Zip Eyes Nasdaq Listing Amid BNPL Boom
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Zip is weighing a dual-listing on the Nasdaq to tap the U.S. investor appetite for BNPL. While it will maintain its primary listing on the ASX, Zip already generates 80% of its cash earnings and over two-thirds of its sales in the U.S., making Wall Street a natural next step.
Full-year cash earnings jumped to $170.3m, platform volumes soared past $13.1B, and U.S. bad debts held steady at 1.7% of transaction value. Shares popped 22% in last Friday's morning trading.
Scroll for the full scoop, including how Zip stacks up against Affirm, Klarna, Sezzle, and Afterpay in the BNPL race.
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FINTECH NEWS
🌍 Geneva and Frankfurt FinTech Running Clubs maintain strong momentum! In August, Rony Meyer leads lakeside runs in Geneva, while Jan Sicking rallies the community through Frankfurt’s streets, proving that FinTech is about more than innovation; it’s about healthy habits and strong connections. Join us as we run, connect, and grow across Europe!
🇺🇸 FinTech firm Aspiration Partners' co-founder pleads guilty to defrauding investors. Joseph Sanberg, who was also a board member of Aspiration Partners, has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of wire fraud and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison per count, the Justice Department said in a statement.
🇧🇷 inDrive.Money launches in Brazil. The offering aims to support financial inclusion for drivers by offering quick and convenient access to cash loans within the inDrive app, the world’s second-most downloaded ride-hailing app. inDrive.Money enables drivers to apply for the loans and repay them directly via the inDrive app.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🌎 Soft Restaurant and Getnet partnered to transform Latin America’s dining experience. The partnership led to the deployment of something truly unique in the market: a fully integrated solution that unifies restaurant management and payments into a single, seamless system.
🇺🇸 Decoding ACI Worldwide Inc: A strategic SWOT insight. ACI Worldwide Inc.'s strength lies in its robust market position, evidenced by the consistent growth in its SaaS and PaaS revenues. The company's ability to increase its service offerings from $451.1 million to $508.3 million in just one year indicates a strong demand for its electronic payment solutions.
🇬🇧 UK payments infrastructure: why it’s time for a reset. Richard Albery, Head of Commercial at ACI Worldwide, explores why the UK economy can no longer afford for banks to run their systemically critical payments infrastructure on 30-year-old tech. Keep reading
🇫🇷 Worldline: How to make a €1.6bn overdraft disappear. As the audits and investigations play out, Worldline has sought to reassure investors by maintaining a healthy balance sheet with reasonable debt levels and a comfortable liquidity cushion.
🇺🇸 Zip targets Nasdaq listing to unlock US buy now, pay later growth. Zip makes 80% of its cash earnings and more than two-thirds of its sales in the US. A popular stock for ASX retail investors, Zip said offshore institutions now hold 16% of its shares, with that number to rise.
🇰🇷 Toss to waive international money transfer fees for foreign residents through the end of the year. The new foreign transfer promotion applies to the four countries currently covered by Toss’s international remittance service for foreigners: the United States, China, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan.
🇨🇾 Scope Prime adds 77 new currencies to its offering. Digital asset liquidity from Scope Prime will now be available on an uninterrupted basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This launch augments the company’s previous offering of 10 popular cryptocurrencies, which were available around the clock during the working week.
OPEN BANKING NEWS
🇺🇸 Visa Abandons Open Banking in the US as Data-Access Debate Rages. The payments company has closed its open-banking operations, which provide technology to help third parties, such as financial technology firms, access customer account data, amid regulatory uncertainty about consumer data rights and the prospect of higher fees for customer information.
REGTECH NEWS
🇺🇸 US OCC terminates 2022 order targeting Anchorage Digital over AML. In a notice, the OCC said it had dropped the order to ensure the safety and soundness of Anchorage. The financial regulator’s April 2022 order was based on Anchorage’s failure to adopt and implement a compliance program in accordance with Anti-Money Laundering standards.
🇺🇸 CFPB sues Synapse for mishandling customer funds. The CFPB alleges that when Synapse filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2024, customer funds that were moved between partnering banks were misplaced and lost, leaving the money inaccessible to customers for weeks to months.
🇦🇺 Australia orders Binance audit, flagging serious concerns. Austrac said its concerns were sparked by issues including Binance Australia’s latest independent review, which it described as limited in scope relative to its size, business offerings, and risks. Austrac has given the company 28 days to nominate auditors, from which the agency will make a selection.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇬🇧 RUUT, a new digital banking brand, is set to enter the UK market following a strategic partnership between British and Turkish FinTechs Algbra Labs and Moka United. Continue reading
🇦🇺 CommBank reverses plan to replace call centre staff with AI. The bank has rowed back its decision to cut 45 contact centre jobs after finding that the AI-powered "voice-bot" designed to reduce calls actually led to an increase in work for humans.
🇺🇸 Kasisto launches KAIgentic, an AI that thinks like your best banker. KAIgentic delivers what the industry needs: secure, auditable, domain-specific AI agents deeply embedded within the systems that power banking. Keep reading
🇺🇸 BofA’s virtual assistant Erica surpasses 3 billion client interactions. Clients have spent more than 18.7 million hours conversing with Erica. More than 98% of users find the information they need, significantly decreasing call center volume and allowing financial specialists to spend time focusing on more complex financial conversations with clients.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇰🇷 Circle to play a role in Korean stablecoin issuance. Circle President Heath Tarbert said there is a possibility that the company could be involved in issuing a Korean won-pegged stablecoin if such a project becomes institutionalized, signaling support for the development of Korea's Web3 ecosystem.
🇯🇵 Japan's SBI Holdings joins tokenized stock push with Startale Joint Venture. The companies plan to build an on-chain platform designed for trading tokenized equities and real-world assets (RWAs), they announced. Keep reading
🇯🇵 Ripple and SBI plan RLUSD stablecoin distribution in Japan by 2026. Ripple says this structure offers regulatory clarity and institutional-grade compliance, traits it argues will differentiate RLUSD from peers. The token is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries, and cash equivalents, with monthly attestations from a third-party firm.
🇪🇺 EU exploring Ethereum and Solana for digital euro launch. If confirmed, the EU’s exploration of public blockchains would represent a significant milestone in the digital euro’s development, given that the ECB has not yet finalized the technology framework for the project.
🇰🇵 Coinbase tightens workforce security after North Korea remote-worker threats. North Korean IT workers are increasingly targeting Coinbase’s remote worker policy to gain access to its sensitive systems. Continue reading
🇦🇪 BNB is now available for trading on the UAE’s largest RAKBANK Bank. Customers gain seamless access to BNB via the banking app without an external crypto exchange dependency. The move has caught attention as it signals how traditional banks are slowly opening doors to digital assets.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇸🇪 Klarna agrees on €1.4 billion financing facility with Santander. The Swedish FinTech said in an emailed statement that the financing will be backed by receivables in its German business. Niclas Neglen, CFO, said the deal would be a key pillar of its growth strategy and would enhance the funding tools available to Klarna.
🇯🇵 SBI Holdings and Circle establish JV. The establishment of this joint venture aims to promote the use of USDC in Japan and create new use cases in the Web3 and digital finance domains. The two companies will contribute to advancing Japan’s digital financial ecosystem.
🇺🇸 MeridianLink and Jack Henry expand their strategic reseller relationship. The expanded collaboration builds upon the successful 15-year alliance to jointly serve over 500 banks and credit unions and new joint customers by transforming digital lending and account opening experiences for both consumers and staff.
🇺🇸 OpenEden selects BNY to provide investment management and custody services for its tokenized U.S. treasury bills fund. The strategic relationship highlights their shared commitment to shaping the future of financial infrastructure by facilitating regulated and institutional-grade assets on-chain for global investors.
🇦🇺 Cognizant and Temenos expand partnership to power core banking transformation in Australia. By leveraging Temenos’ cloud-native banking solutions and Cognizant’s implementation and market expertise, the Temenos Country Model Bank provides pre-configured frameworks designed to accelerate modernization while reducing costs and operational friction.
🇺🇸 Chime partners with Workday to put financial wellness at the center of employee benefits for employers. Workday Wellness is an AI-powered solution that revolutionizes employee benefits experiences, enabling organizations to gain insights into which benefits their employees want and use, so they can improve programs and efficiently add new offerings.
🇨🇳 HSBC invests in Chinese cross-border FinTech firm Dowsure. The partnership with Dowsure reflects HSBC’s commitment to serving the evolving needs of cross-border merchants in an increasingly digital economy, according to Managing Director Neo Wang.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 Wealthtech firm Neo to raise $19 Mn. The board of Neo has passed a special resolution to issue 1,887 equity shares at Rs 8,60,410 each, to raise Rs 162.3 crore ($19 million), according to its regulatory filing sourced from the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇨🇾 Former Finalto and Markets.com Executive Stavros Anastasiou joins Revolut Board. He also served as an Executive Director at Safecap Investments Limited, a CySEC-regulated firm in Cyprus. He remained in that position for about four years and one month, focusing on board-level oversight and regulatory matters.
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