Weekly Fintech Newsletter | 2021 #4
Insurtech, Investments, Payments, Open Banking, Crypto, Funding, and other topics.
In the last few years, 🇳🇬Nigeria turned into one of the African countries with the most prominent fintech space with innovative solutions that helped shape the financial ecosystem.
The 🇿🇦South African financial services sector is changing quickly in the face of increased technological adoption and consumer demand for better, more affordable products and services. Most of this disruption has been in the retail banking sector through challengers and neobanks.
Read more of my “FinTech in Africa spotlight: Nigeria and South Africa” here.
FINTECH MAPS
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S FINTECH SPACE
FINTECH SPOTLIGHT
Investors are valuing 🇺🇸Stripe at a $115 billion valuation in “secondary market” transactions. Stripe is also planning a new primary funding round at a valuation north of $100 billion.
The San Francisco company helps businesses small and large—including 🇺🇸Peloton and Canadian e-commerce platform 🇨🇦Shopify—accept online payments, taking a fee on every transaction. Over the past 12 months, fintech valuations have ballooned, with companies like 🇺🇸Robinhood, renters, and homeowners’ insurer 🇺🇸Lemonade, buy-now-pay-later company 🇺🇸Affirm and online bill payment platform 🇺🇸Bill.com seeing their values rise threefold or more.
More than six have gone public or are in the late stages of doing so. Stripe is among the many fintech companies rumored to be going public sometime in 2021. Link here.
FinTechs have been particularly popular targets this year for SPACs because there are a lot of them and they can be worth several billion dollars, says Brendan Carroll, a senior partner at the private capital manager at 🇺🇸Victory Park Capital Advisors in Chicago. “There is a lot of growth [with fintechs], and there seems to be significant demand in the public market for high-growth companies and higher-growth stocks,” Carroll said. Read more here.
FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
Are we in a 🇺🇸Stock Market bubble? Link here.
Although no African country has implemented a clear regime or legislative framework for Open Banking, there are promising developments in a number of countries. Link here.
Among the inequities many Black and Latinx consumers in the US face, one of the most concerning is the lack of access to necessary financial products and services. Link here.
The Austrian fintech industry generates an annual turnover of €130 million. Although the payments sector is one of the largest in the Austrian financial services ecosystem, there are only 2 licensed TPPs in this country, both of which offer payment initiation services. Link here.
Analysis by Israeli NGO 🇮🇱Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), has revealed that January 2021 saw record investments in Israel during a single month. Six start-ups raised more than $100M each (mega-rounds) during the month, totaling 73% of the total, record-breaking $1.44 billion raised by Israeli firms in January. Link here.
PAYMENTS
🇺🇸Stripe’s long-stated mission is to “increase the GDP of the internet." Now the firm, which is widely expected to soon close a fundraise pushing it to a c.$100bn valuation, has hired Mark Carney to its board. Link here.
🇲🇾BigPay is expanding its range of financial services in Malaysia with the launch of cash top-up at any of the over 2,400 7-Eleven locations nationwide. In a statement today, the company said existing users can now top up their BigPay account at any of the 7-Eleven locations nationwide. Link here.
🇺🇸Allied Payment Network, an industry-leading provider of emerging bill pay technologies to financial institutions, announced today it will join the Moven collaborative ecosystem of banks, credit unions, and fintech organizations to help financial institutions capitalize on the $3.9 trillion bill pay market. Link here.
🇳🇴Opera launches an in-browser e-commerce functionality supporting cashback and payments activities under the brand “Dify”. Opera’s plan is to offer in-browser services uniquely targeting a young, fast-growing set of “power shoppers” who could benefit from installing the Dify wallet app. In addition to the cashback integration, the initial version of the Dify app ships with a current account and a free virtual Mastercard debit card. Service to debut in Spain with more European markets to follow. Link here.
🇺🇸Marqeta Inc filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision for a proposed initial public offering (IPO). Marqeta will now await feedback from the SEC on its filing and hopes to complete its IPO as early as April. Marqeta is eyeing a valuation in the IPO of around $10 billion. Marqeta raised $150 million in a private fundraising round in May, doubling its valuation to $4.3 billion. Link here.
Also, on the heels of filing for an IPO, 🇺🇸Marqeta, Inc has added credit cards to its open API issuing and processing platform. Link here.
🇳🇱Mollie, one of the fastest-growing payment service providers in Europe, has expanded to support UK merchants looking to grow into Europe. The expansion means Mollie has enhanced its services available to UK companies who can incorporate a variety of EU payment methods into their e-commerce websites. Link here.
🇱🇺Joompay, a social finance app aimed to enable seamless, secure, and lightning-fast money transfers across Europe, has officially partnered up with Visa. Link here.
🇬🇧GoCardless, a global fintech in recurring payments, has announced the opening of an office in New York City as it embarks on a hiring drive to grow its global headcount by two-thirds. Link here.
🇸🇦Tweeq | طويق, a Saudi FinTech which aims to provide a feature-rich spending account for individuals and SMEs, has signed exclusive partnership agreements with Mastercard, the leading technology company in the global payments industry and Paymentology. Link here.
BNPL
🇸🇪Klarna, the leading global payments provider and shopping service and 🇸🇪Safello, Sweden's leading broker for cryptocurrencies, announced a strategic partnership to bring Klarna Open Banking to Safello's brokerage platform for cryptocurrency trading. This partnership, which is Klarna's first entry into the cryptocurrency industry, marks a new era in financial innovation. Link here.
🇬🇧iwoca, one of Europe’s largest small business lenders, announced a UK-first integration with leading small business platform 🇳🇿Xero. Integrating iwocaPay – iwoca’s invoice checkout – into Xero’s platform, will for the first time provide small businesses with a Pay Later option for their business customers. As part of this new integration, iwocaPay will be directly accessible in Xero. Small business owners can add this feature to their Xero invoices and by doing so get them easily and digitally reconciled, whilst at the same time offering attractive payment options to their customers. Link here.
🇳🇴Tillit, a fintech startup that is building something akin to buy now, pay later for B2B purchases, looks set to become Sequoia Capital’s next European investment. According to multiple sources, the Silicon Valley VC — which recently expanded to Europe with an office in London — is backing a €2.5 million round in the Oslo, Norway-based company, alongside seed investors LocalGlobe and Visionaries Club. Link here.
OPEN BANKING
🇬🇧Atom, the UK’s first app-based bank, is collaborating with 🇺🇸Plaid, an Open Finance platform and data network that powers the digital financial ecosystem, to roll out open banking services to its customers, beginning with offering small business owners a streamlined loan application journey and speedier decisions. Plaid enables customers to securely share their banking data with Atom, enabling a quicker response to lending applications. Link here.
CRYPTO
Cryptocurrency wallet provider 🇱🇺Blockchain.com has raised $120 million in funding from a host of macro investors, including Google Ventures. In a blog, Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith says the firm has now seen over 65 million crypto wallets created in more than 200 countries. Link here.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has clarified its position regarding Bitcoin (BTC)-linked exchange-traded funds. According to a Feb. 12 report by The Australian Financial Review, the commission addressed the subject after previously rejecting a Bitcoin ETF initiative by local company 🇦🇺Cosmos Capital. Link here.
INSURTECH
🇰🇷Viva Republica (Toss) said that it will work with South Korean life insurance firm 🇰🇷Samsung Life Insurance to advance its platform for insurance planners. Viva Republica, the operator of the money transfer app Toss, launched insurance affiliate Toss Insurance in 2018, rolling out non-face-to-face insurance services. The company is also running Toss Insurance Partner, a platform to support insurance planners to handle customer services and manage insurance contracts. Link here.
Insurance giant 🇬🇧Aviva, which has 15 million customers in the UK, has launched a new cash savings platform Aviva Save with savings fintech Raisin to offer fixed-term savings accounts. The new online marketplace gives customers a choice of different savings accounts from a variety of banks. Link here.
FUNDING
🇸🇪Billhop AB, the Swedish company which makes every invoice and bill payable by card, has closed a €4M Series A investment round from financial technology VC Element Ventures. Link here.
🇺🇸Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at millennials, has closed on $12.5 million in a Series A round led by VC heavyweight General Catalyst. Link here.
🇺🇸Mesh Payments, a startup that is transforming the way corporate payments are processed, paid and managed, announced that it has raised a $13 million financing round, led by TLV Partners. Link here.
🇮🇱Mirato, an Israeli firm that has built an AI-driven third-party risk management platform (TPRM) for financial institutions, has raised $9 million in funding. Link here.
Worker tech start-up 🇬🇧Orka Technology Group has raised £29m to double headcount and fuel growth of its earned wage access product Orka Pay. Link here.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
Former 🇬🇧Funding Circle chief risk officer Rahul Pakrashi has joined 🇦🇺Cape, an Australian fintech looking to reinvent the corporate credit card. Pakrashi, who also held the chief risk officer role at UK business finance provider MarketFinance, will take on the same position at Cape, leading the firm’s risk function and future business credit line products ahead of its upcoming launch. 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.
If you are looking for my weekly digital banking newsletter (the one divided by regions), you may find it here.
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