FCA, Loot, Santander, Invested and Natwest in Banking this week

by | Dec 18, 2017 | Challenger banks

  • Atlas Merchant Capital, the investment vehicle founded by the former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond‎, is reportedly in talks to buy a stake in Tandem Money
  • FCA has published feedback on its discussion paper on distributed ledger technology. The regulator also said it would continue to monitor DLT-related market developments
  • Loot, a UK digital banking start-up, has secured an additional £2.2m in seed financing, taking total funding to £6m. Loot provides a mobile banking app connected to a prepaid, contactless Mastercard debit card and has acquired 50,000 customers since its launch in November 2016
  • Santander has chosen B2 Group’s Multi-Bank Integrator platform to further improve its supply chain finance solution for major corporate clients. B2’s Multi-Bank allows corporates to automatically connect with their banks for processing of payments and statements, providing a single point of access and cash management portal
  • Investec has partnered with MarketInvoice to outsource the provision of some of its client-facing banking services. MarketInvoice will provide digital invoice finance and business loans services for the bank, as well as handling the underwriting and payment processing for its customers. Investec will provide around £50m to fund the invoice finance deals in the first year
  • NatWest has announced that customers who have an iPhone X can now use facial recognition technology to log into their mobile banking app. The bank also revealed that 1.1bn mobile and online transactions were carried out in H1 2017, an increase of 41% since 2014, with mobile transactions up 73%. There were 3,531 log-ins per minute to its apps in Q3 2017
  • Starling Bank has become the first of the UK digital challenger banks to become a direct member and participant of the STEP2 SEPA Core Direct Debit and SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme (the SEPA payments system). The bank is set to enter the Irish market during Q1 2018.
  • Saxo Bank has forecast that the value of Bitcoin will peak above $60,000 in 2018 before falling to its fundamental production cost of $1,000 in 2019