Hello Fintech Friends,

I admit I am an embarrassingly bad podcast listener, but I am very, very excited for Julie's upcoming Fintech OG's interview series, in partnership with FS Vector.

Julie has always been a masterful interviewer, but she now has a great group with her, including many fintech people I've looked up to and learned from such as Frank Rotman, Laura Spiekerman, Matt Harris, Maia Bittner, Steve McLaughlin, Max Levchin, Jacqueline Reses, Dan Rosen, Nigel Morris, Charley Ma, Alexa von Tobel, Jake Gibson – and also Aaron Frank.

Coming soon!

Elsewhere in Julie interviews this week —

Our Weekly Briefing with Helen Femi Williams returns next week!

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

Give a read to Alloy’s 2024 State of Fraud Benchmark Report:

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📊 Stat of the Week

American credit card balances and delinquency are both on the rise.

Corporate venture rounds from payments and crypto startups have also largely stopped:

Stripe, Flexport, TikTok, and other startups were investing in startups. That has largely stopped - CB Insights Research

We look at the most active players and how the trend has changed in 2023.

CB InsightsCB Insights

💸 Venture Financing

• Bilt Rewards, which allows consumers to earn rewards on rent and daily neighborhood spend, raised $200 million at a $3.1 billion valuation.
• BillingPlatform, an enterprise revenue lifecycle management platform, raised $90 million.
• Sygnum, a Swiss digital asset bank, raised $40 million at a $900 million valuation.
• Turquoise Health, a healthcare pricing and payments platform, raised a $30 million Series B.
• Axiom, a smart contract infrastructure provider for DeFi and crypto, raised a $20 million Series A.
• Alphathena, a bespoke investment portfolio builder, raised $4 million.
• ModernFi, a deposit brokerage for community and regional banks, raised an $18.7 million Series A.
• Ozone API, an open API platform, that enables banks to deliver open APIs that comply with regulation, raised £8.5 million.
• WealthKernel, a provider of digital investment services and infrastructure, raised a £6 million Series A extension.
• BlueSheets, an AI-powered financial data provider, raised a $6.5 million Series A.
• AquaExchange, a farm automation, crop financing, and harvest procurement startup, raised a $6 million Series A.
• Sequence, an Israeli personal finance management app, raised $5.5 million.
• Alinea Invest, an app offering AI-powered wealth management aimed at Gen Z women, raised $3.4 million in seed funding.
• Bankflip, a platform aiding financial service providers with real-time document and data collection, raised €2.6 million.
• Karty, a Qatari digital wallet provider, raised a $2 million seed round.
• Safty, a Danish startup that uses machine learning to help banks identify customer needs, raised $1.7 million.
• Synonym Finance, a cross-chain blockchain lending platform, raised a $1.5 million seed round.
• POST-FREE, a point-of-sale solution for residential retrofit decarbonisation, received a £1.8 UK government grant.
• Neo Tax*, an AI-enabled R&D tax credit platform, raised strategic funding from Thomson Reuters.
• It was revealed last week that Kuda, the Nigerian and UK neobank, tried to raise a $20 million round at a flat valuation last year but did not.

💵 Debt Financing

• FundPark, a Hong Kong-based working capital provider, secured a line of credit of up to $500 million from Goldman Sachs.
• German B2B buy-now-pay-later startup Mondu is looking to expand across Europe after securing €30 million in debt financing from Vereinigte Volksbank Raiffeisenbank.

Pssst - if you like early-stage fintech investing, come join our angel syndicate.