Your Daily FinTech News - July 24th, 2022

Welcome to?your?daily?FinTech?news!

NEWS HIGHLIGHT

Not every company is struggling in this downturn. Despite a cooling market, corporate spend management startup Ramp reports that it has more than doubled its revenue run rate since the start of the year. The feat would be impressive in normal times, but is particularly so when tech companies — big and small — are laying off, freezing hiring and/or reporting slowing growth. Check out the full TechCrunch article written by Mary Ann Azevedo here.

FINTECH?NEWS

#partnerships

• On that note, Ramp is partnering with NorthOne. Read more here.
• BridgerPay announced a partnership with PrestaShop resulting in the release of their module for the well-known eCommerce platform. BridgerPay allows any business to connect to any payment method they need in seconds, through just one integration. Link here.

#openbanking

• Open banking maturity has soared across Europe over the last 12 months. Now in its second year, Yapily’s open banking league table has more insight, analysis and understanding than ever before to illustrate who’s topping the metaphorical league and who’s missing the net. Read the full report, with more stats and figures, here.

#fintechinnovation

• Phos: the 1st solution provider to meet a new Visa requirement with its Software Development Kit (SDK). Link here.
• Airwallex launched its Online Payments App on Shopify. The Airwallex Online Payments App is a payment gateway plugin that merchants can integrate on their online store to accept payments from their global customers. Link here.
• Inside Alipay+: Ant Group’s Cross-Border Payments Solution With Global Ambitions. Few brands are better known than Alipay. Run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, it is the largest globally by user numbers, although is primarily limited to those based in or from China. Link here.

#donedeal

• Atlantic Money secured an additional injection of $3M seed capital to accelerate its growth having recently received its EU license. The additional funding was led by Amplo and included Nordstar and former Lazada Group executive, Martell Hardenberg. Link here.
• TomoCredit raised $22 million in a Series B funding round joined by Morgan Stanley's Next Level Fund and Mastercard. Link here.
• Fairbanc raised $4.8 million in pre-Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures. Other participants in the round included Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group, Asian Development Bank and Accion Venture Lab. Link here.
• Portage Ventures closed on $655 million for its third flagship fund, its largest to date. Portage plans to invest in seed through Series C stage fintech in the United States, Europe, and Canada. Link here
• Covey closed a $2.5M seed round led by Social Leverage and Portage Ventures with participation from Cue Ball and BoxOne. Link here.

#crypto

• Binance Australia Derivatives launched over-the-counter (OTC) derivative products, with crypto contract for differences (CFDs) now available for wholesale Australian customers under an Australian Financial Services Licence. Link here.
• Bitso's $2 billion rise shows the power of crypto innovation in Latin America. Bitso is Latin America's leading crypto exchange, with over 5 million users across four nations. Link here.
• The Opportunity for Blockchain to Disrupt LatAm Fintech. Is blockchain the golden ticket? No. But it will enable so many powerful and scalable use cases in the financial sector when designed properly, ethically, and with the end customer in mind. Link here.

#fintechmaps

• Turkey’s FinTech Map: What has FinTech been like in the Republic of Türkiye (Turkey)????? Link here.?
• Top 18 Chilean FinTechs - Chile's startup ecosystem is varied with a diverse group of startups from different industries. Rockstart, an early-stage investor that empowers purpose-driven founders, mapped them out according to the amount they had raised to date. Link here.

DIGITAL BANKING?NEWS

#breakingnews

• Nubank has just announced Pix no Crédito, a feature that will give its customers greater freedom. According to Nubank, when using the new Pix modality, the user will consume the limit of their credit card and the money will only be withdrawn from the account after the invoice is due. Link here.
• ING will leave the Philippines’ retail banking market before the end of 2022. Nevertheless, it will continue to invest in its wholesale banking business and globally shared services operations in the Philippines. Link here.

#acquisitions

• Qonto buys German competitor Penta. The deal will help Qonto push hard into Germany — where it hopes to become the market leader. German media reported that the price was in the “mid-three-digit million range.” Link here.

#profitability

• Starling Bank reported its first full year of profitability. The digital bank swung to a pre-tax profit of ￡32.1 million for the financial year ending 31 March 2022 from a pre-tax loss of ￡31.5 million for the period to 31 March 2021. Revenue for the same period to 31 March 2022 was ￡188 million. Link here.

#latam

• Mono aims to be ‘first-bankingless bank’ for Latin America’s small businesses. Mono, which means “monkey” in Spanish, is a fintech company that provides corporate or business accounts for startups in Colombia. Zarruk and Ortiz, along with Juan Camilo Poveda and José Tomás Lobo, started Mono in January while going through Y Combinator. Link here.
• The Neobanks Buying Banks in LatAm. Previously, traditional banks used to acquire fintechs. Nowadays the trend seems inverted as LATAM FinTechs have bought traditional banks to speed up their customer acquisition and increase their offering of additional services through banking licenses. For example, Mexico’s Credijusto (Now Covalto) acquired Finterra, Argentina’s Ualá acquired Wilobank, and Brazilian Creditas just acquired Andbank. Link here.
• Clave launched app, redefining consumer lending in LATAM. The Clave App is now available in Argentina, with a full launch in Colombia later this year. Users receive a digital Mastercard – with no fees – for domestic and international purchases. Link here.
• Itaú Targets Tech Clients: the Brazilian bank’s CEO, Andre Gailey, and wholesale banking director in Uruguay talked to Bloomberg Línea in an interview about its Tech Nucleus, dedicated to serving technology companies and fintech, and how more interest rate hikes are likely. Link here.

#fintechsolutions

• Huawei launched a Digital Banking 2.0 solution leveraging Temenos open platform. This occurred during Huawei’s Intelligent Finance Summit 2022. Where Huawei discussed with customers and top partners in the financial industry how to build a cloud-native architecture to achieve business agility and industry innovation. Link here.
• OneConnect announced the launch of OneCosmo, a one-stop omni-platform for an all-in-one digital banking solutions jointly developed with Brazil-based technology company Pismo. The platform leverages technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and SaaS to offer a highly scalable and easy-to-integrate solution for banks and financial institutions to build digital banking capabilities. Link here.?

This ends?Your?Daily?Fintech?News. Let me know if there are any questions or comments. Until the next!

Regards,

Marcel van Oost

marcelvanoost.com

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