Fintech Highlights - 6/8/2021

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Been thinking through some tweaks and starting next week, you'll see some pretty big changes to format, etc.

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Pinned to the Top

The real estate sales market has been in an upswing this year, and last month a startup that’s addressing one of homeowners’ biggest needs — repair and maintenance services, and specifically the stress of sorting these out when things break down — is announcing some funding on the heels of strong growth.

Super — which has built a business providing repair and maintenance for electrical and mechanical systems, appliances and plumbing by way of a monthly subscription — has closed a growth round of $50 million.

Below we've outlined a few other startups that are seeing growth in this category too, such as Homeward, Briq and others.

The BFD

In the last few months, there has been an explosion in funding for consumer banking startups in Latin America, all eager to reinvent traditional banking in the region.

Last month, Chile-based Kredito announced a $4 million pre-seed round. The company focuses on generating loans for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

And yesterday Nubank, a Brazilian challenger bank, raised $750 million at a $30 billion valuation led by Berkshire Hathaway.

Neobanks and fintech's that solve key customer challenges are thriving, and putting real strain on traditional FI's across the globe.

Fintechs

Homeward, an Austin, Texas-based residential home-buying enablement platform, raised $136 million in Series B funding. Norwest Venture Partners led, and was joined by insiders Adams Street, Javelin and LiveOak Venture Partners. More here ->

Briq, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based fintech platform for the construction industry, raised $30 million.  Briq describes its offering as a financial planning and workflow automation platform that “drastically reduces” the time to run critical financial processes, while increasing the accuracy of forecasts and financial plans.More here ->

Synctera, which aims to serve as a matchmaker for community banks and fintechs, has raised $33 million. Their goal is to connect community banks and fintechs to streamline the process with its “Banking-as-a-Service” (BaaS) platform. And was founded on the premise that some community banks and credit unions are actually turning down deals with young fintechs because the relationships can be too complicated or time-consuming to manage. More here ->

Pinwheel, a New York-based the payroll API, has raised $20M. Pinwheel is a “payroll connectivity” API designed to help neobanks and other clients connect into a users’s payroll information system, offering everything from direct-deposit switching to income verification and paycheck-linked lending. More here ->

Figure, which uses blockchain for products such as home equity lines of credit, has created a marketplace for buying and selling loans on blockchain. And recently raised a monster funding round. It is lead by SoFi founder Mike Cagney. More here ->

Chipper Cash, a San Francisco-based cross-border payments company focused on Africa, raised $100 million. The three year old startup offers mobile-based, no fee, P2P cross-border payment services, across up to seven African countries — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya. More here ->

Truebill a personal finance startup that is tackling recurring but unwanted subscription charges (and has saved its customers more than $100 million) and has just raised a $45 million round. Read more about how they started. More here ->

Snapdocs, a San Francisco-based digital mortgage closing platform, raised $150 million. Snapdocs enables lenders to connect all parties and technologies involved in a mortgage transaction to complete the closing process online, bringing together lenders, settlement agents, title companies, borrowers and notaries. More here ->

Paysend, a British mobile payments system which currently offers international money transfers, global accounts, and business banking and e-commerce for SMBs — has picked up some money of its own. Raising $125 million. More here ->

Insuretechs

Boost Insurance, a New York-based B2B digital insurance platform, raised $20 million. The platform allows businesses to customize and integrate insurance offerings into their own platforms. That includes businesses that are not operating in the insurance market in the traditional sense but may find that offering customers insurance products can be a valuable and complementary tool. More here ->

Wefox, a Berlin-based personal digital insurance platform, raised $650 million. Wefox is a digital insurer focused on personal insurance products, such as household insurance, motor insurance and personal liability insurance. More here ->

Bought By Many, a London-based pet insurer, raised $350 million. Bought By Many started out as a service helping consumers find better deals on niche insurance. After five years of evolution, the company went all-in on pet insurance in 2017, launching their own branded policies, underwritten by Great Lakes Insurance. More here ->

Trellis, a San Francisco-based car and home insure-tech startup, raised $10 million. They provides secure, digital solutions that help consumers get the most value from their car and home insurance. More here ->

From the Stash

Visa takes a swipe in fintech, builds new online marketplace – TechCrunch — techcrunch.com Well, today, an announcement by global payments giant Visa is aimed at helping facilitate banks and fintechs’ ability to work together.

Europe's insurance startups are raising record funding. Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck pay-as-you-drive startup Wrisk used to raise its $6.5 million Series A. — www.businessinsider.com Wrisk recently launched a first-of-its-kind flexible car insurance product, allowing people to pay for the miles they drive.

Banking-as-a-Service, Authentication, and Lending Technologies Highlight Ten Growth-Stage Companies Chosen for FIS Fintech Accelerator Program | The Venture Center — www.venturecenter.co Learn more about Banking-as-a-Service, Authentication, and Lending Technologies Highlight Ten Growth-Stage Companies Chosen for FIS Fintech Accelerator Program at The Venture Center.

The ‘Atomised’ banking app points the way forward for marketing on mobile | The Drum — www.thedrum.com The days of the mobile app acting as a largely passive icon on your mobile are clearly coming to an end. Apps are developing a much stronger contextual awareness, coming to you when they sense that you need them rather than vice versa, delivering digestible and useful snippets of information, of the sort which Google described as “Micro Moments”.

Citi Ventures looks to process discovery and API security in 2021 | Bank Automation News — bankautomationnews.com Citi Ventures, the $2 trillion venture investment firm and incubator within Citibank, is setting its sights on investment in process discovery and API security in 2021. Citi Ventures Managing Director Matt Carbonara recently sat down with Bank Automation News to discuss his group’s investment appetite and the perils of implementing robotic process automation (RPA). The […]

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