This week the FinTech world was electrified by exciting news about Boots and some other companies partnering up with Mode Global to offer cashback in crypto. However, as it was quickly disclosed, it’s not true at all.  A Boots spokesperson said: “Boots is not involved with this scheme. We have not been directly approached by Mode and they have used our name without permission in their press release and marketing materials.” As a result, Mode’s shares keep losing value. Question is: who caused this whole mess?

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Hong Fang of Okcoin says there will always be volatility in the cryptocurrency market and discusses why she is bullish on the trajectory of Bitcoin, in an interview published by CNBC. It doesn’t stop the investors, though, since the market is mature enough to understand on what stage Bitcoin is right now. Accepting it as a payment method in more and more places may, though, change the way the cryptocurrency is perceived and, long term, we may expect it to gain more stability – which is happening already. As always – only time will show what will happen next.

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Abeg is a Nigerian startup that allows for free and easy wire transfers and payments. Being relatively new, the company managed to achieve a huge success. So huge, in fact, that it can easily sponsor the largest reality TV show in Africa! Can this machine be stopped? It seems impossible, as it’s simple, friendly and transparent. It’s also super trendy and by being on television, it’s building the customer base and spreading the understatement of FinTech in the society rapidly.

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Some recent events, for example Tesla deciding to stop accepting payments in Bitcoin drew attention to the fact that a lot of energy needs to be consumed to mine cryptocurrencies and maintain the infrastructure, even if it’s decentralised. However, there are green solutions and Simon Chandler from CryptoVantage is ready to tell us all about them. We highly recommend reading his text and getting familiar with his opinion!

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Andy Sleigh, ClearScore‘s COO, commented: “Traditionally, customers would first turn to their existing financial partner – i.e. their bank – if they were in the market for a credit product. But with the influx of challengers and fintechs, who, thanks to open finance and more agile technology, are able to offer not only highly competitive rates, but also pre-approved products with a guaranteed rate and credit line. This all means that the traditional route to market is becoming less and less popular.” It makes perfect sense, the customers always choose more convenient alternatives, they only need time to find out about them and trust them. As alternative banking is in the mainstream already, we hope more and more FinTech products will offer a wide variety of competitive options, so everybody can benefit.

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“AI can massively improve any process that has large data volumes and is complex. Compliance, fraud and audit are all  good examples. In the  UK, for example, the Faster Payments Scheme means data transfer is instantaneous. This has necessitated the systems and processes to be able to check for fraud in almost real-time. There is also a need for real-time risk scoring and this is another thing we will be aggressively pushing over the next three to six months.” says James Thomas, the CEO of Itemize, proving that what seemed to belong to the realm of sci-fi, is already surrounding us and impacting our daily lives, even if, as customers, we rarely even know about it.

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