fintech digest
Embedded Finance, Key Themes in AI and More
28 June 2024
iBusiness Funding Snaps Up Funding Circle’s US Business for £33m
Small business lending platform Funding Circle has entered into an agreement to sell its US business to iBusiness Funding, a software and lending service provider based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for £33 million.
The deal includes the division’s entire loan portfolio, which Funding Circle says “includes a £10m gain” before transaction costs.
Tech Translated: Embedded Finance
Embedded finance is the seamless integration of digital banking, along with other financial products and services, into nonfinancial companies’ platforms or applications. It enables these nonbanking businesses to offer their customers—and additional stakeholders, such as suppliers, partners, and employees—a wide range of financial services, including lending, insurance, and payments, without having to build the underlying financial infrastructure or hold the relevant regulatory approvals themselves.
AI Survey: Four Themes Emerging
For generative artificial intelligence (AI), if 2023 was about exploring possibilities, then 2024 is about delivering results and generating real business value.
Most companies are laying the groundwork: By the beginning of 2024, 87% of companies surveyed by Bain said that they were already developing, piloting, or have deployed generative AI in some capacity, with most of these early deployments in software code development, customer service, marketing and sales, and product differentiation.
From Ripples to Waves: The Transformational Power of Tokenizing Assets
Tokenization, the process of creating a unique digital representation of an asset on a blockchain network, has reached a tipping point after many years of promise and experimentation. The benefits—including programmability, composability, and enhanced transparency—can empower financial institutions to capture operational efficiencies, increase liquidity, and create new revenue opportunities through innovative use cases. These benefits are being realized today, with the first at-scale applications transacting trillions of dollars of assets on-chain per month.
SEC Chair Gensler Criticizes Crypto Sector for Non-compliance and ‘High Centralization’
SEC chair Gary Gensler reaffirmed previous criticisms of the crypto industry, stating that the sector is highly centralized with “significant non-compliance” in a Bloomberg interview on June 25.
He downplayed decentralization in the sector, stating that a few platforms are “centralizing and commingling things that we would never allow anywhere else.”
Gensler listed specific violations such as trading against customers, trading in front, and taking investments in a contract before listing.