Fintech Highlights - 1/28/2022

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

Pinned to the Top

This year those looking for free options to file their taxes can look no further than an app they might already have on their cell phone: The Cash App.

Square Inc. (now Block) acquired Credit Karma Tax in November 2020 and this year will add that product into the features offered through the Cash App. The application routes that many users will be able to submit a simple tax return in minutes, free of charge.

Cash App has done a really nice job of driving usage of core features and capabilities, and then found the right bolt-ons to capture a bigger share of attention. Part of a "super app" strategy that is effecting traditional players in financials services.

The BFD

Data: S&P Global Market Intelligence; Chart: Will Chase/Axios

Bank branch closures hit a record last year, Hope writes.

By the numbers: The number of net closures increased by 38% from 2020, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The big picture: Banks, which had been closing branches steadily for about a decade prior to the pandemic, hastened plans to consolidate locations as a way to cut costs during the health crisis.

Details: Wells Fargo topped the list with a net 267 closures. Ohio-based Huntington Bancshares had the most net closures (221) on a percentage basis among banks with 1,000 or more branches.

Fintechs

Fintech startup Revolut is rolling out stock trading in its app in the U.S. The company already lets you buy and sell shares if you’re a British user. And now, Revolut has received approval to become a licensed U.S. broker-dealer in the U.S. Revolut users will be able to trade 1,100 securities, such as shares on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The company will also offer access to 200 ETFs. When it comes to features, Revolut offers fractional shares and several order types, such as limit and stop-limit orders. More here ->

M2P Fintech, a payments infrastructure startup that has established market dominance in India, has raised $56 million in a new financing round, less than three months after closing its previous funding, as it works to deepen its footprints in several international geographies. M2P Fintech, whose three founders come from Verizon and Visa, has two core offerings. It helps banks and other financial institutions that have the regulatory licenses but need help with tech to launch banking services. More here ->

Israeli fintech Personetics has raised an additional $85M for tools to help incumbents personalize banking services to compete with neobanks. The company has built AI-based technology for banks to personalize their offerings — for example understanding a users’ spending habits, and combining that with larger data sets, to offer advice for savings, based on a customer’s spending patterns. The funding will go toward expanding the tools that Personetics provides to banking customers, as well as to expand its base of users. More here ->

Plaid, a fintech unicorn known for its APIs that connect consumer bank accounts to financial applications, announced today that it is buying Cognito. The price is around $250 million, paid in a blend of cash and stock. Cognito is an interesting buy for Plaid, offering verification services for the fintech world, which is distinct from what its acquirer is best known for. In practice, Cognito offers ID verification, along with help with thorny issues like know your customer (KYC) rules, and anti-money laundering requirements. More here ->

Vartana, an S.F.-based provider of checkout and BNPL options for businesses, which aims to be the “Affirm for B2B," is emerging from stealth with $7 million in equity funding and $50 million in credit. Founded in June 2020 by two former KeepTruckin employees, Vartana was selected as the company name because it is the Sanskrit word for “financial wellness,” according to CEO Kush Kella. More here ->

Accrue Savings, a Middletown, Del.-based “save now pay later” startup, raised $25m in Series A funding. Founded in June 2021 by CEO Michael Hershfield, Accrue aims to get people saving again with its merchant-embedded shopping experience that rewards consumers for saving up for the things they want to buy. More here ->

Car Capital, a Grapevine, TX based regulatory technology provider for car dealerships, announced a $6.2M investment from Fortress Investment Group, as well as closing on a $150M, three-year, credit facility. Through their proprietary, fully digital platform, Dealer Electronic Auto Loan System (DEALS), Car Capital allows their dealer partners to instantly approve 100% of their customers, regardless of credit history. More here ->

Pinwheel, a New York-based payroll API, raised $50m in Series B funding at a $500m valuation. Pinwheel serves neobanks and fintechs like Block, Varo and Lendly by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) linked to payroll, income and employment data. Historically, systems for providing such data are inefficient and clunky, a problem Pinwheel’s co-founders recognized when they were working on a startup that helped companies provide pre-tax benefits to their employees.  More here ->

Facet Wealth, a Baltimore-based provider of financial planning benefits for employees, raised $100m in Series C funding. Industry analysts say the latest funding round is validation of Facet Wealth’s model, which combines financial planning technology with human-based advice, delivered through its more than 100 staff CFPs. Unlike most traditional advisors, Facet charges a flat subscription-based fee; it’s not based on the client’s assets or income, but rather it’s tied to the level of complexity in the client’s situation, says Anders Jones, CEO and co-founder of Facet. The firm's average client pays $3,000 a year. More here ->

INDmoney, an Indian super finance app, raised $75m. Founded in 2019, INDmoney started its journey as a wealth management app, helping users track their investments and expenses and set financial goals by using machine learning. But soon, it expanded its offerings to allow users to make those investments and expenses on the app itself — at zero commission. The startup, which has amassed over 3.5 million users, enables its members to invest in mutual funds, bonds and stocks. (INDmoney also offers US-listed stocks on the app.) More here ->

Spendesk, a French corporate spend management platform, raised €100m in Series C funding at a valuation north of €1b. The startup offers an all-in-one corporate spend management platform for medium companies in Europe. Originally focused on virtual cards for online payments, the company has expanded its product offering to tackle everything related to corporate spending. More here ->

Asaak, a Ugandan asset financing startup, raised $30m in equity and debt funding. Asaak offers motorbike financing to operators, who are often locked out by formal banking institutions due to stringent security requirements comprising income history and regular account activity. More here ->

Payflow, a Spanish salary advance startup, raised $9.1m in Series A funding. The startup sells a salary-advance service to employers to offer their staff — charging companies a commission for the tech rather than levying a fee on users to withdraw a portion of their salary early (as some other salary startups do). More here ->

Float, a Ghanaian provider of business cashflow solutions, raised $7m in equity co-led by Tiger Global and JAM Fund. It also secured $10m in debt from Cauris. The fintech provides credit lines for businesses and this funding will be used to bolster its offerings and expand geographically. More here ->

Pluang, a Jakarta-based investment app, raised $55m. Launched in 2019, Pluang started with gold and has since grown its range of asset classes, so investors can diversify their holdings and decrease risk. Investments can start as low as IDR 10,000 (or less than $1 USD) in gold, indexes, mutual funds and crypto assets. The app is also launching new features that will allow users to invest in fractional U.S. stocks.  More here ->

Rain Financial, a Bahrain-based crypto brokerage, raised $110m in Series B funding at a $500m valuation. Founded in 2017, Rain became the first licensed crypto-asset service provider in the Middle East two years later. The company now has subsidiaries in Bahrain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. More here ->

Flip, an NFT marketplace platform, announced a $6M seed round led by Distributed Global and Chapter One. Flip aggregates NFT marketplaces under one roof on its platform, allowing users to easily navigate through available NFTs to buy. More here ->

Burnt Finance, a decentralized auction protocol built on the Solana blockchain, raised $8m in Series A funding. Burnt Finance will now launch its own NFT marketplace, which will feature English, Dutch, and Buy Now auctions, aiming to be a hub for NFTs by integrating DeFi functionality, such a NFT lending, liquidity mining with staking incentives, fractionalization, and GameFi. More here ->

SEBA Bank, a Swiss crypto banking platform, raised around $119m in Series C funding. Launched in 2018, SEBA started as a crypto banking service and expanded into offering crypto trading and custody for institutional investors. More here ->

iTrustCapital, a Long Beach, Calif.-based platform for buying cryptocurrencies via IRAs, raised $125m in Series A funding at a valuation north of $1.3b led by Left Lane Capital. More here ->

BillEase, a Philippines-based BNPL startup, raised $11m in Series B funding. Operated by fintech First Digital Finance Corporation, BillEase launched in 2017, with shopping marketplace Lazada as its first merchant partner. It can now be used at more than 500 merchants, including consumer electronics seller Kimstore and Philippine Airlines. More here ->

Insuretechs

French startup Luko is acquiring German startup Coya in order to grow its European presence and get an insurance license from German regulators. While Luko isn’t disclosing terms of the deal, the company says it’s a 100% share deal, which means that Coya investors are now Luko investors. More here ->

Extend, a leader in technology-driven product protection plans, announced today it has become a licensed service contract provider (also known as an “obligor”), allowing it to design and underwrite its own plans. The move makes Extend the first company to own every step of the product protection or extended warranty process in all 50 states and enables it to offer innovative, consumer-friendly plans customized to meet the unique needs of its merchants and their customers.  More here ->

The Helper Bees, a digital insurance company for seniors and families, announced a $12.8 Series B round.  The new round of funding comes on the heels of The Helper Bees’ significant growth in recent months. This includes increasing revenue by three times in just over a year and increasing their team size by eight times. More here ->

Proptech

KKR acquired Merchants Mortgage, an Austin, Texas-based provider of short-term mortgage products. MMTC’s CEO Justin Land and the existing management team will continue to lead the company. More here ->

HappyCo, an S.F.-based rental property condition data platform, raised $52m. Founded in 2011, HappyCo helps property and asset managers, lenders and investors make better management decisions. The software suite includes condition assessment and workflow tools with in-unit data on over 3.5 million US rental homes.  More here ->

From the Stash

From The Metaverse To Gen Z, What 2022 Will Mean For The Real Estate Sector — news.crunchbase.com While last year broke real estate tech records, this year will see a confluence between desires for normalcy, real estate stakeholders embracing technology, and Web 3.0’s opportunities for technology entrepreneurs. Agya Ventures' Kunal Lunawat shares key areas he expects will see increased activity.

Opera launches a dedicated crypto browser — techcrunch.com Steve Dent Contributor Steve Dent is an associate editor at Engadget. More posts by this contributor Tesla ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta features an ‘Assertive’ mode with rolling stops TikTok moderator sues over mental trauma caused by graphic videos Opera has launched its Web3 “Crypto Browser” into beta with features like a built-in crypto wallet, easy access […]

A hard rain is coming for UK’s crypto boom — techcrunch.com The U.K.’s ad-fuelled boom in crypto trading looks to be headed for major speed restrictions: The country’s financial watchdog said it will beef up rules around marketing of crypto assets and could even put limits on who can invest, following government confirmation yesterday that it will extend the regulator’s remit to cover crypto. In recent […]

A Lot Of Recently Public Fintechs Have Seen Share Prices Plunge — news.crunchbase.com Since continued strength in fintech startup funding will likely require some public market enthusiasm for the space, we thought it’d be useful to take a look at how shares on major U.S. exchanges are performing.

Amazon to continue accepting Visa credit cards in UK as it bids to resolve payment dispute — news.sky.com The online retailer, which has claimed that Visa's fees for processing credit card transactions were too high, said it was now working with the payments company on a potential solution.

The 2022 design trends that will make a mark on financial services — content.11fs.com With 2022 underway, let’s look at which design trends are set to take the year by storm.

Reports / Webinars

The Leadership In Insurance Podcast with Chris Finan, COO, ActZero.AI — preview.mailerlite.com The California-based start-up ActZero uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to increase the likelihood of identifying and preventing attacks while reducing the duration and impact of incidents should they occur. They help to remediate vulnerabilities and mitigate risks so their customers can focus on their core competencies and driving business growth.

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