Visa looks into scooping up anti-fraud platform for close to $1B (TWIF 9/1)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Our friends at Commerce Ventures are hosting their startup pitch competition again at Money2020, and the winner will receive a $100,000 uncapped SAFE note. Applications are due by September 15th:

I'm also excited in October to join the first-ever AI-Native Banking & Fintech Conference. The Spring Labs team were nice enough to extend a 20% discount to our readers, using code ThisWeekInFintechSubscriber.

🎫 Guests can register here.

What AI x Fintech topics would you like to see included in the programming? What are your most burning questions?

Some details: On October 7th, 2024, in Salt Lake City, UT, the conference will highlight proven AI use cases in the fintech and financial services sectors, offering tangible examples of success. Leaders from regulatory, technological, and financial backgrounds will better understand how AI can be effectively and ethically implemented.

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

As Matt Levine highlighted this week, Libya’s Central Bank demonstrated why every financial institution should invest in a good access and password management provider. The deputy central bank governor appointed by the new government, which took posession of the central bank by force last week, does not have access to the payments systems passwords in order to process the country's payroll or access its currency reserves.

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Global card network Visa is considering a $925 million bid for fraud-prevention firm Featurespace, which uses behavioral analytics software and machine learning to spot fraud in 180+ countries, with clients like HSBC, NatWest Group and Worldpay.
Trintech, a provider of cloud-based financial close technology for the office of the CFO that makes $200 million in annual revenue, may potentially be sold by private equity backers Vista Equity and Summit Partners for $2 billion.
Paymnet processing and encryption solutions provider Shift4 acquired Givex, a Canadian gift card company active in 10 countries, in an all-cash C$200 (about $148 million) deal, a 64% premium to its stock.
Stock-trading platform Public acquired the brokerage account's of Carta's secondaries marketplace business (CartaX) for private company shares.
Wealth management AI platform TIFIN sold off its stake in Paralel Technologies, a fund administration, fund accounting, tax, and transfer agency which it incubated.
Private equity firm Five Arrows sold French wealth management SaaS platform Harvest to investors TA Asssociates and Montagu.
MoneyThumb, a provider of automated document evaluation and fraud detection solutions for financial services and other industries, was acquired by private equity firm Iron Creek Partners.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Investment banking firm Piper Sandler agreed to buy smaller rival Aviditi Advisors, which has advised on $30 billion of transactions.

A cool guide to which currecies have been around the longest.

British Pound - 1,224 years
Serbian Dinar - 810 years
US Dollar - 232 years
Haitian Gourde - 211 years
Egyptian Pound - 190 years pic.twitter.com/IJSRkGFuBV
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) August 29, 2024

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Big if true.

Just over the last two years @twifintech we’ve seen large deals get done, rounds get filled, acquisitions occur, and even (believe it or not) a literal marriage as a result of the community we’ve built.

This from a long time partner of ours recently: https://t.co/kwDNMqKnXY pic.twitter.com/LbGycWVEcp
— Alex (is not at Burning Man) (@CallMeGillette) January 24, 2024