Hello Fintech Friends,

A few highlights from this week:

💡 Power, one of our Fintech Fund syndicate portfolio companies, was acquired by Marqeta in a $275 million all-cash deal (Marqeta’s first acquisition).

🕵️ Our portfolio company TrueBiz, a one-stop shop for KYB, announced their seed round (where we invested alongside our friends at Flourish, Homebrew, and Y Combinator).

👛 We partnered with Portabl founder Nate Soffio to write a deep-dive on open banking and ID wallets.

🌊 I sat down with friends Ronit Ghose and Gaurav Dhar of the MENA Fintech Association to talk about exploring the next wave of fintech.

👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

Rutter is a Universal API for Commerce & Accounting (‘Plaid for Commerce’) that makes it easy for fintech companies (like Ramp, Mercury, Airwallex, Parafin) to read and write financial data from e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, accounting systems, and payment processors like Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Quickbooks, Xero, Stripe, Chargify, and 30+ other integrations.

Join us for a discussion, Future of Accounting Automation with Gappify Co-Founder, Jotham Ty, on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, at 10 AM PT. Learn More

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If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, we may be able to help - come check out our fund, The Fintech Fund (including a link to pitch us). Are you a fintech angel investor? Come join our syndicate.

💸 Venture Financing

1. MNT-Halan, an Egyptian microlending fintech, raised $260 million in equity and $140 million in debt at a $1 billion valuation.
2. Zopa, the UK neobank that pivoted from peer-to-peer lending, raised £75 million at a £1 billion+ valuation.
3. Moov, an embedded payments processor, raised a $45 million Series B.
4. Treasury Prime, a banking-as-a-service provider, raised a $40 million Series C and grew revenues by close to 400%.
5. Hnry, a New Zealand accounting platform, raised an A$35 million Series B.
6. Lulalend, a South African digital lender, raised a $35 million Series B.
7. Sunstone Credit, a solar financing startup for businesses, raised a $20 million Series A.
8. Finley, a private credit documentation management platform and CRM, raised a $17 million Series A.
9. Passthrough, a fund workflow automation platform for investors, raised a $10 million Series A.
10. BridgeWise, an Israeli machine learning-powered equity research platform, raised a $13 million seed round.
11. TigerBeetle, a financial accounting infrastructure platform, raised a $6.4 million seed round.
12. Archimedes, a defi lending and borrowing marketplace, raised a $4.9 million seed round.
13. Alaan, a UAE-based spend management platform, raised a $4.5 million pre-Series A.
14. Wink, a biometric ID and payments platform, raised a $3 million seed round.
15. TrueBiz*, a comprehensive KYB solution to help startups and financial services providers avoid fraud, raised a $2.4 million seed round.
16. SunFi, a Nigerian solar financing app, raised $2.3 million.
17. Bean, a digital accounting marketplace startup, raised $1.7 million.
18. Stripe, the global online payments processor, is reportedly raising $2.5 billion from existing investors at a lower $65 billion valuation (it last raised at $95 billion in 2021).

💵 Debt Financing

• DailyPay, a provider of real-time earned wage access, received a new $260 million lending facility.
• Raylo, a circular economy (reusables) startup, raised a £110 million debt facility from NatWest and Quilam Capital.
• Embedded business fintech Liberis raised a €30 million debt line from Silicon Valley Bank to expand into Germany and Poland and the Nordics.
• Medsi, a Mexican medical care financing startup, raised $10 million in debt.

💰 Venture Funds

• The University of Utah announced the Stena Center for Financial Technology. The foundation has orchestrated total funds of up to $65 million over the next 10 years, including industry-sponsored labs, a start-up incubator, venture funds and fintech-focused degrees and certificates.

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

• Marqeta, the provider of an open API platform for card issuing and transaction processing, announced its first acquisition in its 13-year history, buying credit issuing infrastructure provider Power for $275 million in an all-cash deal.
• Dubai Investments acquired 9% of UK startup Monument, a neobank targeting the UK's mass affluent market.
• Autonomous checkout technology provider Standard AI announced its acquisition of Skip, a self-checkout point of sale provider.
• Wealth management and RIA rollup firm Focus Financial Partners received a $4.1 billion take-private offer from private equity firm CD&R.
  

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

• Private equity investor Brookfield is reportedly eyeing Deutsche Bank’s secondaries business.
• Spanish bank Santander denied reports that it is interested in acquiring Orange Bank, the mobile banking unit of telco Orange.
• Blackstone acquired AIG's CLO business for $3.6 billion.

As a reminder, you can always nominate someone to be profiled by us here!

🌎 Fintech Around the World

A new Sierra Leone law finally allows women to get bank loans

Nigerian cash crisis worsens as CBN extends deadline

📚 Deeper Reads & Features

FT Partners’ 2022 Annual Fintech Almanac

How fintech enables sustainable cashless economies

The humbling of Goldman Sachs

Why Goldman Sachs Is Far, Far Behind Morgan Stanley

European banks struggle with AI, while US banks lead the field, according to a new index

State of Fintech: What we expect in 2023

Banks Launch “Wallet” (again)

Banks must act now to embed themselves in the digital identity market

Banks Cannot Keep Shouldering Risks For Crypto And Fintech Clients

On-chain Foreign Exchange and Cross-border Payments

Judo Bank: Redefining the challenger bank

Startups And Small Businesses Flock To Fintechs As Banks Flounder

Americans Fall Behind on Car Payments at Higher Rate Than in 2009

The enduring appeal of buy now, pay later

New year, new voters in Fed policymaking

Republicans vow to probe US banks and asset managers’ ‘ESG agenda’ in Congress

Will Flutterwave move ahead with its IPO plans this year?

High-profile implosions like FTX and Frank mean would-be sellers can expect more scrutiny

Investing In The Underbanked: An Opportunity At The Intersection Of Fintech And Proptech

Analyzing a16z’s fintech investment strategy

Pokémon-playing fish commit credit cod fraud.

Have a news item for us? Reach out to news@thisweekinfintech.com