Symbiotic relationships, like the way bees help flowers pollinate while harvesting nectar to feed their colonies, can be found all over nature. They are also quite common in fintech.

The latest example of fintech symbiosis is today’s partnership between Amazon and Goldman Sachs. CNN reported this morning that Amazon revealed a lending program for U.S.-based small businesses that sell on its platform.

Goldman’s Marcus will offer revolving credit lines of up to $1 million. The loans will carry an annual interest rate of 6.99% to 20.99%. Minimum payments are due on a two-week cycle and if borrowers don’t use at least 30% of the funds, they are charged a maintenance fee.

Interestingly, the new offering will compete with Amazon’s existing small business lending product, which it launched with Bank of America in early 2018. According to CNN, last year Amazon loaned more than $1 billion to 14,000 sellers.

Goldman, which will service the lines of credit, will underwrite the loans using merchant data collected by Amazon (if the seller agrees to share their data). As CNN pointed out, this is a rare move by Amazon, which, “has kept a tight rein on its small business lending program, using algorithms and closely guarded sales data to determine who could use a loan.”

The data sharing doesn’t extend past lending opportunities, however. Goldman will only use seller data for lines of credit and will not use it to cross-sell other products or services. Additionally, Amazon won’t be able to access the data that Goldman collects from prospective borrowers.

The move makes Amazon the latest third party on Goldman’s list of partners for its Marcus brand, which caters to a younger and generally less wealthy client base. Furthermore, the partnership accelerates the bank’s mission to make Marcus a banking-as-a-service provider for third parties. Marcus’ existing partners include Apple, JetBlue, Intuit, and AARP.

Photo by Hoover Tung on Unsplash

In a round led by Gallatin Point Capital and The Rise Fund, mobile banking startup Varo Money has secured $241 million in new funding. The investment in the San Francisco, California-based fintech, which featured participation from HarbourVest and Progressive Insurance, takes Varo’s total capital to $419.4 million.

The funding comes at a time when Varo Money is closing in on the opportunity to be the first, fully-digital U.S. bank to earn a national charter – as early as this summer. The charter would enable the company to add credit cards, loans, and other savings products to its offerings.

This most recent investment will help Varo further develop its mobile banking solutions. In a statement, Varo Money co-founder Colin Walsh underscored growing consumer preferences in favor of digital banking services, and said that the company, founded in 2015, has been “laser-focused” on becoming the first fully digital bank in order to take advantage of this kind of opportunity from the start.

The investment also will accelerate the company’s goal of bringing better banking services to the underbanked. “Varo was founded first and foremost to make a powerful impact on systemic financial inequality in communities across the country,” Walsh said. “As the first fully digital bank, Varo will bring our mission of financial inclusion to life and create more financially resilient – and thus healthier and stronger – communities. This new investment will enable us to complete the chartering process and leverage our modern banking technology to build on our track record of innovation and inclusion,” he added.

Varo Money offers a high-yield savings account with an annual percentage yield of up to 2.8% for five-digit savers, as well as a Varo Visa Debit Card. The company also offers an online bank account with no overdraft or monthly fees charged, and no minimum balance required. Accountholders can authorize direct deposit with their Varo accounts to get their paychecks up to two days early, and can send money instantly and without fees to other Varo accounts. Deposits are FDIC insured to $250,000 courtesy of Varo’s partnership with The Bancorp Bank, and accountholders have access to fee-free ATM withdrawals at more than 55,000 ATMs worldwide.

If you’re trying to launch a successful global currency, getting the brand name right is key. That must be what Facebook was thinking this week when it changed the name of the digital wallet for Libra, its new global cryptocurrency payment project.

The new name of the wallet, Novi, was rebranded from Calibra. While Facebook did not say what prompted the name change, TechCrunch speculated in its piece that, ” By rebranding Calibra to Novi, Facebook is trying to make it super clear that the Libra project isn’t a Facebook project per se. Facebook is just a member of the Libra Association with dozens of other members, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, Iliad, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, Uber, etc.”

However, the new Novi brand has not completely left Libra out of its new look. The wallet incorporated the three waves of Calibra’s logo into the design of its new logo. The Facebook subsidiary said it did so, “to underscore our commitment to the Libra network.”

The Novi wallet, which was named as a combination of the words “novus via” (Latin for “new way”), will offer a standalone app for instant cryptocurrency transfers. Users will also be able to transfer funds via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

As of now, there is no word on the fee structure. However, Novi said in its announcement that there will be no “hidden” fees for money transfers, indicating that the wallet will be transparent about the pricing. Novi is aiming to launch in a limited number of countries when the Libra network is available.

It’s a good time to launch a digital wallet. With consumers all across the globe eschewing cash for digital payments in order to be more conscious about transfering the coronavirus, there is likely to be higher demand for digital payment technologies. That said, mainstream consumers have been notoriously wary of cryptocurrencies, so they may opt for tap-to-pay or QR code payment methods before they are willing to use a cryptocurrency.

Retail commerce company Shopify unveiled a slew of announcements this week, one of which caught our eye. The Canada-based fintech joined forces with cryptocurrency payments processor CoinPayments to enable merchants to use crypto payments processing.

When Spotify merchants opt to add CoinPayments to their point of sale, they will be able to accept 1,800 cryptocurrencies. Transacting in cryptocurrencies not only reduce fees for sellers, it will also facilitate cross-border payments, enabling them to increase their global customer base.

CoinPayments was founded in 2013 and has since facilitated more than $5 billion in total transactions. The Cayman Islands-based company’s crypto acceptance platform enables merchants to accept more than 1,900 altcoins and charges 0.5% per transaction, much less than the standard 2% to 3% transaction fee typically charged with debit and credit card transactions.

“The combination of Shopify and CoinPayments is unstoppable in the payments industry,” said CoinPayments CEO Jason Butcher. “By bringing our easy-to-use global crypto payments platform together with Shopify’s extensive merchant base, we look forward to delivering a seamless process for anyone looking to do business using cryptocurrencies. As leaders in ecommerce and crypto payments, our combined expertise reflects the future of business transactions.”

Among Shopify’s other releases this month are:

• Shopify Balance, a business bank account, card, and financial management tools
• Shop Pay Installments, a buy now, pay later option for customers
• Local Delivery, a tool to help online merchants with local delivery logistics
• Shop, a direct-to-consumer app and personal shopping assistant to facilitate purchasing and order tracking

Shopify has also added a handful of products to help merchants struggling in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company recently added a quick website launch to help brick-and-mortar stores go digital, and also added the option to help merchants collect tips and sell gift cards.

As the gig economy grows, so do opportunities for banks and fintechs.

That’s what’s on the mind of Oxygen, a challenger bank built for freelancers. The San Francisco-based startup, which recently launched its mobile app, is now collaborating with CPI Card Group to create a debit card option for its users.

Oxygen tapped CPI Card Group for its “advanced print design services” in hopes to better connect with its unique target market made up of freelancers, digital natives, and small businesses. At launch, two vertical card designs will be available. Both feature a “clean and crisply-designed” look with back-of-card personalization.

“At Oxygen, we understand that the physical brand experience – including everything from the card design to the packaging appearance – matters for our creative, tech-savvy clientele. With CPI’s cost-effective scale and design strengths, we were able to deliver a sleek card to customers in a unique, memorable fashion,” said Oxygen Founder and CEO Hussein Ahmed. “We are pleased to have such a reliable secure card provider and are thrilled to offer customers an eye-catching debit card that echoes their drive, ambition and lifestyle.”

Oxygen was founded in 2018 and caters to the growing set of customers that rely on gig work and multiple income streams to pay their bills. The challenger bank offers both personal and business accounts with features including cash-back rewards and virtual cards for personal accounts, as well as accounting tools and the ability to mail checks from within the app for business accounts. Both accounts boast no monthly fees.

Along with its digital capabilities and creative branding, Oxygen differentiates itself with a lending product that works for the self-employed workforce with fluctuating income. Instead of relying on job stability and credit scores to underwrite loans, Oxygen instead looks at a borrower’s historical cashflow to assess risk and repayment capability.

Oxygen and other challenger banks such as Wollit and Xolo are among the growing number of players eager to serve the gig economy. These customers have traditionally been ignored by larger traditional financial institutions, which haven’t seen the value in serving clients with unpredictable income. This may change in a post-coronavirus economy, however, as more of the population earns their paycheck with freelance work rather than a full-time job.

European wealth management firm Raisin is bringing its Savings-as-a-Service solution to the U.S. The new offering, the first U.S.-based product from the Berlin-based fintech, will enable banks and credit unions to provide private-banking services typically not available to the average banking customer.

Foremost, FIs that partner with Raisin will be able to leverage the company’s technology to quickly build custom retail deposit products. These products include market-linked solutions that enable customers to benefit from a resurgence in economic activity while at the same time providing 100% FDIC deposit insurance up to $250,000. Banks and credit unions can also create deposit products with dynamic features such as laddering, and ones that can be optimized for profitability or other individual preferences.

“Given the current economic uncertainty, financial institutions want a share of the big increase in deposits, but many don’t have the technological tools to optimize or meet customers’ current needs,” Raisin U.S. CEO Paul Kodel explained. He said that in order for banks and credit unions to help rekindle the economy, they will need to be able to offer a wider range of solutions. “Banks need affordable products that enable customers to stabilize their assets now, and then also grow with a recovery,” Kodel said.

Raisin Communications Manager Maggie Bell noted that the company’s new offering comes at a time of increased opportunity in deposit products for financial institutions. She cited data from the Federal Reserve indicating that while commercial bank deposit market volume had grown by more than 10% since the beginning of the year, deposits spiked from $13.5 trillion to nearly $15 trillion between the second week of March and the third week of April. Additionally, deposits could represent a significant part of the refinancing mix for banks, Bell wrote, “especially as bonds have become more cost-intensive within the last two months.”

With 92 partner banks, more than 260,000 customers and €23 billion in assets invested, Raisin was founded in 2012. The company provides access to guaranteed deposit products from across Europe and, in Germany, offers diversified, cost-effective exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolios and pension products. Named a top five European fintech by the FinTech 50 awards, Raisin is backed by investors including Goldman Sachs, PayPal Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Index Ventures.