Investment

Mobile payments got an early start in parts of Africa more than a decade ago, but the continent's overall banking infrastructure lags far behind, creating a void for companies like AZA and WorldRemit to fill.

Starling Bank Ltd. is weighing plans for a fresh funding round that could value the U.K. challenger at around 2.5 billion pounds ($3.4 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.

Taavet Hinrikus turned his startup into the one of the world’s biggest digital-payment firms, giving returns of about 35,000% to early investors including Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.

European regulators are telling the region’s banks to keep a close eye on potential hacking attacks as tensions with Russia rise over Ukraine.

The U.K. financial technology startup GoCardless raised $312 million in new funding to speed up its expansion in open banking across products and geogrophies.

The new group will provide technical assistance for cloud clients’ blockchain-based platforms.

Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has cautioned banks, credit unions and fintechs about fair-lending violations that may stem from reliance on artificial intelligence. His comments threaten to discourage financial firms from using the technology to crunch nontraditional data about borrowers, experts say.

Esusu, a financial technology company that aims to help bridge the racial wealth gap by reporting rent payments to credit agencies, has become one of only a few Black-owned startups to reach a valuation of $1 billion after closing a Series B round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

The cryptocurrency exchange recently refunded $35 million to customers whose accounts had been drained by hackers. Here's what banks and other financial firms can learn from the attack.

A new service speeds payments by using artificial intelligence to predict which buyers are most likely to pay.