Fintech Highlights - 3/12/2024
Bitcoin reaches $61K. Confide launches to combat bad business behaviors. Synctera raises a round. And more...
<NOTE - We just saw that the 3/12 newsletter edition never went out. Enjoy an out-of-cycle news dump :) >
Pinned to the Top
Bitcoin rallied above $60,000 on February 28th, riding its bullish momentum to its highest levels since November 2021, Axios' Javier E. David writes.
The big picture: The digital token has gone from strength to strength in the wake of the rollout of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which have reignited broad interest in the sector.
- Bitcoin is now within shouting distance of its all-time high above $69,000, set in late 2021.
What we're watching: Coinbase experienced some trading issues.
The BFD
Pav Gill, best known as the whistleblower who helped uncover the Wirecard scandal, has launched a new platform to tackle bad behaviour in businesses.
Confide bills itself as ‘a secure platform to uncover and investigate corporate misconduct, protecting your brand, and is designed to make reporting and investigating issues easier and more secure.
Tell Me More: The new platform offers organisations essential insights into potential “game-over events” that senior leadership might otherwise miss until it’s too late, as highlighted by recent events including the Post Office Horizon scandal and the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank.
Additionally, by enabling secure and confidential internal reporting, Confide prevents concerns from being stifled by middle management or by the absence of safe reporting avenues, and aims to promote a greater culture of transparency and honesty within the corporate sector.
It also hopes that by digitising the investigation process, it will be more effective for businesses to collect and manage information.
What's Next? There’s no doubt that Pav Gill has extensive first-hand experience of the whistleblowing process, and that will feed positively into the design of Confide.
He has channeled his own experience and factored in important lessons from other high profile events to create a platform that truly wants to help the corporate sector improve their whistleblowing processes.
There are many layers to corporate misconduct, of which whistleblowing is just one, so if this is a solution to manage the reporting, investigation and mitigation of issues securely and effectively, then it can only be a good thing.
M&A
Ageas, a listed Belgian insurer, offered to buy Direct Line Insurance (LSE: DLGD) rejected a £3.1b takeover offer from listed Belgian insurer Ageas. More here ->
Induver and Clover, two Belgian corporate insurance brokers, are merging, with Hg investing in the combined entity. More here ->
SCB X, Thailand's largest bank, agreed to buy the Vietnamese business of Czech consumer lender Home Credit for around $860m. More here ->
Cinven invested in Alter Domus, a Luxembourg-based provider of alternative investment management tools, at a €4.9b ($5.3b) valuation. More here ->
Fintech
Moego, a L.A.-based payments and scheduling software company for pet groomers, raised $24m in Series A funding. MoeGo provides a suite of features to help pet grooming businesses streamline their operations. More here ->
Synctera, an S.F.-based banking-as-a-service startup, raised $18.6m in additional Series A funding. This funding will support customer growth, technology scaling, talent acquisition, and process streamlining as the company onboards more clients for larger and more complex programs. More here ->
Helcim, a Canadian payment processing startup, raised US$20m in Series B funding. Helcim is an affordable and easy-to-use payment processing solution for small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. It allows businesses to accept credit card and debit card payments both in-person and online.
More here ->
NayaOne, a London-based fintech adoption platform, raised $4.7m.NayaOne's core offering is its "Sandbox-as-a-Service" platform, which allows financial institutions to access hundreds of fintechs and datasets to innovate, build, and test digital solutions quickly and securely. More here ->
Bfree, a Nigerian debt collection startup, raised $3m. The company's mission is to revolutionize the credit collection landscape in emerging markets across Africa by introducing ethical and automated debt recoveryprocesses. More here ->
ProCredit, a Filipino lending firm, raised $4.1m in pre-seed funding. ProCredit's strategic approach involves credit-first client engagements, rules-based underwriting, risk-based pricing, and flexible product offerings. The funding received reflects investors' confidence in ProCredit's mission to address the financing gap for SMEs in the Philippines. More here ->
Embat, a Spanish corporate treasury management and accounting platform, raised $16m in Series A funding. Embat focuses on digitalizing and automating finance processes to enhance efficiency within organizations. More here ->
Salla, a Saudi provider of website building and payments software for ecommerce businesses, raised $130m. Salla offers an online platform that facilitates shopping and provides smart commerce solutions to users. More here ->
MoneyHash, an Egyptian payments orchestration startup, raised $4.5m in seed funding. MoneyHash provides a unified checkout experience built on top of a secure super-API that aggregates payment and fintech solutions through a single integration, as well as a central dashboard consolidating technical infrastructure and centralizing data and operational reporting. More here ->
Yuno, a Colombian payments orchestration startup, raised $25m in Series A funding at a $150m valuation. Yuno's platform integrates over 300 payment methods and financial institutions into a single layer, allowing companies to access a wide range of payment options globally. More here ->
Wagely, an Indonesian earned wage access startup, raised $23m in debt and equity funding. Wagely is a financial wellness platform that allows workers in Indonesia and Bangladesh to access their earned wages on-demand, without having to wait for their regular pay cycle. More here ->
Investtech
Slice, an employee equity management platform, raised $7m in seed funding. Slice leverages AI to simplify the process of equity compliance and taxation for companies with global workforces. More here ->
Crypto
Stack, an on-chain points and rewards startup, raised $3m in seed funding. This project, founded by Graeme Boy, focuses on turning points systems into an on-chain primitive, following Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's vision for non-transferable NFTs. More here ->
Backpack, a crypto exchange founded by former FTX and Alameda Research employees, raised $17m in Series A funding. Despite losing 80% of its operating capital due to FTX's collapse, Backpack managed to thrive with the support of its community. The exchange recently completed its beta phase, trading over $27.5 billion in volume and attracting 252,000 KYC'd users. More here ->
Superfluid, an Ethereum-based token streaming protocol, raised $5.1m. It enables continuous transfers of tokens between parties at defined rates, creating streams that persist until canceled or depleted. More here ->
Insuretech
Yurtle, a London-based insurtech focused on alleviating caregiver burnout in workplaces, has successfully concluded a Seed funding round amounting to £1.37 million. More here ->
Coverdash, a New York-based SMB-focused insuretech has announced the successful closure of a significant US$13.5 million Series A funding round. Coverdash offers a full suite of commercial insurance products for startups and small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) across the U.S., allowing them to purchase business insurance within seconds from the places they trust most.
More here ->
Hellas Direct, an Athens, Greece-based insurer focused on Central and Southern Europe, raised €30m. The company operates as a digital-first, full-stack insurance provider, utilizing cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence to offer a more efficient and cost-effective insurance experience directly to consumers in Greece and Cyprus. More here ->
Proptech
Parspec, a construction product procurement platform, raised $11.5m in seed funding. The company's mission is to streamline the procurement process for constructionmaterials by providing better information andonline workflow support. More here ->
From the Stash
Plaid won't go public soon - Axios Pro's Lucinda Shen that it doesn't plan to go public in 2024. More here ->
Buffett’s Berkshire Achieves Record Profit Driven by Insurance and Investments - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has unveiled its second consecutive annual operating profit, marking a new milestone fuelled by the strength of its insurance business and investment portfolio amidst a backdrop of rising interest rates. More here ->
Citizens receives patent for its Digital Butler - Citizens Bank’s virtual assistant, Digital Butler, was granted a patent this week for its “high degree of personalization,” Jo Wyper, executive vice president and head of operations at Citizens Commercial Bank, told Bank Automation News. Whereas retail solutions have personalized capabilities, commercial solutions often do not. More here ->
Canadian banks focus on tech, efficiency, innovation - Canadian banks leaned into technology spend during the most recent quarter as efficiency and innovation remained a priority. “Transformational level use of technology, creating capacity and business velocity,” is top of mind for Canadian clients, Karin Kirkwood, president of Canada-based fintech Broadridge Canada, told Bank Automation News. More here ->
What bank execs are saying about embedded finance - Will embedded finance technology usher in a new era of banking, or is the impact of the technology overblown? Bank executives from ClearBank, Deutsche Bank and Raiffeisen Digital Bank weighed in at FinovateEurope this week. ClearBank Head of Embedded Banking Paul Staples at $3.4 billion ClearBank said that many organizations have embedded…. More here ->
Dave posts first quarterly profit since going public - For the first time since going public in 2022, digital bank Dave posted a profitable quarter. Dave reported fourth-quarter adjusted EBIDTA of $10 million compared to a loss of $13 million in Q4 2022, according to the bank’s earnings release today. More here ->
Reports & Webinars
Embedded Insurance in Europe to Reach 30% of P&C and 10% of Total Life Markets over Next Decade
A new report from Embedded Finance & Super App Strategies and InsureMO describes the commercial potential for Embedded Insurance in Europe.
Chubb Report Highlights Role of Insurance in Enhancing Trust in E-commerce Platforms
A recent report by Chubb sheds light on the uneven trust dynamics within e-commerce platforms, underscoring the potential for insurance to bolster consumer confidence in online transactions.
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