Fintech Highlights - 07/20/2021

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Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan — an ex-Google SVP of Ads and an ex-YouTube VP leading monetization — want to make your search experience about you, not ads.

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Pinned to the Top

💰 Square is launching small business savings and checking accounts.

Today, the company is launching a new product called Square Banking that combines a checking account, savings accounts, debit cards and loans.

With Square Banking, the company wants to convince small businesses that it’s just easier to manage all their money needs through Square.

And it's got a pretty good shot at doing so.

The BFD

Kin Insurance, the Chicago-based insure-tech company, agreed to go public at an implied billion $1 billion enterprise valuation via Omnichannel Acquisition Corp. a SPAC led by Matt Higgins.

The agreement values Kin Insurance at roughly $1.03 billion.

The company, which currently operates in Florida, Louisiana and California, also unveiled plans for a national expansion after purchasing an inactive insurer that operates in more than forty states.

Kin's technology-first approach enables customers to insure homes online within minutes.

Insuretech companies like Hippo, Matic, Lemondade and now Kin have set the property and casualty world on fire with their sky-high valuations and rapid growth. It remains to be seen how traditional carriers and underwriters will adjust to these insurgent competitors.

Fintechs

M1 Finance, a Chicago-based automated money management platform, raised $150 million.  The startup combines three different traditional fintech services into one (automated investing, borrowing and banking/spending) and has seen rapid growth over the past couple of years. Since July 1, 2020, the company has more than doubled its user base and tripled its AUM. More here ->

Railsbank, which builds APIs for banking, payment cards and credit products for use by fintechs but also a wide range of other kinds of businesses, has raised $70 million in new equity funding, money that the London startup plans to use to continue growing internationally and to add more features to its product set. More here ->

Cardless, a San Francisco-based platform for launching branded credit cards, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Put simply, Cardless aims to help consumer brands launch credit cards “very quickly and easily” by handling the program creation, card underwriting, lending, issuance and customer service for brands. This quarter, the startup launched three digital programs — with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, British soccer team Manchester United and the Miami Marlins, a Major League Baseball team based in Florida. More here ->

Tide, a British financial platform for businesses, raised $100 million in Series C funding. Tide provides a business financial platform that offers business accounts and related banking services, and a comprehensive set of software solutions, such as full integration with accounting systems. Tide has over 350,000 members and over 400,000 business accounts. More here ->

Jasper Card (f.k.a. CreditStacks), a customized credit card startup, raised $24 million in new Series A funding. Jasper Card provides advanced financial services including a program that enables customers to be approved based on their future potential credit, not only their credit history. The Jasper model is based on an algorithm-driven underwriting platform that relies on income, employment, and a variety of other sources for producing a credit score based on the customer’s predicted future credit behavior rather than looking backward. More here ->

Yapily, a London-based open banking platform, raised $51 million in Series B funding. The company has been working on a single, unified open banking API for several European markets. Developers can leverage that programming interface to interact with third-party bank accounts directly from their own products. More here ->

Tinvio, a Singapore-based fintech aiming to build financial services for supply chain merchants, has raised $12M. First created to give supply chain merchants a streamlined way to communicate with buyers, Tinvio is now preparing to launch financial services, including financing and credit card issuing. More here ->

Insuretechs

YuLife, a London startup that has built a new kind of life insurance concept — it incentivizes and rewards users to focus on their physical and mental health through a gamified interface — has raised $70 million in what is, to date, one of the largest Series Bs raised by an insurtech startup in Europe. YuLife is currently active only in the U.K. and is only sold directly to organizations, who in turn provide it to their employees. More here ->

Super, an insurtech company that provides subscription care for the home, today announced the closing of $50 million. New investor Wells Fargo Strategic Capital (WFSC) led the round. The company is reinventing an insurance category—home warranty—that is ready for innovation. With a data platform that captures more data on the home, on service providers, and on homeowners, Super has made impactful improvements in coverage, fraud prevention, and automation—from upfront scheduling through claim approval and service delivery. More here ->

From the Stash

UnitedHealthcare to Provide Millions of Members with Year-Long Access to the Peloton App - UnitedHealth Group — www.unitedhealthgroup.com

UnitedHealthcare and Peloton are working together to provide millions of Americans with access — at no additional cost — to classes that can help improve their overall fitness and well-being, the first such relationship between Peloton and a health plan.

An insurtech startup exposed thousands of sensitive insurance applications – TechCrunch — techcrunch.com The exposed insurance applications included Social Security numbers, medical diagnoses, and detailed questionnaires about a person's health past and present.

What impact will Apple’s buy now, pay later push have on startups? — techcrunch.com The more specialized the BNPL startup, the less likely that Apple's foray into the BNPL space may prove combative; the more general the BNPL player, the more likely that Apple could snag its business.

The 12 Most Important Mobile Banking Features (And Why No Bank Can Have Them All) — www.forbes.com For a growing number of consumers, a mobile app is the primary way they interact with their checking account. So, in essence, the mobile banking app IS the product. To keep up with evolving needs, banks need to personalize mobile banking apps and find ways to alleviate consumers' fraud concerns.

Current, a new digital bank, built its own tech — www.protocol.com A current bank account will get you all the things other digital banks have: account opening, debit card processing, real-time transaction decisioning and direct integration for rewards, cash deposits, ACH transfers and mobile check deposit. But Current built its own core banking infrastructure thanks to CTO Trevor Marshall's background.

Sure Inc. sues rival startup Boost Insurance, alleging it's a copycat — www.axios.com Sure Inc. says that Boost's CEO, a former Sure investor and director, created a duplicate company.

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