Fintech Focus For February 2, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: “This is not the market participants' problem, they paid to play. It’s the broker’s problem, from an operational standpoint, to make sure that these things are in check.”

Source: Kris Sidial

One Big Thing In Fintech: Year 2021 will be all about consolidation and innovations in the payments sector; … in the next 12 months, there will be a massive push for several categories

- Transportation space will see a huge leg-up with new products around toll, transit, parking, all vying for efficient products as latent demand has picked up
- New and innovative affordability options like 'buy-now-pay-later' will become mainstream, with more players offering the same
- Cross-border payments for consumer and businesses will see the renewed focus and rollout of newer products around UPI
- The ensuing roll out of WhatsApp at scale will trigger a new wave of UPI adoption
- In the new fiscal, credit-led payment products will see a major push with the scars of moratorium behind

Source: Entrepreneur

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Unlocking the payments conundrum.
• Public.com looks to align with users.
• Scalapay taps $63 million for growth.
• Zionodes to add BTC mining market.
• Uber vet invests $50M in Metromile.
• Paybby buys Wicket, eyeing banking.
• Enigma, Verisk will be collaborating.
• How venture capital sees fintech now.
• Fidelity launching ESG advisor tools.
• QuantConnect opening up its market.
• Ripple responded to the SEC lawsuit.
• Virtu intros big data analytics utilities.
• Robinhood has raised another $2.4B.

Watch Out For This: Washington will return to the Iran nuclear deal provided Tehran gets into compliance, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with NBC News, adding that the Biden administration then plans to negotiate a “longer and stronger” accord.

Source: Al Jazeera

Interesting Reads:

• Goldman warned trade manipulation.
• South by Southwest added partners.
• Myanmar’s military conducts a coup.
• Citadel’s part in the GameStop mess.
• UWM looks into Super Bowl spotlight.
• Ford bets on cloud for transformation.
• SpaceX aiming to fly all-civilian flight.
• Joe Biden links climate and security.
• GM commits to fully electric vehicles.
• What a blowout Q4 means for Apple.

Market Moving Headline: Equity valuations have been top of mind after major stock indexes have scaled new highs. Last week’s volatile market moves as a result of technical deleveraging added fuel to these concerns. We do not see risk asset valuations as obviously stretched overall, and expect low interest rates – and a vaccine-led restart – to support risk assets over the next six to 12 months.

Source: BlackRock