Welcome to another Fintech Friday Roundup.
1) This week, investing app Robinhood was the center of attention yesterday when shares of GameStop soared 75%. Robinhood restricted trading for a short time, angering investors, and cited capital requirement mandates of the SEC as the reason for the restrictions. They ended up having to scramble to get more than $1 billion from existing investors to cover their commitments. What’s interesting about all this is that institutional investors typically move capital markets with large infusions of money injection, but in this case, it was a lot of smaller retail investors who moved the stock price and some people are seeing it as a pushback against powerful hedge fund traders. Ah, the joys of unfettered capitalism! Bring it on baby. Life is good in these interesting times.
2) Stripe is the lead in a $102 million funding round for a startup named Fast. Fast’s main product is a single-click checkout for e-commerce brands aiming to cut down on shopping cart abandonment.
3) Greenwood Financial has launched a challenger bank targeting black and latin communities. They’ve receive half a million signups in only 100 days.
4) Real estate investing platform PeerStreet has launched a new product called Pocket, which allows investors to earn interest on cash in their accounts.
5) Personal lender Avant has hit a new milestone - 1.5 million customers. Congratulations!
6) Ally Lending has introduced financing for hearing aid technology at medical device company Eargo.
7) Roostify, a mortgage lending platform, has raised $32 million in new capital.
8) KeyBank in Cleveland is launching a digital bank for doctors. Coming this March.
9) Mastercard is taking on Square with the introduction of its own point-of-sale platform called Cloud Tap on Phone. No, that is not a joke.
10) Coinbase reports it now has more than $90 billion in assets on its platform from more than 43 million customers.
Exciting things happening in fintech. Send your fintech news to allen@tayloredcontent.com. And if you’re looking for a content writer for your fintech brand, look me up.
