Weekly Fintech Newsletter | 2021 #35
The financial services industry continues to attract tech companies that transform how people and businesses spend, save, borrow, invest, and more. From capital markets to insurance and digital banking to wealth management, the Fintech 250 are among the most promising of these companies globally.
CB Insights has unveiled the fourth annual Fintech 250 — a list of 250 of the top private fintech companies using technology to transform financial services. The 2021 Fintech 250 cohort has raised approximately $73.8B in aggregate funding across nearly 1,200 deals since 2016 and includes startups at different investment stages of development, from early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns. Link here.
BLOG
ARTICLE
Today, about 90% of public SaaS companies and the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100 have subscription-based revenue models. Now new FinTech infrastructure companies have made it possible for SaaS businesses to add financial services alongside their core software product. By adding FinTech, SaaS businesses can increase revenue per customer by 2-5x* and open up new SaaS markets that previously may not have been accessible due to a smaller software market or inefficient customer acquisition.
REPORT
Check out FT Partners Research report: Q3 2021 Quarterly Fintech Insights. At the end of Q3, 2021 YTD total volume surpassed $100 billion reaching $103.3 billion, a FinTech sector record and an unimaginable level from less than a year ago.
The first three quarters of 2021 were the largest ever for private FinTech company capital raising with Q3 closely following Q2 at $35.8 billion in total volume across 909 financing rounds.
INSIGHTS
Creator economy is a buzzy (often catchall) term, used to describe independent contractors. But in reality, most of the innovation has revolved around passion-project content (Substack for writing, Teachable for courses, etc.) and niche side projects.
To date, “creator” tools have largely been quasi-horizontal, designed to serve broad categories of largely creative pursuits: writing, podcasting, course creation, and the like.
MVO CARD COLLECTION
Santander has begun rolling out its sustainable payment cards made with recycled material in Spain.
FINTECH MAPS
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S FINTECH SPACE
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
This week 🇺🇸 Bolt saw its valuation soar to $6 Billion. Bolt Financial Inc., founded in 2014, raised $393 million in its latest round to bring total funding to $600 million, the company said.
“🇺🇸 Bolt has the opportunity to be one of the most impactful e-commerce solutions in the world,” said Neeraj Chandra, chief executive officer of Untitled Investments, which participated in the series D. “It’s leveling the playing field.”
FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
Top 10 neobanks LATAM by customer count. Link here.
Tech Nation unveiled the next 30 FinTechs participating in its Fintech program from across the UK with 18 calling London home. Link here.
The last 18 months have taught us that for digital-first companies, a business can be done from anywhere. Link here.
Indonesia’s FinTech landscape has been on a stellar ride in the last 5 years, attracting over 800+ startups to innovate across financial services sectors, raising billions of dollars in venture funding, multiple exits, and creating a collaborative ecosystem between banks, non-banks, FinTechs, and tech providers. Link here.
PAYMENTS
Karina Mata, Head of Marketing at 🇧🇷 BoaCompra by PagSeguro, looks at some of the main payment practices and trends in Brazil, highlighting the opportunities for merchants aiming to operate in the country. Link here.
🇨🇦 Nuvei Corporation, the global payment technology partner of thriving brands, announced its collaboration with Visa, the world’s leader in digital payments, to offer Nuvei’s U.S. clients access to fast payouts via the implementation of Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time2 push payments platform. Link here. Also, they filed for an initial public offering in the United States, more than a year after its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Link here.
Fintech scale-up 🇩🇰 Pleo, which offers a simplified company spending solution, smart company cards and bill payment processing, announces its new business model incorporating a no-fee service for customers in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark. Link here.
🇸🇪 Confidus Venture Capital announced that it has concluded an agreement to acquire an equity stake in 🇸🇪 Centiglobe, a Stockholm-based Fintech company offering an Instant Global Payment platform. Link here.
The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) market is currently a £2.7 billion market in the UK, as per a review by the 🇬🇧 Financial Conduct Authority. Link here.
🇺🇸 Airbase, the only comprehensive spend management platform available for small and mid-market companies, has announced a partnership with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the bank of the world's most innovative companies and their investors. Link here.
Homegrown e-wallet player 🇲🇾 MyMy announced its partnership for a principal membership from Mastercard to add prepaid physical and virtual cards to their offering. Link here.
🇸🇪 Razer Merchant Services (RMS), the B2B arm of Razer Fintech, has partnered with PayNet (Payments Network Malaysia) to launch the MyDebit Tap-On-Phone (TOP) feature on the RMS Virtual Terminal (RMS VT) mobile application. Link here.
🇺🇸 PayPal’s coupon service Honey is now offering cashback, giving U.S. customers another way to redeem Honey Gold points while online shopping. Link here.
BNPL
The Paypers has launched the Who’s Who in Buy Now, Pay Later industry mapping, a global overview of key players, and business models. Buy Now, Pay Later industry has massively expanded in the last two years, becoming a useful service for both merchants and consumers. Providers such as Klarna, Afterpay, or Affirm have already paved a way towards the e-commerce ecosystem, by acquiring new customers and expanding their footprints. Link here.
Buy now, pay later credit grows increasingly hot, making it easy to dismiss these installment payment plans as a fad. Link here.
Buy now, pay later solutions are dramatically changing the way consumers interact with merchants, both online and in-person, providing an attractive alternative for paying for goods and services. The past two years have seen double-digit growth in BNPL transaction volume as consumer and merchant adoption skyrocketed both leading into and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Link here.
‘Buy now, Pay smarter.' company, Openpay USA, Inc., and its parent company Openpay Pty Ltd, have strategically partnered with Cross River Bank, a technology-driven financial services organization that provides core infrastructure and embedded financial solutions, to offer Opy’s differentiated next-generation “Buy Now, Pay Smarter” products for consumer banking loans. Link here.
CRYPTO
Payments processing company 🇺🇸 Stripe is branching out into the cryptocurrency space, creating a brand new team of engineers and designers to chart its path in digital assets. Link here.
‘Crypto Made Easy’ pioneer 🇬🇧 Divi, has taken a major step towards its goal to create a fully decentralized, private payment solution that drives crypto’s mass adoption, with the UK launch of its user-friendly mobile wallet. Link here.
🇬🇧 Wirex, the leading payments firm, has launched its crypto platform in Vietnam and increased the range of revolutionary services across 81 others. Link here.
blockWRK, the issuer of the federally approved WRK token, announces the launch of its blockchain-powered employee rewards app and Visa card. Link here.
🇬🇧 Elliptic, the London-headquartered crypto startup that monitors financial crime, has raised $60 million from a group including SoftBank Investment Advisers. Link here.
Former UK chancellor Philip Hammond has signed on as an advisor to a British cryptocurrency startup. Link here.
🇬🇧 Ziglu is led by Mark Hipperson, a founder and former CTO of Starling Bank. Its customers are given easy and insured access to cryptocurrencies, a Mastercard debit card, and safeguarded GBP accounts. Link here.
INVESTMENTS
There are few people in this world who know more about cannabis than US rap legend Snoop Dogg, and now the weed enthusiast-cum-entrepreneur is bringing his herbal expertise to Europe.
The Doggfather, otherwise known as Calvin Broadus, is cofounder of LA-based VC fund Casa Verde Capital, and the firm is announcing its first investment into continental Europe, leading a $15m round into Lisbon-based AceCann. Link here.
OPEN BANKING
Google has invested in Bangalore-based 🇮🇳 Open Financial Technologies, becoming the latest high-profile investor to back a neobanking platform. Link here.