Episode 5 - 7th October 2015

TOP STORIES China starts dumping US Treasury Debt. The International Monetary Fund (i.e. the IMF), has issued a warning of fresh shocks to the local financial stability. Ben Bernanke states “the Fed should have abandoned inflation targeting.” Starbuck’s hires a full-time CTO The US Marshals Service is preparing to auction the left over 44,341 Bitcoin from the Silk Road Former Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit has invested in TransferWise WorldBank has issued a warning that low oil prices would result in reduced remittances from the Middle East to South Asia SynapsePay a US based a fintech company in the payments spaced just announced all ACH transactions on their branded service are 100% free. PODCAST OPINION Yesterday, I and my co-host Mike Townsend from our weekly podcast of Around The Coin had the opportunity to interview Peter Ohser, EVP Business Development at MoneyGram. We probed Peter about MoneyGram, and how it sees the P2P, B2C, and B2B sector along with some hard questions on Bitcoin and remittances. You can listen to that episode on www.AroundTheCoin.com DID YOU KNOW Every Wednesday, I’ll make a mention of a single startup in the financial space, so, the selected candidate for today is Bridg, that is bridge spelt without the “e” (B-r-i-d-g). Bridg is a mobile-wallet payment app that uses bluetooth and/or Internet (via GPRS) to make effortless payments. The company is based out of Dubai and the product, well, you just have to see to believe it.