Financial Inclusion

Alternative Credit
The Week In Data (In An Image)
December 07, 2015

Holiday shopping got moving into high gear last week, as consumers dug deep, browsed adamantly and shopped with the fevered intensity of athletes competing in the Olympics. The strenuous shoppers event of choice? Mobile commerce. When the dust had cleared, over $3 billion was spent...

Financial Inclusion
CFPB Says Card Act Saved Consumers Billions
December 03, 2015

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s latest release, American credit card owners have managed to avoid $16 billion in card fees thanks to the CARD Act and other tighter CFPB regulations it brings to the marketplace. The 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure...

Consumer Finance
The Consumer Credit Market Boom
December 03, 2015

Six billion and counting. According to VantageScore, that’s how many credit scores generated by its model have been used by card issuers and other industry participants. Yet, VantageScore tells PYMNTS, there remains one category in which the use of alternative scores has yet to take...

JPMC And OnDeck Are Teaming Up To Take On Lending
December 02, 2015

JPMorgan Chase and OnDeck Capital are joining forces in an old financial services meets new financial services type of moment. The largest U.S. bank by deposits announced yesterday (Dec. 1) that it was breaking into online lending with an assist (and signed agreement with) New York-based...

Financial Inclusion
Giving Financial Inclusion A Voice
December 02, 2015

Navigating the payments landscape can be a difficult, but for the nearly 800 million illiterate and 1 billion handicapped people around the world, it can pose a significant challenge. Norman Niemer, Developer of PayButler, chatted with MPD CEO Karen Webster about what it means to...

What Does Phone Usage Say About Creditworthiness?
December 01, 2015

So, how does a firm evaluate credit when dealing with a population without access to standard credit monitoring or mainstream banking products that tend to help build credit? For an emerging number of Silicon Valley firms, the answer is increasingly a simply question: How do...

Alternative Credit
Australia’s Tyro Payments Snaps Up $72M
November 30, 2015

Tyro Payments has just landed $72 million in new funding from Tiger Global, TDM Asset Management and Atlassian Cofounder Mike Cannon-Brookes to continue its quest to disrupt traditional banking down under. Tyro specializes in debit and credit payments and currently processes POS payments for 14,000 Australian...

Alternative Credit
Did The CFPB Strong-Arm Ally Bank Into A Settlement To Push Anti-Discrimination Regs?
November 25, 2015

So, what does a federal watchdog — say the CFPB — do when it wants to crack down on discrimination in lending but knows that the legitimacy of its methods for doing so will be roundly questioned? Well, it seems, in the CFPB’s case, the winning...

Alternative Credit
Mighty Marketplace Monetizes Lawsuits
November 10, 2015

Americans are often portrayed as a fairly litigious group of people – so much so that the term “lawsuit millionaire” is pretty well-established. Most prominently featured in comedy movies, the “lawsuit millionaire” is typically portrayed as an essentially likable oaf that literally bumbled his way...