Fintech Highlights - 7/11/2023
Revolut stays in the news. FIS sells Worldpay. Equabli raises a round. Here's what we've been watching this week….👇
Pinned to the Top
Revolut lost more than $20 million last year to thieves who exploited a flaw in the UK-based fintech firm’s payments system, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
According to the Financial Times, Revolut gave refunds to some customers for transactions they attempted to make that were declined. Criminals reportedly took advantage of the glitch by attempting to make large purchases in the hope that Revolut would reject them and mistakenly place the amount of the rejected transaction in their accounts.
Revolut fixed the issue in the spring of 2022 after one of its partner banks told the fintech firm it had less cash in its accounts than expected.
This year has brought a number of challenges for Revolut, including an indication from the Bank of England that it will reject Revolut’s application for a UK banking license, an auditor saying it couldn’t verify the company’s 2021 revenue and the departure of its CFO and head of UK banking.
Revolut received a $33 billion valuation during its most recent funding round, in 2021. The company’s investors include SoftBank and Tiger Global Management.
The BFD
GTCR is in talks to buy a majority stake in London-based merchant payment processor Worldpay from Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE: FIS), per multiple reports.
Why it's the BFD: This could be the year's largest private equity deal, with a value in excess of $15 billion, but also just a fraction of what FIS paid to acquire Worldpay in 2019.
- It also would be the largest deal in the 43-year history of Chicago-based GTCR, which recently raised $11.5 billion for its 14th flagship fund.
- Other suitors reportedly included Advent International.
The bottom line: This is a course change for FIS. Earlier this year it announced plans to spin off Worldpay via an IPO, after deciding that merchant banking and core banking were two great tastes that didn't taste great together.
M&A
Billwerk+, a German portfolio company of PSG, acquired Plenigo, a German provider of subscription management and recurring billing software. More here ->
CAB Payments, a British money transfer firm, raised £335m in a London IPO. More here ->
Coalition, an SF-based cyber risk insurer valued by VCs at $5b, acquired Jumbo, an online privacy control app that had raised around $25m from firms like Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, Thrive Capital, Kima Ventures, NextView Ventures and SV Angel. More here ->
Fintech
Equabli, an Austin, Texas-based debt recovery startup, raised $3.35m. The company offers a " centralized debt management platform uses intelligent tools and technologies to revolutionize the debt recovery process." More here ->
Clair, a New York-based advance payment fintech for frontline and gig workers, raised $25m new equity funding (plus $150m in debt). The company offers "a new tool to help workers get paid after completing a shift." More here ->
Tandem, a British challenger bank, raised £20m from Quilam Capital. Tandem has repositioned itself as a green alternative to traditional mainstream banks, offering customers loans, savings and mortgage products under the epitaph 'Banking for a Greener Future'. More here ->
Abound, an Indian cash-back and rewards app, raised $10m. The app — owned by the Times of India and formerly known as Times Club — is designed especially for Indian expatriates living in the U.S. More here ->
Moove, a Ghanian fintech for “mobility entrepreneurs,” raised $8m. The company uses "technology and productivity data to build the world's largest integrated vehicle financing platform for mobility entrepreneurs. More here ->
Crypto / Web3
Gondi, a New York-based NFT protocol for lenders, raised $5.4m in seed funding. Gondi is a decentralized peer-to-peer NFT Lending protocol that enables continuous underwriting, refinancing and renegotiations of NFT loans. More here ->
Insuretech / Proptech
Steadily, a Beaverton, Ore.-based landlord insurance startup, raised $28.5m in Series B funding. Steadily is designed to help create policies for any type of landlord, and any type of property. More here ->
From the Stash
Affirm Axes Returns Management Service It Bought in 2021 - Affirm will wind down its Returnly returns management software and transition its customers to Shopify-backed competitor Loop Returns by this fall, the companies announced Thursday. Affirm will take an equity stake in Loop as part of the partnership, a person familiar with the matter said. More here ->
Top Binance Executives Quit - Binance General Counsel Han Ng, Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman and Senior Vice President for Compliance Steven Christie told CEO Changpeng Zhao this week that they plan to leave the company, Fortune reported.The executives resigned over Zhao’s response to a long-running investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into whether Binance violated anti-money laundering laws, Fortune reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. More here ->
UiPath tapping AI to process unstructured loan data - Financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Truist Bank and Wells Fargo are using AI models to expedite administrative processes and organize unstructured data through UiPath More here ->
Generative AI co-pilot to help banks automate compliance - What if a bank’s compliance software could relay messaging in natural language? That’s the question anti-money laundering fintech Lucinity is hoping to answer with Luci, its new generative AI-powered co–pilot for financial institutions. The tool was built in collaboration with Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI and uses natural language understanding to turn data into easy-to-understand insights More here ->
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