Fintech Highlights - 8/10/2021

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Pinned to the Top

Affirm CEO Max Levchin owes Jack Dorsey big time.

Just a few weeks ago, news that Apple was working on an Affirm-like buy-now-pay-later consumer service sent Affirm shares plunging 14%.

Then - Dorsey’s Square unveiled plans to buy Affirm’s bigger rival, Australia-based Afterpay. And Affirm’s stock jumped back 15%.

Competition from Square cancels out worries about competition from Apple, it seems.

It’s not as crazy as it appears. Square’s Afterpay deal may trigger a consolidation: perhaps potential buyers including Shopify, Stripe and American Express may start pursuing targets like Affirm and Klarna.

We’ll see. Predictions that one deal will spark others don’t always pan out.

But either way - Affirm got the bounce. And maybe an exit somewhere down the road.

The BFD

We’ve all been there. You’re getting ready to vacate a property you’ve rented, only to be told by the landlord that you won’t be getting your security deposit back.

If only there was some kind of technology available to have helped us make our case.

Well, today there is. RentCheck, a startup that is out to help solve the “he said, she said” challenge in these situations with an automated property inspection platform, has recently raised $2.6 million in seed money.

Why is this a BFD? A lot of lower to middle income people find themselves stuck into the rental market, and having to deal with a lot of difficult landlords. And any financial setback, like a non-returned deposit, have the potential to hit them hard right now.

You can read more about RentCheck's attempt to aid the renter here ->

Fintechs

Yaydoo, a Mexican business-to-business software and payments company, raised $20.4 million. The Mexico City-based B2B software and payments company provides three products, VendorPlace, P-Card and PorCobrar, for managing cash flow, optimizing access to smart liquidity, and connecting small, midsize and large businesses to an ecosystem of digital tools. More here ->

Wapi Pay, a Singapore-based B2B payments platform, raised $2.2 million. Founded in 2019 by brothers Paul Ndichu and Eddie Ndichu, Wapi Pay provides a payments gateway for African businesses to receive and send money from Asia via mobile money platforms and bank accounts. More here ->

FinAccel, an Indonesian fintech company, has agreed to go public through a merger with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings II at a $2.5 billion valuation.  More here ->

Rapyd — which provides a range of financial services like payments, mobile wallets, money transfers, card issuing, fraud protection, and more, all by way of an API for third parties to integrate quickly into their own services — has raised $300 million, a Series E that TechCrunch understands from reliable sources values the company at $8.75 billion. More here ->

Abrigo, an Austin-based financial technology company formerly known as “Banker’s Toolbox,” announced The Carlyle Group made a “strategic growth investment” of an undisclosed amount in the company. The investment was large enough to give The Carlyle Group a co-majority status alongside Accel-KKR. This new investment increased the company’s valuation above $1B, elevating Abrigo to unicorn status. More here ->

From the Stash

If you know nothing about embedded finance, start here. — medium.com Embedded finance is this new thing that is starting to take early form in the FinTech space. In essence, it involves financial products becoming native to user experience and business operations. We…

11 insurtech predictions for 2021 — www.dig-in.com More big exits, more parametric insurance, expected as industry emerges from pandemic-stricken 2020.

Distributed Banking Gives Banks Opportunity To Redesign The Customer Experience — www.pymnts.com Distributed banking, Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards said, allows banks to evolve capacities in the constantly changing digital financial services ecosystem.

Reports / Webinars

Elevate Customer Experience with Insights-Driven Interactions - Presented by Bank Innovation — mailchi.mp

Emerging technologies are redefining success for financial institutions. Traditional success criteria such as scale of assets, high cost of switching, or customer relationship exclusivity make way for using data at scale to provide highly tailored experiences for customers.

Learn how banking customers are making use of digital channels for communication, payments, and to create new products and services that ensure they stay competitive. In this new dynamic, maintaining a consistent 360-degree view of the customer is critical to ensure a positive customer experience.

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