Your Daily Fintech Podcast - May 19th, 2022

Sign up for my Daily Fintech or Daily Digital Banking Newsletters here. Check out my latest podcast episode below: Welcome to another episode of our Daily Fintech Podcast. THE NEWS HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY IS London-based FinTech Thought Machine has doubled its valuation to $2.7bn as the cloud banking company pulls in institutional investors like Morgan Stanley and looks to expand its international presence. JUST IN: Modulr, an embedded payments platform for digital businesses, today announced that it has raised $108m (£83m) in series C funding led by General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm. ALSO: According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, fintech companies based in APAC surpassed previous deal values and volumes observed in the March quarter over the past three years. Nubank on Monday posted a surge in revenue that beat expectations, as the Warren Buffett-backed digital bank benefited from a healthy loan book and strong client additions, sending its shares surging nearly 8% in extended trading. FURTHERMORE, Buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform Zilch has launched in the US with over 150,000 pre-registered customers and a new Miami headquarters. The US expansion is being led by Zilch’s US CEO Albert Periu. As Vodacom wades deeper into financial services, the telco reported its VodaPay super app has attracted 2.2 million downloads and 1.6 million registered users in the eight months since its launch. WHAT ABOUT CRYPTO? Emirates, the largest airline in the United Arab Emirates, announced its intention to add bitcoin as a payment option and to make NFT collectibles tradable on the company’s website. WHAT ARE THE LATEST INSIGHTS? THE Central Bank of Ireland has widened its consumer protection rules to cover so-called ‘buy-now-pay-later’ (BNPL) firms. AS FOR PARTNERSHIPS Westpac has commenced work on a new transactional platform for institutional clients and is looking to UK-based technology provider 10x Banking to provide the core technology