The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | April 3rd

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Licence revoked

CBUAE  has revoked the licence of Russia’s sanctioned MTS Bank Branch in Abu Dhabi. This decision comes after considering the available options regarding the new status of the MTS Bank. The Central Bank of the UAE announced that it has decided to cancel MTS Bank’s Abu Dhabi license, wind down its operations within six months from the date of the decision, under the supervision of the Central Bank, and close the branch.

This decision comes after considering the available options regarding the new status of the MTS Bank and taking into account the sanctions risks associated with the bank after the designation.

During the winding down, the branch will be prohibited from opening new accounts and conducting transactions, except for clearing prior obligations and the bank’s use of Central Bank’s payment systems will be restricted to this purpose only.

 An easy-to-use healthcare credit card based on RuPay has been developed by NPCI in partnership with QubeHealth and Falcon, a fintech startup in India.

QubeHealth, introducing premium healthcare payment products for employed Indians, aggregate healthcare providers, lenders, payment services providers, and Indian corporates to offer a frictionless healthcare borrowing and payment experience to salaried employees of some of India’s largest corporates. Under this strategic partnership, Falcon will provide its full-stack BaaS platform to QubeHealth to embed a healthcare wallet and RuPay co-branded prepaid card for their end users.

“In today’s business landscape, nearly every enterprise is becoming fintech-enabled. and NPCI also plays a crucial role in the growth of India’s embedded finance ecosystem. Healthcare is a vital sector in the country, particularly in terms of inclusion and digitalization,” Nalin Bansal, Chief of Corporate and Fintech Relationships and Key Initiatives at NPCI said.

The card enables employees to get reimbursements on healthcare expenditures from their employers as well as load this card with their funds to avail cashback of up to 50% and discounts at the QubeHealth partner merchant ecosystem, which comprises over 600 brands of health service providers and over 11,000 hospitals and clinics across the country.

Open banking solution for SMEs

‍ The Dutch banking firm ING has partnered with FinTech startup Salt Edge to develop open banking solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

The partnership will see use cases developed for SME segments from various industries, corporates, and individual end users. ING says it chose Salt Edge for its “client-oriented approach” and coverage which will allow the bank to serve all types of clients in its key markets, extending the range of services ING can offer.

Salt Edge claims the widest bank connectivity, comprising more than 5,100 banks worldwide for account information and 2,000 bank API integrations for payment initiation across Europe. The fintech open banking solutions expert and vice president, Erica Virlan, said the growing interest in open banking from financial institutions is “fulfilling”.

The fintech has been busy of late, forging partnerships with Hong Kong-based Shanghai Commercial Bank to ensure PSD2 compliance for its online banking services and financial super-app Curve for a compliance and regulatory partnership to bring new payment technologies to Curve users.

LI.FI, a multi-chain liquidity and data gateway, raised $17.5m in a Series A fundraising co-headed by CoinFund and Superscrypt.

LI.FI claims it abstracts away the most crucial financial infrastructure to move in and out of any position on any chain — the one gateway to access all DeFi which helps TradFi save valuable go-to-market time, research, integration, and maintenance overhead, to avoid sunk costs in this fast-changing infrastructure environment for developers working on projects including but not limited to dApps, Web3 & other protocols.

LI.FI said the proceeds from this raise will be used to accelerate the development of LI.FI’s offering across more blockchains, DEXs, cross-chain bridges, and more. It will also bolster sales, business development, marketing, and other capabilities with the new funding.

The company said it has become a leader in cross-chain liquidity aggregation, quickly rising to handle almost 100% of all cross-chain swap activity on MetaMask.

LI.FI CEO Philipp Zentner said, “This fundraiser is vital to enabling us to execute our vision of a multi-chain future. Our goal is to enable access to any token and order flow across any chain, trading on any venue, in a seamless manner that helps bring the next one billion users to Web3.

What is the buzz

Coalition for a Digital Economy research indicates that open banking in the UK has created 4800 jobs and is valued at £4.1 billion, but cautions that the industry is at a “vital crossroads”.

According to the policy group, 82 fintech companies operating in the open banking sector provided data for its analysis. The value of the ecosystem was determined by the post-money valuations of firms that raised venture capital funding between 2009 and 2022.

Last year, the Open Banking sector in the UK raised over £886 million and the median value of a UK open banking firm in the period was £16m.

The report notes that open banking has been a success in the UK so far, with over seven million users and 50% of SMEs having used open banking services. Yet despite its size, Coadec believes the industry is at a critical juncture, and is calling for urgent clarity on the future regulatory direction of open banking in the UK.

To protect the integrity of the sector, Coadec believes the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) must continue past April 2023. However, the policy group is clear that an evolutionary step to ‘Open Finance’ requires political action, starting with a Treasury consultation on an Open Finance scheme, in anticipation of Smart Data becoming law over the coming months.

“The growth of open banking has been a UK-led marvel,” said Luke Kosky, fintech policy lead at Coadec. “However, we now face a critical sink-or-swim moment for the industry. We have seen this industry grow to over £4 billion within 5 years and with proactive support and regulation the possibilities for open banking are endless.”