Exits & Deep Reads

Circle is going public (again) (TWIF 11/12)

A Guide to Antigua, Guatemala: A Candy-Colored City Framed by Volcanoes

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To all our southern readers, join us in Charlotte tomorrow for our Southeast Women in Fintech Happy Hour:

And to everyone else, we hope to see you at the Fintech Formal:

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

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📖 Reads of the Week

More banks are turning to fintech companies as partners and portfolio companies as they look to stave off competition from big tech. A recent survey of 300 banks showed that 40% saw tech giants as their biggest competitors in the next five years.

Meanwhile, European regulators are cracking down on embedded finance and banking-as-a-service providers, which is worrying to European fintechs.

Fintech investment bank FT Partners published their Monthly Fintech Market Updates & Analysis.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Circle, the crypto issuer of the stablecoin USDC, plans to go public via IPO in 2024. It was valued at $9 billion when it attempted to go public via SPAC in 2022. USDC is one of the world's largest stablecoins, with $24 billion in circulation.
Prepaid card provider Netspend, a 25 year-old fintech company that was previously public, plans to spin out and go public again.
Swedish buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna is also moving towards an IPO, on the heels of $550 million in revenue and its first profitable quarter.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Publicly-traded fleet billing and payments provider FleetCor announced their acquisition of PayByPhone, a global provider of digital parking payment solutions.
Italian payments giant Nexi sold its Nordic eID business to French company IN Groupe for €127.5 million.
Public business billing company Bill.com is reportedly close to a deal to acquire Israel-based digital payments provider Melio in a $1.95 billion cash and stock deal, though Bill has denied reports of the acquisition.
Digital wallet and financial coaching provider Bond.AI acquired Elastech, a technology-as-a-service provider.
Fintech card provider Point Card acquired LGBTQ+ bank Daylight.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Goldman Sachs is reportedly looking to spin off its General Motors credit card business to an external buyer.
Investment bank Houlihan Lokey is in talks to acquire private equity placement agent Triago.
UAE-based asset manager Dubai Investments acquired an additional 7.7% in UK publicly-listed neobank Monument Bank, increasing its stake to 16.9%.

As of this moment, PayPal has issued $114.55mm crypto dollars, verifiable via blockchain analysis.

Which is far less than PayPal's $38.6 billion normal dollars. But the latter is just a rough estimate. It relies on PayPal's stale (and unaudited!) Sep 30 financial statements. pic.twitter.com/VDfEoYncX4
— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) November 4, 2023

I love this article by @long_solitude

I will continue to die on this hill:

For early-stage teams, TAM is mostly a distraction.

I'd much rather back founders with killer wedges than undifferentiated 'me too' products in large markets.https://t.co/wTIZWbtglI (h/t @mdudas) pic.twitter.com/XVWwnNq2Gm
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) November 5, 2023

It was nothing but the best vibes last week at the @twifintech happy hour in Lusaka. Super grateful to @onchitchathq @Lupiyaloans and @PeachPayments for making it possible 🙏🏾

400+ pix from the event here: https://t.co/Uqrr7zgZfz pic.twitter.com/aDvk7UO07S
— Wiza Jalakasi (@wizaj) November 6, 2023