FinTech Monthly: £10.75m in VC funding, HSBC selfies, Samsung’s payments update & more
Welcome to FinTech Monthly for September 2016 – your monthly round up of the top financial technology news. In this episode, we have DueCourse’s funding round, the partnership between Barclays and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a report on alternative finance by KPMG and more.
This month, we filmed from the London innovation centre of consulting and technology firm, Synechron. The hub enables financial services companies to view and prototype technology-led innovations.
Investments
In funding news, DueCourse, an invoice financing service for SMEs, received £6.25m. The Manchester-based firm hopes to raise a further Series A round over the next 10 months.
Point of sale finance company Divido raised £2.5m from Mangrove Capital Partners and DN Capital. The firm enables customers to spread the cost of any purchase over a period of time while the retailer gets paid in full right away.
Curve, a bank account management platform, raised £2m in seed funding, bringing its total raised to £3.5m. The mobile platform allows users to connect multiple bank cards and manage them with one pin number.
HSBC selfies
HSBC will allow customers to use selfies to open new bank accounts.
In an attempt to simplify its application process, the bank will verify potential customers using facial recognition software, before allowing them to deposit or withdraw funds.
Samsung Pay
Likewise, the latest update to Samsung Pay lets customers pay for goods using their eyes. Operating in a similar way to fingerprint verification, the iris scanner on Samsung’s Note 7 device can be programmed to enable one set of eyes to authorise payments.
Barclays & Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Barclays have joined forces to streamline the payment process between Australia and the UK.
The CBA app will be linked with Barclay’s Pingit, enabling customers to send money across the globe with just a mobile number.
Report
A new KPMG report revealed the European online alternative finance market, which includes crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending, grew 92% in 2015.
The UK was the largest market for alternative finance by a considerable margin, followed by France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Barclays hackathon
Barclay’s latest Rise Hackathon, ‘Episode II – The Bank Awakens’, saw 1,045 participants compete in Manchester and Mumbai.
The hackathon was designed to address the challenges and opportunities presented to the banking industry by the ‘Directive on Payment Services’. This new European regulation is set to come into effect in 2018.
That’s all for this month’s roundup. Visit our FinTech news channel for more and subscribe now to receive future FinTech Monthly videos to your inbox.