Fintech Highlights - 10/3/2023

TrueMed wants you to use your HSA. Grow Credit raises a round with USAA. Bundl "disrupts." Here's what we've been watching this week 👇

Pinned to the Top

Truemed, a payment integration company - wants to put food in front of medicine.

Calley Means and Justin Mares started TrueMed last year to make it easy for consumers to pay for healthy food, exercise and supplements using their tax-free health savings accounts or flexible spending account dollars. And with regulatory compliance.

Most patients need some kind of letter of medical necessity to use HSA or FSA dollars on items outside of procedures or medication. Tapping into telehealth laws, Truemed collects certain data points and then seamlessly and asynchronously provides that letter without a doctor’s visit.

About $140 billion is sitting in these accounts, mostly going unused, and the IRS increased the amount you can contribute to health savings accounts to $4,150 for an individual and $8,300 for a family. This will hopefully enable people to more easily put these dollars to work.

The company launched this week with $3 billion of gross merchandise volume already amassed from businesses, including CrossFit, Magic Mind and Kos. It also received $3.5 million in SAFEs (simple agreement for future equity) from investors, including functional medicine pioneer Mark Hyman and founders from Thrive Market, Eight Sleep and Levels.

The BFD

Grow Credit, which has been working for financial inclusivity since 2018, is aiming to accelerate its mission to reach more struggling segments in society, including those in the military, veterans, and their families - with a recent investment from USAA.

The company just finalized a $10M Series A funding round, with USAA taking lead.

Why this is the BFD: The funding comes at one of the most difficult times for fintech funding in decades. Despite early round financings being relatively distanced from stock market direction - fintech foudners are having a tougher time finding backers as compared to just 1-2 years prior.

The big picture: This investment confirms the strong business growth that Grow Credit has seen, and gives USAA another strong partnership to meet their mission - serving military members and their families.

M&A

The Dutch government reduced its stake in ABN Amro Bank (Ams: ABN) to below 50%, which could set the stage for a full sale. More here ->

Fireblocks, a New York-based crypto custodian valued by VCs at $8b, acquired BlockFold, an Australian provider of blockchain services to financial institutions.  More here ->

Citigroup (NYSE: C) is in talks to sell its China onshore retail wealth unit to HSBC (NYSE: HSBC), per Bloomberg. More here ->

Rithm Capital Corp. (NYSE: RITM) agreed to buy the mortgage services and specialized loan servicing businesses of Computershare Ltd. (ASX: CPU) for around US$720m.  More here ->

Travelex, a British foreign currency exchange firm that went bankrupt in 2020, is on the block, per Reuters.  More here ->

Featured at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

Bundl, a total rewards software that enables employees to build and customize their own rewards package that best fits their wants and needs, was featured by TechCrunch during Disrupt 2023. Worth a read today. More here ->

Kenyan fintech FlexPay is helping shoppers save for future purchases. More here ->

Fintech

Financial super app Curve raised $163 million in a series C round this week, even as global fintech funding has dropped significantly.  Not only has funding dropped due to uncertain macroeconomic conditions and rising global interest rates, but the number of deals has also decreased. More here ->

PortX, a Seattle-based provider of financial services infrastructure for banks, raised $16.5m in Series B funding. PortX is a technology company focused on integrating software for financial services that unlock access to banking core data, eliminate vendor dependencies, and enable embedded banking-as-a-service solutions.   More here ->

Slope, an SF-based B2B payments platform, raised $30m. Slope enables businesses to accept online payments, offer flexible terms, and automate Order to Cash processes with their APIs and flexible infrastructure. More here ->

Apron, a London-based invoice processing platform for small businesses, raised $15m in Series A funding. The company offers an intuitive platform that slashes the time small businesses spend processing invoices.  More here ->

Perenna, a London-based mortgage lender, raised $52m in equity funding. Perenna offers simple, consumer-friendly mortgages with up to 30 years fixed interest rate, without age limits and up to 95% LTV. More here ->

Albo, a Mexican neobank, raised $40m in Series C funding. nlike many neobanks in the region, Albo focuses on the traditionally underbanked Mexicans from middle and low-income families. More here ->

Investtech

Farther, a New York-based wealth management startup, raised $31m in Series B funding. Farther is "a new kind of financial institution: combining expert advisors and cutting-edge technology to deliver a comprehensive, personalized client experience."  More here ->

Collective Liquidity, a San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based provider of financial tools to "unicorn" shareholders, raised $12m in Series A funding. Collective Liquidity provides transparent and liquid access to the private growth asset class services.  More here ->

Timeline, a British financial planning platform, raised £10m in Series B funding. Timeline is a provider of financial planning software and investment solutions to the independent financial advisor (IFA) community in the UK. More here ->

Avantis Labs, a DeFi derivatives ecosystem, raised $4m in seed funding. Avantis Labs is building a derivatives super app, starting with Avantis, a fully decentralized trading platform for perpetual futures that rivals the best centralized exchanges. More here ->

Vega, a British investment platform for high-net-worth individuals, raised over $8m from Motive Ventures, Picus Capital, Citi Ventures and No Label Ventures. More here ->

Insuretech

USAA has announced an expansion of its collaboration with Resideo Technologies, to bolster its commitment to safeguarding homes and optimising efficiency.  More here ->

From the Stash

💵 JPMorgan's Chase bank in the U.K. is banning crypto transactions made by its customers. More here ->

Brex, Ally roll out AI-driven assistants - Ally Financial and Brex rolled out AI-driven virtual assistants this week. Ally debuted a customer representative assistant to help service team members aid clients more efficiently while Brex’s virtual assistant aims to help employees of commercial clients file and manage expense reports. More here ->

Payments status updates comprise 80% of Citi queries - Eighty percent of queries across Citigroup’s 96-country network — which includes more than 200 million clients — are payment status queries.  Pre-validation capabilities could bring that number down for banks, Debopama Sen, co-head of global payments and receivables at the $2.4 trillion Citi, said at the Sibos 2023 event this week. More here ->

Discover tests generative AI for internal purposes - Discover Financial Services is keeping customer needs and compliance at the forefront as it tests uses for generative AI.  “We have to understand what is hype versus what is reality. We have to be very thoughtful around how we deploy those capabilities,” said Jeff Stone, senior director of digital customer service More here ->

Mercury Raise transitions from a seasonal, cohort-based program into “an always-available” platform - Raise features new tools, programs, and networks as well. “After working with thousands of founders, we began to notice that they were consistently encountering roadblocks centered around three distinct themes: raising money, finding community, and getting expert guidance.” More here ->

Arc revealed a new bank account called Platinum - “We built this partnership in stealth over the last 6 months, after receiving feedback from thousands of founders and boards that have been forced to choose between the safety of the world’s largest banks (JPM, Goldman, Citi, BofA) and the user experience & yield available exclusively via B2B Fintechs (Brex, Arc, Mercury). Thanks to Arc Platinum, startups get both safety & UX for the first time in a digital bank.”  More here ->

Brex introduces “a proactive assistant that gives every employee their own EA (expense assistant).” - “Brex assistant uses the power of natural language, autonomous AI agents, and spend data to help employees file expenses compliantly and efficiently. With Brex Assistant, every employee now gets the same ‘swipe and forget’ corporate card experience as their executive team. As a result, finance teams can also look forward to increased productivity across the company.” More here ->

More articles:

• Plaid’s Zach Perret on Visa, valuations and privacy - More here ->
• As Robinhood eyes global expansion, CEO says: ‘We’ve made a lot of progress’ - More here ->
• After cutting ties with Binance, Checkout.com says crypto companies are about 4% of its total processing volume - More here ->
• SVB’s commercial banking president: ‘Come on back, the water’s fine’ - More here ->
• Block’s stock has been a laggard lately. Will management shakeup provide a needed jolt? More here ->
• Solid faked revenue numbers, special committee appointed to investigate, sources reveal - More here ->
• SentiLink launches Facets More here ->
• Nova Credit partners with HSBC for cross border credit sharing More here ->
• Varo aims to displace Venmo, Cash App volume with new P2P feature  More here ->
• Apple officially launches Tap to Pay in Brazil as international expansion continues - More here ->
• Tipalti lights up expenses solution and Tipalti card More here ->
• Treasury Prime announces integration with Astra to bring real time payment capabilities to customers - More here ->

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