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Zurich Insurance nears $4b deal for MetLife property and casualty (P&C) insurance unit - The deal, executed through its Farmers Group subsidiary, would expand Zurich Insurance’s P&C business, as the industry grapples with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove up claims for business interruptions and event cancellations. It would also allow MetLife to exit a business in which it faces fierce competition from larger players such as State Farm, GEICO and Progressive Insurance. Read more

Spain’s second-largest bank will soon launch crypto services - BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain, with about $840b in assets, is poised to enter the cryptocurrency trading and custody space, according to two people familiar with the plans. The Spanish bank will begin its crypto offering out of Switzerland. Read more

Revolut takes on digital payment rivals with new service for businesses - Revolut has launched a new service allowing businesses in 13 European countries to accept online card payments, expanding its product range and taking on established rivals in a high-growth area. The new product pits Revolut against fast-growing incumbent digital payment providers Stripe and Adyen. Read more

Betterment CEO Jon Stein steps down - Betterment founder Jon Stein is stepping down as chief executive and will be succeeded by Sarah Kirshbaum Levy, a former executive of ViacomCBS. The New York based firm that was founded in 2010 manages $25b with more than 550,000 customers. Read more

US to shift burden from banks in overhaul of money laundering laws - The US Congress is expected to approve the first overhaul of the country’s anti-money laundering laws in decades. Under the new legislation, all US corporations will have to register the identity of their beneficial owners in a database operated by FinCEN, in order to prevent criminals from using shell companies to conceal ill-gotten gains. Read more

Mastercard, Visa stop payments processing on Pornhub over alleged content - The two payments giants cite reports of the numerous videos posted on the site of sexual assault of minors as reason for the move. Mastercard said it would permanently end the use of its cards on the sex video site after the report came out and was confirmed, while Visa said it would be suspending the payments until an investigation was completed. Read more

Robinhood Is losing thousands of traders to a China-owned rival - Even in a year full of surprises on Wall Street, this one stands out: A Chinese-owned brokerage has quietly built one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S. Webull, founded by Alibaba alum Wang Anquan, has increased its roster of brokerage clients by about tenfold this year, to more than 2m, by offering free stock trades with a slick online interface. Read more

Facebook adds carts to WhatsApp to make shopping easier - Carts are aimed at making it easier for consumers to buy multiple items from a business, and for merchants to keep better track of order inquiries and manage requests. But one big element that remains missing from WhatsApp’s shopping experience is support for payments. Read more

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says he’s open to asset manager acquisitions - It’s not just asset managers that Dimon is interested in. He noted that the bank has some investments in the fintech space and that there may be some opportunities for an acquisition. Dimon’s eye for deal making makes sense as financial institutions look to diversify their revenue streams in a low interest rate environment. Read more

Online lender SoFi explores deal to go public - The San Francisco based company, which was valued at $4.8b in a private fundraising round last year, has held talks with a number of so-called special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). The discussions show that going public is solidly in the sights of SoFi’s CEO, Anthony Noto. Read more

Goldman plots Florida base for Asset Management in a blow to New York - Florida’s warm weather and lack of a state income tax have lured wealthy Americans for years. But until 2020, the region struggled to peel away the rainmaking class from Wall Street’s most elite firms. Most hedge funds that relocated to the state were relatively small. Now the migration of larger financial firms and money managers is showing signs of gaining momentum. Read more

Outages at Interactive Brokers, Robinhood leave stock traders furious - A spike in individual investing this year has buoyed the entire brokerage industry. Retail equity orders accounted for 20% of U.S. stock trading in the past quarter, up more than five percentage points from the prior year. But as much as the boom in stock trading by individuals has been a hallmark of this year, so has service disruptions at the online brokerages. Read more

MicroStrategy to raise $400m to buy even more bitcoin - MicroStrategy bills itself as a business-intelligence firm but has been doubling down on its capital-allocation strategy disclosed in July, which includes investing up to $250m in assets including Bitcoin. Read more

Paysafe to go public in Bill Foley-backed $9b deal - London based payments processor owned by The Blackstone Group and CVC Capital Partners, agreed to be acquired via a $9b reverse merger with a SPAC led by Bill Foley. Foley said in an interview that Paysafe had been at the top of his target list of mergers because it had different businesses that could be scaled. Read more

China hands out $3m of digital yuan as JD.com becomes first online platform to accept it - A total of 20m yuan ($3m) will be up for grabs in a lottery. Winners will receive a so-called “red packet” via an app containing a maximum of 200 yuan of the digital currency. A hundred thousand of these red packets will be distributed. Those who receive the digital yuan can spend it on JD.com’s online shopping platform. Read more

Payments have become tech arms race say banks - The vast majority of banks (94%) believe that the Covid-19 pandemic has turned the payments market into a technology arms race for which they are unprepared. Read more