Digital banking and mobile money accounts now cover three-fourths of global adults, with the gap in account ownership between genders reducing significantly. This surge in digital banking and payments, primarily fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to an impressive expansion of formal financial services worldwide. As a result, new economic avenues have opened up, […]
The financial landscape is experiencing a monumental shift, one that could potentially redefine our approach to transactions. As we move further into the digital age, the era of paper money—a dependency we’ve carried for a millennium—is gradually ending. The harbinger of this transformation is the advent of real-time payments (RTP), a concept that offers a […]
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have gained significant popularity and adoption in recent years. As the crypto market is growing, regulators around the world have been grappling with the challenge of effectively overseeing this emerging asset class. In the European Union (EU), the introduction of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation aims to provide a comprehensive […]
Full disclosure: this isn’t yet another blog post about the banking sorry saga which started in the US with the closure of Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature and a few more regional banks; and it isn’t a story about how the UK Government quickly stepped in to ensure HSBC rescued SVB’s UK business and […]
Over the past years regulators worldwide have been dealing with and addressing the increasing size, complexity and resulting risks posed by the crypto industry. It hardly comes as a surprise to anyone who is involved day-to-day with this industry, whether directly as a trader, investor, journalist, or just curious bystander that compliance plays a key […]
Every company is fintech company Today’s financial services have turned pretty much every company into a financial services provider or enabler. Even just a simple payment requires a complex chain of fintech actors to make it happen. More than ever, financial technology infrastructure has become a critical utility that everyone wants to use, everyone wants […]
Merge has raised $9.5 million in a seed round to develop its API-based banking and payments platform, bridging the gap between fiat and crypto ecosystems. Merge addresses the struggle that many companies in the crypto economy face in being able to access traditional financial services without the hefty fees and poor functionality that are usually […]
Despite the over-glorification of decentralized finance and web3, the reality is much more prosaic. Money has always been and will remain a means of exchange of value, whatever form it may take. With the growing adoption of blockchain-based solutions and challenger banks, it’s logical to assume that money is simply being redefined, taking another iteration […]