“TOP READS OF THE WEEK” (for week ending 2 July)

This week’s top reads in banking, fintech, payments, cybersecurity, AI, IoT, risk management and much more

In this weeks selection;

Top Reads

• Robinhood agrees to pay nearly $70M in FINRA settlement
• Will Artificial Intelligence Robots Do the Majority of Our Work in the Coming Decade?
• British regulator warns Binance to halt UK activity
• Citi launches digital assets unit, confirming crypto plans
• On-demand pay catches on, but scrutiny persists
• New consumer tech gadgets modernize payments
• Quarles: Fed-backed currency poses 'significant' risks, 'unclear' benefits
• How multi-accelerated Kenyan fintech startup Kwara is building an international operation
• Critical goods industries face existential ransomware decisions
• Users Clueless About Cybersecurity Risks: Study
• Whistleblowers risk getting nothing from bankrupt companies
• Scant evidence that cyber insurance boom is leading to better security
• Automating invoices becomes a hot payments play

From our Blog

• CBDC and Cryptocurrencies are NOT the same
• Is the rush to CBDCs just a fad driven by FOMO?
• CBDCs and the opportunities for the monetary system
• Key Steps on the Road to Digital Modernization in Corporate Banking
• Crypto: will the bitcoin dream succeed?

How covid-19 is boosting innovation - The Economist

Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of technologies and pushed the world faster into the future. As businesses and organisations look towards the post-pandemic era, what lessons can be learned about innovation?

The IPO is dead! Here comes the SPAC!

Are SPACs a useful innovation, a mania, or both? The SPAC boom in part reflects a rebellion by Silicon Valley types, who have long grumbled about having to go through an IPO.

Silicon Valley has thrived by inventing new ways of doing things, from searching for information to contacting friends. So it may come as no surprise that the Valley is eagerly embracing another sort of disruption: special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), as an alternative to the conventional initial public offering (IPO) for startups.

Here is a selection of articles from The Economist on the SPAC.

• The Spectacular boom on Wall Street
• Why SPACs are Wall Street’s latest craze
• What the SPAC craze means for tech investing
• Amsterdam’s financial center gains an edge over continental rivals

Death of the unicorn - Technology startups are headed for a fall

The unicorn reality check was already underway before America declared a national state of emergency over Covid-19 on March 13th. Venture capitalists reckoned that a third of American unicorns would thrive, a third would disappoint and a third would be taken over or die.

Read more HERE

RealReal’s Biggest Hurdle Will Be Keeping It Real After IPO

As The RealReal Inc. prepares to go public, the online marketplace for used luxury goods faces a big challenge: weeding out the fakes.

From Uber to Lyft to Airbnb, it is the year of the tech initial public offering. Jonathan DeYoe, a Bay Area financial adviser to some of the new IPO millionaires, explains how many of his clients acquired so much stock and what he suggests they do with their new riches.



Illustration: Timothy Wong for The Wall Street Journal.

Indian neobank “Open” raises $30m

Finextra has reported that “Open”, an Indian neo-banking startup that targets SMEs, is set to launch a "programmable" bank account after raising $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global Management.

Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors and existing investors 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest and BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate all joined the round for Bangalore-based Open.

Founded in 2017, Open partners regulated banks to offers SMEs and startups a business account designed to automate the way they run their finances by helping with things like payments and bookkeeping.

Open already has over 100,000 users and says it is adding 20,000 a month. This makes it the fastest growing SME-focused neo-banking service in the world.

With the new funding in place, Open is set to immediately launch a business credit card styled Open+, with a 30-day interest-free credit line.

Additionally, the firm is rolling out Layer, a "programmable" bank account that will let developers use APIs to build their own features on top of it and integrate with other services.

Anish Achuthan, Open CEO says: "This funding will help us accelerate our target of simplifying business banking for more than 1 million businesses at a greater pace and also launching new products like the Open+ card and Layer that will enhance our value proposition for small businesses."

Banking Explained – Money and Credit

Banks are a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. We all kind of know that they do stuff with money we don’t understand, while the last crisis left a feeling of deep mistrust and confusion. We try to shed a bit of light onto the banking system. Why were banks invented, why did they cause the last crisis and are there alternatives?