Global FinTech | 2022 #7
Weekly news up to Tuesday, February 15, 2022
MVO BLOG
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and financial inclusion captured headlines and investments in 2021 and will continue to grow in 2022 as traditional banks scurry to join the crowded BNPL space and organizations strive to modify processes to meet the needs of a previously unserved population.
In an article in Financial IT, Kathy Stares, Executive Vice President, North America, for Provenir, provides insight on the critical role alternative data plays in both BNPL and financial inclusion, and why data, AI, and real-time decisioning will be key areas of investment in 2022.
👉 Read the full Provenir article here.
😎 SPONSORED CONTENT
📊 INFOGRAPHIC
Q1 2022 Open Banking Trends: 175% annual growth rate, regulations move to data sharing:
👉 Read the full Platformable article by Phuong Pham & Spencer Perkins here.
📰 ARTICLE
Read the New Operating Manual for FinTech-Enabled Marketplaces by Pete Flint through the link 👉🏻here
👨💻 BLOG
💬 INTERVIEW
In short, there’s simply no reason why today’s customers should continue to accept opaque commissions, unexplained costs, or repeat charges. We no longer pay for every track we download thanks to the likes of Spotify, or each film we stream via platforms like Netflix, yet when people want to send money or make a payment to family back home, we are hit by unspecified and variable costs. - Vroon Modgill, CEO & Founder at Sokin
👉 Read the full interview here.
💡INSIGHTS
The MENA region has about 400 million people with $500 billion in annual savings. But as a relatively young population, most of them have minimal equity market and investment exposure.
Replicating the success of Robinhood in the U.S., some platforms are looking to create investors out of the region. One such is Egypt-based Thndr. The company has raised a $20 million Series A round to democratize investing in the Middle East and North Africa.
👉 Read the full TechCrunch article here
👀 Looking for funding news? We've moved them to their own special weekly newsletter here.
👉 Read all about M&As, VCs, Down Rounds, IPOs, Funding Rounds, etc.
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NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️i2c Inc. announced its partnership with KARTY to launch a digital-first prepaid mobile wallet in Qatar. Link here.
⭐️ Zimpler announced their partnership with Rabble to offer instant payouts to customers in Sweden as the company launches its unique new cashback app today. Link here.
⭐️ EverUp has doubled down on its mission to democratize access to financial products with its entry into the crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) markets. Link here.
⭐️ Marqeta announced a partnership with Plaid to simplify ACH transfers, enabling customers to seamlessly and securely authenticate their bank accounts and fund their accounts to power more immediate spending. Link here.
⭐️ Adyen Delivers Impressive H2 2021 Results by Flagship Advisory Partners. Link here
⭐️ HolyWally, a white-label digital wallet platform that seamlessly connects with banks, fintech companies, and retailers, has raised US$1.4m, led by M-DAQ. Link here
PAYMENTS
Banked, the alternative payment provider to cards, has raised $20m in a funding round co-led by Bank of America. London-based Banked is building a digital payment network to challenge systems already in place. Link here.
Juni, the financial companion for ecommerce entrepreneurs, launched its new VISA credit card in the UK. The first of its kind, Juni’s credit card is designed specifically to help ecommerce companies expand and grow. Link here
Apple announced the new Tap to Pay feature for the iPhone. This feature enables millions of Apple Pay merchants to easily facilitate transactions using a simple tap regardless of the payment method. Link here
In a move that will see enhanced financial services for people in Egypt, Mastercard and Egyptian fintech Kashat have signed a five-year agreement that will digitize the onboarding, disbursement, and collection processes for MENA’s first nano financial service provider. Link here
Spreedly, the provider of the leading Payment Orchestration platform, announced that it is now able to offer even more local payments methods as part of its partnership with Stripe. Link here
Dutch payments group Adyen saw a 70% growth in transactions last year, according to the Feb. 8 report from the Financial Times. The numbers were reportedly boosted by the pandemic-spurred digital shift. Adyen acts as a middleman of sorts, working between other payment companies and merchants, including Uber, LinkedIn, Spotify and Microsoft. Link here
Malaysian fintech company IIMMPACT announced that it has raised US$2 million in seed funding from Sequoia India’s Surge, a rapid scale-up program for startups in Southeast Asia and India. Link here
Vitesse PSP Limited, the global payment, liquidity and treasury management platform, announced that it has raised $26 million in Series B funding led by Prime Ventures (VC). Link here
Brick - Financial API has raised $8.5 million of funding in a Seed investment round led by prominent global venture capital investors Flourish Ventures and the global venture capital firm Antler. Link here
BNPL
After surveying 2,000 pay later shoppers, Barclays found 30 percent were overwhelmed by the amount of buy now, pay later bills they had racked up. Meanwhile, 25 percent were concerned about their ability to repay the buy now, pay later bills coming in. Link here.
French startup Alma is trying to build a new “buy now, pay later” giant in Europe. The company has closed a $130 million Series C round (€115 million). It has also raised $109 million (€95 million) in debt financing. Link here
Klarna is likely to attract sovereign wealth and pension funds as new investors, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Klarna could potentially fetch a valuation of roughly $50 billion to $60 billion based on preliminary estimates, though it hasn’t finalized a precise target. Link here
Singtel has entered an exclusive partnership with Zip, a financial services company, to add a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service on their Dash app, a non-banking mobile wallet. Through the partnership, app users can choose between paying for their purchases immediately with Dash or paying later with Zip, which offers four interest-free instalments across six weeks. Link here
OPEN BANKING
European open banking platform Tink has partnered with subscription technology platform Youtility in a bid to unlock cash and carbon savings for customers of UK retail banks on their utility bills. Link here
Ecospend, the leading UK provider of open banking technology, has partnered with digital identity network, Yoti, to integrate open banking services with its suite of identity solutions including the Yoti digital ID app. Link here.
CRYPTO
KPMG in Canada has completed an allocation of cryptoassets to its corporate treasury, the firm's first direct investment in cryptoassets. Link here
Following the recognition of its unicorn status, the Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX has now amassed a total of ten million active users on its platform; representing India’s growing crypto ambitions. Link here
Financial technology leader Worldpay from FIS® has partnered with Crypto.com, the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency platform, to be a global validator and operator for the Crypto.org Chain. Link here.
BLOCKCHAIN / DEFI
The one-of-its-kind nature of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have earned them the modern-day excitement and monetization ability—one that has paved the way for trading and investment in any digital asset (art, music, texts, etc.) a possibility. This same hype has given rise to numerous NFT projects that are changing the game for owning something original and traceable. Link here
INVESTMENT
Wahed Invest was charged on Thursday by The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US for making misleading statements, breaching its fiduciary duty, and for compliance failures related to its Shariah advisory business. Link here
The Financial Conduct Authority has ordered Freetrade to take down all of its social media influencer posts over concerns that they could tempt vulnerable people into making unwise investments. Link here
GREEN FINANCE
HELPFUL and Mastercard launch the first-ever digital wallets and micropayments for the Scottish Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) pilot. The digital innovation, designed to make it easier to collect rewards for returning single-use plastic bottles, will reward users with 20p for each bottle collected. The scheme is set to reduce Scotland’s CO2e emissions by 160,000 tonnes a year, the equivalent of taking 83,000 cars off the road. Link here
REGTECH
Sardine, a behaviour-based fraud and compliance platform for fintechs developed by Coinbase, Revolut, and PayPal veterans, has raised $19.5 million in a Series A funding round. Link here
MOVERS & SHAKERS
The Algorand Foundation announced the appointment of Staci Warden as its Chief Executive Officer. Link here
Money management app Plum has appointed a former Monzo and Deliveroo executive to oversee its product offering as it launches a US stocks investment product. The appointment of Phu Ly follows Plum's recent $24m fundraise, which it is using to boost its presence in Europe and help with new launches including a US investment product. Link here.
OPPORTUNITIES
Franklin Templeton Investments, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, is pleased to announce a joint incubation program in Singapore for early-stage FinTech startups in partnership with FinTech startup accelerator and incubator, F10 Incubator & Accelerator (“F10”). Link here
UK fintech investment hits £27.5bn, a sevenfold increase in just twelve months. Link here.
One of the hottest fintech events is returning to Europe in March, and Provenir will be right in the middle of all the action. Join us at Finovate Europe 2022 in London, March 22-23, and visit our stand to discover how an AI-powered risk decisioning platform can level up your decisioning. Link here.
FINTECH MAPS
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.