Fintech Highlights - 4/19/2022

👋  Thanks again for subscribing.

Here’s what’s worth watching this week….. 👇

A Favor.....

If you are liking what you are reading, you find it valuable....would you be willing to flip this to....

3 friends. Just forward it. Simple.

Thanks 🥳

Pinned to the Top

💰 More crypto: One-stop checkout company Bolt yesterday announced plans to acquire VC-backed crypto infrastructure company Wyre, with sources pegging the price tag at $1.5 billion.

That makes it the largest-ever crypto merger that doesn't involve a SPAC.

It's also worth noting that Bolt is no longer raising that Series E-2 round at a $14 billion valuation. Word is it's holding off a bit to pin down more big customers and, thus, a larger valuation. Unclear how that effort will be impacted by Fast's failure; positively because of less competition, or negatively because it's a well-funded failure in the sector.

The BFD

There's a vibe shift afoot on the blockchains. "Buy crypto" is edging out "buy bitcoin" in Google searches, Brady Dale writes in Axios Crypto.

Why it matters: Bitcoin has always dominated the crypto market, but if the public is becoming more conscious that there are other options out there, it could threaten Bitcoin's hegemony.

• "Bitcoin dominance" measures how much of the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is represented by bitcoin alone. Until early 2017, it was always over 90%. Now, it's around 40%.
• "Buy crypto" first pulled ahead in early 2021. Jagger Bellagarda noted the shift at the time.
• "Buy dogecoin" beat them both a few times in 2021, but it was fleeting.

Be smart: Google Trends doesn't reveal how much searching is going on, but how much search there is relative to other search terms.

Fintechs

Beam Impact, a New York-based app that helps consumers support social causes via spending, raised $13.3m in Series A funding. The company was founded in 2017 by Beam CEO Viveka Hulyalkar, a former McKinsey consultant, and CTO Alex Sadhu, a former Tinder iOS engineer. The pair founded Beam to connect people who are anxious to make an impact with brands that have the resources to do so. More here ->

Circle, the Boston-based provider of payment and treasury infrastructure solutions for online businesses, raised $400M. BlackRock and Fidelity headlined the stablecoin issuer's latest funding round, which follows a $440 million raise last May. More here ->

Winden, an LA-based provider of digital banking services for entrepreneurs, raised $5.3M in seed funding. Winden was born as a neobank that offers deposit banking, spend management and other financial products for digital entrepreneurs. Specifically, Winden is gearing its products primarily toward single-person e-commerce businesses, but also digital freelancers and agencies. More here ->

Ugami, a gamer debit card startup, raised $4.8m in seed funding. The debit card and app saw more than 265,000 registrants during the waitlist period. While the Ugami card isn’t the first gamer-focused debit card, it’s now potentially the largest. More here ->

Leatherback, a British cross-border payments startup, raised $10m in pre-seed funding. Leatherback offers multi-currency accounts with the option to exchange currency across multiple countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Tanzania, Angola, South Africa, the UAE, Denmark, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. More here ->

Wagestream, a London-based income streaming startup, raised $60M in Series C equity funding (plus $115M in debt). The startup is known best for working with employers to enable salary advances for employees by way of an app. More here ->

Montonio, an Estonian ecommerce payments and post-checkout experience company, raised €11M in a Series A funding round as it presses forward with its one-stop-shop checkout solution for e-commerce merchants and consumers mission. More here ->

Finkargo, a Bogota-based SME import finance platform that provides credit underwriting, raised $7.5M in seed funding. More here ->

Umba, a Lagos-based digital banking app, raised $15m in Series A funding. Its features include free bank accounts, interbank transfers, peer-to-peer transfers and bill payments. More here ->

Crypto

MoonPay, a Miami-based crypto payments startup, raised $87m at a $3.4B valuation from a group of celebrities like Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton and Drake. More here ->

BloXroute, a Chicago-based DeFi trading startup, raised $70M in Series B funding. Founded in 2018, BloXroute bills itself as "Flash Boys for DeFi," helping traders win trades ahead of slower rivals. BloXroute says its blockchain distribution network allows users to avoid network congestion and receive critical trade information — such as buy and sell orders — quickly. More here ->

Context, maker of a social crypto wallet, raised $19.5M in seed funding. The startup, which allows users to monitor other people’s wallets and transactions through an Instagram-esque feed, also released a new version of its product that will now help users automatically find the wallets linked to people they follow on Twitter. More here ->

Insuretechs

Newfront, a San Mateo, Calif.-based insurance brokerage platform, raised $200M at a $2.2B valuation. More here ->

Covr, a Hartford, Conn.-based digital life insurance startup, raised $15m in Series B funding. Covr offers life insurance products from insurance carriers, an easy way to compare rates, and the ability to purchase policies within minutes. Through its digital insurance solutions, the company helps financial institutions deliver an improved experience under the brand their customers already trust. More here ->

EvolutionIQ, a New York-based insurance claims platform, raised $21M in Series A funding. EvolutionIQ assists insurance professionals in improving claims handling through insights uncovered by analyzing historical claims data. More here ->

Proptechs

IMMO, a London-based residential investment platform, raised $75M in Series B funding. Immo provides a residential real estate investment platform designed to create portfolios of quality from existing single-family rental (SFR) assets at scale and at speed. More here ->

RentRedi, a New York-based provider of property management software for landlords, raised $12m in Series A funding. With features like mobile and web apps, automated rent collection, free listing syndications, tenant screening, maintenance, credit boosting for on-time payments, lease signing, and accounting, RentRedi has created and scaled its platform to support its 10K+ landlords and has partnered with Propay, Realtor.com, TransUnion, REI Hub, and Latchel to create a better user experience. More here ->

Beanstock.fr, a French buy-to-let investment marketplace, raised €12M in Series A funding.  Beanstock is integrating and streamlining all the steps of a buy-to-let project (property search, mortgage brokerage, refurbishment and property management), allowing them to make the transaction much more efficient and cost-effective. More here ->

Splitero, a San Diego-based home equity financing startup, raised $5.8m in seed funding. The fintech startup offers home equity investments of up to $500,000 without income or credit score requirements and no monthly payments. The funds have a 30-year repayment period. More here ->

From the Stash

Embedded lending is the future of lending in emerging markets — content.11fs.com Embedded lending could be the key to driving big change in emerging markets. Here’s how.

Wells Fargo adds 500K mobile customers in Q1 — bankautomationnews.com A rebuilt banking platform and focus on digital experience led to 500,000 new mobile customers in the first quarter for Wells Fargo, the bank announced Thursday. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg The $1.95 trillion bank announced plans to roll out a revamped digital banking platform last quarter, and feedback has been “very positive,” Charles Scharf, chief

US Bank reports 80% of transactions and two-thirds of loan sales are digital — bankautomationnews.com Digital activity and technology investments remain high at U.S. Bank despite a dip in year-over-year technology spending. Image via U.S. Bank Digital transactions account for 80% of total bank transactions and digital loans make up two-thirds of all loan sales, according to the $587 billion bank’s first-quarter earnings presentation today. Combined digital engagement rose 3%

E-commerce unicorn Bolt to buy Blockchain startup Wyre for $1.5B — news.crunchbase.com The deal will integrate San Francisco-based Wyre’s blockchain technology into Bolt, rather than have the crypto company operate independently, the publication reported.

Citi to spend $11B on tech in 2022 — bankautomationnews.com Citi plans to spend $11 billion on technology this year, an 11% year-over-year increase. “This year, we've budgeted approximately $11 billion, which is a 30% increase compared to 2020,” Stuart Riley, head of Institutional Client Group (ICG) technology and operations, said recently during Citi Investors Day 2022, which was referenced during the bank’s first-quarter earnings

Reports / Webinars

Insurance meets the metaverse and web3 — content.11fs.com Nigel Walsh and John Bean are joined by a panel of guests, from Anthemis and 11:FS, to talk through a new age of insurance and how it can be used in the…

The Current State of Crypto — thecurrentstateofcrypto.splashthat.com

More than 1 in 4 young Americans are investing in cryptocurrency. At the same time, lawmakers, financial institutions and key stakeholders are assessing how to enable or restrict digital currency. Following the launch of Axios’ new crypto newsletter, we’ll explore the most consequential trends in cryptocurrency and examine what’s next for the regulatory framework.

—

☑️ Thanks for reading. Please ask your friends, colleagues and others to sign up.

If you have any companies or news to share - use the form

AND - if we’re not already connected - let’s do it.