5 trends we’re watching this week

5 trends in finance this week

[alert type=yellow ]Every week at Tradestreaming, we’re tracking and analyzing the top trends impacting the finance industry. The following is a list of important things going on we think are worth paying attention to. For more in depth trendfollowing, subscribe to Tradestreaming’s weekly newsletter (published every Sunday).[/alert]

1. Funding Circle’s Sam Hodges on scaling growth by navigating globally (Tradestreaming)
Sam Hodges joins the Tradestreaming podcast to talk about going global, the challenges his firm faced expanding cross borders, and how he’s ramping growth for next year.

2. Swift to launch global payment innovation project (banking technology)
Due to launch early next year, this new platform will “improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments”. Nice.

3. Funding Circle is 3rd biggest SMB lender in UK behind RBS and Lloyds (City A.M.)
Illustrating the power of crowdfunding, the third biggest lender to UK small businesses isn’t a bank or building society but peer-to-peer lending platform.

4. Is Walmart About To Ignite Mobile Payments? (PYMNTS)
Walmart is getting into mobile payments in a big way with Walmart Pay.

5. Fintech M&A climbs to $4B in 2015, data analytics may drive more deals in 2016 (InvestmentNews)
M&A activity totaled nearly $4 billion in 2015, led by SS&C’s acquisition of Advent and marked by smaller deals for services ranging from financial planning software to robo-advisor technology.