Barclays boosts green tech investment; Vodafone combats cost of living

By John Adams, Kate Fitzgerald, Bloomberg News

January 24, 2024 11:49 AM

Barclays has redesigned the Cambridge Eagle Lab to focus on companies that develop sustainable and other environmentally focused technology, Vodafone expanded its partnership with global fintech MoneyHub to offer its financial wellness app, and more in this week's global news roundup.

Bloomberg News

Barclays relaunches incubator to focus on climate

Barclays has redesigned the Cambridge Eagle Lab to focus on companies that develop sustainable and other environmentally focused technology. The space has boosted desk capacity and collaboration areas and features a space to showcase new technology. The site itself is designed to reduce its own carbon footprint by 90% compared to 2018. Barclays' climate programs include sustainable impact capital investments, a global social-impact partnership program called Unreasonable Impact and fintech partnerships. The U.K. bank additionally partnered with Carbon 13, a U.K.-based effort to mentor and provide other support for startups that are focused on carbon reduction. Reducing the carbon footprint has become a strategy at a number of financial institutions globally in recent years. —John Adams

Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

Mastercard pushes small-biz tech in UAE

Mastercard and the Abu Dhabi Global Market are collaborating to sell technology to small and medium-sized businesses in Abu Dhabi and other parts of the United Arab Emirates. The card network and ADGM, an international finance center, will partner with banks to issue payment cards designed for small businesses. The businesses can also participate in Mastercard's education program and potentially Start Path, a Mastercard accelerator for small businesses. Start Path recently added a new class of startups, with a focus on businesses with founders from underserved demographics. Mastercard has also set a goal to bring 50 million micro, small or medium-sized businesses into e-commerce in the next year. —John Adams

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Vodafone offers free personal financial management amid U.K. inflation

Vodafone has expanded its partnership with global fintech MoneyHub through a campaign that offers consumers a year of free access to MoneyHub's financial wellness app. The app, which usually costs about $20 yearly, enables consumers to connect savings, credit cards, investments, retirement funds and other accounts into a single location. This then powers budgeting, spending analysis and other tools to manage finances. There is also an embedded credit-scoring feature. MoneyHub developed the campaign to address demand from younger consumers who are concerned about the rise in the cost of living, which has been particularly severe in the U.K. While Vodafone is a telco, it offers a menu of payments and other financial services, often designed for underserved communities. It also partners with projects to bring real-time payments to emerging markets. —John Adams

Canadians feel they have lost control over data: Interac

Seventy-seven percent of Canadians feel their data is more exposed than ever, according to research released this week by Interac, Canada's national debit card network. Interac's research also found that 72% of Canadians say companies have access to too much of their data, and 40% are confident they can keep their personal information safe online. And 80% want more control over how their information is shared online. Eighty-seven percent want the ability to order companies to delete their personal information and 59% say they cannot easily consent to having their personal information shared with third parties. Another 65% say the language organizations use to describe data usage is vague. "Consumers are increasingly concerned about the privacy and security of their personal data and are dissatisfied with the status quo," said Colette Stewart, managing counsel and enterprise privacy lead at Interac, in a press release. —John Adams

Google to help India take its UPI payments global

Google has signed a memorandum of understanding with India's state-operated payments system operator to co-develop an international version of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's real-time payments service, Yahoo Finance reports. The move by Google India Digital Service and India's National Payments Corporation aims to simplify travel payments for Indians and create interoperable channels to ease cross-border remittances. Last year, India successfully pushed to make UPI available in Singapore, and negotiations are ongoing to expand UPI's reach to Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates. —Kate Fitzgerald

Onafriq, Alviere collaborate on U.S.-to-Africa remittance service

Onafriq, a South African software payments provider, has teamed up with New York-based Alviere, which specializes in embedded finance technology, to support payments and remittances sent from the U.S. to Africa, according to a press release. Johannesburg-based Onafriq, founded in 2009, has connections to hundreds of millions of African mobile wallets, bank accounts and small businesses. The firm aims to work with Alviere — a seven-year-old licensed U.S. money transmitter — to develop tools to streamline more than $50 billion in remittances that flow annually to sub-Saharan Africa. —Kate Fitzgerald

French bank buys a stake in Worldline to boost its share price

France's Credit Agricole bank bought 7% of Worldline on Jan. 22 in a bid to shore up the French payments firm's stock after it began to sag last fall, Reuters reports. The move comes as Worldline and other European payments companies battle the effects of inflation and an economic downturn, which reportedly drove Worldline to line up financial support from banks to avoid a hostile takeover. Credit Agricole formed a partnership with Worldline last year to mutually develop payment services across Europe. —Kate Fitzgerald

Klarna CEO signals IPO in U.S. may happen 'quite soon'

Klarna, the Swedish fintech that was once Europe's most valuable startup, may soon launch a stock market listing in the U.S., according to Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Siemiatkowski. "It's very likely that this is going to happen quite soon, but there are no official dates," he said in a video interview with BNN Bloomberg in Canada.

The CEO pointed out that the U.S. is a natural choice for an initial public offering given that it is the firm's largest market by revenue. "So it is obviously leaning toward that direction," he said. Speculation has been rife about when and where Klarna will IPO, with the U.K. and its home market of Sweden being other potential possibilities for a listing. In November, the buy now/pay later firm set up a new U.K. holding company in what was seen as the preparatory work for an eventual public offering.

Last year, Klarna saw its valuation slashed to $6.7 billion from about $45.6 billion while it cut jobs, office space and other costs, as investors reconsidered the growth of easy credit at a time of rising interest rates. That value rose to $7.85 billion in December alongside the fintech reporting its first quarterly operating profit in four years. —Charles Daly, Bloomberg News