The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | Nov 8th

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.

Investing in the Cloud

☁️ Audit firm PwC has just announced a partnership with tech giant Microsoft on a digital banking Cloud solution that will allow clients to hyper-tailor customers’ experiences. Microsoft Cloud for financial services was launched last week could help create “differentiated customer experiences”, including onboarding, banking engagement, and loan management. The move comes in response to customers’ demand for increased digitisation and modernisation of old-legacy banking systems.
The View: “In today’s complex financial services environment, one size will not fit all.” ­­– Julien Courbe, Chief Client Officer at PwC US

 CME Group too had to face the inevitable shift to the Cloud and last week announced a 10-year partnership with Google Cloud to transform global derivatives markets through Cloud adoption. This means that the capital markets venue will migrate its infrastructure to Google Cloud at the start of next year, with data, clearing services, and eventually its markets all making the transition. In exchange, Google made a $1 billion investment in CME Group’s equities.
The View: “This partnership will enable CME Group to bring new products and services to market faster, all in a flexible and scalable environment that will create a wide range of opportunities for the marketplace.”  – Terr Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group

African FinTechs scoring big

Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, partnered with the continent’s leading payments company Flutterwave to enhance its customers’ digital payment experience. The integration will cater to individuals, SMEs, large companies and institutions to fully leverage the power of digital payments and e-commerce to grow their businesses. Flutterwave already covers Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Mauritius, Cote D’Ivoire and Malawi and will collaborate with Standard Bank on e-commerce, card issuing, payments, collections, USSD, lending, and BNPL capabilities.
The View: “FinTechs and banks are not competitors but trusted partners with the key focus being the customer. We plan to grow financial and digital inclusion through this partnership and in the long run, we expect to generate more jobs in the digital economy and enable rapid business growth across the continent.” – Olugbenga GB Agboola, Founder and CEO at Flutterwave

African remittance app Chipper Cash raised $150 million in a Series C extended funding round led by FTX taking its valuation at $2 billion. Chipper cash offers no-fees, cross-border payments to its 4 million users in 7 African countries, including Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya, and recently started opening corridors in US and UK. This latest round was led by FTX, with participation by SVB Capital, Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures and Tribe Capital, as well as other backers. Chipper Cash has raised over $305 million to date.
The View: “Despite the recent growth in Africa, moving money across the continent is still slow and expensive. Unsurprisingly, it is the fastest-growing market with grassroots crypto adoption.” – Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO at FTX on TechCrunch

Where is the buzz

Nubank’s confidential F1 filing to IPO in the US and Brazil. Latin America’s largest neobank has massive numbers with 48.1 million users and a growth of 2.1 million new users per month. Nubank is the first credit card for 5.1 million users and +1 million SMEs, as well as the primary account for 50% of its customers who have been with the bank for more than 12 months. Definitely, these are numbers that other neobanks in Europe and the US can only dream of for now.