American Express plans to invest in product innovation in 2025 to keep up with anticipated growth in 2024.   “We currently have plans to refresh around 40 products globally next year,” Chief Financial Officer Christophe Caillec said today during the card giant’s fourth-quarter earnings call.  The focus on products is designed to keep up with client…

Visa extended partnerships and made new connections during its fiscal first quarter as it looked to expand its reach, develop new use cases for its offerings and push its peer-to-peer payments capabilities.  “We remain obsessed about serving our customers, including traditional bank partners, neobanks, fintechs, wallets, sellers, acquirers and everyone else,” Chief Executive Ryan McInerney…

Things we’re reading today include … U.K. to start work on ‘Britcoin’ in preparation for cryptocurrency dominated world | Morningstar Bank of England lays out how Britons can ‘pay the electrician’ using cashless digital pounds (gbnews.com) Bruised by stock market, Chinese rush into banned bitcoin | Reuters UK neobanks need to show sterling qualities, not……

I got into a Scruples debate this week. You know Scruples? A feeling of doubt or hesitation with regard to the morality or propriety of a course of action. Well, that’s the dictionary definition. The real definition should be where you know something is wrong morally and ethically, and wonder what to do about it….…

IBM clients continue to prioritize digital transformation through the cloud and investment in AI as tech spend remains strong across the banking industry.   “This focus on digital transformation and AI initiatives to drive productivity and cost savings has been consistent throughout the year,” Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said during IBM’s Q4 2023 earnings…

Venture funding fell in 2023 as investors took uncertain macroeconomic conditions into account and doubled down on due diligence.  Global venture funding in 2023 stood at $248.4 billion, down 42% year over year, its lowest point since 2017, according to a Jan. 4 State of Venture 2023 report by business analytics provider CB Insights. Global…

Financial institutions are looking to their infrastructure and platforms to determine where to overhaul their tech in 2024.   To keep up with the changing industry including AI tools and immense volumes of data, FIs need modern platforms to support their technology, global payments and banking infrastructure, fintech Episode Six Chief Executive John Mitchell tells…

Over the past few years, I’ve been to many fintech events around the world, from London to Las Vegas; Sydney to Singapore; and even Kigali to Karachi; but last week was a first, for me, Fintech Islands in Barbados. Well yes, someone had to go I guess and so, when asked, how could I resist?……

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! In this edition, I’m going to look at Brex’s latest round of layoffs, the state of fintech investing in 2023 and more! I may be taking some time off in coming weeks but never fear, TechCrunch Fintech isn’t going away. We’ll be back soon! To get a roundup…

I’ve just been through a very strange process with my main personal bank account provider who, thanks to fear of FCA and crypto, noticed that I had regular payments in and out of my account to Coinbase. During 2023, they decided that Coinbase and crypto is no good, and so they rang me to discuss……