Weekly Summary 3/12/23

A massive week on the fintech front with the festive season bringing new (3!) capital raisings as well as significant announcements - lets get to it!

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• Rich Data Co (RDC) – an AI decisioning platform that helps banks make lending decisions efficiently and safely – has successfully raised $28 million (US$17.5m) in its Series B round.
• Sydney based Greener partnered with Tyro Payments to make it easy to take climate action while saving money. By teaming up Greener believes they can help companies across the country become more sustainable and make a huge positive impact on the planet.
• Brisbane digital impact lender WLTH has today announced it has acquired Mortgage Mart of Australia a mortgage manager with a loan portfolio exceeding $1 billion. The acquisition comes as WLTH reveals it has closed a $14 million funding round, led by cornerstone investors Rajomon, a purpose-driven investment firm, and ASX listed Kina Bank PNG's leading digital bank and second-largest commercial bank.
• Stropro recently completed a $3M round. Leslie Szekely from EVP was the lead investor. Other notable investors on the cap table include Seedspace Venture Capital, AfterworkVC, ASX-listed N1 Holdings, Matthew Browne from Blacknova Venture Capital and Dale Holmes from Spire Capital. Funds will be used to execute on distribution partnerships that Stropro has secured. This includes progressing with integrations with the major wealth management wrap platforms so that a broader range of alternative investments can be extended to the private wealth ecosystem.
• Mr Yum & me&u have announced the merged entity will operate under the me&u name with a fresh visual identity that pays homage to the best of both brands. The new brand icon represents “togetherness and perfect pairings - technology & humanity, server & customer, restaurants & community.”
• Commonwealth Bank has provided some insights in to their v5 app:- More than 300,000 additional customers have started using the app, taking total unique users from 7.8m (in June 2023) to 8.1m (in October 2023);- Daily log-ins to the app have increased to more than 11m per day – annualised this equates to 4bn log-ins per year, which is 1bn (33%) more than the number of log-ins seen over the prior year;-The average app customer now logs in 41 times a month, with 20-29 year olds doing so almost twice a day (51 log-ins per month), and over 65s using the app almost every day (24 log-ins per month);- Customers now use the app to process around $2.5bn in payments a day (up 23% year-on-year)
• Sydney based Plenti has partnered with NAB Under the partnership, Plenti and NAB will:- Launch ?? a “NAB powered by Plenti” car and electric vehicle (EV) loan to NAB’s large personal banking customer base- make select Plenti renewable energy finance solutions available to NAB customers ??- explore opportunities for the continued expansion of products offered under the strategic partnership over time ??- Plenti and NAB have also entered into an equity investment agreement under which NAB may acquire up to 15% of Plenti’s share capital through placements and market purchases.The stock finished up 64.71 %
• Melbourne based TaxLeopard has acquired Airtax. The deal will see TaxLeopard onboard Airtax’s 40,000+ users and take on its strategic partnership with Uber. “The move comes in the midst of a significant growth push for the company, which includes hugely bolstering its AI capabilities. “
• Sydney based Mint Payments Limited announced that Mint Payments has placed 13th on The Australian Financial Review's Fast 100 List for 2023, recognising Mint as one of the fastest growing, established companies in Australia.
• Melbourne based Birchal announced their capital raise via their own platform - their last raise captured $3m in a couple of hours.
• Sydney based Future Super said they have entered in to an agreement with Verve Super. The agreement bring their team, technology and back-offices together for the benefit of the members they serve.
• Commonwealth Bank announced a collaboration with AgTech integrator Pairtree Intelligence and launched Smart Real Estate Payments for tenants and real estate managers.Commonwealth Bank’s Group Executive of Business Banking, Michael Vacy-Lyle said the new solutions extended upon the dedicated support CBA had built for business customers in other industry verticals.
• Paydock announced the official rollout of Commonwealth Bank Australia’s Powerboard, a payments orchestration solution delivering powerful new payment experiences for merchants and consumers.
• Bonza and Monoova have partnered to offer PayTo as a payment option. Bonza is Australia's new low cost airline servicing regional domestic routes
• Backpocket was recognised by Finder’s panel of judges for the Finder Innovation Awards 2023 based on 2 main criteria: innovation and impact.

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