Hello Fintech Friends,

🦃 A very happy Thanksgiving to all of our American readers (and to everyone else). This year is always a meaningful time to unplug, get away from the inbox, be with family, and remember everything in life that we have to be grateful for.

It has been a tumultuous year in fintech, but I am confident that this short-term pain will inspire the next wave of innovation and progress in fintech, and I am grateful for this fantastic community and everything that comes with it.

Thank you for being here!

⚽ I am also grateful for a World Cup with no shortage of entertainment, upsets, and spoilers. Enjoy the ride.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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💬 Quote of the Week

📖 Read of the Week

It will be interesting to see the changes between Silicon Valley’s H1 2022 State of the Markets report and the H2 2022 report when it is published next year in Q1.

Data from the first half of this year showed that (1) companies were raising significant amounts relative to their ARR, (2) crossing $100 million in ARR was a significant threshold that took 7+ years, and (3) profitability declined for high-growth companies. You can read the full report here.

We should see a greater emphasis on ARR, with smaller rounds, and leaner teams, within fintech in 2023.

📊 Stat of the Week

“According to Silicon Valley Bank's November "State of Fintech" report, about 44% of fintechs with under $10 million in annual revenue had less than 12 months of runway as of the end of the third quarter.” (Source)

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Royal Bank of Canada rolled out Swift Go, enabling businesses to send real-time low-value cross-border payments.

📰 Other News

Small businesses are increasingly turning to Zelle for payments, to exploit a tax loophole in which Zelle banks say they don’t have to disclose transactions to the IRS.

Visa is providing pay-by-face technology and animated virtual credit cards to this year’s World Cup, while Italy's Sella Group is piloting a biometric recognition credit card that lets people make payments using their fingerprint.

Experian was tapped to run Singapore’s buy-now-pay-later credit bureau.

The Australian Stock Exchange is writing down A$250 million in its shuttered project to replace market infrastructure with a blockchain.

The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, is partnering with top Japanese banks to launch a digital yen next year.

India’s Bank of Baroda will provide collateral-free loans to small businesses who install solar panels.

Goldman Sachs paid a $4 million fine for mis-labeling ESG products.

It’s not just startups: FIS will cut 1,000s of jobs from its workforce of 65,000 to trim costs.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Klarna launched an open banking product to let startups access open banking services at 15,000+ partner banks.

Plaid launched an ML-based transaction fraud and risk engine named Signal.

Pan-African payments firm Flutterwave launched $endmobile, a remittance payment app for the diaspora.

B2B payment app Balance launched a Shopify integration to let merchants add self-service B2B payments.

Enterprise cash management platform Trovata launched a free version of its cash management platform, used by companies like Square, Eventbrite, and Krispy Kreme.

Nomi Health launched a real-time healthcare payment app.

Remittances provider Wise issued a plastic-substitute eco card.

Bump partnered with Mastercard and cards-as-a-service firm Highnote to launch the Bump Creator Card for creators, which along with routine benefits like no monthly fees or credit checks, takes web3 assets into account.

📰 Other News

Pipe, the buzzy revenue-based-financing marketplace for software businesses, announced that the leadership team is stepping down as the company looks for successors.

TrueLayer will power Coinbase’s open banking payments product, and is looking at stablecoin interoperability. Meanwhile, Coinbase Wallet released a new safety feature informing users of what the impact on their balances will be when they make a transaction, to prevent currency scams, and Uniswap overtook Coinbase as the second-largest exchange trading ethereum, after only Binance. Are DEXs finally replacing CEXs?

Binance, for its part, started a recovery fund for exchanges with distressed assets, while digital currency trading firm Genesis is shuttering entirely.

Elsewhere in stablecoins, you can now pay with USDC via Apple Pay (!) and Cardano’s regulated stablecoin, USDA, is planned to hit the market next year.

UK banking-as-a-service provider Griffin* moved its sandbox out of beta and the US’ Varo Bank became the first neobank to join the Zelle payments network.

Payments provider MoneyGram partnered with Bahranian superapp Beyon on real-time payments. Iceland’s largest telecom Síminn expanded into payments by using Enfuce’s card-as-a-service.

Google is removing all unlicensed Nigerian lending apps from the Play Store by January.

Fintech partner bank Evolve re-stressed to customers that deposits are safe, regardless of its FTX relationship.

NuBank parent Nu Holdings reported a $7.8 million net profit for Q3. Revolut hit 25 million customers.Credit-building app StellarFi crossed $1 million ARR and launched from stealth.

Fintech banking app Dave wants you to know that it is not bankrupt.

Swedish neobank Juni laid off ⅓ of all staff and Indonesia’s GoTo Group laid off 12% of all staff.

Recently-launched accessible credit app Nirvana Money is now shutting down. Immigrant banking-focused providers Stilt and related embedded banking provider Onbo have shut down. And, in an upset that nobody could have seen coming, right after raising $50 million, anti-woke neobank Glorifi is shutting down.

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