Hello Fintech Friends,

Conventional wisdom holds that peer-to-peer lending businesses are tough fintechs to scale, but Indonesia’s Investree just raised a massive €220 million Series D round. And that wasn’t even the largest round this week: Metropolis – a checkout-less checkout company – raised $1.7 billion to acquire a public mobility company.

It was an exciting week in The Fintech Fund’s portfolio too:

• Stitch, which started its life as Africa’s open banking provider and has since developed payment facilitation software adopted by banks, raised a $25 million Series A extension from Ribbit.
• Rainforest, which is building a more modular PayFac in the US specifically designed for software companies, came out of stealth and announced its $8.5 million seed round, led by Accel and Infinity Ventures.
• And there were new product launches from Vault (Canadian SMB banking) and Safepay (Pakistani payments facilitator).

Please find another week of fintech financing events below. (PS: Have feedback for us? 👍👎 Let us know!)

📊 Stat of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

1. Metropolis, a computer-vision tech provider that enables ‘drive-in drive-out’ checkout-free payment experiences, raised $1.7 billion in order to acquire mobility software provider SP Plus Corporation for $1.5 billion, a 52% premium to its share price.
2. InvesTree, an Indonesian peer to peer lender, raised a €220 million Series D round.
3. CarData, a platform for streamlining employee mileage reimbursements, raised $100 million.
4. Stampli, which uses AI to help companies pay their bills, raised $61 million in new funding.
5. Brite, a Swedish provider of account-to-account open banking payments in the EU, raised a $60 million Series A.
6. Clearco, a provider of revenue-based financing, raised a $60 million recapitalization down round, lowering its valuation from $2 billion to under $1 billion.
7. Loop, a startup provider of audit and payment systems for logistics companies, raised $35 million.
8. Frec, an automated investment platform, raised a $26.4 million Series A.
9. Stitch*, an end-to-end payments solution designed for enterprise clients, raised a $25 million Series A extension.
10. Cobre, a Colombian corporate treasury platform, raised $13 million.
11. Kafene, a point-of-sale financing provider, raised a $12.6 million Series B extension.
12. Mantle, a platform for enabling any company to provide equity to employees, raised a $10.5 million seed round.
13. RQD Clearing, a provider of correspondent clearing services, raised a $10 million Series A.
14. Rainforest*, a payment facilitator built for software companies, raised $8.5 million.
15. Vyzer, a digital wealth management platform, raised $6.3 million.
16. Getpaid, a European payments startup for marketplaces and platforms, raised a $6 million seed round.
17. Pivot, a French spend management and procurement startup, raised a €5 million pre-seed.
18. Creednz, an Israeli company that combats payments fraud, raised $7 million.
19. SpecCheck, a provider of optical billing and customer management tools, raised a $3.7 million seed round.
20. Revio, a platform that allows community banks to sell more effectively, raised a $2.5 million Series A.
21. StretchDollar, a startup that enables small employers to provide pre-tax funding to employee-owned health insurance, raised a $1.6 million pre-seed.
22. Debtist, a German debt collection and dunning chain management platform, raised a pre-seed.

💰 Venture Funds

• Wells Fargo sold off a $2 billion stake in its single-LP fund, Norwest Ventures.
• Visa launched its own $100 million fund specifically to invest in generative AI startups.
• Fintech investor Motive Partners will take over running and investing Dutch bank ABN Amro’s corporate venture fund.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Lloyds Bank rolled out their own digital ID app to let individuals prove their identities from their phones.

American Express is launching biometrics as part of online checkout.

Experian launched a new digital checking account and debit card, dubbed Smart Money, in order to proactively identify bill payments that could be used to increase consumer credit scores.

Samsung also launched its own AmEx card with a chip that lets it be physically tracked:

The Federal Reserve Board launched its own Instagram and Threads accounts to make Fed announcements more easily accessible - to the youth.

HSBC, Nationwide, Tesco Bank, Newday and Ovo partnered with Experian to launch a one-stop portal for disabled consumers to tell multiple service providers how they need to be contacted and what support they need to access their services

📰 Other News

With bipartisan support, the Senate Banking Committee moves a landmark bill that will allow cannabis businesses to obtain banking services to the Senate floor. 

A group of central banks are exploring whether it’s possible to embed regulatory requirements into cross-border transactions.

Theme park Universal is partnering with Visa on the upcoming launch of a new theme park credit card.

The CFPB issued new guidance on lenders using AI for credit denials.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Embedded virtual card provider Lithic launched bank accounts and ACH payments.

Pepper Money in India partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India and Pine Labs to launch the Pepper Money Dreams Card.

Saldo, a Finnish fintech, is launching banking services beginning with savings.

Intanify launched a closed beta of an AI to help companies identify their most important assets.

Coris launched a merchant risk infrastructure operating system.

Clear launched a reusable KYC solution for financial identity, using the technology acquired from fintech Sora ID.

📰 Other News

Apple's wallet app will now let you see real-time account balances from any bank in the UK in your wallet.

Revolut finally struck a deal with its investor Softbank that will let it obtain a UK banking license.

Corporate spend and expense management platform Tribal Credit announced its expansion to Saudi Arabia.

Coinbase is quietly adding new payment institution licenses around the world, with the latest in Singapore, as well as a new custody license in Spain.

PayPal users can now add their debit and credit cards to Apple Pay. PayPal's stablecoin (PYUSD) is also now ready for use on Venmo.

Canadian debit network Interac expanded access to its e-Transfer service beyond regulated banks and credit unions to fintechs.

Want to see Screenshots of WhatsApp’s Indian payments experience?