Hello Fintech Friends,
A few highlights from this week:
💡 Power, one of our Fintech Fund syndicate portfolio companies, was acquired by Marqeta in a $275 million all-cash deal (Marqeta’s first acquisition).
🕵️ Our portfolio company TrueBiz, a one-stop shop for KYB, announced their seed round (where we invested alongside our friends at Flourish, Homebrew, and Y Combinator).
👛 We partnered with Portabl founder Nate Soffio to write a deep-dive on open banking and ID wallets.
🌊 I sat down with friends Ronit Ghose and Gaurav Dhar of the MENA Fintech Association to talk about exploring the next wave of fintech.
👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!
Please find another week of fintech financing events below.
📺
Sponsored Content
Rutter is a Universal API for Commerce & Accounting (‘Plaid for Commerce’) that makes it easy for fintech companies (like Ramp, Mercury, Airwallex, Parafin) to read and write financial data from e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, accounting systems, and payment processors like Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Quickbooks, Xero, Stripe, Chargify, and 30+ other integrations.
Join us for a discussion, Future of Accounting Automation with Gappify Co-Founder, Jotham Ty, on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, at 10 AM PT. Learn More
Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.
If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, we may be able to help - come check out our fund, The Fintech Fund (including a link to pitch us). Are you a fintech angel investor? Come join our syndicate.
💸 Venture Financing
MNT-Halan, an Egyptian microlending fintech, raised $260 million in equity and $140 million in debt at a $1 billion valuation.
Zopa, the UK neobank that pivoted from peer-to-peer lending, raised £75 million at a £1 billion+ valuation.
Moov, an embedded payments processor, raised a $45 million Series B.
Treasury Prime, a banking-as-a-service provider, raised a $40 million Series C and grew revenues by close to 400%.
Hnry, a New Zealand accounting platform, raised an A$35 million Series B.
Lulalend, a South African digital lender, raised a $35 million Series B.
Sunstone Credit, a solar financing startup for businesses, raised a $20 million Series A.
Finley, a private credit documentation management platform and CRM, raised a $17 million Series A.
Passthrough, a fund workflow automation platform for investors, raised a $10 million Series A.
BridgeWise, an Israeli machine learning-powered equity research platform, raised a $13 million seed round.
TigerBeetle, a financial accounting infrastructure platform, raised a $6.4 million seed round.
Archimedes, a defi lending and borrowing marketplace, raised a $4.9 million seed round.
Alaan, a UAE-based spend management platform, raised a $4.5 million pre-Series A.
Wink, a biometric ID and payments platform, raised a $3 million seed round.
TrueBiz*, a comprehensive KYB solution to help startups and financial services providers avoid fraud, raised a $2.4 million seed round.
SunFi, a Nigerian solar financing app, raised $2.3 million.
Bean, a digital accounting marketplace startup, raised $1.7 million.
Stripe, the global online payments processor, is reportedlyraising $2.5 billion from existing investors at a lower $65 billion valuation (it last raised at $95 billion in 2021).
✈️
Events PSA
🤝 We’re looking for great fintech people to help us host events this year in Berlin, Paris, and other European fintech hubs! If that’s you, please reach out to us at
🏋️ In New York, we’re partnering with our good friends at
to host our first
at Rumble Boxing on Feb 24th.
🍹 On Feb 17th, we’re coming back to Kenya for our annual
, organized by fintech celebrity
and in partnership with our great sponsors, Turaco, Kwara, Paystack & Power.
💵 Debt Financing
DailyPay, a provider of real-time earned wage access, received a new $260 million lending facility.
Raylo, a circular economy (reusables) startup, raised a £110 million debt facility from NatWest and Quilam Capital.
Embedded business fintech Liberis raised a €30 million debt line from Silicon Valley Bank to expand into Germany and Poland and the Nordics.
Medsi, a Mexican medical care financing startup, raised $10 million in debt.
💰 Venture Funds
The University of Utah announced the Stena Center for Financial Technology. The foundation has orchestrated total funds of up to $65 million over the next 10 years, including industry-sponsored labs, a start-up incubator, venture funds and fintech-focused degrees and certificates.
☯️ Exits
🤝 M&A - Fintech
Marqeta, the provider of an open API platform for card issuing and transaction processing, announced its first acquisition in its 13-year history, buying credit issuing infrastructure provider Power for $275 million in an all-cash deal.
Dubai Investments acquired 9% of UK startup Monument, a neobank targeting the UK's mass affluent market.
Autonomous checkout technology provider Standard AI announced its acquisition of Skip, a self-checkout point of sale provider.
Wealth management and RIA rollup firm Focus Financial Partners received a $4.1 billion take-private offer from private equity firm CD&R.
🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ
Private equity investor Brookfield is reportedly eyeing Deutsche Bank’s secondaries business.
Spanish bank Santander denied reports that it is interested in acquiring Orange Bank, the mobile banking unit of telco Orange.
Blackstone acquiredAIG's CLO business for $3.6 billion.
This week for the Fintech Frontlines, we highlight @GarnetHeraman of @ApertureVC investing in underrepresented fintech founders. Garnet is an experienced founder & investor. As an investor, he always prioritizes the founder making key partner introductions & providing guidance! pic.twitter.com/SvwQsmMlmm— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) February 1, 2023
This week for the Builders Series, we highlight @kushsrivastava of @Card91HQ a payment infrastructure as a service for businesses who want to issue, control, view & approve payments. Kush has worked in fintech & built fintech companies long before the term was coined in India. pic.twitter.com/0zr3xYA84r— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) February 3, 2023
As a reminder, you can always nominate someone to be profiled by us here!
🌎 Fintech Around the World
📚 Deeper Reads & Features
Have a news item for us? Reach out to [email protected]
