eBay seeks to plug small business financing gap with an embedded lending product for its UK SMB sellers. eBay and other ecommerce firms will likely add more financial services, like accounting solutions, to better serve their user bases.

eBay rolls out lending to UK SMBs: The ecommerce giant is partnering with embedded finance platform YouLend to extend loans to its sellers—giving the former a chance to make itself stickier for platform sellers and the latter access to data and loan growth.

The ad market in the UK suffered during 2020, but the decline in spending was only marginal as digital investment took up much of the slack. Indeed, the resilience of digital formats has been palpable amid the pandemic.

The combined entity aims to operate as a one-stop shop for the financial needs of SMBs, and the acquisition points toward potential consolidation in the space as competition stiffens.

The UK’s under-35s are 21% more likely to want to share bank data to prove their creditworthiness than in May 2020, presenting partnership opportunities for fintechs with lenders.

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Virgin Money boosts UK SMB lending experience with partnership: The UK bank’s latest fintech team-up demonstrates a focus on pivoting to post-pandemic customer retention.

Wealthsimple hits 2M Canadian users amid neobanking push: The Canadian fintech reached a user threshold as it hit a CAD$5 billion valuation from its latest funding round—positive signs that it could become a significant player despite the challenges in its home market.

A key UK pandemic SMB loan program turns 1: The Bounce Bank Loan Scheme provided £46.53 billion ($59.67 billion) to strapped businesses and offered neobanks a chance to grow their books—but lenders now have to deal with repayments and keeping the borrowers.

Search had a challenging time during the pandemic. Spend grew just 5.3% to £7.34 billion ($9.41 billion) in 2020, down from 17.7% the previous year and significantly down on our pre-pandemic estimate of 12.2% growth. However, this latest forecast is a reversal on our interim August 2020 estimate, when we expected a decline of 1.7% for the year.

Lloyds and Starling top Q4 2020 UK account switching list: The pair took first and second place, respectively, in net account switches—and their different customer acquisition approaches show how to succeed as account switching rebounds from the pandemic.

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

Digital advertising confounded the conditions of the past year or so and will attract more than three-quarters of total media ad spending in 2021—£19.23 billion ($24.66 billion). Video has been the biggest driver of digital spend during this time.

Total ad spending in France and Germany took a big hit in 2020, as a result of the pandemic. But digital advertising bucked that trend and will lead a strong double-digit recovery in ad outlays during 2021.

The robo-advisor surpassed £3 billion ($3.85 billion) in AUM, and it could use open banking to automate how users fund their investment accounts to further grow its AUM and break even.

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