FinTech
Digital payments alone could become a $100 trillion industry, according to PwC. And that’s just one component of the global Fintech industry. This channel tackles the lenders and buyers, the obstacles and achievements, and the trends and trend makers leading the ongoing technological evolution in global finance.
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Nigerian startup Infibranches Technologies has received funding of $2 million from All On, an impact investing organization backed by Shell (NYSE: RDS.A). Infibranches will use the funds for customer acquisition, improvement of its product lineup and for introduction of new products and services to address energy distribution issues.
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FinTech: JPMorgan Chase To Unveil UK Digital Bank Next Week
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), the largest bank in the US, may disrupt the UK banking market with its launch next week of a digital lender retail arm offering, in the first instance, current accounts with a reward program.
FinTech: Goldman Sachs Snaps Up BNPL Fintech Greensky For $2.24B
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) announced Wednesday its all-stock acquisition of GreenSky (NASDAQ: GSKY), a fintech lender specializing in BNPL home improvement loans, for $2.24 billion. Goldman Sachs said the transaction would help accelerate its efforts to “create the consumer banking platform of the future.”
FinTech: Aussie BNPL Company Zip To Offer Crypto Trades And Payments In The US
Zip Co (ASX: Z1P), the Australian fintech that offers BNPL, announced Tuesday its launch of crypto trading services and acceptance by its merchants of bitcoin as a payment mode.
FinTech: QED’s Seventh Fund For Fintechs Closes With $1.05B
Leading global fintech VC firm QED Investors announced today the close of its Fund VII with commitments from investors of $1.05 billion. The firm intends to deploy the funds in support of fintech startups across the U.S., the U.K., Latin America and Southeast Asia. Fund VII is made up of a $550 million early stage fund and a $500 million growth-stage fund.
FinTech: In This BNPL Roundup, Monzo And Revolut Mulling Entry
Read up on why British challenger banks Monzo and Revolut are plotting moves to enter the BNPL space; Italian fintech Scalapay’s big raise, DivideBuy’s lending facility, Wisetack’s “in-person” BNPL, and US shoppers are falling behind on BNPL payments.
Venture Capital: Massive $500M+ Rounds From Snyk And Varo Bank
Lately chartered U.S. neobank Varo Bank announced Thursday its raise of a $510 million Series E at a valuation of $2.5 billion. Today, Israeli cloud security startup Snyk said it collected $530 million comprising $300 million in new money and $230 million in secondary funding. Snyk’s valuation was a solid $8.5 billion – up sharply from $4.7 billion in March when it raised $300 million.
FinTech: Eyeing Cryptos, Mastercard Acquires CipherTrace
As Mastercard (NYSE: MA) ventures deeper into the digital assets ecosystem, top of mind are security and fraud detection. It announced Thursday its acquisition of CipherTrace, which obtains cryptocurrency intelligence from its analysis of huge amounts of validated blockchain transaction attribution, for an undisclosed amount.
FinTech: PayPal To Acquire Japanese BNPL Pioneer Paidy For $2.7B
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) announced earlier this week its acquisition of Paidy, a Japanese payments platform and BNPL provider for ¥300 billion or approximately US$2.7 billion, principally in cash, as big-ticket deals in the BNPL space gather pace. PayPal also said the deal will expand its reach into Japan, the third largest Ecommerce market in the world.
FinTech: Funding Circle Launches BNPL Solution For Small Businesses
Funding Circle (LON: FCH), the fintech and lending platform focused on small businesses, has launched FlexiPay, a new product that allows a small business to spread any UK invoice or supplier payment over three months. Funding Circle would make the initial payment on behalf of the business. The business mode “buy-now-pay-later” facility could be approved in a matter of minutes.
FinTech: African Fintech Wave Scores $200M Series A Raise At $1.7B
African fintech Wave, which aims to make Africa the first cashless continent, has raised $200 million from Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund, pStripe and Ribbit Capital, who jointly led the company’s Series A round. The amount was a record for a Series A raising in Africa, and propelled Wave into the unicorn club with a valuation of $1.7 billion.
FinTech: Indian Payments Fintech Razorpay To Raise $200-250M
Razorpay, the Indian payments fintech founded in 2014 by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, is looking to raise $200-250 million from global investors at a valuation of around $4 billion, two people familiar with the development told Mint.
Digital Assets: Belgian Startup Seety Enables Crypto Payments For Parking
Seety, a Belgian startup focused on digital parking has made it possible for users to pay for parking in Antwerp and Brussels with cryptocurrencies. Seety founders Hadrien Crespin and Nicolas Cognaux (pictured above) have the vision that more and more people will use cryptos for everyday purposes as the coins become more climate-friendly.
FinTech: Revolut’s Storonsky Says IPO Possible Only After Multi-Billion $ Revenues
Revolut, the UK-based digital challenger bank, and the U.K.’s most valuable start-up, is led by co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky. Now among the best funded fintechs in Europe, speculation has always swirled about its plans for an IPO. Speaking on Bloomberg television on Wednesday, Storonsky said that a potential market listing was inevitable at a certain point of time given that Revolut was a venture-funded company. He also clarified that the company would need to boost its revenues by billions of dollars before that could happen.
FinTech: Vietnamese Digital Bank Cake Engages Mambu For Cloud Banking Services
Vietnam-based virtual bank Cake announced its selection of cloud-based, banking-as-a-service provider Mambu for deploying a comprehensive range of digital banking services that would make online banking easier for its customers.
FinTech: PayPal Looking To Offer Stock Trading
A CNBC report revealed Monday that fintech giant PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) is considering offering stock trading to individual investors amid a retail trading boom that has drawn millions of new investors into stock markets.
FinTech: Amazon Customers To Get Affirm’s BNPL Solution At Checkout; Affirm Shares Spike 43%
Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) announced it is partnering with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) on a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) solution, also known as a flexible payment facility, to be made available by Affirm to Amazon.com customers. BNPL has become highly popular across the globe, particularly after the pandemic, as customers sought payment solutions that were less expensive than credit cards.
FinTech: Boku Launches World’s Largest Mobile Payments Network
Boku Inc (AIM: BOKU) has launched M1ST, a seemingly all-encompassing payments network covering 5.7 billion mobile payment accounts in 90 countries and connecting them with over 330 mobile payment methods.
FinTech: Fractional Trading Provider DriveWealth Snags $450M At $2.85B Valuation
DriveWealth last week raised $450 million in a Series D round co-led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital investors Insight Partners and Accel, with significant participation by Greyhound Capital, Softbank Vision Fund, and Series C lead Point72 Ventures. New investors including Base 10, FTX, and FlightDeck also participated. The round valued the fintech at a sizable $2.85 billion.
FinTech: Opay Nabs $400M; Turns Africa’s Fastest Unicorn
Opay, a mobile payments platform and POS device maker based in Africa, raised $400 million in a round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 with participation by Sequoia Capital China and Redpoint China. Opay became a unicorn after the funding, the fastest startup in Africa to do so, after snagging a valuation of $2 billion.
FinTech: Indian Fintech CRED Launches Mint, A Community Lending (P2P) Feature
Three year old, India-based fintech startup CRED has launched ‘CRED Mint,’ a community lending feature, allowing its high-credit-rated members to lend to one another at rates earning as high as 9% per annum. A prospective CRED member must have a minimum credit score of 750 to join the platform.
Venture Capital: VC Firm FinTech Collective Lands $250M For Fintech And DeFi Startups
FinTech Collective, a New York-based venture capital firm founded in 2012, announced its raise of $250 million for investing in financial services startups focused on traditional fintech and DeFi. Of this $200 million would be directed towards investments in early-stage fintechs, and $50 million in DeFi applications.
FinTech: ‘Payday’ From Revolut Offers Advances Against Earned Wages In The UK
Revolut’s new Payday product allows employees to access upto half their earned wages on payment of a small fee starting at £1.50, thus avoiding access to expensive credit cards or usurious payday lenders.
FinTech: Sightline, Hopper, And Branch Snag Big Buck Funding Rounds
From casino and workforce payments to a travel fintech, funding rounds are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Sightline Payments ($244 million), Branch ($540 million) and Hopper ($175 million) all announced fundraises on Tuesday (August 17, 2021).
FinTech: Plaid Extends Its April $425M Funding To Include JPM And Amex
Plaid has announced today an extension of its April $425 million Series D round that was led by Altimeter Capital with participation from new investors, Silver Lake and Ribbit Capital. The expanded round now includes funding from J.P. Morgan Private Capital Growth Equity Partners and existing investor Amex Ventures.