• Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth forms the Strive Learning Network, a coalition of individuals and organisations to work together to support small businesses.
• Strive UK is a programme to help small businesses build financial resilience and improve growth prospects over the next three years and beyond, by developing the digital skills they need to thrive.
• Research finds £827 billion growth opportunity for UK’s small businesses who can digitise in the next five years.

As the need to keep cash in our pockets and wallets disappears, banks have had to be creative in the way they continue to offer cashless services. ATM pooling is one such tactic, which sees two or more banks agree to handover the ownership and operation of their ATM fleets to a separate business entity. Pooling ATM resources offers banks a way of providing their customers access to cash, while reducing the operational costs of doing so. It is a concept that has been in use in the Nordics (Finland and Sweden) for some time.

Soft Chinese Data Weigh on Asian FX; NZ CPI Jump Lifts Kiwi, DXY Flat

Overview:

Watch the video for a summary of this week’s news releases, a review of the USD Index, and a complete Top Down Analysis of the AUDUSD.

AUDUSD Monthly:

Monthly support at 0.6991, resistance at 0.7414.

Monthly chart is in a downtrend. Price is currently rallying within the range of last month’s candle.

Tesla up 3%, helped push the Nasdaq higher, while the Dow Jones declined and the AUS200 appeared fully priced. The US economy is in serious trouble as the contraction in industrial production accelerates. The US dollar and stocks continue to be supported by massive capital inflows, $91 billion last month.

We have to mention the passing of former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, who as the first African American to be Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State, and is perhaps even a more significant figure than President Obama in this respect.

·         Early fintech champion, Ahsan Raza, formerly Managing Director and Co-head of the Technology Investment Banking Coverage team for Barclays in EMEA, appointed as CFO

·         Varun Atre appointed Head of Product from the previous role as Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, bringing his experience in technology and financial services

SEON, the fraud fighters, is strengthening its mission to eradicate online fraud as it today updated its fraud detection solution with new capabilities that will increase its ability to detect fraud while decreasing false positives from legitimate customers.

·        Launched in June 2020, Zopa bank is one of the UK’s newest digital banks, built on its unique legacy as the world’s first Peer-to-Peer lender 

·        It meets customer needs by focusing on how they borrow and save, the two things with the most impact on consumer finances 

·        Latest financing is a clear validation of Zopa’s sustainable lending model and of its strong unit economics  

Two industry leaders team up to support growing demand for subscription-based business across Europe

Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry and #4 player worldwide, and Chargebee, the leading subscription billing and revenue management platform, today announced their collaboration to provide an end-to-end payment, subscription and revenue operations solution for merchants operating in a subscription model.

One stop business payment solution provider, Safenetpay, Financial Supervisory Authority, following the establishment of a Danish subsidiary.