Staying on the beat – 13-19 September 2021.
From Startups to Funding
SellersFunding secured $166.5 million in a combination of Series A equity funding and a credit facility to continue developing its technology and payments platforms for e-commerce businesses.
Dopay, a London-based fintech startup that offers payroll services for the unbanked, has closed an $18M (approx €15.3M) Series A funding round. Investors in the round include Force Over Mass Capital, FMO, and NN Group. Africa’s Mbuyu Capital and Nordic fund Alder Tree Investments also participated. The latest round comes five years after securing $2.4M (approx €2M) in Pre-Series A funding from Techstars Ventures and Force Over Mass Capital. To date, the company has secured $22.5M (approx €19.2M) in funding.
Fintech Startup Pagaya Reaches $9 Billion SPAC Deal to Go Public
Pagaya Technologies Ltd. is going public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that values the financial-technology startup at about $9 billion, the companies said. Based in New York and Tel Aviv, Pagaya operates an artificial intelligence network to make financial transactions like lending more efficient and give more people the ability to borrow.
Fintech Startup Neo Financial Closes $64 Million Series B Funding Round
Neo Financial, a Calgary-based Fintech startup, has closed a $64 million Series B funding round to revolutionize how people use their money. The round was led by Valar Ventures, who also led the Series B round, and counted with participation from Greenoaks Capital, Altos Ventures, Breyer Capital, Golden Ventures, Afore Capital, Inovia Capital, Thomvest, and Maple VC. This brings the total funding raised by the startup since being founded in 2019 to $114 million.
Airwallex Raises $200 Million at a $4 Billion Valuation to Double Down on Business Banking
Airwallex — which provides business banking services both directly to businesses themselves, as well as via a set of APIs that power other companies’ fintech products — has raised $200 million, a Series E round of funding that values the Australian startup at $4 billion.
Big Beats
Fintech Startup Fyp Launches Pocket Money App, Holographic Card for Teenagers
Fintech startup Fyp on Monday said it has launched a unique payments application along with a prepaid card for teenagers, in association with YES Bank and Visa. In a statement, the firm said that the aim behind building the app is to help teenagers learn financial management and concepts at an early age. It added that this will give teenagers exposure to digital payments and banking. Teenagers can complete the onboarding process within 60 seconds with the help of Aadhaar card for KYC.
A Record Number of Startups Join Europe’s Fintech Unicorn Herd
At the start of 2021, Europe had just one decacorn—a startup valued at $10 billion or more—in the fintech sector to speak of: Klarna, the fast-growing buy now, pay later platform. Since the start of the year, the continent has minted another two decacorn startups—Revolut and Checkout—and added a record 19 new fintech companies to the ranks of private company unicorns, Crunchbase data shows.
Wall Street Embraces LA Companies Shaking Up the Financial System
Local fintech companies are moving payments and conducting financial transactions at lightning-fast speeds. They’re upending credit score models and lending money to small business owners from underrepresented backgrounds. But brick-and-mortar Wall Street and traditional big money houses aren’t casting a wary eye. Instead, they’re funneling billions of dollars into fintech. In a September report, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimated fintech companies in the United States attracted nearly $7.5 billion in venture capital funding in the second quarter of 2021 across 194 transactions, representing a nearly 70% increase year over year.
The Fintech Startups Plaid, JPMorgan and Stripe Could Buy Next
Just this week, on the heels of Square’s $29 billion deal to buy Australian installment lender Afterpay, PayPal said it would buy Japan’s Paidy, which also offers “buy now, pay later” services to shoppers. Corporate card startup Brex in August bought Weav, an Israeli ecommerce software developer. And Visa and JPMorgan in June both announced plans to buy fintech startups.
More from PCN:
Paddy Vishani, Strategic Partnership Manager at Yobota
We are back with In Check with Fintech!
This week, our CEO Rogier Rouppe van der Voort sat down with Yobota’s Strategic Partnership Manager Paddy Vishani discuss the fast-changing retail landscape and how #buynowpaylater solutions fit into the scene. Yobota, a next-gen, cloud native core banking platform, leads the way in aiding Buy Now, Pay Later services. This enables a differentiation across the entire purchase journey, by integrating solutions like leveraging affiliate marketing.
Check our Podcast channel and look out for the episodes to come: https://paymentsandcards.podbean.com/
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