FinTech news in eastern europe category

Investors such as Inovo, Credo, LauncHub, Vitosha, VentureFriends, and Marathon VC are all VCs of varying sizes who are — as we speak — roaming everywhere from Estonia and Poland all the way down to Greece and Turkey looking for early-stage startups to write checks for. Started in 2016, 500 Istanbul began with a $10.5 million fund and invested in 40 companies from Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine and Poland, and has three unicorns in its portfolio. What happened to Western European VCs in the last 15 years started to happen to Central and Eastern (and South Eastern) VCs about two to three years ago and is now gathering pace. That may be the case but as the past recedes, having those U.S. connections are less interesting, as other VCs in the region will make their own connections to U.S. networks and U.S. VCs.

Two of Fireblocks’ biggest competitors in the crypto custody infrastructure space were acquired last year, Shaulov said. In terms of crypto products, decentralized finance (DeFi) has been an especially hot growth area for the startup, accounting for 10% of Fireblocks’ transaction volume in the past month, according to Shaulov.

Unlike most developed countries, the West African nation lacks an advanced credit bureau system to detail people’s credit histories, so there’s some scepticism to how Fintech Farm will use credit cards to operate.