Daily Fintech brings fresh daily fintech insights from people just like you – senior executives, entrepreneurs & investors working in the fintech revolution. Our weekly summaries give you a look at what you will get by reading the whole article.

Bernard Lunn is a Fintech deal-maker, investor, entrepreneur and advisor. He is CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy.

Monday Ilias Hatzis @iliashatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur, wrote Charles Darwin would have built a killer stablecoin. Stablecoins are competitors to traditional bank accounts

Ilias Louis Hatzis is the Founder & CEO at Mercato Blockchain Corporation AG and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech.

New forms of money and their adoption will greatly depend on two things: if they can be used as a store of value and if they can be used as a means of payment. Stablecoins have emerged promising both, making significant strides in the past couple of years. Since 2014, a total of 213 stablecoin projects have been announced. Out of all these projects, 59% are still conducting R&D and not yet trading, 29% are live and 11% are dead due to lack of funding, regulatory issues, or fraudulent behavior. Can stablecoins replace existing financial infrastructure, manage currency risk and reduce back-office fees without causing harm? Are stablecoins like Libra solving a problem or is it just technology for its own sake?

Editor note: Excellent data and analysis to show why stablecoins are exciting both incumbents & startups and worrying banks and regulators.

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Tuesday Efi Pylarinou @efipm our Swiss-based Fintech Adviser wrote Square`s growth strategy and the masses

Efi Pylarinou is the founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer – No.3 influencer in the finance sector by Refinitiv Global Social Media 2019.

The ten-year-old Fintech that listed on NYSE exactly 4 years ago – November 2015 with the ticker symbol SQ; continues to innovate. It is best known as a B2B Fintech in the payments space that had huge success with small merchants globally. It grew with POS terminals and smart credit card readers.

As a publicly-traded company there are several KPIs available (unlike for Robinhood) to quantify its growth, EBITA, and profitability.

Payments processing, its core business, was growing at 30%yoy in Q2 2018. This growth rate has steadily started declining (roughly 1% each quarter) and Square reported at 25% yoy growth for Q2 2019.

Editor note: Square is an example of a scaled up Fintech delivering real value to a lot of people and a real exit value via IPO to the public markets where the price is disciplined by shorting.

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Wednesday Jessica Ellerm @jessicaellerm, our Australia-based Fintech entrepreneur,  wrote Bye Bye Banking Integrations, Hello Bud

Jessica Ellerm is a thought leader specializing in Small Business and the Gig Economy and is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zuper, a new superannuation startup in Australia.

If as a fintech you’ve ever exposed yourself to the forgettable experience of trying to work with a bank, possibly participating in their endless ‘innovation sprints’ or graveyard show and tell executive presentations, chances are you’ve probably strongly considered giving up on the concept of building a consumer facing fintech business that involves partnering with banks.

Editor note: Open Banking regulation forces open the door. That is essential but only step one. Step two is what Jessica describes here – a better API product to consume the data that can come through that door. Step three will be entrepreneurs using that data to create services that consumers need & want.

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Thursday Patrick Kelahan @insuranceeleph1, our US based Insurtech expert, wrote SME insurance- you can lead a horse to water, can you make it drink?

Patrick Kelahan is a CX, engineering & insurance professional, working with Insurers, Attorneys & Owners. He also serves the insurance and Fintech world as the ‘Insurance Elephant’.

If 40% of the U.S. and EU business owners do not have property and liability insurance, and 70+ % are underinsured, and the existing market is already more than US $60 billion in premiums, is there not an opportunity for growing the commercial line business, particularly for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs)?

Of course there is.

But how to get SMEs to get on board with the ideas that insurance is a key business need, is easily accessed, and is a value expense?

Editor note: The idea of the bank coming to you, in context to something relevant to you at that point in time, needs to come to insurance so that SME action buying insurance rather than put it in the do later bucket.

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Friday Arunkumar Krishnakumar @karunk, our London based Fintech investor, wrote Walmart hits gold with India Payments as PhonePe valued at $10 Billion

Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.

How do you make $10 Billion from $300 Million investment within a year? Walmart did just that with their acquisition of Flipkart in India last year. Flipkart is the ecommerce giant in India, and Walmart acquired a 77% stake in them for $16 Billion in 2018.

Flipkart came with its payments app Phonepe (pronounced as “phone-pay”). Flipkart’s founders Sachin and Binny Bansal had acquired Phonepe in 2015 as they anticipated a payments boom in India.

PhonePe received an investment of $300 Million from Walmart to grow the payments business. It was thrown into the deal as an add-on. Seems, Walmart has now struck gold!

Editor note: While so many in the West were looking at China, fortunes were being made in India. Amazing that all this value is simply a spin-off from a startup that is unknown to most in the West.

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