Fintech Highlights - 9/17/2024
Here's what we've been reading and watching this week 👇
Pinned to the Top
There’s a whole lot of fintech in the real estate world.
Here's an example….
A new startup called Landian has emerged from stealth to take advantage of recent rule changes related to real estate commissions. In fact, one of its co-founders is also one of the people who successfully sued the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to help facilitate those changes.
Buyers have the option to pay à la carte for Landian’s offering: $49 for each home tour and $199 for an offer prep session or they can commit to paying a flat fee of $1,799 for up to five home tours and two offer prep sessions.
You can read more about Landian here ->
PS: Digital brokerage Redfin had some thoughts about the flat fee model, which you can read about here ->
The BFD
Buy now, pay later players Klarna and Affirm shared their latest financials last week, and both had pretty impressive results.
Affirm blew away analysts’ expectations of a loss per share of 51 cents by notching a loss of 14 cents per share. Its revenue was up 48% year-over-year to $659 million U.S., which was also above analysts’ estimates. Its stock surged on the performance, closing August 30 at $44.01 a share, up significantly from the $31.58 it had closed just two days prior.
It also announced it is Apple's partner for BNPL features inside the Apple Wallet (!).
Meanwhile, Klarna saw its revenue increased 27% in the first half of 2024 while adjusted operating expenses remained flat.
M&A
Centerbridge Partners agreed to buy Italian lender Banca Progetto from Oaktree Capital Management. More here ->
Paylocity (Nasdaq: PCTY) is paying $325m to acquire Airbase, an SF-based spend management platform for SMBs that raised $90m (including at a $600m valuation) from Menlo Ventures, Craft Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, First Round Capital, Quiet Capital, Webb Investment Network, and BoxGroup. More here ->
Tarabut, a UAE-based open banking startup, acquired British real-time account-to-account payments platform Vyne. Tarabut has raised $32m in VC funding, while Vyne had raised over $18m from firms like Entrée Capital and Hearst Ventures. More here ->
Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK) agreed to buy Archer, a Berwyn, Pa., provider of managed account solutions to asset and wealth managers. More here ->
ConnectOne Bancorp (Nasdaq: CNOB) agreed to buy rival lender First of Long Island (Nasdaq: FLIC) for $284m in stock. More here ->
Fintech
Flex, a provider of infrastructure for accepting HSA and FSA payments, raised $3.2m in seed funding. With Flex, direct-to-consumer health and wellness brands can integrate HSA/FSA payment capabilities into their e-commerce platforms, driving new revenue, increasing average order values, and improving customer retention. More here ->
Comun, a digital bank focused on serving immigrants in the United States, has raised $21.5 million in a Series A funding round less than nine months after announcing a $4.5 million raise, The startup released its first product in October 2022 using BaaS (banking-as-a-service) middleware. But the co-founders decided that it made more sense to own their own infrastructure and decided to build it out. More here ->
Fido, a Ghanaian digital lender, raised $20m in Series B funding. It also secured $10m in debt. The platform uses mobile technology and alternative data sources, such as mobile money transaction histories, to offer instant micro-loans to individuals and small businesses that are often unable to access credit from formal banking institutions. More here ->
Palm, a European enterprise cash management startup, raised $6.1m in seed funding. Palm aims to modernize cash management for global businesses, providing a Treasury Operating System (OS) that understands and frees up operational cash. More here ->
Cobre, a Colombian real-time payments infrastructure startup, raised $35m in Series B funding. The company provides a corporate treasury platform for companies to centralize, digitize, and automate their payment processes. More here ->
Ume, a Brazilian payments startup, raised $15m in Series A funding. It offers a BNPL consumer credit platform that aims to make credit more accessible to a broader audience, particularly in the retail sector. More here ->
Investtech
VGRL Wealth, a developer of a wealth management data analytics software based in Dallas, raised $6 million in strategic round funding . VGRL has raised $27.98 million to date. More here ->
Malaa, a Saudi wealth management platform, raised $17.3m in Series A funding. More here ->
Crypto
Quai Network, an Austin based developer of merge-mined blockchains, raised $5 million in strategic round funding from several investors. Quai has raised $15 million to date. More here ->
Insuretech
Korint Insurtech, a rising player in the digital insurance space, has raised €5 million in a funding round. Korint’s platform uses an “event-sourcing” logic engine to manage the entire lifecycle of an insurance contract in real-time, handling even complex cases with ease. More here ->
Proptech
Unlock Technologies, a Tempe, Ariz., home equity agreement provider, raised $30m in Series B funding It also secured a $250m capital commitment for origination. More here ->
Daisy, a Costa Mesa, Calif., home tech installation and services startup, raised $7m in Series B funding. More here ->
From the Stash
Marqeta innovates to expand client base - Card issuing platform Marqeta is looking to innovation in a bid to woo fintechs and businesses to diversify its revenue streams. “The environment is changing for fintech,” Todd Pollak, chief revenue officer at Marqeta, told Bank Automation News. More here ->
How Mastercard taps AI, open banking to predict ACH payment success - Mastercard is looking to AI and open banking for transaction monitoring, data standardization, and even to predict payments success. “We are very cautious and safe in the way we use AI” throughout the institution,” Jess Turner, head of global open banking and API at Mastercard, said Aug. 28 at Fintech South 2024 in Atlanta More here ->
Chase check fraud not ‘a glitch,’ expert says - Chase customers claimed to have identified a glitch in Chase ATMs during Labor Day weekend, allowing them to deposit false checks and withdraw large sums of cash from accounts potentially without the funds to cover the withdrawals. Last weekend, Chase clients took to TikTok to share “the glitch” in the $3.8 trillion bank’s system. More here ->
Transactions: Akoya, Nova Credit team up on financial access - Today, API-connected data access network Akoya teamed up with credit infrastructure and analytics company Nova Credit to allow lenders to deploy cashflow and income data. This will ultimately improve credit decisioning, Misha Esipov, co-founder and chief executive at Nova Credit, told Bank Automation News. More here ->
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said his company has no interest in a U.S. IPO, due to what he believes is SEC hostility toward crypto. More here ->
Root Insurance Partners with First Connect to Streamline Auto Insurance for Independent Agents - Root Insurance has announced a new partnership with First Connect Insurance Services, a digital platform that provides independent agents access to multiple carriers and Managing General Agents (MGAs). More here ->
100% of Amex fraud models tap AI, ML - American Express’ credit and fraud models completely use machine learning and AI. “In fact, the first time American Express used machine learning in the company was back in 2010 in our fraud models,” Anna Mars, group president of global commercial services and credit and fraud risk at the financial giant More here ->
Stock-trading startup Public has acquired the brokerage accounts of Carta’s secondaries business - Carta, best known for its cap table management software, sits on a stockpile of data. It tried to expand into the bubbling hot secondary marketplace brokerage business, but in January, a startup customer publicly accused Carta of using the startup’s private cap table data to approach its shareholders in order to broker a sale without the startup’s knowledge. More here ->
The Bolt saga continues. One of Bolt’s proposed new backers, The London Fund, has been scrubbing its web page. Head here to learn why. More here ->
More from the stash:
Sean Murray
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