Fintech Highlights - 7/27/2021

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Pinned to the Top

Last week, Visa announced that that it would acquire Currencycloud in a deal valued at $963 million (£700 million).

Currencycloud's APIs power remittance and currency exchange services. Use cases include multicurrency wallets, currency exchange services and account management, for some of the biggest startups around, such as Monzo, Moneze, Starling, Revolut and Dwolla.

Coming off the failed deal with Plaid, Visa has picked up a solid asset that also powers fintechs and neobanks now, and into the future - keeping Visa as a prominent power in a changing landscape.

The BFD

Many of the biggest tech companies announced quarterly earnings yesterday. And let's just say, they all had a HUGE quarter. Some numbers....

Apple: Amid a continuing chip shortage and for what’s typically the slowest quarter for the company even pre-pandemic, Apple still managed to bring in $8.1 billion more in sales than estimated.

Alphabet: The company blew past sales expectations by close to $5.7 billion thanks in part to YouTube ads revenue, which nearly doubled.

Microsoft: Cloud services, including Azure, continued to drive results — growing 30% from last year.

The bottom line: So far, Big Tech has more than trumped Wall Street’s expectations for blowout results.

NOTE: Facebook releases results tomorrow, and Amazon comes on Thursday.

Fintechs

There are far fewer annoying things than managing one’s passwords.

There are a bunch of companies out there to help you attempt to do that. And there’s also a number of companies that want to go a step further and eliminate the password completely.

Magic, a San Francisco-based startup that builds “plug and play” passwordless authentication technology, has raised $27 million. The company is on a mission to end traditional password-based authentication. Magic’s flagship SDK, which launched in April 2020, enables developers to implement a variety of passwordless authentication methods with just a few lines of code and integrates with a number of modern frameworks and infrastructures. More here ->

And - Stytch, just raised $30 million as it launches out of beta with its API-first passwordless authentication platform. Stytch was founded by two former Plaid employees, Reed McGinley-Stempel (CEO) and Julianna Lamb (CTO), who built user authentication features that “millions” use to connect their bank accounts to apps like Venmo, Coinbase and Robinhood. More here ->

Homeownership is one of the key components to building intergenerational wealth, and Landis is working to make that a reality for renters. To continue with its mission, Landis raised $165 million via Sequoia Capital and was joined by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation venture investment arm Arrive, Will Smith’s Dreamers VC and existing investor Signia Venture Partners. More here ->

Paystand, a Scotts Valley, Calif.-based B2B decentralized finance platform, raised $50 million. the company uses the Ethereum blockchain to operate what it calls the Paystand Bank Network, “a digital, highly secure B2B payment network with zero fees.” More here ->

iCapital Network, a New York-based fintech platform for alternative investing, raised $440 million in equity funding. iCapital’s growth is driven by a commitment from financial advisors to provide a diverse set of quality private market investment opportunities to meet accelerating appetite from their high-net-worth clients. More here ->

Nium, a Singapore-based payments processor, recently raised $200 million. The company claims $8 billion in payments processed annually, and its revenue has grown 280 percent year over year. Nium has five core customer segments: banking, fintech companies, distributed workforces around the gig economy and supply chain contractors, travel, and finally corporate customers. More here ->

Klarna, a Swedish online payment platform and Europe’s most valuable unicorn, bought APPRL, a Stockholm-based provider of influencer marketing software, as it looks to tap into strong growth in shopping across social media channels. More here ->

From the Stash

Why big companies are spending billions on deal sites like Honey and Slickdeals — www.cnbc.com Deal-finding and coupon code sites make millions in commissions. The sites are being bought by behemoths like PayPal, Goldman Sachs and Rakuten.

Inside Look: Scotiabank’s AI automation expansion — bankautomationnews.com

Canada’s Scotiabank is reaping the benefits of its AI investment across the bank, finding returns in the back office of its global banking marketing division, improved security on the front line, and better call center responses.

Twitter ‘acqui-hires’ the team from subscription news app, Brief — techcrunch.com Twitter’s recent acquisition spree continues today as the company announces it has acqui-hired the team from news aggregator and summary app Brief. The startup from former Google engineers launched last year to offer a subscription-based news summary app that aimed to tackle many of the problems with today’s news cycle, including information overload, burnout, media […]

Microsoft bests earnings estimates as Azure posts 51% growth; shares fall — techcrunch.com Microsoft shares fell after the news, perhaps due to its results missing so-called whisper numbers; that it has traded at or near all-time highs recently puts the 3% after-hours drop into context.

Alphabet crushes Q2 earnings estimates as Google Cloud cuts losses, grows 54% — techcrunch.com Today after the bell amidst a deluge of major technology company earnings reports, Alphabet reported its own second-quarter performance.

iPhone sales fuel Apple’s Wall Street-beating Q3 — techcrunch.com Another excellent quarter for Apple, as the company posted $81.4 billion in revenue. That’s a 36% year-over-year jump for the company, besting Wall Street estimates of $73.3 billion by a considerable margin. “Our record June quarter operating performance included new revenue records in each of our geographic segments, double-digit growth in each of our product […]

Recommended

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