Tuesday, 5th of July, 2022

Hi,

LinkedIn personal accounts were given the option to generate newsletters for their community and followers seven months ago.

I figured why not share some interesting news with you and keep you updated on what's happening worldwide?

Since then, your numbers have grown, and I've received a lot of feedback, so I've adjusted my approach.

From daily to twice a week updates.

Thousands of individuals were reached, and about 2000 people became subscribers.

Counting continues.

Thank you for your input over the last 7 months.

Let's try for another 100 editions.

PS. If you have any suggestions or ideas on how I may improve, please share them with me in the DM.

Cheers,

Radek

Finance & Tech?

• A decade ago, SumUp was one of the army of fintechs that made names for themselves with dongles that turned basic smartphones into card payment terminals. Today, the London-based company has expanded into a wider range of business services that are used by some 4 million small and medium businesses in 35 markets, and as it continues to scale out its ambitions, it’s closed in on a major round of funding of €590 million ($624 million). Marc-Alexander Christ, SumUp co-founder and CFO, said in an interview that in fact before this round less than €100 million of that figure was equity, meaning dilution is relatively low despite those high numbers, and there has been little in the way of transparency on the company’s valuation. Read more.?
• Meta is officially closing all accounts on its digital wallet, Novi. Both the Novi app and Novi on WhatsApp will no longer be available, and all accounts will be closed on the 1st of September 2022, with the firm advising all users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible”. From the 21st of July 2022, customers will not be able to add money to their accounts. The fall of Novi follows the downturn in crypto trends and indicates an upcoming crypto winter. Recent market conditions have led to multiple crypto firms to lay off employees, such as BlockFi, Coinbase, and Bitpanda. Read more.?
• Klarna is closing in on a funding round that would see the BNPL giant's valuation slashed from $45.6 billion last year to just $6.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sweden's Klarna is working to raise about $650 million, most of it from existing investors led by Sequoia Capital, says the Journal, citing anonymous sources. The valuation would represent a massive discount from last June's $639 million funding round, when the firm was riding the buy now, pay later wave. Read more.?
• Amazon has collaborated with Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) fintech platform, vaIU, to launch affordable payment options for Amazon Egypt. Through this service, customers will be able to opt for one of a variety of BNPL installment plans at check-out. They can select a payment option based on their credit limit, which is provided by vaIU. Shoppers will be able to spread payments over periods of 6 to 60 months without any downpayment, and make purchases with a minimum spend of EGP 500 in a variety of product categories. Read more.
• Leo Varadkar TD, the Tánaiste and minister for enterprise, trade and employment in the Irish government, has launched 11 remote working hubs in Ballycoolin, Dublin as part of the Bank of Ireland’s Hybrid working model which was developed in partnership with Bank of Ireland staff. Bank of Ireland group CEO, Francesca McDonagh, said: “Our new hybrid working model is a real break with the old way of doing things in terms of how and where we work. The opening of three new hubs in major regional centres means more opportunities to attract talent from locations around Ireland. For our colleagues, the hybrid model offers enhanced flexibility and choice, blending home and office working with less time and money spent on commuting and a better work-life balance.” Read more.?
• Payment processor Worldline has completed a €256 million deal to acquire an 80% stake in Eurobank’s Merchant Acquiring business in Greece, as a joint venture. The deal was first announced in December 2021, six months after the vendor finalised its 92.5% acquisition of Cardlink, a Network Services Provider for both Eurobank and Alpha Bank in Greece. Gilles Grapinet, CEO of Worldline states: “I am very pleased that we can today officially launch our joint-company with such a leading banking partner as Eurobank, in Greece, that is a very strategic country for us […] For Worldline, this second major investment in the Greek market after our recent acquisition of Cardlink in 2021, is a testimony of our trust and commitment to Greece, its economy and its dynamic retail environment and a perfect example of the execution of our pan- European consolidation strategy.” Read more.?
• GoCardless has announced its plans to acquire Nordigen, a freemium open banking data provider. This move will open GoCardless to a wider covering in its account-to-account network, more than 2,300 banks in 31 countries. Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder and CEO of GoCardless, said: “The Nordigen acquisition will take us to the next level. By intelligently combining free, state-of-the-art open banking connectivity with deep payment expertise, we can now offer open banking-as-a-service to any developer, partner or fintech. We believe this open access will lead to experimentation, and that will create even more compelling use cases.” Read more.
• Following the news of Finastra’s new product, an embedded consumer lending solution, Finastra’s senior director of solution management, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), and orchestration, Jeannette Kescenovitz comments on the new service. Discussing the solution in the context of Finastra’s current offering, Kescenovitz notes: “Historically, financial institutions have used our products to offer lending services direct to consumer. We have thousands of financial institutions in the US running on our software. Embedded finance has opened up a $7 trillion opportunity, shifting finance out of banks and into contextual channels consumers use on a daily basis.” Read more.?
• Lloyds Banking Group is advertising for its first group head of data ethics to help it navigate the complexities around the ever-growing use of data and AI. The financial services sector is facing up to the new ethical issues that arise as big data and machine learning become more embedded into their services. Lloyds has put its chief data and analytics office at the heart of its ￡3 billion digitisation programme and is now looking to put in a senior ethics leader. Read more.?

Disrupting Retail?

• Polish convenience giant ?abka Group has opened its 50th ?abka Nano checkout-free store.? These leverage AI powered computer vision technology created via cooperation with AiFi. In a LinkedIn post, Patryk Powier?a, ?abka Nano Growth, said: “BOOM! Store number 50 has been opened.” “After about a year from opening the first autonomous outlet, we have reached the milestone of 50 stores.” “That number strengthens our position as the biggest chain of autonomous stores in Europe. Easily you can estimate one week – now new store. It’s HUGE!” Earlier this year, Tomasz Blicharski, Managing Director at ?abka Future, said: “We are constantly working to develop and improve the unique concept of ?abka Nano.” Read more.?
• Delivery Hero SE he world’s leading local delivery platform, has successfully taken all closing actions for the transaction in relation to GlovoApp23, S.A. (“Glovo”). The Company will be the majority shareholder of Glovo and will hold approximately 94% of shares on a non-diluted basis in the leading multi-category delivery platform. The Delivery Hero share capital increase and the subsequent admission for trading is pending. Niklas ?stberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Delivery Hero, said: “This partnership represents a perfect match and we are very happy to welcome Glovo to the Delivery Hero family. We have known, liked, and trusted each other for years. Our teams share the same vision, and yet we can still learn a lot from one another by exchanging knowledge and exploring technological as well as operational synergies.” Oscar Pierre, CEO and Co-Founder of Glovo, said: “Joining forces with the Delivery Hero family will accelerate our growth and development of our product. Together we will be serving such a vast part of the population across four continents, with millions of local businesses and couriers continuously benefitting from our platform. We are very happy to finally start working together and share learnings and technology with other brands in the Group.” Read more.

Number to Remember

10

• This is a monthly feature that runs down the month’s top 10 funding rounds in the U.S. There’s been a lot of talk about the slowing pace of venture capital. While the stats seem to indicate this year will not be like the record-shattering fundraising numbers put up last year, June still seems to show some strength—albeit anecdotally. Five VC-backed U.S. startups raised rounds of a quarter-billion dollars or more, and investors spread their money across a vast array of sectors from space travel to AI to farming. In fact, the only sector to see two startups in the top 10 was biotech. Read more.?

Reader’s Corner?

• Products tend to fail when the team behind it dwells only on the product idea without paying attention to what customers actually want and are willing to pay for. Building a successful business requires understanding your customers as early as possible. In today’s digital economy, enterprises and startups can (and should) put their product ideas in front of users throughout the product development process to test their assumptions and make the necessary iterations that benefit customers. Read more.?
• A cloud web application firewall (WAF) is a security solution that protects web applications from attack. It sits between the Internet and the web application, intercepting traffic to and from the application. A cloud-based WAF provides increased security, improved performance, simplified management, and lower costs compared to an on-premises solution. Read more.?
• Perceptions of ethical finance have varied and changed over the years. For some, ethical banking is a green campaign taking a stand on environmental concerns. For others it is about increasing access to affordable and appropriate financial products and services. Today we share insight from across the industry on that very subject: what is ethical banking? Read more.?