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New York sues OCC for allowing fintechs to become banks

This battle is brewing! The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) opened up the application process for the National Bank Charter for Fintech companies in July 2018. “Providing a path for fintech companies to become national banks can make the federal banking system stronger by promoting economic growth and opportunity, modernization and innovation, and competition,” Comptroller Otting said. “It also provides consumers greater choice, can promote financial inclusion, and creates a more level playing field for financial services competition.” Source: https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2018/nr-occ-2018-74.html However, not everyone is happy about this, with New York being the first state to sue the US...

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3 Cryptocurrency Exchangers Could Be Breaking the Law

When it comes to Money Transmission Regulations, don’t mess with the US.   Seriously! The new Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative Report, cited 3 exchangers, Binance, Gate.io, and Kraken for “possibly operating unlawfully in New York”.  The New York Attorney General will now be referring these exchangers to the New York Department of Financial Services. Last week, a Federal judge in Brooklyn said that SEC rules apply to initial coin offering. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2018/09/18/new-york-attorney-general-warns-kraken-cryptocurrency-exchange-could-be-breaking-the-law/amp/

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How Stripe built a Powerhouse Payment Platform Online and Now Going Offline

I remember many years ago talking with one of the early investors in Stripe.  He told me that Stripe built a PSP/PF platform and their target market was Developers.  My initial reaction was, “another gateway”, as there were already so many on the market.  Companies were already building on top of Vantiv and Wells Fargo.  In retrospect, I was so wrong. However, Stripe did something remarkably different.  By targeting Developers, they realized that Developers were the decision makers most of the time when a business owner asks them to “setup payment processing for me”.  With Stripe, developers were now able...

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Another day, another data breach

U.S.-based food-delivery company says ‘unauthorized third party’ accessed user data May 4 CBC News · Posted: Sep 27, 2019 9:58 AM ET Online food delivery service DoorDash says it’s the victim of a data breach in which the personal information of 4.9 million people was stolen, including names, email addresses, delivery addresses, phone numbers, and partial banking and credit card details. DoorDash, which allows people to order food from a website or smartphone to be delivered to them, said Thursday an “unauthorized third party” accessed some of the San Francisco-based company’s user data on May 4. As a result, information on customers, merchants and even Read more…

By Ferhan Patel, ago

Thomas Cook – End of an Era

New York (CNN Business)British tour operator Thomas Cook collapsed on Sunday night, stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers and putting 21,000 jobs at risk.The 178-year-old company said in a statement that its board “concluded that it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect” after talks on a financial rescue failed. All Thomas Cook bookings have been canceled, the UK Civil Aviation Authority tweeted.Peter Fankhauser, Thomas Cook’s chief executive, apologized to customers, employees, suppliers and partners.”This marks a deeply sad day for the company which pioneered package holidays and made travel possible for millions of people around the Read more…

By Ferhan Patel, ago

Twilio Acquires SendGrid for $2 billion

Exciting news for all technology fans.  Anyone who has worked for a startup or Fintech has most definitely heard of Twilio and SendGrid. Twilio is well known for being a platform as a service (PaaS) that simplifies building SMS, Voice & Messaging applications on an API built for global scale.  SendGrid is well known for being a platform as a service that simplifies delivering transactional and marketing emails through the world’s largest cloud-based email delivery platform.  WIth Twilio’s latest enterprise omni channel platform called Twilio Flex, this makes perfect sense since email was a missing part of the equation. This is a great Read more…

By Ferhan Patel, ago