Fintech Highlights - 9/24/2024
Here's what we've been watching this week 👇
Pinned to the Top
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it’s adding PayPal as a checkout option for its Buy With Prime feature, which allows brands that don’t sell on Amazon to offer speedy shipping on their own e-commerce sites. Amazon will also allow shoppers to link their Amazon and PayPal accounts beginning next year for purchases through Buy With Prime.
PayPal isn’t a checkout option on Amazon’s own e-commerce site, and the announcement marks its latest move to boost its checkout and payments processing services by striking more partnerships. PayPal announced earlier this month that Shopify had added PayPal as an additional debit and credit card processor in the U.S., where Shopify was already using Stripe.
M&A
Carlyle agreed to buy a minority stake in Unison, an SF-based residential equity company. More here ->
Oaktree Capital Management agreed to buy the wealth management unit of Close Brothers (LSE: CRBO) for up to £200m. More here ->
EQT agreed to buy the home finance unit of India's IndoStar Capital Finance for $209m. More here ->
Rightmove (LSE: RMV), a British online real estate portal, is considering a sweetened $8.1b takeover offer from REA Group (ASX: REA), owned by Rupert Murdoch, after having rejected a $7.3b approach. More here ->
Fintech
Loop, a Canadian cross-border business payments startup, raised C$6.4m. It offers services to help businesses manage international finances, simplify cross-border payments, currency exchange, and treasury management.Loop was launched in 2022 as a pivot from its original incarnation as Lending Loop, which was a peer-to-peer lending platform. More here ->
Upfront, a New York-based real estate finance platform, raised $1.5m. It also secured $1m in debt. The company's mission is to empower real estate agents with seamless cash flow solutions that remove financial barriers and drive their success More here ->
Optalitix, a British insurance and finance software startup, raised $3m. Optalitix offers three main products: aA tool to convert Excel models into cloud-hosted systems; a digital platform for insurance pricing and underwriting, and ; a cloud-based lending platform to streamline loan processes. More here ->
Yonder, a U.K. rewards credit card startup, raised £23.4m. Yonder provides a lifestyle rewards credit card that utilizes open banking data rather than traditional credit checks to assess customers' creditworthiness. More here ->
Novatus, a London provider of reg-tech for financial institutions raised $40m. More here ->
FlexiLoans, an Indian SME lender, raised $34.5m in Series C funding. More here ->
Kaleidofin, another Indian lender, raised $13.8m. More here ->
Settle, an Egyptian B2B payment platform, raised $2m in pre-seed funding. Founded in 2023 by Mostafa Mubarak and Camille Sayour, SETTLE aims to modernize financialoperations for businesses by automating paymentprocesses and providing real-time financial insights. More here ->
Investtech
Wealth.com, a Gilbert, Ariz., estate planning startup, raised $20m in Series A funding. More here ->
Crypto / Blockchain
Huma, an SF-based payments blockchain network, raised $38m. Huma's growing PayFi network has caught the attention of leading blockchain advocates, further fueling the momentum behind PayFi. More here ->
Yellow Network, a decentralized clearing network for digital assets, raised $10m in seed funding. More here ->
TrueX, a non-custodial stablecoin-native crypto exchange, raised a $9m seed funding. More here ->
Vana, a crypto startup building a network of user-owned data pools, raised $5m led by Coinbase Ventures. More here ->
Regolith Labs, a developer of proof-of-work currency, raised $3m in seed funding. More here ->
Insuretech
Ledgebrook, a Boston specialty insurtech, raised $17m in Series B funding. ounded in 2021, Ledgebrook is a tech-enabled excess and surplus (E&S) managing general agent (MGA) that aims to revolutionize the insurance industry. More here ->
Roots Automation, developer of a generative AI model for insurance claims, raised $22.2m in Series B funding. More here ->
Akur8, the AI-powered insurance pricing and reserving platform, has raised $120 million in its latest Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to $180 million. More here ->
Nirvana, a pioneering health tech company specialising in insurance verification and eligibility with machine learning and artificial intelligence, has announced a successful $24.2 million Series A funding round. More here ->
Onsurity, an Indian Insurtech for SMEs, raised $21m in Series B extension funding. It specializes in providing employee healthcare benefits and insurance solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. More here ->
More insuretech:
Avi Ben-Hutta
Romain Dillet
Amit Chowdhry
Proptech
Cherre, a New York-based provider of real estate data management SaaS, raised $30m in Series C funding. Cherre's platform allows real estate firms to integrate, manage, analyze and leverage data from multiple sources across their organization More here ->
GreenLite, a New York construction permitting startup, raised $28.5m in Series A funding. More here ->
Sitewire, a Lafayette, Calif., construction finance startup, raised $3.2m in seed capital. More here ->
From the Stash
Ally faces legal battle after data breach - Ally Financial faces two class action lawsuits in the wake of a data breach earlier this year. Plaintiff Sebastian Owens, among others in the class action suit, according to court documents filed in the District Court of Western District of North Carolina on Sept. 7, are suing Ally Financial subsidiary Detroit-based Ally Bank More here ->
75% of Truist customers’ primary access is mobile app - Truist Financial is seeing increased mobile banking adoption among its customers as it prioritizes personalized experiences. “You hear people talk ‘digital first,’ [but] I would actually argue it’s ‘mobile first,’” Sherry Graziano, head of digital, client experience, and marketing at Truist, told Bank Automation News. More here ->
JPMorgan explores taking over Apple card that Goldman wants to ditch - JPMorgan Chase & Co. is in discussions with Apple Inc. about taking over a credit card portfolio that rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been trying to ditch. The biggest US bank is among a slew of credit-card issuers that have explored taking over the Apple card, according to a person familiar with the matter. More here ->
Big tech pulls back on in-house financial services innovation - Tech giants are bailing out on in-house financial services innovation as they look to embed their offerings into third-party vendor platforms. “After nearly a decade or more of big tech companies venturing into launching their own financial products, many of the major players have now pulled back,” Laura Kennedy, principal analyst at think tank CBInsights. More here ->
Grasshopper reduces manual reviews with Alloy risk solution - Grasshopper Bank has reduced manual reviews in its onboarding process by 57% through fintech Alloy’s risk-management solution. The bank implemented Alloy’s Identity Risk Solution in March 2022. At the time, 20% of its applications were reviewed manually to monitor for fraud, Lauren McCollom, head of embedded finance at Grasshopper, told Bank Automation News. More here ->
TD Bank names Chun as CEO - TD Bank named Raymond Chun its incoming chief executive today after current CEO Bharat Masrani announced plans to retire in April. Chun, who serves as the bank’s group head of Canadian personal banking, will become chief operating officer Nov. 1 as he plans to step up as CEO on April 10, Masrani said today More here ->
More from the stash:
Fintech Newsdesk
Robert Lewis
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