Fintech Highlights - 12/6/2022

Pinned to the Top

Circle, a Boston-based provider of payment and treasury infrastructure solutions for online businesses, terminated plans to go public via Concord Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: CND), a SPAC formed by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond.

The deal had been set to expire later this week, after having previously been extended and recut.

In September, Circle announced $400m in new funding.

Circle founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire tells me that the company is generating cash-flow, generated $274 million in Q3 revenue and has around $400 million on its balance sheet: "We are committed to becoming a public company, but don't have specific plans at the moment."

The BFD

UK-based Atom Bank has raised £30m and shelved its IPO plans until 2024 or 2025 at the earliest.

This round brings Atom’s valuation to a cool £460m, following a £75m injection back in February. Previous backer Infinity Investment Partners returned, alongside majority shareholders BBVA and Toscafund, for the latest boost.

Why is this the BFD? Having gained its licence in 2016 ahead of giants Monzo and Starling, Atom is one of the original UK digital banks. Despite the current climate, it’s been a pretty healthy year for the sector, all in all.  Monzo posted narrowing losses back in July, while Starling enjoyed its first full year of profitability. With Atom turning a profit and growing at a decent pace, there’s a lot of cause for optimism.

The big picture: The public offering is on ice for now, but the Atom team isn’t slowing down. It cleared £4.5bn in retail deposits not too long ago, while staff retention and productivity have been given a shot in the arm by introducing a 4-day working week earlier in the year. All signs point toward progress.

M&A

Royal Bank of Canada (TSE: RY) agreed to buy the Canadian banking business of HSBC (NYSE: HSBC) for C$13.5b in cash. The deal would include 130 branches and more than 780,000 retail and commercial customers.  More here →

Cred, an Indian credit card payment app valued at $4b by VC firms like Ribbit Capital, agreed to acquire Indian underwriting tech firm CreditVidya, which raised $15m from firms like Matrix Partners India, Bharat Innovation Fund and Kalaari Capital.  More here →

Tide, a London-based small business lending startup, is acquiring SME credit marketplace Funding Options. Tide has raised around $200m from firms like Anthemis Group, while London-based FO was seeded by such backers as ING Ventures, AXM VC, Alan Morgan and Adfisco.  More here →

Binance, the largest global crypto exchange by volume, acquired locally licensed Japanese exchange Sakura Exchange BitCoin.  More here →

CrossTower, a global cryptocurrency trading platform, agreed to acquire Bequant, a prime brokerage and digital asset exchange.  More here →

Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) announced  it has entered into an agreement to acquire SeedFi, the partner behind Credit Karma’s Credit Builder.  More here →

Fintech

Quiltt, a low-code financial tech platform that "lowers technical barriers for innovators," announced its beta launch for other startups and small businesses. The company closed a $4 million seed funding round earlier this year.  “Quiltt's vision is to make fintech development more accessible so that more growing businesses and startups can create seamless experiences for their customers,” says Ruben Izmailyan, Quiltt co-founder and CEO. More here →

Roundup App, a donation and fundraising platform, raised $2.8M of Seed funding. RoundUp App is “a donation and fundraising platform for nonprofits, eCommerce, and donors, making supporting nonprofits effortless and fun.”  More here →

Teampay, a New York-based spend management startup, raised $35m in Series B equity funding (plus $12m in debt). The company is a platform that attempts to automate the software purchasing process for companies.  More here →

Greenwood, an Atlanta-based digital banking platform for Black and Latino individuals and businesses, raised $45m. The company’s founder, Mike Render, states:  “Our vision is to make Greenwood the premier destination for Black and Latino wealth creation and regeneration while keeping community connection and collective professional advancement at the center.”  More here →

Totem, which is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced that it had raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding.  The bank is focused on solving financial barriers to Native Americans "to change the status quo and create a new tradition of Native wealth-building," Amber Buker, founder and CEO of Totem, said in a press release. "We're doing it in a way that honors and uplifts our people." More here →

X1 Card, an SF-based credit card startup, raised $15m. X1's technology allows cardholders to cancel subscription payments in just one click and end free trials automatically with auto-expiring virtual credit card numbers. Cardholders can also get instant notifications on refunds and create virtual cards (disposable card numbers) for one-time use, making it possible to spend anonymously without disclosing your personal information.  More here →

Buckzy, a Canadian real-time cross-border payments startup, raised US$14.5m in Series A funding. A licensed money transfer company, Buckzy works with large banks around the world to enable real-time international payments, offering multi-currency bank accounts, local settlement accounts, real-time FX quoting and booking.  More here →

XanPool, a Hong Kong-based cross-border payments infrastructure startup, raised $41m at a $400m valuation. Since its founding in 2019, XanPool (which supports both crypto and fiat currencies) has grown rapidly during the pandemic amid a boom in cross-border commerce in Asia as merchants who have traditionally relied on financial intermediaries such as Visa and Mastercard to process international payments switch to Xanpool’s platform. The company currently has a user base of over 2 million. More here →

Atoa Payments, a London-based payments startup, raised $2.2m in pre-seed funding. Atoa Payments provides solutions for small and mid-sized UK retail merchants to accept payments via SMS, Pay-by Link or by displaying a QR code on their app or physical QR stand next to their till.  More here →

KreditBee, an Indian digital lender, raised $80m in Series D funding. The startup said it is planning to use the fresh funds to invest in its product development, specifically to expand from unsecured personal loans to secured loans, home loans and credit lines, and to start work on adjacent services such as insurance, credit score reports and merchant-side offers. More here →

TreeCard, a climate-conscious digital money app, raised $23 million from investors in a new financing round. Founded by British entrepreneur Jamie Cox in October 2020, TreeCard is a novel concept in the fintech world. It offers users a spending and money management platform tied to a debit card made from wood. The firm uses 80% of the profits it makes from card interchange fees to plant trees through a partnership with green search engine Ecosia. TreeCard has so far planted more than 200,000 trees. More here →

Crypto

Kiln, a Paris-based crypto staking startup, raised €17m. The company is attemtoing to make “staking seamless and secure from our dashboard, a hardware wallet, a browser wallet, a B2B custodian, a crypto exchange or an investment app. So that institutions and retail users worldwide can secure the network and be rewarded for it.”  More here →

Ejara,  a Cameroonian fintech offering an investment app that allows users to buy crypto and save through decentralized wallets, has raised $8 million in Series A investment.   More here →

Keyrock, a Belgian digital asset market maker, raised $72m in Series B funding. Ripple led, and was joined by Six Fintech Ventures and Middlegame Ventures.  More here →

Insuretech

Igloo, a Singapore-based consumer insurance startup, raised $27m in Series B extension funding from KfW, Women’s World Banking Asset Management and insider Cathay Innovation.  More here →

Proptech

Wander,  an operator of smart homes intended for vacations and workcations, received a $100M Credit Facility from Credit Suisse.  More here →

Stellar, a Dallas-based marketplace which solves maintenance at scale for the Single-Family Rental market, announced a $20M Series B. This round brings the company’s total venture capital to $35M.  More here →

From the Stash

Visa names McInerney new CEO - Ryan McInerney will become chief executive of Visa effective Feb. 1, 2023, replacing current CEO Alfred Kelly, who is stepping down from the role he has held since 2016.  More here →

Wells Fargo launches automated same-day loans Wells Fargo is launching a digital-only product that runs on microservices to provide small, same-day loans to clients.  The $1.8 trillion bank’s Flex Loan product has been in development since January and was integrated across multiple systems in real time using an API.  More here →

The Week In Crunchbase Data: A Trucking Startup Sputters Spectacularly, Crypto Contagion Spreads, And More. This week we learned that the fallout from FTX’s collapse cannot be contained as fellow crypto exchanges lay off employees, file for bankruptcy and are generally very sad Apes. More here →

Liberty Mutual explores $1B sale of Europe businesses
Liberty Mutual Holding is exploring the sale of its businesses in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, according to people familiar with the matter, joining other American insurers retreating from the region. More here →

Reports

Salesforce - Better experiences start with automation - Surveying 2250 FS customers and interviewing 6 industry experts, we found companies that invest in their customer experience outperform those that don’t by 70%. Explore what your customers are looking for, where the industry is meeting their needs, and where it’s falling short in our latest report. Get the report →

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