PUBLISHED: 11 OCTOBER 2019 AUTHOR: FINTECH CIRCLE A FINTECH Circle weekly round up of the latest fintech news, with headlines, summaries and links to the leading articles trending online

Goldman is crowdsourcing ideas from its employees to find the next billion-dollar start-up

As one the most active banks in venture capital Goldman Sachs wanted to maximise the potential for innovation by reaching out to their 36,000 employees.  As job cuts continue to loom across banking 500 teams have pitched their ideas to receive backing from Goldman. Internal program GS Accelerate head Tanya Baker said “We found that getting things off the ground here across divisions or just anything riskier was harder than it should be” adding “With all the change and disruption in the industry right now, it’s not a problem we wanted to have.” In the light that employees leave the firm to build their ideas Baker said “You can do it outside but most businesses fail. There will be some ideas that will uniquely be successful here.” Read more

Unicef launches cryptocurrrency fund

The United Nations agency to support children, Unicef, has launched a cryptocurrency fund to transact donations in bitcoin and ether. The fund will also go towards backing open source technology benefiting young people starting with an Ethereum Foundation led project to connect schools to the internet. Henrietta Fore, executive director, Unicef, says: “If digital economies and currencies have the potential to shape the lives of coming generations, it is important that we explore the opportunities they offer “That’s why the creation of our Cryptocurrency Fund is a significant and welcome step forward in humanitarian and development work.” Read more

PayPal pulls out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency

Even though early days regulatory issues continue to go unanswered resulting in unease in the Libra Association camp. In an announcement made by PayPal “forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations” adding “We remain supportive of Libra’s aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work together in the future. Facebook has been a longstanding and valued strategic partner to PayPal, and we will continue to partner with and support Facebook in various capacities.” Read more

Robinhood revives checking with new debit card & 2% interest

Commission free stock trading firm Robinhood has launched a savings product following on their first move into banking last year with a checking and savings offering which was eventually cut. “We believe our financial system should work for you and do more for your money” adding “To help get us there, we announced plans in December to launch a new product. We made mistakes with that announcement, which led us to hit the reset button and start over from scratch.” The new Cash Management account will offer Mastercard debit card enabling customers to withdraw and spend money from their brokerage account.  Read more

DNB bids to become Norway’s go-to banking app through Nordic API Gateway tie-up

Using the open banking platform Nordic API Gateway, Norway’s largest bank, DNB, is launching a new version of its mobile app. Per Kristian Næss Fladset, Head, Open Banking, DNB, said “With Nordic API Gateway, we’re taking full advantage of the opportunities PSD2 creates. It’s a unique opportunity to aggregate account information from other players to give our customers a full financial overview of our new mobile bank.” The advantages of creating a portal to share with competitors allows DNB to better serve their customers “Now, we have a clear chance of owning the relationship with our customers no matter how many banks they have. This is an important step in the direction of becoming the mobile bank for all Norwegians.” Read more For the latest fintech news and events sent straight to you inbox sign up to the FINTECH Circle newsletter