Fundraises

Phantom's $150 million shows Solana is here to stay (TWIF 1/25)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Catch up on the week in fintech if you missed any of it:

Being in NYC today and working in Stablecoins/onchain payments is equivalent to:

1. Athens during the golden age
(Socrates, Plato, Hippocrates, etc.)

2. Florence during the renaissance
(Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Alighieri, etc.)

3. Detroit during the early auto boom
(Ford,…
— Dante Reminick (@DanteReminick) January 17, 2025

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

(👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know! Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm)

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📊 Stat of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

Phantom, a crypto wallet popular in the Solana ecosystem, raised a $150 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation.
Highnote, a card issuance and program management platform, secured $90 million in a Series B round, announcing an expansion into U.S. merchant acquiring.
Fundraise Up secured $70 million in growth funding to enhance donation platforms for nonprofits.
Vertice raised $50 million for its AI-powered SaaS spend management platform.
Fundment, a UK-based wealthtech firm, raised $45 million to scale its operations.
Method*, an embedded debt repayment and financial customer data API, raised a $41.5 million Series B.
Paytrack, a Brazilian corporate expense management startup, raised $37 million.
Tapline secured a €20 million pre-Series A to bolster its digital finance platform.
Zepz, a cross border payments provider, added $20 million from the IFC to its recently-announced $267 million Series F.
LeapXpert, a financial communications compliance platform, raised a $20 million Series B.
Qomodo raised $13.9 million to expand its BNPL services for Italy’s main street retailers.
GTE, an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange, raised $10 million.
Moniepoint, an African banking and payments platform, added $10 million from Visa to its $110 million Series C.
Sunfish raised $10 million in a Series A round to support IVF financing and predictive technology.
MoneyHash, an Egyptian paytech firm, secured $5.2 million to expand its payment infrastructure.
Aslan raised $5 million to enhance its employee pay platform.
GRVT, backed by Abu Dhabi-based VC, raised $5 million to support its zkSync-based crypto exchange.
Pluto, a UAE-based expense management company, secured $4.1 million in Pre-Series A funding.
Smart Data Foundry raised $3 million to operate its financial data service.
Open Payments, based in Sweden, raised $3 million to develop its open banking solutions.
CapeZero raised a $2.6 million seed round to advance clean energy software.
Hamilton secured $1.7 million to tokenize real-world assets on Bitcoin.
Lune, based in the UAE, closed $1.5 million in funding.
Sonex secured $1 million in seed funding to develop its AI-driven DeFi platform.

💵 Debt Financing

Liberty Mutual Investments made a $750 million commitment to buy consumer buy-now-pay-later loans from Affirm.
Recharge, a Dutch prepaid payments platform, secured a £38 million facility from ABN Amro to fund its “ambitious M&A strategy.”

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