Today in FinTech: FinTechIPO™ Index Still Trending Down; Pyypl Points to Blockchain to Fill Payments Gap; Zeller Bank Claims Unicorn Status

In today’s FinTech news, Pyypl wants to help fill the payments gap in the United Arab Emirates by using the blockchain for cross-border payments. PYMNTS FinTech IPO tracker is continuing to see a downward trend, and Aussie digital business bank Zeller becomes a unicorn. GameStop moved closer to fleshing out its NFT plans with the hiring of a legal veteran with FinTech, Crypto, NFT, and Blockchain expertise.

Pyypl CEO Makes Case for Blockchain When Sending Cross-Border Payments

In an interview with PYMNTS, Antti Arponen, founder and CEO of United Arab Emirate-based digital payments and financial services provider Pyypl, said that despite the considerable progress and adoption of mobile money services, there remains a gap. He pointed to mobile money as being inconvenient and expensive for some transactions due to having to use a bank.

Arponen said that Pyypl — a blockchain on-demand liquidity solution — and similar financial services providers can fill the gap where roughly 800 million smartphone users “just need to do these daily, business-as-usual payments.” Using blockchain technology, Pyypl also enables users to make cross-border transfers without the need for a bank account or credit card.

FinTechIPO Index Shows Continued Weakness vs Broader Markets

FinTech initial public offerings (IPOs) are continuing an underperformance trend in comparison to the market as a whole, according to the latest reading of the PYMNTS FinTech IPO tracker, which surveys a group of 45 companies. March started off with a reading of 70.5 against a pandemic-set baseline of 100. The group of 45 lost an estimated 30%.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine played into the uncertainty that always plays a role in market performance. The general benchmarks the PYMNTS tracker is measured against are also down. Nasdaq is down roughly 5% year to date and the S&P is down an estimated 11%.

Zeller Bank Becomes Unicorn with Latest $100M Funding

Digital business bank Zeller is now an Australian unicorn following its $100 million funding round. The startup was founded in 2020 and is striving to offer business owners every product or solution in financial services they might need. Its out-of-the-box payments platform attracted over 10,000 businesses during the startup’s first eight months of business.

GameStop Appoints FinTech Legal Vet Cindy Yang from Duane Morris

As GameStop continues transforming itself from a physical video game retailer to an eCommerce technology marketplace, its aspirations of doing something with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continue to take shape. The company recently put out a call to hire NFT creators, and that’s on top of the 20 people already put in place to run the unit. Now FinTech legal expert Cindy Yang is coming on board to help guide legal and regulatory issues involving blockchain, digital assets, NFTs, metaverse, web3 and NFT gaming.