Fintech Highlights - 11/2/2021

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NerdWallet, the S.F.-based personal finance platform, has set IPO terms to 7.3 million shares at $17-$19.

Were it to price in the middle, the company would have a $1.3 billion fully diluted value.

Nerdwallet might be in a highly competitive sea of financial content companies. But it does a good job of standing out.

Its most direct competition comes from companies like Credit Karma, which also publish personal finance content that directs to real credit cards and loan programs. And there are only a handful of successful ones - one of them is Nerdwallet.

More than any other company, though, a brand like Nerdwallet must compete with itself. Readers always want to question Nerdwallet and Credit Karma's interests between promoting big banks and delivering honest information.

We'll see how successful Nerdwallet is, as perceived by the markets, shortly.

Fintechs

Extend, a New York-based startup which provides digital payment infrastructure for financial institutions, so they can offer virtual cards to their users, raised $40M. The company is hoping to help banks better compete with fintechs, by building technology that supports virtual cards on top of the infrastructure banks are built upon. More here ->

Maxwell, a Denver-based digital mortgage software, raised $52.5 million. Founded in 2015, the startup says its offerings make mortgage applications, processing and underwriting more efficient for lenders, and enable loan closures 13 days faster than the national average of 47 days.  More here ->

Button Finance, a Volente-Texas based fintech mortgage lender focused on home equity, raised a $2M seed round. Button Finance enables homeowners to borrow against their home equity through a hassle-free online process that delivers quick decisions and funding in as little as five days. The company has built an AI-powered underwriting platform that enables it to lend to borrowers who are under-served by traditional lenders. More here ->

Zolve, a neobanking startup that aims to help immigrants in the U.S. gain access to financial services, has raised $40 million. Zolve currently works with banks in the U.S. and India to provide consumers access to financial products seamlessly — without paying any premium or coughing up any security deposit. It underwrites the risks, which has enabled banks in foreign countries to extend their services to Zolve customers. More here ->

Finverse, an open banking startup with ambitions to be Asia Pacfic's version of Plaid, has raised $1.8m, and come out of stealth. Finverse is currently building out dependable APIs and data integrations. “At the core, we are a basically a consent-based data pipe where a consumer allows Finverse to connect to their account and share it with another fintech or financial institution,” said Lesaffre. More here ->

Swap, São Paulo-based banking-as-a-service startup, raised $25 million. wap aims to empower companies to transform their financial operations via its APIs, which it says offers users “the infrastructure for various financial solutions, allowing them to monetize their platforms.” More here ->

Selfbook, a New York-based hotel payment startup, raised $25 million. Formerly a consumer travel app, Selfbook claims that its software gives hotels a way to accept “one-click” payments directly on their websites while eliminating fraud and reducing chargebacks. More here ->

CoinList, an S.F.-based platform for crypto offerings, raised $100 million The trading app for new digital assets, which launched in 2017, said it focused its fundraising in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, where it's "growing fastest." More here ->

Alchemy, a San Francisco-based blockchain developer platform, raised $250 million. start-up lets developers build applications on top of blockchains such as Ethereum. More here ->

Beta Finance, a DiFi protocol for shorting crypto assets, raised $5.8 million.  It has developed a one-click solution for lending, borrowing and shorting of any crypto asset. More here ->

Swivel Finance, a decentralized protocol intended for fixed-rate lending and interest-rate derivatives, raised $3.5M. Swivel provides lenders the ability to lock in a fixed-yield or otherwise amplify their yields. More here ->

Union54 has raised $3m. The company has built an API that allows African software companies to issue and manage their debit cards without needing a bank or third-party processor. for its card-issuing API. More here ->

Brazilian neobank Nu, better known as Nubank, announced that it has filed to go public. Today its S-1 filing remains private, but the announcement of its existence implies that Nu is on track to go public soon, perhaps inside of 2021. More here ->

Insuretechs

Sana Benefits Inc., a health insurance provider for small/medium businesses and individuals, announced a $20M extension of its Series A round. Founded in 2017, Sana is on a mission to expand health insurance options for small and midsize businesses. The startup offers medical, dental, and vision plans and members enjoy virtual primary care, mental wellness, physical wellness, and more. More here ->

From the Stash

Why Startup Investors Are Putting More Money Into Insurtech – Crunchbase News So far this year, investors have put just over $6 billion into U.S. insurance and insurtech-focused startups, per the latest Crunchbase data. With just over two months left in the year, that’s already 32 percent over the tally for all of 2020.

Reports / Webinars

Fintech 250: 3 Trends, 4 Fintechs to Watch — bankautomationnews.com Across an ever-widening, highly funded global field of fintechs, several major themes are emerging in the latest innovations of banking and financial services. Business analytics and market intelligence firm CB Insights whittled down a pool of more than 17,000 companies to produce its fourth annual Fintech 250 list of "most promising" private fintechs. They were […]

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