Fintech Highlights - 9/27/2022
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Citi Ventures has joined Visa as an investor in Belvo, which closed a $43 million Series A funding round last June. The investment also sees Belvo work with Citi’s Mexican business, Citibanamex to push open banking in the country.”
Belv is a Latin American startup which has built an open finance API platform. The startup’s API platform enables developers to access and interpret end-user financial data, which is then used build better, more efficient and more inclusive financial products. Developers of popular neobank apps, credit providers and personal finance tools use Belvo’s API to connect bank accounts to their apps to unlock the power of open banking. More here ->
The BFD
FTX, the crypto giant led by Sam Bankman-Fried, reportedly is raising up to $1 billion at the same $32 billion valuation where it raised back in January, per CNBC.
Why it's the BFD: Bankman-Fried has become the Mr. Plow of crypto winter, scooping up melty assets. Raising new cash suggests a large acquisition is around the corner, perhaps crypto's largest ever, with Axios Pro previously reporting that FTX could eye targets worth $3 billion or more.
Cap table: FTX has a long list of existing investors, including Paradigm, SoftBank, Insight Partners, Tiger Global, Temasek, Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, DCG and BlackRock.
The bottom line: "FTX’s revenue soared more than 1,000% in 2021 to $1.02 billion from $89 million the prior year, CNBC reported last month, based on a leaked investor deck. FTX saw net income of $388 million last year, up from just $17 million a year earlier. Momentum continued in the first quarter, as the company reeled in $270 million in revenue." — Kate Rooney, CNBC
M&A
JPMorgan Chase is bolstering the ranks with the acquisition of payments start-up Renovite. The company moved quickly to see off competition from Stripe and Block. The bank hopes that Renovite will accelerate plans to roll out new offerings to merchants and keep the payments giant purring. More here ->
Acrisure, a Caledonia, Mich.-based insurance brokerage valued at $23b, acquired B2Z Insurance, a Schaumberg, Ill.-based small business insurer. Acrisure backers include ADIA, Guggenheim Investments and Oak Hill Advisors. More here ->
Ben, a Dallas-based provider of liquidity, data, custody and trust services to alt asset holders, agreed to go public at an implied $3.5b valuation via Avalon Acquisition (Nasdaq: AVAC), a financial services SPAC formed by Grail Partners. More here ->
Fintechs
Ply, a New York-based provider of financing and payment tools for HVAC businesses, raised $1.7m.The platform "platform streamlines and augments materials sourcing, management, payments, and financing. More here ->
Carats & Cake, a New York-based financial operating system for the events industry, raised $10.6m in Series A funding. The company delivers a revenue optimization platform for venues and property groups, which features a full suite of purpose-built marketing, sales, and customer conversion (contracting, invoicing, and payments) solutions. The company’s solutions then connect the customer journey from venue discovery to actually paying for an event and complement CRM and POS solutions already in use on the hotel booking side of the business, which are commonly run entirely separately.More here ->
Sparrow, a student lending startup, announces the raise of a $5.83M Seed investment — finance.yahoo.com
The two-year-old financial search engine that simplifies the student lending process announced the raise of a $5.83M Seed investment. With $6.7 million of capital raised to date, Sparrow is using the funding to grow its platform, facilitate new partnerships and reach additional students and universities.
Sardine raises $51.5M led by a16z to sniff out fishy fintech transactions — techcrunch.com Sardine uses behavioral, financial and device-specific user data to detect fraud on behalf of its clients in the crypto and fintech industries.
CNote Closes Series A Investment, Cementing the Women-Led Impact Platform's Leadership in Closing the US Wealth Gap Through Financial Innovation — www.yahoo.com
CNote announced today that it raised $7.25 million in an oversubscribed Series A investment round. Building on the momentum of its impact platform—already adopted by corporate leaders including Apple, Mastercard, Netflix and PayPal as a scalable way to address wealth inequality in the U.S.
Healthcare financier Scratchpay secures $35M Series C — techcrunch.com Scratchpay is a “care now, pay later” company that similarly follows the BNPL model.
Ex-CPPIB Boss’ Opto Nabs $475 Million Value in Round — www.bloomberg.com
Opto Investments, the newly launched private capital platform led by investment veteran Mark Machin and Palantir Technologies Inc. co-founder Joe Lonsdale, has raised $145 million in a Series A funding round
Fondue CashBack App Raises $10M for Expansion Shopify app Fondue CashBack has raised $10 million in seed funding. Fondue’s app replaces coupon codes with brand-embedded CashBack.
Sequence orders up $19M led by a16z for a new approach to B2B fintech — techcrunch.com When it comes to fintech, consumers have commanded the most attention in the last decade. But there's been a growing trend for building more for the B2B market, and today a hopeful in that space is announcing high-profile funding ahead of GA in Q4 this year.
European neobank Monese nabs $35M from HSBC — techcrunch.com Monese is a called "challenger" bank, serving customers with a range of online-only services, including cash accounts, savings and international money transfers.
Noble emerges from stealth to help companies extend lines of credit to their customers — techcrunch.com Noble, a startup helping companies to extend lines of credit to their customers, has raised $15 million in a Series A financing round.
Ivorian fintech Julaya gets $5M to become banking partner for businesses in Francophone Africa — techcrunch.com Small to large enterprises can use the Julaya platform to make bulk payments to other businesses and their unbanked employees through existing mobile money channels.
Karachi-based startup Neem raises $2.5 million in seed funding — www.dawn.com
The embedded finance startup says funding will "further its mission of bringing financial wellness to Pakistan’s underbanked communities".
CHEQ, the Social Payments Platform, Raises $8M in Series Seed Funding — www.yahoo.com
CHEQ is an Israeli mobile payments platform for the restaurant and hospitality industry. The company enables social purchasing and gifting, allowing users to pay for and send drinks to one another for on-premise consumption.
Crypto
Integral raises $8.5M to build a real-time finance tool for web3 and web2 teams — mirror.xyz
Real-time accounting, treasury management, and financial analysis will soon be the norm.
International money-transfer startup Higlobe raises $14 million — markets.businessinsider.com Higlobe uses stablecoins to bypass money-transfer fees between banks. It will launch in Mexico this month.
Nibiru, a crypto derivatives protocol, raised $7.5m in seed funding
Nibiru is attempting to build the first mainstream decentralized multichain solution.
Messari raises $35M to expand ‘Bloomberg of crypto’ ambitions — fortune.com Messari raised a $35 million series B from the venture arms of FTX, Coinbase and Kraken among others.
Nilos raises $5.2 million to build a crypto treasury platform for businesses — www.theblock.co Nilos raised $5.2 million in a round co-led by Fabric Ventures and Viola Ventures.
How Binocs Promises To Help Keep Crypto Investors Out Of Trouble — www.forbes.com Binocs has raised $4 million of seed finance for its tax and compliance solution for crypto investors
Sintra, a San Francisco-based NFT investment app, raised a $2m in seed funding. The company describes itself as " the socially-powered NFT investment app that connects investors who strategize, together.” More here ->
African Crypto Exchange Yellow Card Closes $40M Series B — www.coindesk.com Polychain Capital led the funding round, which comes less than a year after the Series A.
Tres, an Israeli financial data lake for web3 companies, raised $7.6m in seed funding led by Boldstart Ventures. More here ->
Insuretechs
Pie Insurance raises $315m in Series D funding
Pie, a Washington, D.C.-based provider workers' comp insurance to small businesses, raises a massive round.
A Strava co-founder races into a lucrative market – lending against life insurance with Inclined — techcrunch.com The fintech startup lends against whole life insurance policies, with the goal of digitizing “many of the traditional time-intensive operations” involved in the process.
Boundless Rider Announces $4.75 Million in Seed Funding to Reimagine Insurance for Motorcycle, Powersport and E-bike Riders — www.yahoo.com
Boundless Rider has closed $4.75 million in seed funding. Boundless Rider raised a previously unannounced $2 million pre-seed round in March 2021, bringing the startup's total financing to $6.75 million.
PolicyMe Raises $18M to Scale Its Product Suite and B2B2C Distribution — www.streetinsider.com
The digital-first insurance provider on a mission to deliver simple and affordable insurance for Canadian families, today announces its raise of $18 million CAD in Series A financing
Zopper raises $75 million to solve India's insurance problem — techcrunch.com Zopper has partnered with over 150 players in India including Amazon, Ola, Croma, Xiaomi, Hitachi, and Equitas Small Finance Bank.
Proptech
DoorLoop Raises $20M from Alpine Software Group — therealdeal.com DoorLoop, a Miami-based rental property management software startup, raised $20 million from Silicon Valley investment firm Alpine Software Group.
From the Stash
Insurtech gets more specialized, with products just for e-bikes and factory-built homes — techcrunch.com Startups Boundless Rider and CoverTree raise venture money to grow their specialized insurance products.
Introducing Stash Core — www.stash.com
A close look at the why, how, and future vision of Stash Core, our new world-class infrastructure platform.
Seattle Bank explores BaaS, embedded finance — bankautomationnews.com Seattle Bank is preparing to enter the banking as a service and embedded finance markets as part of its digital banking and post-core conversion strategy. The $752 million bank is exploring microservices, moving to the cloud and establishing vendor relationships with API-first, open-banking capabilities. The bank completed its core conversion to Finastra’s Fusion Phoenix in
Open Lending extends AI-powered underwriting — bankautomationnews.com Automation fintech Open Lending has expanded its maximum auto loan terms as more consumers are priced out of the market. Lenders using Open Lending’s artificial intelligence-powered underwriting can now offer 84-month loan terms for near and nonprime borrowers on new and used vehicles that are up to four years old with less than 60,000 miles, representing a
How have tech accelerators shaped fintech?
Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from Tech Nation, F10 and OakNorth, to explore the impact of tech accelerators on the fintech space.
Even Before Figma Deal, Design Startup Funding Looked Good — news.crunchbase.com Things are looking good for design startups, and a host of them are staking a claim for a leading role in our design-centric world.
The best-designed finance projects of 2022 — www.fastcompany.com See all the honorees of Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards in the Finance category.
Klarna to make second round of job cuts — sifted.eu The Swedish buy now pay later giant recently suffered a valuation drop of 85%
Stripe’s Early Stock Awards Could Spur IPO Plans — www.theinformation.com Stripe founders John and Patrick Collison have indicated the payments software pioneer, valued in its last fundraising at $95 billion, is in no rush to go public. And few tech firms want to test the whipsawed public stock markets. But a new listing could solve one looming problem for the ...
a16z’s fintech leads say ‘Silicon Valley is becoming unbundled’ — techcrunch.com a16z's Angela Strange and Anish Acharya share why they believe that more people companies going global spells huge opportunity for fintech companies.
Liberty Mutual teams up to produce insurance product for Sony — www.insurancebusinessmag.com New insurance offering to address electronics manufacturer's drone product
Reports / Webinars
Embedded insurance: building customer-centric insurance distribution using apis — www.insurtechinsights.com We all know buying insurance is hardly a gratifying experience, especially when there are several policy options available in the market...
Webinar: Attracting & retaining talent in the Insurtech world - Navigating the perfect storm — www.insurtechinsights.com
As the insurance industry undergoes radical changes, there is increasing need for future skills. As we grow our dependence on data, analytics, cloud based platforms racing to become more efficient, our required skillsets are evolving.
McKinsey: Autonomous mobility - The future of auto insurance — www.insurtechinsights.com
Three technologies will shape the future of mobility and global auto insurance: autonomous driving, connectivity and embedded telematics, and vehicle electrification.
4 Key Trends Impacting Property and Casualty Programs : Risk & Insurance — riskandinsurance.com
Navigating today’s perils requires underwriters to reexamine how they estimate loss, develop risk adequate pricing and help mitigate risk.
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