Exits & Deep Reads

Paytm and Flipkart shareholders concentrate their holdings (TWIF 8/6)

Hello Fintech Friends,

We’re excited to announce the publication of our whitepaper Evaluating The Global State of Fintech, coauthored with the AWS FinTech team!

The fintech industry is estimated to total $134 billion in size today. Despite its relative infancy, fintech is disrupting how virtually all traditional financial services providers – banks, investment advisors, lenders, and more – do business. Many fintechs have already established themselves as household names in areas like peer-to-peer mobile payments, digital investing, and blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.

But how did fintech get here? What were the biggest growth drivers of this ecosystem, and what does the future of fintech look like, exactly?

In this paper, we surface key trends, technologies, business models and feature short case studies for a dozen or so marquee AWS FinTech customers globally. You can read more here.

Thank you to Sophie Vo on the TWIF team for so diligently editing this.

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

It was a busy week for deals and acquisitions!

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Embedded payments provider Rapyd announced its acquisition of PayU, the payments group of internet giant Prosus that focuses on emerging markets, for $610 million.
GoLogic, a US-based provider of fintech data analytics, announced its acquisition of Vietnam’s Symplefy, a payroll and human resource management platform.
Crowdfunding and angel investing platform AngelList announced the acquisition of Nova, a builder of investor management software for institutional private funds.
Similarly, fund management platform Allfunds announced its acquisition of Iccrea Banca’s local paying agent business.
Upgrade, a personal credit line and card platform, acquired Uplift, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider, for $100 million in cash and stock. Uplift had previously raised nearly $700 million in equity and debt, far exceeding the purchase price.
Vanquis Banking Group acquired fintech Snoop, an open banking-based consumer money-saving app.
Vestwell, a savings platform for small businesses, acquired Gradifi Solutions, a student loan benefits provider.
Private equity firm Vista announced it will put $1 billion of preferred equity into its portfolio company, UK financial data platform Finastra, in an effort to get a multi-billion dollar refinancing over the line.
Private equity firm KKR is reportedly planning to hand Unzer, a German white-labeled single platform to handle all payments, over to its creditors, after Germany’s BaFin banned its subsidiary Unzer E-Com from taking on new clients, citing “serious shortcomings.”
Italian payments giant Nexi acquired a 30% stake in German payments processor Computop for an undisclosed amount.
Capital markets risk management technology provider Numerix acquired PolyPaths, which builds analytics and risk management solutions for financial institutions.
Revenue cycle management platform Waystar acquired HealthPay24, an enterprise patient medical billing platform.
Stavvy, a digital and remote collaboration tool for lending and real estate companies, acquired Brace, a digital mortgage servicing platform.
Indian payment giant Paytm’s Chairman and founder plans to buy a 10.3% stake of the firm from Chinese fintech giant Ant Financial for $628 million.
Walmart paid $1.4 billion to boost its stake in Indian e-commerce and payments platform Flipkart, valuing it at $35 billion.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will buy a stake in U.S. Bancorp valued at $936 million, which will offset some of the US bank’s borrowed funds.
Seattle’s HomeStreet Bank has lost two-thirds of its equity value this year in the regional banking meltdown, and is considering selling assets or a potential acquisition.
Asset manager BlackRock acquired Kreos, a provider of growth and venture debt financing to tech and healthcare companies.
French bank Credit Agricole will acquire a majority stake in Belgian asset and wealth manager Degroof Petercam, which it values at €1.5 billion.
German stock exchange Deutsche Börse is acquiring FundsDLT, a platform which uses distributed ledger technology for fund distribution and processing.
Barclays received non-binding offers from a few private equity firms for its German consumer banking business unit.
The FDIC is looking for an acquirer for $18.5 billion of Signature Bank’s loans tied to private equity firms Starwood, Carlyle, and Blackstone.
Australian financial regulators blocked bank ANZ Group’s proposed A$4.9 billion ($3.2 billion) acquisition of the banking unit of financial services firm Suncorp Group due to antitrust concerns.

Today, @coinbase filed our brief asking the Court to dismiss the SEC’s case against us. Our core argument is simple — we do not offer "investment contracts" as that term has been construed by decades of Supreme Court and other binding precedent. 1/3 https://t.co/r2EkDgkEuc
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) August 4, 2023

Catching up on FIS earnings...growth rates look rough 😬. Only a matter of a few years before Adyen and Stripe are doing more volume than Worldpay. pic.twitter.com/3sWh4C03yZ
— Jareau (@jkwade) August 4, 2023