FinTech news in austin category

One Austin-based startup is out to help people build — or get — credit without taking on debt. And that startup, StellarFi, has just closed on a $15 million Series A round of funding to help it advance on that goal.

The Austin-based firm recently secured $145 million in its own debt and equity financing to help B2B SaaS founders grow their businesses without diluting ownership.

For their second fund, Brand and Rupp will largely continue with the same strategy from Fund I, sticking to making about 15 investments in total after making 12 out of the first fund, they said. In an ecosystem where women make up just 2.4% of partners at venture firms and considering that the vast majority of first-time funds never actually make it to closing.

Amex users have been waiting for an announcement like this for some time, as its competitors Visa and Mastercard have already launched their own crypto rewards credit cards through partnerships with digital asset companies, such as Visa’s crypto rewards card offered in conjunction with BlockFi and the Mastercard-powered card issued by crypto exchange Gemini.

The company doesn’t just look at top-line sales, which Youngstrom believes differentiates his company from competitors but takes in historical sales data to build a sales forecast.

Ghost Financial is developing API integrations with point-of-sale systems, like Toast, and delivery apps, like DoorDash, so it can pull metrics that represent areas including operational health and efficiency, hourly and daily sales, average food preparation ties, ratings and reviews to determine credit limit and provide an instant loan decision. After operating his own ghost kitchen, Keto Kitchen, in Austin for the past year, serial entrepreneur John Meyer saw that fintech resources for the industry were lacking.

Digging into the Alkami Technology IPO Tacora’s fund is backed by prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whose Mithril Capital Management, an investment firm he co-founded with Ajay Royan, left the Bay Area for Austin in 2018.

Routefusion cofounders Colton Seal and Richard Scappaticci attempted to launch a neobank in 2016, but they ran into significant hurdles when trying to integrate with banks to help their customers move money to other countries.