The fintech wants to win millions of new customers from Japan, even though regulators are stepping up their scrutiny. Also: Crypto company Bitfront is about to go out and Twitter is removing Covid rules.
Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.
The top topics:
The British financial technology company Revolut is aiming for rapid growth in Asia, according to a report in the US medium “Bloomberg”. The fintech aims to attract millions of users despite being under particular scrutiny from regulators in the recent past. Japan’s financial regulator in particular is keeping an eye on Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko’s fintech startup: It was only in September that the authority proposed business improvements to the 40-strong local team and said there were “serious problems” with the control measures.
According to Storonsky, the company has responded to the demands. The CEO of the fintech company, which was last valued at 33 billion US dollars, sees opportunities in the Japanese market. It specifically targets Japanese exporters looking to lower international money transfer fees in a country that’s still lagging behind in cashless payments. Revolut aims to reach 1 million users in Japan – an important step towards reaching the goal of at least 10 million customers in Asia by the end of 2025. According to the company, it currently has 80,000 customers in Japan and 600,000 users throughout Asia. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]
on Founder Scene: It will get hotter and hotter on earth in the coming decades, and dry forests will increase the risk of forest fires. Investors are now investing 15 million euros in the Munich startup Ororatech, which is intended to detect fire disasters from space at an early stage. The European space agency Esa and the Free State of Bavaria are also co-financing the whole thing with a loan. Editor Fiona Mathewson has explained exactly what Ororatech is planning – and what role the Elon Musk company plays SpaceX playing. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]
And here are the other headlines of the night:
Bitfront is the next crypto firm to emerge after the collapse of FTX and Blockfi have to give up. The company that became the Japanese social media conglomerate Line according to media reports, will no longer accept new customers and no longer process credit card payments. In a few months, the business is to be completely discontinued. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt und Reuters]
Twitter will no longer take action against misinformation about Covid-19 in the future. The innovation was noticed by some users on Monday evening. Twitter updated its online rules with one sentence: “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 policy on misleading information.” Public health experts have already raised concerns that the short message service’s new policy could have serious consequences as the virus continues to spread. [Mehr bei The Guardian]
Crowdstrike is down nearly 20 percent in the stock market after the cybersecurity company reported rather weak third-quarter customer growth. This was the largest one-day loss since the 2019 IPO. While earnings and sales of 40 US cents per share or 581 million US dollars were above analysts’ expectations, the prospect of new customer subscriptions is currently significantly weaker. Because of the weak economic situation, many companies are also cutting back on their IT budgets. [Mehr bei CNBC und Bloomberg]
TeslaManager Anders Bell is leaving his position as Senior Director of Vehicle Engineering for Europe to join the Research and Development department Volvo to direct. Bell joined Tesla from Volvo in 2016 and is now returning to the Swedish automaker. Bell was based in Berlin/Brandenburg, where Tesla opened its fourth Gigafactory in March. His departure shows that the electric vehicle market is becoming increasingly competitive and that top engineers have more choices than ever when choosing their place of work. [Mehr bei The Information]
Blockfi plans to re-enable payouts to “maximize customer paybacks”. This is what the crypto lender’s lawyers said at a court hearing on Tuesday, a day after the firm filed for bankruptcy. At the hearing, Blockfi’s lawyers expressed optimism that the firm is in a sufficiently good position to restructure the company and bail it out through the bankruptcy proceedings. [Mehr bei CNBC]
Our reading tip on Gründerszene: With a fake profile of the influencer Paul Ripke wanted to Weight Watchers on Tinder win new customers. That backfired. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]
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Happy Wednesday!
Your Gründerszene editors
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/revolut-expansion-asien/
