Weekly Fintech Newsletter | 2021 #25
Hi, there! Welcome back to another Fintech Weekly Newsletter. In this newsletter, I cover all the major weekly news related to the fintech industry. The newsletter begins with recommended articles, reports, and Fintech maps. Thank you for subscribing!
As later-stage founders are raising record rounds, first-time founders and those raising the smallest rounds are struggling to raise funds.
The number and size of later-stage deals are growing fast; but the number of early-stage deals, and the amount of capital invested at an early stage, is declining, data shows. In the UK, Europe’s largest startup ecosystem, the number of first-time deals has been declining since 2018, according to a report from SFC Capital and Beauhurst.
👉 Read more here.
ARTICLE
🇦🇺 Zip Co co-founder Peter Gray has dismissed the potential competitive threat posed by 🇺🇸Apple, saying the technology giant’s foray into payments has gained no traction in the crucial online retail market.
Mr Gray’s comments came as 🇦🇺 Zip’s revenue doubled in the June quarter compared with a year earlier, but some analysts found customer growth was softer than expected in the critical US market. 🇦🇺 Zip’s share price, which is often volatile, dropped 7.8 per cent to $6.99 in afternoon trade.
👉 Read more here.
REPORT
Check out Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners’ new Buy Now Pay Later report, including an overview of recent catalysts and a detailed landscape of companies in the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) FinTech space.
“Access to more data and better insights are driving significant change in how consumers get approved and charged for credit. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are enabling companies to harness and analyze massive sets of alterative data to build powerful credit decisioning systems, which empower them to reach new consumers and offer credit instantenously."
👉 Read more here.
FINTECH MAPS
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S FINTECH SPACE
FINTECH SPOTLIGHT
Former 🇳🇱 Mollie and 🇸🇪 Klarna senior managers have developed Biller, an AI-powered buy now, pay later service for B2B purchasing.
The Biller invoicing platform provides suppliers with automated credit and fraud underwriting and the ability to offer buyers flexible payments terms running up to 90 days after the invoice date.
Biller is also taking on the post-transaction heavy-lifting, promising personalized debtor management and guaranteed payouts.
👉 Read more here.
FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
🇺🇸 Robinhood will sell shares to the public next week seeking a market valuation of up to $35 billion. Link here.
🇺🇸 Mastercard announced that it will join the Regional Alliance for the Digitalization of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Link here.
🇺🇸 Mastercard will stop issuing credit and debit cards from today, following the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s recent order. Link here.
In this week’s blog 🇦🇺 AfterPay - Arvato Financial Solutions published the online purchase volumes for June, and they see that volumes decline. Link here.
Investors poured more money into blockchain companies in H1'21 than they did over the course of any full year in history. Link here.
CRYPTO
Anne Boden, the CEO of British fintech start-up 🇬🇧 Starling Bank, is worried about cryptocurrencies. Link here.
🇦🇬 FTX: Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, owner, and operator of FTX.COM, a cryptocurrency exchange, today announced the closing of a $900 million Series B fundraise, valuing the Company at $18 billion. Link here.
According to a draft press release from the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, the Bureau of Securities is planning to issue a Summary Cease and Desist Order to New Jersey-based multi-billion dollar bitcoin financial services platform 🇺🇸 BlockFi to stop offering interest-bearing accounts. Link here.
The crypto craze may seem a bit quieter than it was earlier this year, but the crypto credit card landscape is heating up. 🇺🇸 Upgrade, Inc. launched a new version of the Upgrade Card that allows cardholders to earn bitcoin rewards on every purchase they make. Link here.
OPEN BANKING
Prometeo OpenBanking, an Open Banking API platform in Latin America, has announced the launch of Spark, a free program for startups, fintech companies, and small businesses that provides access to its infrastructure of banking connections with APIs in a region that has been historically underserved financially. Link here.
Open banking infrastructure provider 🇬🇧 Yapily, announces the first closing of its $51m Series B funding round (second closing subject to regulatory approvals), taking its total investment to date to $69m. Link here.
PAYMENTS
🇬🇧 Vodafone could spin off its popular African mobile money service M-PESA Africa, the company’s CEO told Bloomberg News on Friday (July 23). Link here.
The brainchild of ex-Mastercard veterans, WhenThen, is a startup that claims to allow any developer (or savvy business user) to create payment flows in minutes, no matter how weird and complex. Link here.
🇬🇧 PayQin, a cross-border payment startup that operates a comprehensive e-wallet service for the underbanked in West Africa, is announcing a new €300K seed investment round that takes the company's funding up to $1 million. Link here.
🇬🇧 Barclaycard Payments announced it has agreed to join 🇺🇸 Mastercard Track™ Business Payment Service, making new services available to Barclaycard Payments’ customers later this year. Link here.
Blockchain-enabled commercial payments outfit 🇺🇸 Paystand has raised $50 million in a Series C round of funding led by 🇺🇸 NewView Capital. Link here.
🇺🇸 Square, the fintech merchant services provider and the purveyor of the popular money transfer platform Cash App, is higher by a decent 6.41% year-to-date. Link here.
With the shift towards an economy that relies much more on online interactions, online payments have increased a lot since 2020. To give you figures, the global digital payments industry is expected to hit $6.6trn value in 2021, a 40% increase in two years — according to data presented by Finaria.it. Link here.
🇺🇸Mastercard has launched a cloud-native, real-time payment gateway designed to ease access for institutions connecting to the UK's Faster Payments network. The PayPort+ gateway has been developed by 🇬🇧 FORM3 and is now live with two UK financial institutions, including Nationwide Building Society. Link here.
🇺🇸 PayPal-owned payments app Venmo will no longer offer a public, global feed of users’ transactions, as part of a significant redesign focused on expanding the app’s privacy controls and better highlighting some of Venmo’s newer features. Link here.
🇺🇸 Mastercard is using the USDC stablecoin to make it easier for people to spend their cryptocurrency with its cards. Link here.
🇺🇸 Visa announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 🇬🇧 Currencycloud, a global platform that enables banks and FinTechs to provide innovative foreign exchange solutions for cross-border payments. Link here.
🇨🇳 Shanghai Fuiou Payment Service Corp., Ltd rolled out an international corporate payment offering through the help of 🇺🇸 Visa and 🇸🇬 Nium. The debut comes as Fuiou and Visa had previously begun working together on corporate payments in Greater China, according to a Monday (July 19) announcement. Link here.
🇬🇧 Percent, founded in 2017, Percent provides an API allowing firms to customers to donate to good causes, matching a donation made when making a payment, or rounding up a financial transaction, for instance. Link here.
BNPL
🇸🇬 Atome announced that its order volume in Malaysia has grown by 100X in the first half of the year. The company also added that its online and offline merchant network has grown to serve more than 500 retailers now, a 500% increase from when it first launched in Malaysia at the end of 2020. Link here.
🇺🇸 Sezzle is rolling out a new business line that will see it provide qualifying merchant customers with same-day funding of working capital up to $10 million. Link here.
🇸🇪 Klarna buys 🇺🇸 Stocard - Your Mobile Wallet. The Swedish FinTech acquires the Mannheim-based start-up for more than 100 million euros. It is not the first acquisition this year. Klarna is in acquisition fever: Only at the beginning of July, the FinTech bought the social shopping platform Hero. Link here.
🇦🇺 Zip Co Limited, has announced that from mid-August it will operate as a single global brand, with a new unified purpose and brand identity, strengthening its people-first approach to providing fair and transparent payment options. Link here.
FUNDING
🇦🇺 OwnHome, an Australian rent-to-own scheme for millennials, has bagged $3.6 million in funds from investors including Global Founders Capital, Entrée Capital, AfterWorkVentures and Inventures. Link here.
🇺🇸 Bolt, a San Francisco-based startup offering online shopping software, is raising $ 333 million in Series D funding for a $ 4 billion post-investment valuation, nearly five times its December valuation, according to three people who are familiar with the matter. Link here.
Business-to-business payments platform 🇸🇬 Nium announced that it raised more than $200 million in Series D funding and saw its valuation rise above $1 billion. Link here.
Indonesia-based FinTech platform 🇮🇩 OY! Indonesia has been reported to raise a US$45 million or IDR653 billion Series A funding round. Link here.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams has joined a $10 million investment round in 🇺🇸 Esusu a fintech startup that helps renters build their credit scores. Link here.
🇺🇸 Jasper Card, an advanced financial services company challenging how traditional financial institutions make money, announced it has raised a $34M round of Series A financing, led by Benslie International Fund, with 500 Startups, Gauss Ventures, Off the Grid Ventures, OurCrowd, and 🎯 SIBF VC. Link here.
🇬🇧 Zilch has struck a deal to raise $110m (£80m) in debt and equity from Goldman's asset management arm's private credit team and DMG Ventures, a division of Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT). Link here.
World-leading investors back 🇬🇧 Soldo in the biggest round for a European spend management company, with $180m invested to underpin our mission: liberating businesses from spending chaos. Link here.
FOUNDERS & INVESTORS
Cross-border payments leader 🇸🇬 Thunes announced the acquisition of 🇫🇷 Limonetik - a Thunes Company, a European Payment Methods Platform. Link here.
Two of the UK’s most prolific venture capital firms, 🇬🇧 Index Ventures and 🇬🇧 Dawn Capital, both announced funding rounds last week as they build up their investment war chests. Link here.
A new report by AfricArena has revealed that venture capital funding for African startups will reach a record of $2.25 billion and $2.8 billion this year. While 2020 stunted its growth, VC investment is expected to climb sharply and exceed $10 billion by 2025. Currently, Nigeria and Kenya are the hotspots for African VC investment, with $307 million and $305 million raised in 2020. Link here.
Venture capital investors including 🇺🇸 Zillow founder Spencer Rascoff and Truliaco-founder Pete Flint, believe that 🇺🇸 Tomo has the potential to topple the legion of lenders that have increased market share, invested heavily in technology, and lapped up record profits in recent years. Link here.
🇺🇸 Bill.com, a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates complex back-office financial operations for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Invoice2go in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $625 million. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
🇨🇦 Coinsquare, Canada’s leading digital asset and cryptocurrency trading platform, has announced that its Board of Directors appointed Martin Piszel as its new Chief Executive Officer. Link here.
We’re pleased to be welcoming Robert Zagotta to 🇱🇺 Bitstamp as our new Chief Executive Officer for the U.S. Link here.
This ends my weekly digital fintech newsletter. Thank you for reading to the end! If you liked it, I invite you to like, share and/or leave a comment below. You may find more information regarding my newsletter here.
If there is anything else you think I’m missing, please don’t hesitate to reach out by email at bonjour@marcelvanoost.nl.
Let me know if there are any questions or news/insights worth mentioning in next week's newsletter. Until the next!
Regards,
Marcel van Oost
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