After a slow climb in January, the covid-19 pandemic flushed all profits down the drain in a matter of weeks. This was mostly personified by Tesla’s Q1 rollercoaster, going from a short squeeze which sparked a 50% increase in the stock price to being hit by the covid-19 lockdown, which made it drop back to where the year started.

Following a fantastic year in 2019, the market took a tumble in the first months of 2020. This resulted in a 24% drop on the S&P 500.

The global payment industry has gone through a massive change over the past decade, with more and more people utilizing the benefits of innovative financial technologies. The global shift towards a cashless society produced a massive space for mobile wallets as a new, safer, and more convenient way of making payments. With the coronavirus outbreak, electronic payments became even more appealing as people started questioning the safety of using banknotes for fear of transmitting the virus.

Leading paytech, cloud based payment processor Paymentology, has achieved certification in record time from Jetco, the consortium of thirty leading banks in Hong Kong and Macau, which owns the 3,000 ATMs across the region, to support the launch of a new digital bank in Hong Kong.

Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved four new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) - The Co-operative Bank, Cynergy Bank, OakNorth Bank and Starling Bank.

Following their approval, each lender will be putting in place the operations required to start lending under the scheme and will confirm shortly the dates from which they will be ready to start receiving CBILS applications from smaller businesses across the UK.

COVID-19, the current global crisis is affecting individuals and businesses equally. Isolation and selective lockdown of the economy are helping in containing the pandemic, but it is leaving a lasting impact on businesses. Most of the businesses moved to abrupt remote work without prior planning, which is affecting their sales, employee retention, production, and marketing. Once this pandemic subsides businesses will face a plethora of changes.

SoFi, the online personal finance company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Galileo Financial Technologies (“Galileo”), the powerful financial services API and payments platform.

QuantaVerse, the only company to offer an end-to-end financial crime platform that uses AI and machine learning to automate the majority of the AML investigation process, has announced new enhancements to its AI Financial Crime Platform.