Fintech Highlights - 11/30/2021

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Pinned to the Top

In the UK, two banks are truly looking to make a difference.

Standard Chartered and Starling are teaming up to launch a digital platform that will allow UK customers to invest in green and sustainable projects.

Powered by the fintech’s BaaS offering Starling Bank Services, Shoal is expected to land next year. After choosing a ‘theme’ to support, customers’ money will go towards supporting appropriate projects. They’ll receive regular updates and a competitive rate of return, according to reports.

The news comes in the same week Visa announced an ‘Eco Benefits’ bundle for account issuers and climate-focused fintech Evergrow netted $7 million in seed funding.

Environmentalism is high on the agenda and, frankly, it couldn’t come soon enough. Financial services has a pretty checkered history when it comes to climate change.

Let’s hope these recent developments become the rule and not the exception.

Read more here ->

The BFD

Jack Doresey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, resigned yesterday.

Dorsey is now likely to turn his full attention to the financial firm Square, which he co-founded in 2009.

Square has a grip on the entire consumer payment system. Square is enmeshed with brick-and-mortar sales, e-commerce, peer-to-peer, and increasingly the crypto market. While Twitter is building new revenue streams, particularly through its subscription offering, Square simply has more chips on a table with generally lower risk and better returns.

Another reason could be personal. Jack Dorsey, whose Twitter bio just reads “#bitcoin,” is enthralled with crypto.

Why it's the BFD: Square may give Dorsey the financial platform he needs to realize his crypto-utopian dreams. Square is already heavily invested in crypto, Square holds about 5% of its cash reserves in bitcoin, having last bought $170 million in additional bitcoin February 2021. Square's Cash App lets users buy and sell bitcoin on its platform, it is working on a bitcoin-based decentralized finance platform, and is considering building a bitcoin mining system.

The bottom line: Through Square, not Twitter, Dorsey may be able to bet on the future of crypto.

Fintechs

TruePay, a Brazilian BNPL startup, raised $32 million in Series A funding. TuePay’s mission is to build a B2B “buy now, pay later” network where sellers (industries) can grant credit without being exposed to default risk and where buyers (merchants) access credit to buy inventory from their suppliers seamlessly and costlessly. More here ->

Column Tax, a maker of mobile income tax software, raised $5.1 million in seed funding. They are also announcing the launch of its first commercial product, which will provide users with early access to their tax refunds. More here ->

OnePipe, a Nigerian embedded finance startup, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. By running API infrastructure on behalf of these partner banks and helping them monetize it, OnePipe works with non-financial institutions to launch and cross-sell an array of financial services such as credit, accounts and payments within their offerings.   More here ->

Slice, an Indian digital credit card provider, raised $220 million in Series B funding. Slice has established itself as one of the market leading card-issuing firms in India. The startup offers a number of cards that are aimed at tech-savvy young professionals in the country. “These users have been on Instagram and Snapchat for years,” said Bajaj of Slice customers in an interview with TechCrunch. More here ->

Motorway, a British auction platform for used cars, raised $190 million in Series C funding. On Motorway, consumers can sell their car via a smartphone app that also uses computer vision to assess the state of the car. The cars are then bid on by professional car dealers in a daily online auction, with the car collected for free by the winning dealer within 24 hours.  More here ->

TabTrader, a crypto exchange data aggregation app, raised $5.8 million in Series A funding. The company's platform aggregates prices and token availability across dozens of exchanges. While other platforms allow users to look at token prices across exchanges, most are desktop-optimized while TabTrader has built up a substantial presence for its mobile app on iOS and Android. More here ->

From the Stash

What’s the Deal With Microinsurance? — content.11fs.com Microinsurance is a great way of reaching people who really need it. Let’s look at what it is and what the future might hold.

Fintech Is Only 1% Finished — content.11fs.com When you take a look at the customer numbers that financial services brands are serving in any particular segment, it’s apparent that the majority of UK…

N26 Neobank Is De-Prioritizing the US Market for the Time Being — www.businessinsider.com N26's soft retreat in the US market echoes the obstacles other Europe-based neobanks have faced in the US.

Reports / Webinars

The Leadership in Insurance Podcast with Carey Anne Nadeau — preview.mailerlite.com In this week's episode, we speak to Carey Anne Nadeau, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of LOOP, the Texas-based motor insurance start-up on the mission to make motor insurance more fair and transparent for more people.

MoneyFest 2021 - Money’s Greatest Minds Are Hitting Your Screen — www.money2020.com Money20/20’s world-class content is coming to your screens with the third edition of MoneyFest on November 29. And guess what? It will be absolutely FREE.

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