Daily Tearsheet: Fidelity’s Schouela on the metaverse, Citi’s Elms on digitization, Fiserv on bank-fintech collab, and LendKey’s Passione on lending-as-a-service model
- On Tearsheet today, great stories on how top FIs like Citi and Fidelity are looking at new, emerging tech.
- Also, Fiserv on partnerships -- embedded fintech -- that bring tech capabilities to traditional bank stacks.
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'The real magic happens in between the tech silos': Fidelity Center for Applied Technology's Adam Schouela
In this episode of Tearsheet’s Podcast, Adam Schouela, the head of emerging technology at the Fidelity Center joins host Zack Miller, Tearsheet’s Editor-in-Chief.
Fidelity has the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, where it tests and assesses new tech, like the metaverse and blockchain. It’s almost like Fidelity’s skunkworks R&D arm.
Adam talks about different technologies, emerging use cases, and sheds some light on how Fidelity thinks about its priorities and customers out into the future. Additionally, there's a discussion of the experiments Adam and Co. have done around blockchain technology, around the metaverse, and where it sees opportunities and just as importantly, where it doesn’t see opportunities.
Challenges of digitization across incumbent FIs: 5 questions with the Global Head of Sales at Citi, Steve Elms
In the past couple of years, the financial industry has undergone extensive digital growth, a growing openness toward blockchain solutions, and a focus on creating new regulatory compliance and policies by the government to adapt to the changes.
Embedded fintech might emerge as the next 'big thing', but are incumbents ready to ride this wave of digitization?
Thinking about how incumbent banks are handling digitization, Tearsheet spoke with Steve Elms, Global Head of Sales, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions for Corporate, Commercial and Public sectors – about topics revolving around how Citi Commercial Cards will power global mobile wallet offering, challenges for traditional banks in 2022, and remote future opportunities for the banking sector in the metaverse.
How Fiserv facilitates bank-fintech collaboration with embedded fintech
The pandemic and its global lockdowns forced banks to accelerate their digitization efforts. In order to maintain existing customers and attract new ones, and more importantly, stay relevant to younger consumers, banks are embracing digitization more than ever.
Speaking at Tearsheet’s DataDay Conference, Mclninch reflected on how banks perceive the next generation of banking, use cases of embedded fintech, and how banks and fintech startups are becoming collaborators – if not exactly companions – to facilitate technology shifts.
The latest briefing
Lending Briefing: Five questions with Vince Passione, CEO and founder of LendKey
Ten years ago, everyone wanted to build a direct lender, but LendKey took a different approach by going B2B. They wanted to work with lenders like regional banks and credit unions to help them power their own lending business.
LendKey is now a well-networked lending platform designed to deliver capital and liquidity management to banks, credit unions, and fintechs.
Tearsheet spoke with LendKey founder and CEO Vince Passione about the evolution of the lending-as-a-service model, as well as the current macro lending landscape.
Read more (exclusive to Outlier members)
Just look at the charts
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2. Trust is still a pillar of finserv relationships, but so is data privacy
Today's stories
Celsius repays $183 million on DeFi exchange maker, gets back collateral
Celsius, the crypto lender that's halted withdrawals and is reportedly cutting jobs to stave off a liquidity crisis, has been aggressively repaying debt on one of the largest DeFi protocols, blockchain data shows – possibly to get back Bitcoin-equivalent tokens that had been posted on the platform as collateral (CoinDesk)
eToro's $10 billion SPAC merger is called off
Social investing network eToro Group and the SPAC fintech acquisition corp. V have decided to call off their planned merger for an IPO, initially announced in March 2021 -- the proposed merger agreement and the amendment failed to meet the closing conditions within the outlined timeframe as the transaction couldn’t be completed by the June 30 deadline (PYMNTS)
Wirex launches crypto-backed credit
The new offering, Wirex Credit, enables customers to instantly borrow up to $100,000 issued in USDC, USDT, and NXUSD, in place of clients’ BTC or ETH as collateral with zero origination or setup fees -- users can borrow up to 80% of the value of their crypto holdings and only pay interest once their credit line goes live (Finovate)
Revolut is joining hands with Stripe for payments in Europe
Revolut is teaming up with Stripe to support payments in the UK and Europe by facilitating payments through Stripe’s existing infrastructure and could use the platform in more regions in the future as it looks to expand in markets (Bloomberg)
Meta is still bullish on digital assets
Facebook parent Meta is planning to push access to digital collectibles to its 3 billion users as the social media group seeks to reinvigorate its growth, despite falling crypto asset prices (FT)
Revolut is launching Revolut Reader across the UK and Ireland
Revolut is entering the retail space for the first time with a card reader in the UK and Ireland -- the hardware device is designed to allow merchants to accept payments anywhere and give customers the option to pay via chip and pin, contactless, Apple Pay, and Google Pay (AltFi)
How can banks thrive in the next five years?
Jeff Marsico, president of the Kafafian Group, outlines how communities are beginning to recognize that the local bank is more important to the success of the community than the national bank -- community banks can win this game with discipline, purpose, a plan, and by being important to their stakeholders (Jeff For Banks)
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