The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | Feb 7th

By Gaia Lamperti

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

Big times for Open Banking

After the launch of its Open Access service in November last year, Tide has announced that 1,000 business customers have signed up within just a few weeks. The bank opened up its services to non-account holders, allowing SMBs to connect their existing bank accounts to its platform, without having to switch. According to Tide, the majority of the SMEs joining banked with the big 5 high-street banks, and the firm now serves 7% of the SMB market while it continues broadening its offering beyond lending with accounting products and cashflow invoicing.

Meanwhile, the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) has appointed its first CEO, Henk Van Hulle, following the updated governance arrangements published by the CMA, founder of the entity. The new CEO will “provide strategic, financial, and operational leadership” as OBIE works with the UK’s 9 largest banks (Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, Danske, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, Natwest Group, and Santander) as well as other banks (including challengers), financial technology companies, third-party providers, and consumer groups.

Regulations getting tighter for crypto

‍⚖️ HMRC has updated its cryptoassets tax guide to include provisions for staking and decentralized finance (DeFi). Crypto staking is a process to verify cryptocurrency transactions and according to the new documents released by HMRC this week on the UK government website, crypto investors have to determine whether their returns fall under ‘income’ or ‘capital’. HMRC notes that because of the complexity of DeFi systems, this may not always be clear, so the department gives some factors for crypto investors to look at when determining their tax status.

The Central Bank of Ecuador has its eyes set on crypto too and is planning to prepare and issue cryptocurrency-related regulations this year. The new regulation would not make bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency legal tender, as happened in El Salvador, due to the volatility associated with these assets, instead, this piece of regulation would be directed at bringing more clarity to the status of crypto in the country.

Where’s the buzz

Neobank Revolut is moving into InsurTech and it is focusing on… pets! The company launched a pet insurance product to reinforce its existing insurance offering and announced more standalone insurtech products on the horizon. The in-app pet profile allows customers to manage everything from policy documents to claim and vet support in one place.