🗓 All FinTech news in May 2023

Co-founders and industry angel investors, Arman Anatürk, Camille Bossell and Emilie Dellecker launched the Switzerland-based entity out of stealth Tuesday to joins similar groups, like Vauban, Odin and Roundtable, in helping founders, fund managers and syndicates in the climate tech industry raise capital from their networks for their own raises.

Byju’s recently secured a $250 million in fresh funding at a valuation cap of $22 billion earlier this month, indicating that the startup continues to be valued higher by other backers.

The company, founded by Rene Saul and Fernando Sandoval in 2020, got started after the pair sold their previous business and wanted to build a platform that could provide a way for small and medium-sized businesses across Latin America to have all of their financial needs, including cash flow, credit and investments, all in one place.

NY Mag piece detailed a lawsuit brought on by three former employees as well as alleged fabrications and inappropriate behavior on the part of Curtis. The startup also planned to build out a LGBTQ+ business marketplace and a platform that offered discounts and rewards when members shop at merchants whose actions support the queer community.

But Chu points to firms like Apollo Global Management (full disclosure: the owner of journalist’s parent company), Ares Management and Blackstone, all of which have developed large private credit operations, as supporting evidence that private credit has its merits.

Obie, a real estate-focused insurance technology company, has raised $25.5 million in a funding round led by Battery Ventures. Since the company last raise – a $10.4 million Series A – nearly two years ago, the startup says it has gone from securing insurance for over $3 billion worth of property to $20 billion worth.

Founded out of London in 2014, Smart emerged in the wake of the U.K. government’s auto-enrolment pensions legislation two years previous, mandating that employers provide a workplace pension scheme by default rather than requiring workers to opt-in.

The Mint will be a three-month accelerator, based out of San Francisco, that cuts $500,000 checks in exchange for 10% equity in between six to ten startups.

A majority of consumers approved for Petal credit cards since its 2018 launch had either thin or no credit history when they were first approved, according to Rosen. Prism Data essentially takes the cash flow underwriting technology the company initially developed for use at Petal, and makes it available to any lender, fintech or financial institution.

The company secured $10 million in funding to do just that: provide APIs for developers to add revenue-generating payroll solutions inside their own software products for an all-in-one platform.

Down the line, the goal is to build an age-based, risk-tolerance-based deaccumulation ETF, Nazemi said, as well as a product called a home pension, where Charlie can enable users to use a portion of their home equity to supplement their social security check.

. Liquidity is part tech platform and part lender, using its technology to make decisions on deploying debt facilities and other financial solutions from $5M to 100M relatively quickly compared to more ponderous processes.

Certain startup-types have been a little more impervious to market conditions. The global supply chain was one of the major industrial casualties of the pandemic, so it perhaps goes without saying that companies tackling issues related to the global supply chain would remain an alluring proposition for otherwise hesitant venture capitalists.

The fund, sixth overall for 3one4 Capital, was oversubscribed to $250 million but the firm is accepting only $200 million to keep itself lean and disciplined, said Pranav Pai, co-founder and partner at 3one4 Capital.

Peter Ackerson has departed from his role as general partner at fintech-focused venture firm Fin Capital and started a new firm, Audere Capital.

On May 2, as first reported by Barron, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, wrote a letter to FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg expressing concerns about Tellus’s claims

Perhaps persuaded by Slash’s 20,000-person-strong customer base, NEA, Menlo Ventures, Connect Ventures, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Global Founders Capital and angel investors poured $19 million into Slash’s Series A and seed rounds.

So far, it processed more than $300 million in payments through a closed beta with several consumer brands in the region ($20 million of that was processed in the first two quarters of 2022), and now says it’s ready to open access to cross border and local merchants across Latin America.

Essentially, Green-Got guarantees that your savings and the money that is sitting in your bank account aren’t going to finance fossil fuel projects and other polluting industries

As journalist’s Connie Loizos reported at the time, Finix told employees that soon after issuing its check, Sequoia concluded that Finix competes too directly with Stripe, the payments company that represented one of Sequoia’s biggest private holdings and that in turn counted Sequoia as one of its biggest outside investors. Serna believes that Finix’s latest move only drives the two closer toward each other despite the disparity in size (Finix has 130 or so employees and Stripe had just under 7,000 as of last November) and funding (Finix has raised about $133 million in funding and Stripe has raised nearly $9 billion). Block (formally known as Square) is often viewed as a payment processor, is actually built on top of other payments technology and itself works with a number of payment processors to provide direct connection into networks, Serna noted. Serna believes that Finix’s tech stands out because it was built from the ground up, and not built through a number of acquisitions as in the case of some legacy providers.

Its name change reflects that: Kudi, the simple cash-in, cash-out and payment and collection POS system, to Nomba, an omnichannel platform with a range of business and management tools for different types of businesses, which are also attractive to other fintechs offering interchangeable services such as Moniepoint, OPay and FairMoney, via its acquisition of CrowdForce.