In the third issue of FinTech Wire we informed about Monument, a new challenger bank to be launched in the UK. Last week, the startup made a significant step towards the launch by securing a £28M funding in its Series-A round. With the total funding of  £40M, the company believes it’s now able to start preparing its launch as a fully-fledged bank sometime in summer this year, and attract the underserved affluent segment of the market, supposedly worth around £3.5trn. Monument wants to stand out from the crowd of other British digital banks with its offering focused on savings, lending and investment products.

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How to help renters afford deposits when signing new tenancy agreements? Fronted, a new startup founded in London by Jamie Campbell, Simon Vans-Colina and Anthony Mann, has the answer. It offers 12 months loans to those who don’t have enough savings to afford paying the deposit. Interestingly, Fronted is the second platform built on the Yobota core banking platform, using its API to customise customer experience and streamline the process of applying for the loan.

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Another British challenger, Atom Bank, is planning its IPO, preferably sometime in the financial year 2022/23. At the same time, the company is looking to secure £40m in funding from its investors, with the goal of further fuelling growth and achieving profitability within a year. Seeing how the neobank’s revenues grow in the pandemic, with many SME asking Atom for loans mostly through the governmental Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), it doesn’t seem improbable. 

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Now we move to Africa where, according to Stitch, running a FinTech business is particularly difficult due to compliance challenges and lack of infrastructure. However, Stitch has a solution, and has just gathered $4 million in seed funding that will help it deliver this solution to African FinTechs. What is it about? Stitch provides an API infrastructure that handles things such as security, privacy, compliance, allowing FinTechs to focus on their core business and on providing the best experience to customers.

Read more about the rise of neobanking in Africa 

It’s all said and done: Coinbase has filed the paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in order to go public via a direct listing, following the steps of Slack and Spotify to avoid intermediaries. The IPO is rumoured to take place early this year, but no exact date is provided. After the IPO, the cryptocurrency exchange is expected to be valued at around $100 billion, based on the current share price on the Nasdaq Private Markets. If you’re interested in buying Coinbase stock, we recommend reading this handy guide by Nerdwallet to learn more about this opportunity.

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It seems like QR code-enabled payments are booming—remember Revolut Business and Evershare from FinTech Wire #17? Now the trend has arrived in Australia. Eftpos, the country’s national card scheme, unveiled plans for a nation-wide QR code payments network rollout by 2022. The solution will cover both online and mobile, as well as high street transactions. Eftpos CEO Stephen Benton assured that the network “will enable local home-grown innovation by connecting numerous APIs, consumer digital wallets, and supporting technologies on top of the existing Eftpos network rails”.

Read more about the most popular payment methods in 2020