Fintech Highlights - 08/03/2021

👋  Thanks again for subscribing.

Here’s what’s worth watching this week….. 👇

Want to make your search experience about you, not ads?

Make privacy a priority and get Neeva. Sign-up today ->

Pinned to the Top

It's finally "Infrastructure Week" (or month? Summer??) and Congress is hammering out the details of a $1 trillion bill inching closer to the finish line. But one area that could face unpleasant consequences from the bill is cryptocurrencies.

Why it matters: Nearly $30 billion in taxes from cryptocurrency transactions, as part of the bill's "pay-fors," is at stake.

More here ->

The BFD

Square has agreed to acquire Afterpay, an Australian company in the "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) category, for $29 billion.

Why it's the BFD: This is Square's second big-ticket acquisition this year (after Tidal), showing that it's not shy when it comes to bold moves to expand its business lines.

Details: Square is paying a premium of about 30% over Afterpay's closing price on Friday, though still below the company’s all-time high of A$160 per share. Also: Multiple sources tell Axios' Dan Primack that Square didn't reach out to Affirm, another buzzy BNPL company.

The bottom line: "'There's a lot of growth occurring in this shift away from credit to debit, and it's due to the fact that we've flipped the model on its head,'" Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar told the NY Times. "The banks’ credit model 'doesn't work,' he said. 'The incentive is the opposite of how we built our product, which is to charge the retailer a small fee instead of making our money from the consumer.'"—Lauren Hirsch, NYT

Fintechs

Spark, a Canadian software platform for real estate developers, raised C$6.3 million. Originally created as an industry-specific CRM, Spark is transforming the way new multi-family real estate is sold by offering a comprehensive suite of products that eliminates the need for multiple platforms. More here ->

Paystone, a Canadian payment processing and customer engagement company, raised C$30 million. The Canada-based company got its start in 2008 as the payment processing company Zomaron, and rebranded itself as Paystone in 2019. Today it provides electronic payments and customer engagement technology to businesses, particularly those that provide services. More here ->

Mercury, the startup banking platform, raised $120 million in Series B funding. Mercury launched in 2019 by serial founder Immad Akhund, promising full-stack bank accounts that help startups scale with features such as cashflow analytics, programmatic payments and instant runway estimates. More here ->

Settle, a financial-technology startup that helps e-commerce companies manage cash flow, is in talks to raise fresh funding at a valuation of roughly $600 million, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Settle’s technology automates business-to-business payments. The company tracks receivables and pays vendor invoices on behalf of its small-business customers, giving them 30 to 120 days for repayment. The San Francisco-base company’s founder and chief executive officer is Alek Koenig, the former head of credit at Affirm Holdings Inc. More here ->

Nada, a Dallas-based real estate tech platform for trading, growing, and managing your real estate equity, recently raised $1.8M. More here ->

Insuretechs

Agentero, a Berkeley, Calif.-based digital insurance network, raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2017 and led by Luis Pino, CEO, Agentero leverages smart algorithms to combine agents’ existing data with third-party information sources to identify new business and cross-sell opportunities. It then connects agents with carriers in real-time to instantly quote, and to provide communication and automation tools so they can efficiently write more new business. More here ->

Eden, an Indian provider of health services not covered by insurance, raised $5 million in seed funding. Even is a healthcare membership company, and aims to cover what most insurance companies in the country don’t, including making going to a primary care doctor as easy and accessible as it is in other countries. More here ->

At-Bay, a Mountain View-based cyber insurance company, raised $185 million in Series D funding. While legacy insurers are pulling back on coverage and raising rates in the face of challenges like ransomware, At-Bay is doubling down with a modern approach to risk management that helps businesses improve their security and avoid loss before it happens.” More here ->

Spot, an Austin, Texas-based provider of accidental injury insurance, raised $15 million in equity seed funding and $2.5 million of debt. Spot was founded in 2018 by Maria Goy and Matt Randall with a goal of making health care and health insurance more accessible and affordable. The company makes a digital on-demand injury insurance product designed to complement or be used independently of traditional health insurance. More here ->

Flock, a connected car insurance startup, raised $17 million in Series A funding. Emerging from an academic project to look at drones, Flock shifted into providing drone insurance, then commercial vehicle insurance. The twist is that it hooks into the telematics of cars so that the vehicle only triggers insurance cover when it’s actually moving, not when it’s sitting on the lot, incapable of causing any accidents. More here ->

Amplify Life Insurance, a digital permanent life insurance platform, raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Started in 2019 by cofounders Qiyun Cai and Hanna Wu, Amplify provided a platform that offers life insurance products where customers can access tax-free investments inside their policy to use for retirement, student loans, a down payment – meanwhile providing lifelong protection. Additionally, the platform provides policy customization, streamlined underwriting, and an educational customer journey. More here ->

From the Stash

Robinhood’s stock drops 8% in its first day’s trading — techcrunch.com Once the U.S. consumer investing and trading app began to allow investors to trade its shares, they went down sharply, off more than 10% in the first hours of its life as a floating stock.

PayPal’s new ‘super app’ is ready to launch, will also include messaging — techcrunch.com

PayPal’s plan to morph itself into a “super app” have been given a go for launch. According to PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, speaking to investors during this week’s second-quarter earnings, the initial version of PayPal’s new consumer digital wallet app is now “code complete” and the company is preparing to slowly ramp up.

Financial firms should leverage machine learning to make anomaly detection easier — techcrunch.com Anomaly detection is one of the more difficult and underserved operational areas in the asset-servicing sector of financial institutions.

Cinven, CVC Said to Weigh IPO of Consumer Credit Firm NewDay — www.bloomberg.com Cinven Ltd. and CVC Capital Partners are weighing an initial public offering of consumer credit provider NewDay, according to people familiar with the matter.

Recommended

I get a lot of content from AXIOS. Who are crushing the daily newsletter game. Sign up for one of their excellent newsletters such as Pro Rata by Dan Primack, What’s Next and more -  today.

—

☑️ Thanks for reading. Please ask your friends, colleagues and others to sign up.

If you have any companies or news to share - use the form

AND - if we’re not already connected - let’s do it.