The following is an excerpt from today’s Global Newsletter.

Today we turn our focus to July and the impending launch of FedNow. 

While Twitter is awash with naysayers and confusion about whether the real-time payments network is actually a CBDC (it is not), there’s a flurry of excitement from fintech leaders. Finally, the Fed is doing something substantial to bring the payments and banking system into the 21st century.  

Sure to impact traditional finance and fintechs alike, people are bracing for a wave of innovation, taking advantage of the increased speed and access while trying to protect consumers from potentially increased fraud rates. 

It’s not the first of its kind in the U.S. (shout out to The Clearing House and Zelle), but hopes are high for adoption.

Watch this space because we could witness the beginning of a new dawn in U.S. payments. 

Featured

USA FedNow brings innovation, fraud concerns, and conspiracy theories By Isabelle Castro Margaroli Government-backed initiatives for real-time payments in the U.S. have lagged behind the rest of the world. However, the long-awaited FedNow is due to launch in a matter of weeks.

From Fintech Nexus

Global Kashable and SecureSave partner to support strained employees By Isabelle Castro Margaroli    Rising rates and inflation have caused employee financial stress to skyrocket. The partnership could ease some of the strain.

USA It’s a rate-shopping environment: Do you have the data to compete? By Mit Shah    In today’s rate-shopping environment, it is important for Americans to be able to accurately compare credit products and make the best possible decisions for their financial future.

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Also making news

• USA: Bitcoin Bonanza on Tap if BlackRock ETF Approved Grayscale owners could see a double benefit, and Coinbase would get a shot in the arm.
• USA: Volt, an open banking fintech for payments and more, raises $60M at a $350M+ valuation Open banking — where traditional banks enable payments and other new services by way of APIs that give access to financial data previously locked up in their systems — has led to a rush of startups looking to build the links to make it a reality.
• Europe: KKR Agrees to Buy Up to €40 Billion of PayPal’s Pay-Later Loans KKR & Co. agreed to purchase as much as €40 billion ($44 billion) of buy-now-pay-later loan receivables from PayPal Holdings Inc. in a deal that frees up the payments giant to do more share repurchases.
• USA: A closer look at Stripe’s new charge card program for Stripe Issuing users Stripe has introduced a new charge card program for Stripe Issuing, Stripe’s commercial card issuing product. Stripe Issuing is the infrastructure that allows fintechs and platforms to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical payment cards to their customers. 
• USA: JP Morgan invests in trade finance fintech Wall Street bank JP Morgan has made a strategic investment in a fintech startup focused on trade finance.
• Global: The End Of Innovation (As A Management Fad) Innovation has become the Holy Grail of the business world, promising salvation from obsolescence and irrelevance. Promise and reality are two different things, however.
• USA: ‘It’s worth all the hype’: SouthState Bank deploys ChatGPT-like tech Answers that used to take employees 15 minutes to find, they can now obtain in seconds using Microsoft’s Bard generative AI.
• USA: Don’t classify earned wage access programs as consumer loans California regulators are suggesting that programs that allow workers fee-free access to their earnings between pay periods should be treated as loan products. That’s wrong and short-sighted.
• USA: WisdomTree, Invesco Follow BlackRock With Spot Bitcoin ETF Applications The SEC is facing a fresh wave of spot Bitcoin ETF applications from major investment firms in the wake of BlackRock’s filing.

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