Fintech Highlights - 7/23/2024
Here's what we've been watching this week 👇
Pinned to The Top
Evolve Bank’s data breach is still playing out in fintech, with several startups feeling the impact of the mess.
Yieldstreet, for one, last week confirmed some of its customers were affected.
Meanwhile, Fintech Business Weekly author Jason Mikula said he received a cease-and-desist letter from the bank, asking him not to share files from the dark web with any allegedly impacted fintech companies.
“As I understand it, some fintechs hadn’t gotten ‘confirmation’ from Evolve about what had been breached and thus hadn’t acted to mitigate risk or inform users,” Mikula told TechCrunch.
And, a group of senators banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and fintech and bank partners (including Evolve) to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as being responsible for missing customer funds.
The latest in the saga involves a new dispute between fintech middleman Synapse and its database provider, MongoDB, which is threatening efforts by independent advisers to return money to millions of customers of apps such as Juno and Yotta who have been cut off from their money for weeks, reports Bloomberg.
Another Pinned to The Top
Investors are betting on Indian wealth tech startups as a growing middle class turns to diversify investments and startups challenge traditional financial advisers for high-net-worth clients. Notably...
- Premji Invest is in advanced stages of talks to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Dezerv, an app offering a suite of investment solutions to India’s wealthy.
- Lightspeed Venture Partners is in advanced talks to lead an investment round larger than $20 million in Centricity, a digital wealth management platform. More here.
The BFD
Revolut revealed last week that its full-year pre-tax profit rose to a record $545 million in 2023 after gaining 12 million customers during the year. (Yes, profit. Impressive.)
Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC that the digital bank is “confident” about securing its British bank license. The bank also hinted at an IPOin its annual report, saying that it had “enhanced” its financial controls in the ways that “listed companies” do.
If/when it does go public, some former execs may be feeling a bit regretful about leaving the company. Revolut was last valued at $33 billion when it raised $800 million in 2021.
In addition - Storonsky plans to sell millions of dollars worth of stock in an upcoming secondary offering of Revolut stock, Sky News reported.
The report said the offering was part of a $500 million share offering being organized by Morgan Stanley, at a target valuation of $40 billion. The report said Storonsky could sell stock worth “tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars” in the offering.
M&A
Bellway (LSE: BWY) sweetened its takeover offer for U.K. homebuilder Crest Nicholson (LSE: CRST) to more than £700m, one day after Crest Nicholson rejected a second offer from rival Avant Homes. More here ->
Barclays (NYSE: BCS) agreed to sell its German consumer finance business to a subsidiary of Austrian bank Bawag Group. More here ->
Fintel (LSE: FNTL) acquired Threesixty, a British provider of compliance and biz support software for financial advisers and wealth managers, from Abrdn (LSE: ABDN) for £14.6m. More here ->
Fintech
Nala, a Kenyan remittance and B2B payments startup, raised $40m in Series A funding. Acrew Capital led, and was joined by DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital, Amplo and Nyca Partners. More here ->
Zeti, a London fintech for clean transport adoption, raised £5m in Series A funding led by Hycap Group. More here ->
BOB, a hybrid Layer-2 project powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, raised $1.6m from Ledger Ventures. More here ->
Trustap, an Irish marketplace transaction platform, raised $5.5m in Series A funding. TX Ventures led, and was joined by SeedX, Partners Resolute, Aperture, MiddleGame Ventures, ACT VC, Atlantic Bridge, and FurthrVC. More here ->
Accend, an onboarding and risk assessment startup for B2B fintechs, raised $3.2m in seed funding, per Axios Pro. Adverb Ventures led, and was joined by YC, General Catalyst and 645 Ventures. More here ->
FreeBnk, a Lithuanian hybrid crypto banking app, raised $3m in equity and token funding from Founderheads, ChaiTech Ventures, LVT Capital, and Lavender Capital. More here ->
MUFG backs Thailand-based fintech unicorn Ascend Money in $195M funding round. More here ->
Investtech
Trever, an institutional operating system provider for digital assets, recently announced a €2.4 million seed investment co-led by TX Ventures (CH) and Market One Capital (LUX). The funding is aimed at boosting its presence in the European market, reports FinTech Global. More here ->
Canoe Intelligence, a New York-based provider of reporting workflow automation for alternative investments, raised $36m in Series C funding. Goldman Sachs led, and was joined by insiders F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads. More here ->
From the Stash
Ally launches AI innovation challenge - Ally Financial will launch a generative AI innovation challenge for startups on July 9, focusing on developing tech solutions for its customers and staff. “We see generative AI giving us more capabilities that solve for unmet business needs and applicable to many functions within the company,” Sathish Muthukrishnan, chief information, data and digital officer More here ->
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