Freepay PayOut service in the Nordics. With the new agreement, Freepay will enable its customers to process fast and secure payouts with Visa and Mastercard via the TRU Connect Gateway. Read more

🇬🇧 UK Finance releases Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit Report. The unit is described as being “a unique, proactive and fully operational police unit with a national remit to investigate, target and, where appropriate, arrest and seek successful prosecution of offenders responsible for card and payment fraud crimes.”

🇦🇺 Australia outpaces US in online BNPL adoption nearly 3 to 1. As buy now, pay later (BNPL) options become more common around the world, the Land Down Under is leading the charge by a considerable margin, as per a recent PYMNTS Intelligence report.

OPEN BANKING NEWS

🇺🇸 Plaid got its start as a company that connects consumer bank accounts to financial applications but has since been gradually expanding its offerings to also include lending, identity verification, credit reporting, anti-fraud and payments. More here

DIGITAL BANKING NEWS

🇬🇷 snappi, the Greek neobank, announces that it has received a universal banking license from the European Central Bank (ECB), following the proposal of the Bank of Greece. The regulator’s approval comes as the first milestone in snappi’s plans to provide next-generation financial services.

🇬🇧 Thousands of UK bank customers were hit by payment problems affecting some of the biggest High Street lenders on Friday. Banks including HSBC, Nationwide, Barclays and Virgin Money were all affected by issues with a system that operates payments between individuals and firms.

🇰🇼 NBK introduces “WAMD” instant payment service on its mobile banking app. The instant payments system (WAMD) provides added value and quality to the national payment infrastructure capabilities. It offers a safe, advanced payment option for various customer needs, advancing digital transformation in Kuwait.

BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS

🇺🇸 Coinbase + Stripe team up to expand global adoption of crypto. The companies have announced a partnership to increase onchain adoption and provide faster, cheaper financial infrastructure. Click here to learn more

DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS

🇬🇧 Bank of America backs London FinTech Simply’s lending to small businesses. The Wall Street giant has agreed to a new £120m loan facility with Simply, to enable the specialist lender to raise UK business lending by 30% and increase loan origination by £100m in the first year.

🇩🇪 Family FinTech app Bling raises $12M Series A funding. The company aims to improve the financial and media literacy of families by using simple visualisations and educational information in the app and on social media. Read on

🇬🇧 FinTech security leader PortSwigger secures $112m investment from Brighton Park Capital. The investment will predominantly finance the enhancement of PortSwigger’s flagship products including Burp Suite Professional and Burp Suite Enterprise. 

🇬🇧 Zeti announces series A investment from Hycap Group. The investment will enable Zeti to further enhance and accelerate the distribution of its pioneering Zeti Hub digital platform to provide a fully financed and integrated Transport as a Service (TaaS) solution.

🇺🇸 Female-founded FinTechs get just 3.4% of all funding in the sector in 2023, data from venture capital firm Anthemis shows. The sector has fallen significantly behind the broader startup space, where an estimated 25% of all startup funding went to companies that had at least one female founder, per Pitchbook. 

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

🇺🇸 Alex Hoffmann has been appointed General Manager of Edenred Pay, North America. Hoffmann brings three decades of experience in scaling payments and driving innovation to Edenred Pay North America, leading the growth of its market-leading Invoice-to-Pay solutions. 

🇺🇸 Nium appoints Spencer Hanlon to Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Hanlon will lead and scale Nium's day-to-day operations into its next phase of growth, with particular emphasis on new client onboarding, global technical services, and long-term strategic initiatives. 

🇺🇸 Coinme taps Robert Villaseñor as Chief Legal and Compliance Officer. This strategic move underscores Coinme's commitment to regulatory compliance and readiness to navigate the cryptocurrency industry's intricate legal and regulatory framework during its accelerated growth and expansion.

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