FTX was one of the newer cryptocurrency platforms which have become wildly popular in 2021, with some pegging it as a key competitor to Coinbase in the retail investor market. Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang launched FTX in May 2019, two years after Bankman-Fried founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm which specialises in cryptocurrency. It offered derivatives, options, tokenised stocks, leveraged tokens and an NFT marketplace. It has also launched its own utility token, FTT, w...| Business of Apps
The future of banking is being pushed by alternate financial startups, which operate outside of the typical banking infrastructure. Chime, which offers a debit, credit and savings account, aims to do this through a commitment to fee-free mobile banking. In the US, several technology companies are building financial platforms which do away with customer fees. Robinhood pioneered zero-commission stock trading and both Venmo and Square’s Cash App have made sending money to friends easy. Alongs...| Business of Apps
NuBank is the largest neobank in the world, with over 90 million customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. Built as an alternative bank without the extortionate fees Brazilian’s regularly faced, NuBank quickly drew a large community of unbanked customers. Co-founder David Vélez had worked as a partner at Sequoia Capital and co-founder Cristina Junqueira was previously employed by the largest bank in Brazil. In the first few years, NuBank struggled to meet the demand, with a waiting list of...| Business of Apps
Starling Bank is one of the three main “challenger banks” in the U.K., which have made inroads into the banking ecosystem with fee-free services, no physical branches and alternative features. In comparison to Revolut and Monzo, Starling Bank has marketed itself as a proper banking institution, albeit without any physical branches. It has been named Britain’s Best Bank at the British Banking Awards four years in a row. Originally launched in 2014, Starling was the first of the three mai...| Business of Apps
The financial sector has not been adverse to technology, however the monumental push by startups in the mid-2010s to disrupt financial sectors, spurred on by governments slackening regulations, forced established players to modernise its services to meet the demands of a new generation of customers. Everything from banking to investment to insurance has been modernised, utilising the power of the internet and mobile to improve speeds, reduce costs and improve customer service. In 2009, fintec...| Business of Apps
Venmo started out in 2009 as a way for founders Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail to pay each other without having to exchange cash or write a cheque. The first prototype worked over SMS, Andrew and Iqram would send notes alongside the cash to keep track of payments. While SMS functionality died with the app launch in late 2010, the social element of Venmo remains one of the app’s core features. In early demos, Venmo founders proposed it as a way for musicians to sell songs and merchan...| Business of Apps
Before Robinhood, anyone who wanted to invest in stocks would be charged between $5 to $10 a trade. They also needed to invest a minimum of $500 to open an account. Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt (co-founders) had previous experience building these systems and saw the extraneous costs as little more than gatekeeping people out of investing. “We are not setting any account minimums, which we think unlocks a market of investors who couldn’t do this before,” said Bhatt to CNBC at launch. ...| Business of Apps
In the late 90s, paying for things online still had a stigma attached to it. There wasn’t any assurance that goods would be delivered or that faulty payments would be recovered. It was wild west and PayPal was one of the first payment solutions to try and civilise it. PayPal was formed when two companies, Confinity and X.com, merged. Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame, was CEO of this combined company for a time. As he would in the future, he zoned in on the vision of PayPal’s future and...| Business of Apps
Cryptocurrency has been in development since the 1980s, but the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto was the first bit-currency to catch on outside of academic circles. At its core, cryptocurrency is a decentralised digital currency, which is usually backed by a public ledger (blockchain) to verify transfers, mint new coins and secure individual coin ownership records. For the first few years, Bitcoin enthusiasts mined the currency and tried to get it accepted ...| Business of Apps