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Acorns, financial literacy, and PayPal’s evolution as a charitable platform

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Acorns, financial literacy, and PayPal’s evolution as a charitable platform

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‘Would you rather talk about your weight or your money to your friends?’: Acorns' Kennedy Reynolds

Fintechs have come to understand educating customers as one of their key tasks. An example of one such fintech is Acorns — a digital banking and investing platform with 8.2 million active users. 

Acorns’ customers can invest with whatever little capital they wish to get started with. Its Round-Up feature allows customers to take the spare change they receive from daily expenses like buying groceries or fuel and invest it into an ETF. The firm’s diversified portfolio program lets users invest in portfolios built by experts with as little as $3 a month.

Through a variety of short-term and long-term investment opportunities, the firm wants to help people get into the habit of investing over time.

Read more

Behind PayPal’s evolution as a charitable platform

PayPal has built up a reputation as one of the top digital donation platforms. It supports and promotes 1.4 million nonprofits and causes by assisting more than 426 million consumers and merchants in over 200 markets globally.

PayPal’s donation programs provide an opportunity to do personalized fundraising campaigns, where people can donate to any cause they want to be a part of.

The last couple of years have been strenuous worldwide due to the pandemic, making it difficult for many people to make ends meet. PayPal has initiated and expanded diverse ways of funding over time, to facilitate the masses in getting monetary aid, if and when needed. 

Read more

Just look at the charts

  1. Six Wall Street banks that paid almost $200B in settlements

Source: XRP_Cro

2. The evolution of software business models

Source: Timo Dreger

Today's stories

Visa lowers interchange fees for SMBs
Visa will lower consumer credit interchange rates by 10% to help US merchants recovering from the pandemic (Reuters)

KeyBank's formula for success
KeyBank CEO Chris Gorman shares how the firm has leveraged technology, ecosystem partnerships, and innovative solutions to help position itself for the future (The Financial Brand)

'Fair' deal
Fintechs are working to identify and address unconscious biases and create equal opportunities for women leaders (People Matters)

Watchdogs are divided over crypto
Industry regulators in the world’s leading financial hubs are proving reticent to authorize edgy crypto funds (Financial Times)

Banks see fintechs as "frenemies"
Despite the competition, there is also some cooperation between banks and fintechs, as banks need fintechs to stay competitive and fintechs too can glean knowledge from banks that have operated for decades (TechCrunch)

BlackRock funds ride high on ethical investment inflows
BlackRock manages seven of the ten largest ethically-themed ETFs in the US and the three largest such funds in Europe (Financial Times)

SoFi wants to disrupt traditional banking
SoFi is transforming itself from a student loan refinance lender to a banking and technology powerhouse, complete with a national banking charter (The Financial Brand)

Whatever happened to P2P lending?
While individuals can still invest in loans to consumers, most digital credit is underwritten by larger funding sources (Kiplinger)

Bankjoy adds 16 credit unions to its service
Bankjoy, a Detroit-based digital banking provider, has added 16 credit unions from across the US to its end-to-end digital service ecosystem (DBusiness)

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