Category Archives: Sales Management

Israeli remittance fintech Rewire targets one million customers by end of 2021

Rewire, the Tel Aviv-founded TransferWise rival, tells FinTech Futures it’s gunning for the one million customers mark this year.

Since launching its service in July 2019, Rewire boasts more than 200,000 European accounts. These are used to send money to family and friends outside the continent, in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Asia.

Incumbent remittance firms like MoneyGram and Western Union have suffered this past year due to their physical footprint. But all-digital services like Rewire have benefitted from the COVID-19-induced push online.

“The remittance market dropped 10-20%during COVID-19,” says CEO Guy Kashtan. “But we are serving the digital market. This has doubled and tripled.”

Growth through COVID-19

During COVID-19, Rewire claims to have more than doubled its customer count and transaction volumes.

The team now sits at more than 130 employees, almost doubling from 70 employees at the beginning of 2020.

Kashtan says Rewire has also … Read the rest

Crypto platforms drop support for XRP amid SEC’s Ripple lawsuit

A growing list of crypto platforms are rescinding support for XRP as Ripple prepares for a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC announced an official complaint that Ripple sold unregistered securities to investors in the form of XRP.

The Daily Hodl refers to a list complied by XRP analyst, Leonidas Hadjiloizou, which consists of companies that have changed their policies surrounding XRP in response to allegations that the asset may be an unregistered security.

The lawsuit notes that XRP is a security because Ripple “has sole control over the purported cryptocurrency’s nodes and is therefore a common enterprise” under US federal securities laws.

It adds that Ripple’s existence as a corporation depended on the sale of XRP tokens to the public, and it used income from this sale to fund its operations.

QR Codes: will COVID-19 be the great global equaliser?

Digital payments are growing the world over. In the UK in particular, we have seen a shift away from traditional payment methods such as cash. This has been accelerated by restrictions to visiting physical stores due to COVID-19 and consumers’ concerns around virus transmission from coins and notes. As a result, new digital payment methods are increasing in popularity, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.

The change that can be most clearly linked to COVID-19 in the UK is the growth in use of Quick Response (QR) codes. QR codes are decoded by smartphones and converted into characters that represent different commands, meaning smartphones can open browser links displaying information or confirming payments. They provide a digital infrastructure that small and medium sized businesses can use to provide completely touchless payment solutions and, unlike card payments, can be set up quickly and easily without needing dedicated hardware like … Read the rest

Independent broker-dealers: keep reps and build on fund-family partnerships

After watching the tug-of-war between brokers and fund families over the past 25 years, I think it’s fair to say that the winners in the battle to “own” the customer relationship are the big brokerage houses and banks. At this point, the vast majority of mutual-fund assets reside in omnibus accounts, out of the direct control of fund companies.

Generally, investors have benefitted from the evolution. They have better access to more asset managers, consolidated statements, simplified trading and integration with a broad array of products offered by those big financial intermediaries.

But the benefits to brokers of this industry evolution do not always extend to independent broker-dealers, which are the focus of this article. Many independent broker-dealers (IBDs) still “go direct” because of operational constraints and strong preferences among their reps to … Read the rest

What the Fintech? Season one | Fintech Jail

Listeners of our flagship podcast, ‘What the Fintech?’  will be all too familiar with our game, ‘Fintech Jail’, where a guest submits their industry buzzword to be banished from the sector for a set amount of time.

Below is a list of all of season one’s fintech buzzwords to watch out for, or set free in season two.

Episode 1 | How to treat borrowers | Nadia Sood, CEO, Credit Enable

Buzzword: Speed, fast, easy

Reason:  “Instant gratification terms that technology gets wrapped around.”

“Whilst these are important, there is a place for things taking longer so you can get the quality and the thing you need from the interaction.”

“If you do a survey on what all the fintechs in the world are talking about, you’ll see they all talk about a one minute loan, one second loan or a one millisecond loan, and when you … Read the rest