Railsr Announces Sale to Consortium

Fellow FinTech Fanatic,

Let's kick off right away with the answer to the question I asked yesterday in this newsletter: will Silvergate survive?

Don’t know whether they read this newsletter as well, but that answer came in quickly after ;-)?

Silvergate Capital released a statement on Wednesday in which it announced that it will wind down operations and liquidate its bank.

All deposits will be fully repaid, according to a liquidation plan shared. However, the company didn’t say how it plans to resolve claims against its business.

Crypto-focused bank Silvergate has served as one of two main banks for the crypto industry, along with Signature Bank.

The liquidation comes less than a week after Silvergate discontinued its payments platform known as the Silvergate Exchange Network, or SEN, which was considered to be one of its core offerings.

Another follow-up on something that has been in the news a lot recently; embedded finance platform Railsr. After a period of rumours, the decision is finally there; Railsr has announced that it has been purchased and re-capitalised by a consortium of investors.?

Railsr is purchased by Embedded Finance Limited, backed by global investors D Squared Capital, Moneta VC and Ventura Capital. Reportedly the change of control has already been agreed with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.

The deal ensures business continuity for Railsr's customers, and more than five million end-users. The UK FinTech will remain headquartered in the City of London.

And last but not least, if you are an angel investor like me, I also like to mention that Vauban Deals is live on Product Hunt where you can launch your syndicate in a matter of clicks.

Let’s get on to the other FinTech news:

#FINTECHREPORT

Research insights: how to build a better signup experience. Building your signup experience is high stakes. According to new research from YouGov and TrueLayer, 4 in 10 people in the UK start creating an online account, but don’t complete it. Get the full research here.

INSIGHTS

It’s not that crazy to lose $100m a month, says Klarna CEO. During buy now, pay later giant Klarna’s heyday of hyper-growth, the company was losing $100m a month. But CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says the burn was justified given the market opportunity, despite media portrayals.

Return to In-store Payments - Benelux Market 2022. Card payments via point-of-sale bounced back in 2022 across the Benelux, experiencing the best performance yet, with year-over-year growth reaching ~20%. Read the full analysis on the Benelux market by Yuriy Kostenko.

Fintech dominates UK women-led startup funding growth in 2022.?

Tech startups in the UK with at least one woman co-founder raised ￡3.6bn in venture capital funding last year, up from ￡2.9 bn in 2021, an increase of more than 20 per cent despite a fall in overall investment. Read more here

Interchange is a burning platform. Today many fintechs are built on the “platform” of card payments, generating revenue from interchange and/or acquirer fee pools. Read all about this in early-stage investor Matt Brown’s interesting article.

FINTECH NEWS

Catch co-founder says health benefits startup is shutting down. Catch co-founder Kristen Anderson tweeted Monday that the health and retirement benefits company she and co-founder Andrew Ambrosino started six years ago is shuttering. Link here

Adyen launches 2023 EMEA Accelerator to give social enterprises the chance to win two weeks of dedicated Adyen mentorship and €30,000 in prize money. The company will leverage its expertise and resources to help social enterprises scale their impact

Saturna officially launches its Shariah-Compliant digital investment platform which is designed to be simple and secure for a seamless user experience, and accessible enough for anyone to start investing.

Better.com’s SPAC gets a lifeline but remains on life support. Digital mortgage lender Better com’s SPAC deal with Aurora Acquisition Corp. recently got a new lease on life, extending its timeframe to close the transaction through the end of Q3 2023. Without the extension, the transaction would have had to close by today.

AstroPay issues new Visa debit card co-branded with Wolves football club. The card is a virtual debit card enabled by Visa, a world leader in digital payments, that comes free of charge to AstroPay’s users and can be used internationally online or at any store through Google Pay.

Stripe increasing cross-border payment fees by .5%. The company communicated upcoming changes to international card transactions.?

DIGITAL BANKING NEWS

Alba, a Scottish banking startup for SMEs, obtains banking licence. Alba will initially operate from two office hubs in Glasgow and London with longer term ambitions to establish commercial offices in regions across the UK.?

BLOCKCHAIN

Coinbase launches wallet API to help integrate Web 2.0 devs into web3 world. Coinbase’s wallet as a service (WaaS) is a scalable set of wallet infrastructure APIs that allow companies to create and deploy customizable on-chain wallets to their users.

Jack Dorsey’s Block announces a mining development kit for novel Bitcoin mining use cases. The development kit is envisioned as having multiple components that would enable increase the accessibility and openness of bitcoin mining hardware.

Brazil announces pilot for digital currency seeking to leverage financial services. Brazil’s central bank announced the start of a digital currency pilot project on Monday, aiming to replicate the success of its instant payment system Pix to popularize financial services in the country.

M&As

Molo acquired by Australian mortgage lender ColCap Financial. Through this combination, the companies look forward to making significant inroads into the UK’s large addressable market.?

FinTech Meetup?in Vegas is just around the corner and I will start and close it with a bang. Join me and let's do this together! ??Sign up here!

PARTNERSHIPS

Tandem partners with money saving fintech Snoop. The partnership will give customers access to Tandem’s savings product offering and will help them to get a much better return on their savings accounts.?

Zilch teams with Yapily to use open banking credit scores for BNPL lending. This marks the first time Yapily has teamed up with a provider of consumer credit via BNPL, and will see Zilch leverage Yapily’s innovative open banking platform and expertise to deliver an even more accelerated and superior credit decisioning process.?

Australian Payments Plus partners Coles on digital wallet. AP+ will be working with Coles to develop a bespoke digital wallet, which will provide the ability to pay with one simple experience using the eftpos QR code in store.?

HMBradley signs for Thought Machine platform. The deal enables HMBradley to eliminate its waitlist and open new accounts for the first time in over 16 months. Link here

Zil Money Corporation partners with ADP Payroll to automate payroll funding by Credit Card through its Zil Money App, which simplifies and speeds up the process of obtaining necessary funds for small business owners to pay their employees on time, reducing financial uncertainty and alleviating stress.

Intergiro forms sustainability partnership with Retreeb. This partnership represents a significant step forward in creating sustainable financial ecosystems that empower individuals to make a positive impact on society and the environment.

Clave Partners with Santander Consumer on digital loan origination and servicing. The partnership pairs Clave’s leading technology with Santander Consumer’s access to capital and expansive network, with operations in 23 countries that serve over 25 million clients.

#DONEDEAL

Lloyds Banking Group invests ￡10million in digital identity company Yoti. The investment supports the development of innovative technology to keep people safe online, tackle the ever-growing risks of identity fraud, and give people more control over their personal data.

British Business Bank unveils ￡70m Northern Ireland fund to invest in small business growth as part of its regional investment strategy.

Monnai Secures $6.5 million Series A funding to support mission of becoming the single source of truth for FinTech decision-making globally. The new round of funding will go toward accelerating the company’s go-to business capabilities in its key markets and further development of proprietary analytics and data ingestion capabilities.

Synctera raises $15M to help companies launch embedded banking products in Canada. The firm is focused on putting this capital to work by setting up operations and working through all of the regulatory and compliance frameworks. ?

Socure gets $95m credit facility. This line of credit will further strengthen the company's financial position as it continues on its mission to be the first and only solution provider to verify 100% of good identities in real-time and completely eliminate identity fraud on the internet.

Berlin-based La Famiglia raises €255m to invest in seed and growth stage startups. The capital will be spread across a third seed fund and a new €90m growth fund, the fund’s first to back companies post-Series B.

French fintech Aria receives €50M in debt funding from M&G Investments. The company plans to extend its offer to new verticals by addressing marketplaces and SaaS dedicated to VSEs and SMEs; and also plans to increase its total payroll by 60% by 2023, by recruiting 15 new profiles.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Provenir appoints Vincent Camara as Regional Leader in France. Camara will lead Provenir’s sales operations in the region, serving the growing number of financial services businesses in need of data and AI-powered risk decisioning solutions.

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Cheers,

Marcel van Oost

Connecting the dots in FinTech

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