Welcome to?your?daily?FinTech?news!
- Klarna
is shifting its business away from growth and towards short-term profitability as the Swedish FinTech tries to raise capital and cuts 10 per cent of jobs due to fears of a looming recession. Sebastian Siemiatkowski
, Klarna’s chief executive and co-founder, told the Financial Times
he was not “convinced” by reports that his bank would have to raise capital at a valuation below its most recent one of $46bn, which made it the most valuable private tech company in Europe. Link here
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- Billionaire brothers John Collison
and Patrick Collison
built Stripe
into one of the world’s most-hyped, highest valued — and profitable! — startups, worth some $95 billion. Now they must stave off going from disruptor to disrupted. The company, dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, processed $640 billion in payments last year across 50 countries. Link here
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- Many SMEs lack access to a modern payment infrastructure or are rejected by traditional financial services providers who are very rigid in the types of solutions they can offer their clients. Link here
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- While the likes of Pipe are reaching multi-billion valuations, European revenue-based financing is experiencing as much of a boom as it is in the U.S. U.K.-based startup platform Bloom Group S.A.
has now secured a ￡300 million / $377 million financing round led by Credo Capital Partners
and Fortress Investment Group
LLC, making it one of the better-funded revenue-based lending businesses in Europe. It has now raised a total of ￡307 million. Bloom competes with companies like Wayflyer
in Ireland, which has raised a total of $636.2 million, according to Crunchbase
, and Clearco
in the U.S., which has raised $681.5 million. Link here
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- Clearpay (Afterpay Ltd)
known as Afterpay
outside the UK and Europe, extends in-store BNPL to smaller high street retailers. By offering installment payments in-store, Clearpay is supporting them to drive more footfall and more sales. Link here
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- Coingrig
has integrated Nordigen
’s open banking platform to increase the ease of bank connectivity to their digital wallet. Coingrig is a next generation digital wallet that allows the users to manage all their personal finance and assets in one place. Link here
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- XREX Inc.
, a Taiwanese blockchain Fintech company, has chosen Lithuania as its entry point to the EU market. After recently becoming a crypto asset service provider in Lithuania, the company plans to entrust operations, AML, and other functions to its Lithuanian office. Link here
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- ZenLedger
, a Seattle, WA-based global leader in cryptocurrency data analysis, accounting, and tax, closed a $15M Series B funding. The company intends to use the funds to expand services globally, innovate further on crypto finance products, and grow retail and government market share. Link here
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- Latin American crypto exchange Bitso
laid off 80 employees on Thursday, the company told CoinDesk
. “Our decisions about the people who work in our company are made on the basis of our long-term business strategy and to support our customers and our strategy as a company,” Bitso said in a statement. Bitso, which had more than 700 employees before the layoffs, still lists more than 60 open positions on its jobs page. Link here
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- ?nima Educa??o
, a Brazilian educational group ahead of 18 universities and more than 570 educational centers, has launched a Corporate Venture Capital Association
(CVC) fund to invest in startups. Called ánima Ventures
, the new fund comes to the market with BRL 150 million and plans to invest in strategic tech companies over the next 10 years. Link here
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- N26
, founded in 2013 within Rocket Internet incubator in Berlin, prides itself on being the first fully digital bank that kick-started the Neo-bank trend now worth USD$47 billion globally. Within just 10 months of launching in 2015, N26 applied for a banking licence with the European Central Bank, which the company then received in July 2016. This is unique to N26’s journey to becoming a bank, as competitors Monzo and Revolut established themselves first and foremost as FinTechs, only later obtaining a banking licence in order to scale. From C-Innovation
’s report “N26 Racing for Differentiation”. Link here
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- Market-leading SaaS banking platform Mambu
, and Brim Financial
(Brim), one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in North America, announced a strategic partnership to deliver a modern, more powerful digital banking, deposit, lending and cards platform across Canada and the U.S. Link here
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- Starling Bank
's Anne Boden
is to chair a Government-backed ‘Taskforce on Women-Led High-Growth Enterprises’, which aims to support women entrepreneurs, tackle investing barriers, and increase the number of women-led fast-growing businesses. Link here
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- Tyme
Group has appointed co-founder Coenraad (Coen) Jonker
as the new CEO of digital-only bank TymeBank
, while current CEO Tauriq Keraan
will be group executive: growth projects for Tyme Group. Link here
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- KAF Investment Bank
announced that it has appointed Rafiza Ghazali
as the CEO of its Islamic digital bank. Thariq Ahmad
, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of KAF Investment Bank shared, “We are pleased to have Rafiza to head our digital banking leadership team given her wealth of experience in both the private and public sectors.” Link here
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- Tandem Bank
has appointed Georgina Whalley
to the newly-created role of chief impact and marketing officer with a mandate to focus on building the digital bank's green credentials. Link here
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This ends?Your?Daily?Fintech?News. Let me know if there are any questions or comments. Until the next!
Always great, insightful, current content, thank you Marcel van Oost!