The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | March 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.

From the frontline

Paypal and all the major card schemes, Mastercard, Visa and Amex have all suspended their services in Russia in response to the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. The move follows financial sanctions to targeted banks. PayPal completely stopped taking on new users in Russia and will continue to support withdrawals “for a period of time, ensuring that account balances are dispersed in line with applicable laws and regulations”. FinTechs like Wise and remittance processor Remitly already suspended their money transfer services in Russia last week.

Yesterday, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov shared on Twitter the government’s decision to soon announce NFTs auctions to fund the war against Russia. Beyond traditional funds, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s multi-billion-dollar emergency support package, the country is seeking alternative investments to finance its military forces. The tweet by Fedorov said the NFTs will be launched “soon”, while there are no plans to sell fungible tokens, such as cryptocurrencies.

Big losses

Klarna‘s losses continue to grow. they went down to $ 748 million, which is more than 4x compared to the previous year and, the company says, are driven by customer growth. Klarna says it has more than 100m active customers in 45 countries and that operating income increased 38% to $1.6 billion. Much of the losses are driven by expansion into the US, which it expects to be its primary market by next year. Reports suggest Klarna is weighing a new round valuing them at $60bn.

Unicorn CRED, the FinTech offering rewards for paying credit cards bills, on Friday said its revenue jumped nearly 170X in the last financial year, bit the company y also registered big losses which widened to Rs 524 crore,  as the company continued to spend on marketing and advertising efforts. CRED, known for its clever, tongue-in-cheek ads involving well-known celebrities and sportsmen, has been the title sponsor for the Indian Premier League for the last couple of years, and has time and again faced criticism for its inordinate marketing spend at the cost of its bottom line

Where is the buzz

As  International Women’s Day approaches, the industry is focused on the conversation around gender balance. Is FinTech still biased against women?

“It’s time to eliminate the bias,” says Jackie Barwell, Director, Market-Facing Product Management, Payments Intelligence at ACI Worldwide.”There’s little or no ‘noise’ out there that really showcases what great and interesting opportunities exist for women. We must strive to showcase it as a great place to work and build careers for women, no matter what role.”

Nabilah Hussain, Head of FinCrime at 3S Money, believes that women should take professional development in their own hands and already established female leaders in the industry can contribute to advancing equality. She added: “Having a proactive approach in your professional development is key. find a mentor with expertise in the field in which you would like to pursue a career so you can get a real-life insight into the job scope, challenges and potential paths for career progression. This will not only allow you to assess whether the career path is right for you but it will also equip you with the information you need to find relevant resources and training courses to boost your knowledge and upskill.”