Fintech Highlights - 2/15/2022
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Pinned to the Top
Global card issuing platform Marqeta is partnering with data network Plaid.
The new tech will allow for Marqeta’s customers to more easily initiate ACH transactions for sending money between both customer accounts and external accounts. Customers will also be able to verify and link external accounts faster, which should simplify funding accounts and spending.
In addition, Marqeta’s customers will also have the ability to keep users up to date on transfer statuses with real-time notifications, and they’ll be able to deal with initiation, cancellations and returns better using Marqeta’s application programming interfaces (APIs).
“By partnering with Plaid, we are building on the capabilities of modern card issuing that make it easier for our customers to build innovative card programs that allow their businesses to thrive,” Marqeta Chief Operating Officer Vidya Peters said in the release. “We’re making it as simple as possible for consumers to access their bank information from one application, and reduce the time it takes to fund and begin using their account.
“Through our Plaid integration, developers building on Marqeta can authenticate users’ bank accounts without the complexity and extra time associated with traditional ACH processing, creating an overall more seamless experience.”
The BFD
PayPal reveals that certain marketing campaigns caused millions of fake accounts to be created.
Why is this the BFD? Fraud continues to plague fintech businesses large and small.
What happened? Over the past two years, while ecommerce soared due to the pandemic, PayPal added 120 million new customers (it now has 426 million total accounts). In 2021, the company “leaned into incentivized customer acquisition tactics to a much greater extent than we ever have in our history,” PayPal's CFO said on an earnings call.
For example, PayPal ran marketing campaigns that offered to deposit $5 or $10 in a new customer’s account if he or she signed up for PayPal or Venmo. It ran into trouble when bots, or software created to automatically visit websites and take actions, started scooping up those incentives for the sole purpose of seizing the reward.
The bigger picture: “What we’re seeing at PayPal is a systemic issue,” says Mary Ann Miller, a vice president at identity and fraud company Prove. “It’s related directly to the identity theft and synthetic fraud that we saw during the pandemic.” She says that bad actors are weaponizing the personal information that they’ve stolen in data breaches and using bots to launch attacks. “They’re going to all kinds of fintechs and attacking their account-openings processes,” she adds.
Embedded Finance
Stitch, a South African-embedded finance startup, raised $21m in Series A funding. The South African API fintech enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products. Per a statement released by the company, it plans to create a “financial graph” ecosystem across Africa with the new funding. More here ->
Banked, a British non-card payments startup, raised $20m in Series A funding. BofA and Edenred Capital Partners co-led. Banked is a fintech startup that offers an alternative to card schemes. Consumers are able to pay without entering financial data, no need to create an account, no financial details are shared, authorization is biometric and the merchant receives the funds in real time. Businesses use it to drive customer engagement and loyalty with incentives and rewards embedded inside the payment process. More here ->
QisstPay, a Buy Now, Pay Later platform from Pakistan, announced an expansion into the US with a 1-click checkout option and offices to be headquartered in Dallas. More here ->
Fintechs
Highline, a Dallas-based payroll-linked bill payment startup, raised $4.5m in seed funding. The Dallas company is on a mission to help millions of Americans increase their access to credit and reduce overdraft fees with its automatic bill payment solution. More here ->
Addition Wealth, a New York-based personal finance benefit platform for employees, raised $4.2M. Founded by Uber Eats’ former head of cities, Ana Mahony, Addition partners with employers to offer workers personal finance tools, community events and professional financial advice. The entire suite of products is free for employees, while companies pay a recurring fee to Addition, Mahony told TechCrunch in an interview More here ->
Daffy, a Los Altos, Calif.-based charitable giving fintech startup, raised $17m in Series A funding. Daffy provides access to what it claims is the lowest-cost, and lowest-friction, way to set up and use a donor-advised fund (DAF), a kind of 401(k) for charitable giving. More here ->
Happy Money, a Tustin, Calif.-based unsecured lending startup, raised $50m in Series D-1 funding. Happy Money is a fintech company advancing and delivering accessible financial tools and services such as the Payoff Loan, which helps members consolidate and pay off credit card debt. Loans funded by a national network of customer-focused lending partners and designed to help them accomplish their goals. More here ->
ComplYant, an L.A.-based digital tax assistant for small businesses, raised $5.5m in seed funding. Using ComplYant, U.S. small business owners easily manage and take charge of income tax, sales tax, business licenses, and even annual reports with deadline tracking, budgeting, tax education, and more. More here ->
Streetbeat, a Palo Alto-based investing app for stocks and cryptocurrencies, raised $10m in seed funding. Streetbeat is a free investing and trading app for stock and virtual currencies with a proprietary marketplace of investment strategies. More here ->
Alma, a French BNPL startup, raised €115m in Series C funding (plus €95m in debt). The company is trying to build a new “buy now, pay later” giant in Europe. More here ->
GoCardless, a London-based provider of direct bank payment tech, raised $312m in Series G funding at a $2.1b valuation. GoCardless processes more than $25bn in transactions per year and serves over 70,000 businesses around the world, including DocuSign, Klarna, TripAdvisor and Epson. Since its last funding round in December 2020, the company’s valuation has more than doubled, while headcount has grown by 85%. More here ->
Vivid Money, a Berlin-based challenger bank, raised €100m at a €775m valuation from Greenoaks Capital, Ribbit Capital and SoftBank. The company has made a name for itself with a financial one-stop shop “super app” that, in addition to basic checking and money management services, also includes stock and cryptocurrency investing. More here ->
Brick, a Singapore-based fintech provider, raised $10m. Brick wants to simplify the process of verifying customer identity, creditworthiness or aggregate information from online accounts with a suite of APIs that connects financial apps to “hyper-local” sources of data, including banks, mobile wallets and telecoms. More here ->
Meet Numeral, a French startup that wants to upgrade corporate bank accounts. While clients interact with Numeral using a modern application programming interface (API), the startup connects directly to bank servers to upload payment files and interact with outdated information systems. By abstracting that layer of complexity, you can treat your bank accounts like another microservice in your architecture. More here ->
Infina, a Vietnam-focused investment app, announced a seed round of $6M. Infina was part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 cohort and aspires to become the “Robinhood of Vietnam.” It launched in January 2021. More here ->
Egyptian investment app Thndr nabs $20M. Replicating the success of Robinhood in the U.S., the company is looking to create investors out of the region. More here ->
Crypto
Qredo, a crypto infrastructure developer, secured $80m in Series A funding at a $460m valuation. Qredo is a crypto infrastructure firm focused on decentralized custody, settlement and cross-chain swaps. More here ->
OpenNode, an L.A.-based bitcoin payment processor, raised $20m in Series A funding. Founded in 2018, Los Angeles-based OpenNode processes and settles bitcoin payments instantly through the Lightning Network, the leading system for improving bitcoin’s scalability. More here ->
Sardine, a compliance platform for fintech companies, announced today that it has closed on $19.5 million in Series A funding. The company primarily serves neobanks, NFT marketplaces, crypto exchanges and crypto on-ramps. Its 50+ customer roster includes Brex, FTX, Luno and Moonpa. More here ->
Insuretechs
LV, a British mutually owned insurer, restarted merger talks with rival Royal London after the company’s members rejected a takeover approach from Bain Capital. More here ->
Allianz of Germany agreed to buy Greek insurer European Reliance for around €207m. More here ->
Proptech
EasyKnock, a New York-based residential sale-leaseback platform, raised $57.2m. A popular corporate finance tool, sale-leaseback transactions are less commonly associated with the housing market. EasyKnock’s offering functions similarly to the commercial model, but targets middle-class homeowners: Owners sell their property to EasyKnock, then lease it back, allowing them access to the equity they have built up. More here ->
Clikalia, an Opendoor-like property service, announced it has raised $86M. The company is primarily active in Spain and Mexico, where it currently has a run rate of 2,400 properties acquired. More here ->
Revere, a New York-based capital markets network and deal marketplace for commercial real estate, raised $5m. The Manhattan-based networking and transaction platform seeks to bring greater access, transparency and efficiency to the $1.6 trillion global real estate investment market. More here ->
Wander, the Austin based long-term stay provider, has raised $20M. For people who want to book a house near Joshua Tree National Park and get away from it all but still have ultra-fast Wi-Fi, Wander has a place. Wander allows people to get lost in the desert but still have all of the amenities of a smart home for the perfect work-from-home vacation. More here ->
From the Stash
Former KW CEO Chris Heller to advise startup Blended Sense — www.inman.com Heller is the chief real estate officer for technology startup OJO Labs. He will continue in that position even as he advises Blended Sense.
Apple to turn iPhones into payment terminals in fintech push — www.reuters.com Apple Inc is introducing a new feature that will allow businesses to accept credit card and digital payments with just a tap on their iPhones, bypassing hardware systems such as Block Inc's Square terminals.
U.S. Consumer Fintech Funding Takes A (Small) Breather — news.crunchbase.com It’s subtle, but maybe things are starting to slow a little in the U.S. consumer fintech startup funding space.
Apollo Nears $2.3 Billion Deal for Worldline’s Terminal Business — axios.link The buyout giant is nearing a deal to acquire the point-of-sale terminal business of European payments company Worldline for close to $2.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The 5 biggest UX challenges for fintechs in 2022 — content.11fs.com As the new year gets underway, what are the biggest UX challenges facing the financial services industry?
Discover Is Bringing a Payment Option Popular in Asia to the U.S. — apple.news The company will help merchants accept payments directly from shoppers’ bank accounts
Reports / Webinars
110. Insights: New insurance products - the good, the bad, and the ugly — content.11fs.com Nigel Walsh and John Bean are joined by a fantastic panel of guests from Safely, Stoïk and Founder Shield to talk through new insurance products in the…
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