Weekly Wrap: N26 faces stiff competition, SC strengthens fault tolerance

Amazon Web Services scored big when Standard Chartered selected the Amazon.com subsidiary as a main cloud provider for its core and digital banking systems. The $754 billion bank is anticipating a 20% reduction in technology infrastructure costs by 2025, and is strengthening its fault tolerance by leveraging multiple cloud providers — SC inked a deal with Microsoft Azure in August — and geographically decentralizing regions and availability zones. Meanwhile, N26 is eyeing a credit card for its U.S. operations, according to CFO Maximilian Tayenthal. But the Berlin-based digital bank will face stiff competition if it moves forward with that plan. There’s no shortage of credit products in the U.S. among incumbent banks, let alone challengers like Chime, SoFi and MoneyLion, which already offer credit products. Find this and more in today’s edition of the Weekly Wrap, featuring JJ Hornblass and Bianca Chan for the week ending Nov. 20, 2020.