FinTech news in bnpl category

The round was led by Japanese bank Mizuho Bank, a subsidiary of Mizuho Financial Group that contributed $125 million. It included participation from returning investors like Square Peg Capital, Jungle Ventures, Naver Financial Corporation, GMO Venture Partners and Openspace Ventures.

We wanted to make sure that consumers would be able to use Klarna everywhere. So we created a browser that allows you to go to any website like Amazon, and you have this Klarna button at the bottom

Arab said that commanding this present valuation conveys Tabby’s product relevance and ability to build a sustainable business in a reasonably challenging space, including upstarts such as Saudi-based Tamara and Egypt’s Sympl and Khazna. About this, CEO Arab explained that Tabby recently launched a product for everyday purchases, such as groceries and food, and will allow customers that don’t have access to credit cards to make purchases and pay at the end of the month. Despite the valuation crunches and muted demand for growth companies globally, Tabby has managed to double its valuation from 18 months ago, even though it raised less capital in a subsequent round; as such, it is currently one of the most valued startups in the MENA region. According to a statement shared by the Dubai-based company, the funding will be used to expand Tabby’s product line into a plethora of consumer financial services and support the company’s growing operations that now include Egypt.

Facing the headwinds, rather than pull out of BNPL altogether, investors appear to be shifting bets to what they perceive as a safer subcategory of BNPL: business-to-business (B2B) BNPL. The beneficiaries are startups like OatFi, which today emerged from stealth with $8 million in new equity and $50 million in debt for its platform that provides working capital infrastructure for B2B payments platforms.

Allocations just got valued at $150M to help private equity funds lure smaller investors Payall lands $10M in a16z-led seed round to help banks facilitate more cross-border payments Lease-to-own fintech startup Kafene raises $18M to battle BNPL Southeast Asian fintech Fazz raises $100M Series C to serve businesses of all sizes Nigerian financial management app for merchants Kippa bags $8.4M in new funding Composer raises $6M for automated investing platform Redfin CEO, DoorDash co-founder invest in new startup, Far Homes, which is building a portal for Mexico real estate German software firm Candis raises $16M to expand AP automation Splitit drives installments-as-a-service growth with a $10.5M funding PortX launched as new entity by ModusBox and secures $10M in new funding Adyen announced on September 15 that it has become the first fintech to partner with Cash App (Block) to offer Cash App Pay, a mobile payment method, to its U.S. customers. In 2020, digital bank Varo became the first-ever all-digital nationally chartered U.S. consumer bank — meaning it received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become an actual bank, as opposed to partnering with one as most digital banks do.

These will likely become more acute as customers begin to use BNPL for routine expenses, the agency said — the CFPB found that BNPL customers are increasingly paying for purchases like groceries and gas, spurred by macroeconomic pressures including inflation.

Ratio gives SaaS companies capital upfront so they can offer customers more flexible payment options. Co-founder and CEO Ashish Srimal founded Ratio in 2021 with CTO Mason Blake, and they have been heads down ever since working on the company’s concept, which is to help SaaS and technology companies tap into the $1.5 trillion subscription market for recurring revenue.

Essentially, Kafene’s model is based on the premise that at the point-of-sale, the prime consumer will probably go with BNPL, while the subprime consumer doesn’t have the credit score to do so and would typically do lease-to-own as their alternative financing mechanism.

To bridge the input-access gap, iProcure, a B2B agtech, has since 2014 been connecting agricultural manufacturers and distributors to local retailers (agro-dealers), through its unique distribution infrastructure that interlinks agricultural supply chains.

Though Halliday plans to charge an initial fee to customers using the product to cover the startup’s costs, Malhotra hopes to eliminate the fee over time as his goal is to keep the product as low-cost as possible for gamers.

Kontempo, a startup offering buy now, pay later (BNPL) and interest-free installment plans to business-to-business (B2B) customers, today announced that it raised a $30 million seed round in a mix of equity ($6.5 million) and debt ($25 million).

After living and working in the United States for almost 25 years, he moved back to Bangladesh in 2018 to digitize micro-credit, with the goal of creating a digital credit platform for micro-merchants that did not require a smartphone or digital literacy.

Swedish buy now, pay later giant Klarna is reportedly close to inking a new round of funding that would slash its valuation to $6.5 billion – about 7x of what the company was valued in June of 2021.

Eventually, Kasheesh plans to develop its technology so users can use the same card across multiple transactions rather than having to generate a new single-use card each time, Miller said.

The latest to enter the BNPL field attacking the B2B/SME market is Playter a London-based BNPL platform aimed at SMEs. It’s now closed a $55 million funding round from Adit Ventures and Fasanara Capital, with Fin Capital and Act Venture Capital and 1818 Ventures also participating.

While Apple has partnered with payment providers and others on the financial side of things before in order to make Apple Pay and Wallet work, Pay Later represents the first time the company is handling the actual loans, risk management, and credit checks itself.

Apple is also getting into the game, it announced today, with a service called Apple Pay Later. So we did get to see Apple’s event impact a stock, just not the one that we expected it to; investors are paying attention, at least somewhat.

Affirm — which was founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin — has built technology that can underwrite individual transactions, and once determining a customer is eligible offer them the option to pay on a biweekly or monthly basis. Some customers are in fact charged interest but Affirm says it doesn’t charge late fees and that there are no surprises with the amount of interest it charges. In an interview earlier this year, Libor Michalek, Affirm’s president of technology emphasized the company’s efforts to be transparent.

These challenges befall millions of micro-retailers across the continent, and Betastore, a B2B retail marketplace for informal retailers, is working to resolve in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

Unfortunately for Klarna employees, the company hasn’t said who will be affected by the job cuts. Cutting 10% of the company’s workforce means that around 700 people will lose their job at the fintech company.

However, now that consumers have grown comfortable with BNPL as a concept and are increasingly using it as an alternative to credit cards, we’re seeing opportunities for new BNPL products for recurring bills, such as rent or streaming service subscriptions.

Walnut works with healthcare providers so that a patient’s bill can be paid back through $100-a-month increments for 30 months, instead of one aggressive credit card swipe Many BNPL startups, Walnut included, do cash-flow underwriting, in which the company connects to users’ bank accounts to see daily income, spending patterns and savings to see if a loan will likely get repaid by the end of month.

ImaliPay’s pilot was based on Furusa’s encounter: a buy now, pay later (BNPL) fuel product, but for two-wheeler gig platforms as the company partnered with a few fuel stations in Ibadan, Nigeria to offer this service to SafeBoda riders.

The credit card is one of two options — the second via the mobile app — consumers can use to access CredPal’s BNPL services when they visit a partner store to shop for items ranging from electronics, particularly smartphones, to furniture and groceries. To that effect, CredPal, one of the earliest pioneers of buy now, pay later in Nigeria, has closed a bridge round of $15 million in equity and debt — the latter constituting a very large chunk of the financing — to expand its consumer credit offerings across Africa.

The simple reason is that people need smartphones more than they need solar systems, evident in M-KOPA’s numbers as of July last year — which in 18 months had already sold 500,000 smartphones, half the units solar systems managed in 10 years. M-KOPA is known chiefly for its pay-as-you-go (PAYG) financing model that allows customers to build ownership of appliances over time by paying an initial deposit followed by flexible micro-payments.

During an interview in December last year, Mbaabu told journalist that RejaReja expects its merchants to grow to 1 million by the end of this year as it works toward digitizing the estimated 100 million small traders across sub-Saharan Africa.

The payment option can be integrated in the payment terminals, or merchants can generate a payment link and share it with customers. Alma has a payment option that lets you buy something and pay 15 or 30 days later. No late fees.

The equity portion was led by Index Ventures and included new investors like Distributed Ventures and its anchor limited partner NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures and a group of strategic angel investors. The company signed its first customer last July, and Ascend is now in all 50 states and working with customers like Vouch, Cowbell, Newfront, Boost Insurance, NFP, LuckyTruck, Rogue Risk, Portal Insurance and Riskwell. The new financing follows a $5.5 million seed round announced last September to give the company $39 million in total equity funding raised to date. Today, the company announced $30 million in Series A funding along with $250 million in lending to finance insurance premium loans by Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM Bermuda).

Karny gives Chari valuable data on the loans provided by grocery stores to their customers and allows Chari to credit-assess the unbanked shop owners, determining the most applicable payment terms to give each.

Vartana plans to use its equity funding to work on its product roadmap, which involves adding more staff to its current headcount of 17 across engineering, operations and sales.

Since the Philippines’ payment sector is fragmented, customers can pay back their BNPL loans a variety of ways, including digital wallets, bank transfers, direct debit, linking their bank account or over-the-counter payments in physical stores like 7-Eleven.

In its bid to traverse Africa, where opportunities abound as e-commerce and alternative credit sources grow, Lipa Later will have to contend with competition from South Africa’s Payflex (which was recently acquired by Australian BNPL Zip) and PayJustNow, and Nigeria’s PayQart and Carbon Zero.

And while currently building out its buy now, pay later infrastructure (which gives businesses a chance to sell products regardless of whether customers have money or not), ThankUCash plans to add a fourth offering soon: a remittance product where merchants can sell directly to the diaspora.

Rupifi has raised $25 million in a new financing round as the Indian startup, which currently provides buy now, pay later service to several marketplaces to serve their merchants, looks to expand its business-to-business payments offerings. Buy now, pay later is Rupifi’s marquee offering today, but Jain, who previously worked at American Express and Razorpay, and sold his edtech platform StudyBud in an all-cash deal, said that the startup will be expanding its product offerings in the next few months. Rupifi works with more than two dozen business-to-business marketplaces.