Welcome to?your?daily?FinTech?news!
- In response to customer demand, PayPal announced that its users will now be able to transfer cryptocurrency from their accounts to other wallets and exchanges. “This feature was the most demanded from our users since we began offering the purchase of crypto on our platform,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP and general manager of blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies at PayPal. Link here.
- Ecuadorian payments infrastructure company Kushki has raised $100 million in an extension to its Series B round, more than doubling its valuation to $1.5 billion. The startup had raised $86 million in the first tranche of the financing in June of 2021 at a post-money valuation of $600 million. It has raised nearly $200 million since its 2017 inception, according to Crunchbase. Link here.
- Morocco-based financial technology and rewards startup WafR has raised $455,000 in its latest funding round. The round was led by Launch Africa Ventures, First Circle Capital, WeLoveBuzz, with participation from a group of angel investors. Link here.
- The Netherlands-based Ximedes, a software firm active in the field of fintech and faretech announced that it has acquired Amsterdam-based payment platform provider, Ginger. Both parties have not disclosed the terms of the acquisition. Link here.
- Yabie, a Swedish fintech company, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €15M at a valuation of €91M in an oversubscribed funding round. The round was led by a new investment fund, Absolute Unlisted, with €5.7M. Swedbank, NFT Ventures, Brightly Ventures, and Ilija Batljan also participated in the round. To date, Yabie has secured €50M in funding. Link here.
- Online trading platform CMC Markets has teamed up with TrueLayer and will leverage its open banking technology to help bolster its client onboarding and payments. Link here.
- TripleA, a digital payment token licensee, has been selected as the global cryptocurrency payment gateway for Binance Pay. This partnership with TripleA gives merchants access to Binance’s large crypto user base. Link here.
- VirgoCX has raised $7.95 million (C$10 million) in a Series A funding round that will help the firm expand globally and add products and services. VirgoCX’s CEO Adam Cai told CoinDesk the company worked diligently to secure the proper licenses to operate in Canada, and is preparing for potential expansion into Australia, the U.K. and some parts of Europe. Link here.
- Apple is turning into a fintech company. The company announced several new features for the iPhone's Wallet app at its developers conference Monday that directly compete with products from other fintech companies such as Affirm and PayPal. Link here.
- Stage, the monetization platform for SaaS teams, is announcing the availability of its first product–flexible plans and packaging–as well as a $5.1 million seed round led by Kara Nortman at Upfront Ventures alongside F-Prime Capital, BoxGroup, HighSage Ventures, and prominent founders and angels from Adobe, Stripe, Plaid, Figma, and more. Link here.
- In one of the latest developments, Hourly.io — which has built an app that tracks working hours, generates payroll, and then calculates and assigns workers’ compensation insurance to individuals based on that — has closed in on $27 million in funding. Link here.
- Digital currencies cannot harm banks' credit capacity, according to Brazil's Central Bank President, and to make monetization possible by banks with this new format, institutions will be able to issue stable coins. The challenge in formulating a digital currency for the Central Bank is to ensure that the credit capacity of banks is not impaired, said this Monday the president of Brazil‘s Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto. At an event about cryptocurrencies by Valor Capital Group, Campos Neto said that digital currency cannot erode banks’ deposit base. Link here.
- Zippi , a Brazilian fintech that came to market in 2021 with a credit solution via PIX (Brazil‘s real-time payment system) for micro-entrepreneurs and self-employed people, announced a $16 million (about BRL 82 million) funding round. Link here.?
- NymCard – MENA-based Banking as-a-Service (BaaS) provider and card issuer has raised $22.5M in its latest Funding round. This will help it enable MENA-based FinTechs with the infrastructure required from BIN Sponsorship, Card Issuing, Program Management, Compliance, FX, and Treasury, leverage its over 150+ modern and open APIs. This round takes NymCard's total Funding to over $35M. Link here.
- After raising over $100m from investors since 2016, embedded finance provider Railsbank unveiled a dramatic rebrand at Money20/20 yesterday. “In our fast-moving world of amazing customer experiences, the finance industry has failed to evolve,” said Railsr CEO and co-founder Nigel Verdon. “We’ve changed our name to Railsr, and we’re making finance a phenomenal experience.” AltFi article by Oliver Smith. Link here.
- It has been a tumultuous few weeks for the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) sector. But alongside layoffs, slashed valuations and uncertainty, new BNPLs continue to launch, from stealth startups to Apple Pay Later, and now Zopa. The digital bank is the latest to jump on the UK’s ￡6bn BNPL bandwagon, but with the aim of doing things a bit differently. Link here.
- UK based banking, exchange, and investment app Ziglu can now offer virtual GBP accounts thanks to technological infrastructure, payment rails and treasury management services supplied by cloud-based clearing bank, ClearBank. Link here.
- The Chinese technology giant Ant Group has soft-launched its Singapore digital wholesale bank Monday, after receiving approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state’s central bank, last week. Link here.
- Citi Group has completed the sale of its Australian consumer banking business to National Australia Bank (NAB). The business, including unsecured lending, residential mortgages, deposits, and wealth, is being transferred to NAB with approximately 800 Citigroup employees. Link here.
- GCash (Mynt - Globe Fintech Innovations, Inc.) announced that it had surpassed PHP 500 billion in Gross Transaction Value (GTV) in March 2022. GCash said that it has daily logins and transactions of up to 29 million and 19 million respectively. Link here.
- Dave launches cash back rewards to all Dave spending members. Dave rolls out rewards for everyday essentials, including a 10% promo on gas purchases, to help members combat inflation. Link here.
- Bitstamp launches earn products in the United States. For the first time, Bitstamp is offering its U.S. retail and institutional customers the ability to participate in staking through its secure, regulated platform, earning up to 5% in staking rewards compared to an average of 0.05% with a traditional savings account. Link here.?
This ends?Your?Daily?Fintech?News. Let me know if there are any questions or comments. Until the next!
