Square bank opens for business; Klarna forms council after influencer controversy

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Square bank

Nearly a year after receiving key regulatory approvals, Square has opened its bank, which will offer both deposit accounts and loans to merchants.

Square Financial Services is an industrial bank headquartered in Salt Lake City. It will become the originator of small-business loans that the San Francisco-based company already offers to retailers that use its technology to process their card sales.

Previously, Square Capital loans were issued under a partnership with Celtic Bank, another Utah-based industrial bank. “Bringing banking capability in-house enables us to operate more nimbly,” Amrita Ahuja, Square’s chief financial officer, said in a press release Monday.

Square store window sticker in Japan
Bloomberg

Influential

Three months after U.K. regulators banned a Klarna Instagram influencer, the Swedish fintech has formed an advisory council to determine best practices for influencer and brand messaging and to shape overall marketing practices.

The ban followed a campaign that encouraged consumers to use Klarna's point of sale credit to cheer themselves up and boost their mood during the pandemic. Other influencers mentioned buying clothes and splurging on skincare products. Point of sale credit products have soared in the past year; Klara's valuation just passed $31 billion, for example. But regulators are also drawn to point of sale credit over concerns it encourages consumer debt.

As part of its promised improvements to social media marketing, Klarna cited commissioned research from Censuswide that found about a third of U.K. consumers have acted on indirect advice from an influencer or a celebrity, with the percentage rising to 53% for GenZ (18-24) consumers.

Go to high street

Amazon Go is set to open a store in West London, part of plans to launch more than dozen other checkout-free stores in the U.K.

The e-commerce company has been planning its U.K. checkout-free strategy for more than two years, and the initial location will offer groceries and technology products, according to Forbes.

Amazon Go has also looked to shopping malls and Amazon's Whole Foods chain as venues to expand the footprint of its checkout-free concept.

Crime report

Financial crime tied to cryptocurrency totalled an estimated $10.5 billion in 2020, with a hint of good news as that total was slightly lower than 2019's tally.

Two thirds of the activity was due to fraud and hacks, reports Coindesk, citing data from Coinfirm. Hacks represented 9.6% of the activity, while Coinform reports crypto-linked terrorism financing, ransomware and blackmail — which get a lot of attention — together totalled less than a half percent.

Crypto crime is also still far less costly than traditional financial crime, which totalled about $3.5 trillion in 2020, Coinsesk reports, referencingEY.

Ad merger

Digital payments advertising platform Cardlytics has agreed to buy incentive marketing firm Dosh for $275 million in cash and stock.

Dosh specializes in a consumer app that supports cash-back offers over a network of thousands of merchants and millions of consumers. It also embeds in digital wallets from financial institutions and firms like Venmo, Betterment and Ellevest.

Cardlytics partners with banks to support cash-back offers based on card customers' purchasing habits. It sells directly to banks and through third party processors.

From the web

China's Ant seeks to ease staff concerns about selling company's shares
REUTERS | Tuesday, March 2, 2021
China's Ant Group is working on measures to help staff with "short-term liquidity problems", its executive chairman said in internal messages, after the halting of the fintech giant's $37 billion IPO dashed employees' hopes of cashing in their shares.

Czech on-demand grocery delivery startup Rohlik bags $230M to expand across Europe
TECHCRUNCH | Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Rohlik, a Czech startup that has built an online grocery ordering and delivery business combining your usual grocery fare — which it procures itself wholesale, or offers in concert with established businesses like Marks & Spencer — with items sourced from local small businesses, has picked up €190 million ($230 million at today’s rates).

Apple has reopened all of its US retail stores for the first time in nearly a year
THE VERGE | Monday, March 1, 2021
Every Apple Store location in the US has reopened as of today, roughly two weeks prior to the anniversary of the first store closures due to the coronavirus pandemic that began on March 13th, 2020. The news, reported by 9to5Mac this morning, coincides with the last of Apple’s Texas retail stores reopening on Monday.

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