Taking control of our money is an ideal we all strive for.  IRAs, 401Ks, stocks, bonds, savings accounts… these and other financial products are designed to set us up financially. However, when used improperly, these products could actually lose money for us. Trading stocks without the proper knowledge and research can be extremely risky and expensive.   Betterment was launched in 2010 and became a pioneer in the world of robo-investing. Artificial intelligence can make recommendations to...

Banking is becoming less about traditional banking and more about technology.  Banking is shifting away from legacy processes and systems. The founders of Xinja, a neobank in Australia, saw a unique opportunity to disrupt the banking landscape.  Neobanking provides a blank canvas where Xinja can use artificial intelligence and cloud services to create its products.   Neobanks are completely digital and build their own tools and applications from scratch.  Xinja is taking innovative steps to...

Forty-four percent of American households have credit card debt. Credit cards can provide a platform to establish credit history, make large purchases, or treat ourselves to a vacation or spa day.  Some people, however, use credit cards merely to stay afloat while they look for ways to increase their income. Credit cards are also incredibly profitable products for banks, with $12 Billion in late fees adding to that profit.   Tally is the world’s first automated debt manager that makes it...

Fintech is developing at a very rapid pace in Asia. For example, China is moving much quicker towards a cashless society compared to many developed countries in the West. We often hear stories of paying for street food in Beijing with WeChat Pay or Alipay. Both payment giants are tightly integrated with local merchants and are the dominant players in the country. Outside of China, such as in Indonesia, the story is not of dominance but rather of fragmentation. There are many payment companies...

A custodian holds customers’ securities for safekeeping in order to minimize the risk of their theft or loss. The main utility of cryptocurrency custody solutions lies in the safeguarding of cryptocurrency assets. Private keys, which are used to conduct transactions or access crypto holdings, are a complex combination of alphanumerics private keys. They are extremely difficult to remember and can be stolen or hacked. Online wallets are a potential solution but recent events have demonstrated...

 Is Artificial Intelligence for FinTech companies a threat or an opportunity? The short answer is, it is both. The use of AI technology has seamlessly shifted from science fiction to everyday fact. Financial institutions are leading the way, as AI and machine learning technology has come to play an integral role in a range of operations. AI is a part of the FinTech industry today in many forms, think of automated fraud detection, robo advisors, credit risk evaluations, the list is...

The freemium revenue model is the go-to-market strategy for many web-based software companies. Cryptocurrency mining offers a new way for users to pay for premium products in what could become the standard for freemium 2.0. Mineful is a B2B payment solution that offers application developers an alternative to monetize their free tier users. With its payment framework, a user exchanges their spare computing power called hash power for a product’s premium service such as Spotify Premium....

If you live in a developed country like the US or the UK, and want to get a financial product, chances are that the financial institution that you will be working with will look up your credit score. Traditionally, accessing your credit information is costly, and the credit report that you might get can be opaque. ClearScore, a 3-year-old start up based in London, is here to change that. ClearScore offers consumers free access to their credit reports, gives them advice on how to improve...

If you have friends that sit on a trading floor, you’ve probably heard them refer to the black box pricing tools they use. They throw in a bunch of numbers to price a transaction, the system then pulls in market data, runs a complex pricing model and throws out a number. One step further, they can give you future projections for your PnL, confidence intervals and value at risk for entire portfolios of trades. Such systems are mostly seen at Big banks, well-funded hedge funds and others who’ve...

Imagine you are standing on the side of a countryside road talking to a man selling t-shirts out of the back of a van. You agree to buy your favorite rock band t-shirt from him but don’t have cash to pay for it. He smiles at you saying don’t worry, pulls out his iPhone and swipes your card through a white block attached to the phone. This is how Square’s Point-of-Sale (POS) system has enabled not just entrepreneurs to kick start their business but also millions of businesses to scale up,...

Commercial real estate is a $15-trillion market, the third largest asset class behind stocks and bonds, and the largest alternative asset category. Yet traditionally, opportunities for individual retail investors to invest in specific commercial real estate (CRE) projects have been limited. It’s been largely dependent on a retail investor knowing a real estate developer or

A good financial plan can make all the difference between having a life with financial security or financial worry. But most people find financial planning challenging, or boring, or something that’s too much of a mental overload and can be dealt with later. Even when people know that financial planning is important, they often can’t