Our Dubai and Abu Dhabi Fintech Trek kicks off in just a week (TWIF 12/4)

Also, India's CRED acquires an underwriter and Chinese fintech giant MICT buys a telco

Hello Fintech Friends,

This week, I arrive in the Persian Gulf for our first international Fintech Trek, which will take place over four days in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in partnership with the MENA Fintech Association.

The Gulf has been a quickly-growing epicenter of financial services innovation for the Middle East and Arabic-speaking world, and This Week in Fintech is excited to convene 25 attendees to meet with over 50 entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, and banks.

The summit will feature speakers from the Egyptian Central Bank and the Saudi Neom project, financial services giants like Visa, Stripe, Binance, and Checkout.com, the general partners of VentureSouq and Nclude, the founders of M2P, Pluto, iOLPay, Thndr, and more.

Attendees will join us at cultural sites like the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Museum of the Future, and Louvre, as well as for lunches and dinners at local restaurants.

I could not be more excited for the Trek, and we will have many photos to share on the other side of it.

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below.

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☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Indian consumer credit issuing startup CRED, last valued at $6.4 billion, is acquiring underwriting startup CreditVidya, which was last valued at $30 million.
US fintech giant Intuit, owner of TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, will acquire financial health startup SeedFi, the maker of Credit Karma’s Credit Builder.
Chinese crypto exchange giant Binance acquired Japanese crypto exchange service provider Sakura Exchange BitCoin.
UK small business payments provider Equals Group will acquire open banking platform Roqqett for up to £2.25 million.
MICT, developer of a consumer fintech suite in China, acquired telco financial services provider Tingo for $1.5 billion.
UK business banking platform Tide acquired small business credit issuer Funding Options.
European marketplace payment provider MangoPay will acquire AI fraud detection and prevention company Nethone.
BVNK, a UK crypto payment platform for businesses, acquired SPS to get an electronic money institution license.
Mastercard will make a minority investment in Conferma Pay, a virtual card issuer for business travel.
Decimal, an accounting software provider, acquired KPMG’s KPMG Spark.
Bestpass, a payment and toll provider for commercial fleets, will acquire trucking tax e-filing system ExpressTruckTax.
Crypto exchange CrossTower will acquire digital asset prime brokerage BEQUANT.
Lime Financial acquired peer to peer loan aggregator LendingRobot.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

In a blockbuster banking deal, global bank HSBC will sell off its entire Canadian retail operation - 130 branches - to Royal Bank of Canada for C$13.5 billion ($10 billion) in cash.
Mexico's Banca Mifel will work with investors including private equity firm Apollo and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to buy Citigroup’s Mexican retail bank.
State Street called off its acquisition of investment bank Brown Brothers’ investment unit.