Global FinTech | 2022 #9
Weekly news up to Tuesday, March 1st, 2022
MVO BLOG
REPORT
Nordic excellence: Sweden's startup ecosystem🇸🇪
Spotify, Klarna, Polestar, iZettle, Oatly, Northvolt, are all products of a Nordic nation of just 10M people. Sweden punches well above its weight as a global tech and innovation ecosystem.
Venture Capital funding hit $7.8B in 2021 (up 2.4x on 2020's total), with half of that going to impact-focussed startups. The country has produced 35 unicorn startups and exits, with a further 21 potential future unicorns in the pipeline.
In partnership with Business Sweden, the Swedish Institute, Startup Sweden, Vinnova, and the agency of economic and regional growth, diving into the startup and venture scene in Europe's impact startup nation.
👉Check out the full report here
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Ali Niknam, founder & CEO at bunq, an Amsterdam-based challenger bank, has offered to help Ukrainian refugees by offering them safety and shelter in Bulgaria and Georgia, and by subsequently helping to bring them to the Netherlands on an HSM visa.
👉 Check out a list of initiatives taken by the global (Fin-)tech community to support Ukraine here.
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📊 INFOGRAPHIC
The recent rebranding of Facebook to Meta—to emphasize the platform’s metaverse vision—has been garnering attention from all sectors alike.
Diversification has always been a pivotal aspect in the tech giant’s innovation strategy, and it has held a long standing ambition to add payment services to its portfolio.
One of Meta’s earliest attempts to foray into the finance industry can be traced back to its partnership with American Express in 2016, where it provided the bank’s card holders with an AmEx bot in the Messenger app.
👉 Read the full WhiteSight article by Sanjeev Kumar and Risav Chakraborty here
📰 ARTICLE
Vlad Yatsenko, co-founder and chief technology officer of one of the UK’s most valuable FinTech companies Revolut, has labeled Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin a “brazen liar”.
Yatsenko, who is Ukrainian and from Mykolaiv, which has become a key flashpoint in the invasion, took to Twitter yesterday to voice his thoughts.
👉 Read the full AltFi article here
💡INSIGHTS
Klarna’s Volumes Jump 42% to $80 Billion as U.S. Business Grows.
⭐️ U.S. users rose 71% to 25 million while retail partners grew
⭐️ Swedish startup also sees credit losses spike in the year
👉 Read the full article through the link here.
🎤 PODCAST
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NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Tradeplus24 is launching into the UK with the close of a £30 million debt facility. Link here
⭐️ HUBUC has become the latest embedded finance player to raise funding, closing a $10 million seed round co-led by WndrCo and Runa Capital. Link here
⭐️ Scalapay lay claim to the title of Italy’s first startup with a $1 billion+ valuation. Link here
⭐️ Berlin-based platform for embedded finance Monite has raised $5 million. Link here
PAYMENTS
Flux hits the one million customer mark. The startup also said around 36,000 customers are joining the digital receipts network every month via its banking partners’ apps such as Monzo and Barclays. Link here.
Payhawk has raised an additional $100m to extend its Series B round to $215m. The Series B extension was raised at a valuation of $1 billion, making Payhawk the first-ever Bulgarian company to achieve unicorn status. Link here.
MFS Africa will extend the PAPSS network’s reach to over 320 million mobile money and last-mile users across 35 African markets, which will enable borderless and seamless possibilities for transaction and trade. Link here
Nomo, the Banco Sabadell-backed fintech platform for the self-employed and SMEs, is adding a current account and virtual card to its offering. The app also analyses the quarterly net result of the sole trader and calculates in real-time the tax return payable at the end of the quarter. Link here
Klarna, a leading global retail bank, payments, and shopping service that helps consumers save time and money, be informed and in control, announced its expansion into Canada in partnership with several of the market’s leading merchants. Link here
FPL Technologies, the Indian startup that operates OneCard, is set to double its valuation to about $1.5 billion in a new financing round, just a month after it disclosed its previous funding, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Link here.
CreditLadder teams up with TransUnion on renting reporting scheme. CreditLadder said the service means that the credit rating agency will have a more holistic view of an individual's financial standing and creditworthiness. Link here.
BNPL
Jiye Technologies, the fastest growing Agri-Tech platform in Pakistan has announced a first of its kind business-to-business (B2B) buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) feature through a digital financing product for farmers and businesses across Pakistan under its program called ‘Jiye Khushhaal Karobar’. Link here.
Australian buy-now pay-later company Zip Co has today entered into a merger agreement with US-based rival Sezzle, valuing the target at approximately $491 million. Link here
Retailers will be able to showcase their latest and best deals directly to Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) shoppers thanks to new easy-to-use deals feature introduced to the Zip Co app. Link here
Shoppers in the UK will be able to earn points each time they make a payment on time, or make a purchase upfront using Klarna's "pay now" option. Link here
OPEN BANKING
Accounting app binderr has tapped into Nordigen’s freemium open banking platform to gain account information for their client operations. Link here
CRYPTO
Crypto exchange and mobile banking platform hi has teamed up with BaaS player Contis on a debit card that lets shoppers pay with their digital assets at over 60 million merchants. Link here
BLOCKCHAIN / DEFI
Wirex, announced the addition of the Polygon Technology blockchain to their recently launched non-custodial wallet, as well as the industry leading Wirex app. Link here
INVESTMENT
Mashreq Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates, has taken a stake in NymCard, the only Banking-as-a-Service provider in the Middle East, to help grow the booming fintech ecosystem in the UAE and support the next generation of innovators. Link here
GREEN FINANCE
Using Open Banking and Open Finance APIs to Build Green Fintech:
👉 Check out the full report by Platformable here
INSURTECH
African insurtech startups are actively overcoming the historically low penetration rates of insurance products across the continent. They build products to help insurers, banks or other businesses ramp up existing insurance lines or create new ones that function as added revenue streams, increasing product adoption for the main service. Link here
MOVERS & SHAKERS
Flux co-founder Veronique Merriam Barbosa has been promoted to CEO and hit out at the paltry number of global female fintech CEOs, calling it “insane”. Link here
OPPORTUNITIES
Amsterdam has ranked fourth in Savills European Fintech Occupier Index 2021, jumping from 10th position in 2020. The report praised the Netherlands for having an “attractive business environment” and predicted a “strong demographic growth in future years”. 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.