In financial services, quantum computing is big business 🖥️ (TWIF 1/20)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Are you not entertained?

That's how we feel looking at 23 new fintech funding announcements this week, including $75 million for an earned wage access provider, $100 million for a Chinese digital asset exchange, and $300 million for a bank-focused quantum computing platform.

All in all, fintechs raised over $700 million this week.

Please find another week of fintech financing events below. (PS: Have feedback for us? 👍👎 Let us know!)

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📊 Stat of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup with many financial services institutions as customers, raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation from JP Morgan.
HashKey, the operator of two Hong Kong-licensed crypto exchanges, raised $100 million at a $1.2 billion valuation.
DailyPay, the earned wage access provider to workers, raised $75 million in new equity at a $1.75 billion valuation.
Digital Onboarding, a customer engagement solution built for banks, raised $58 million.
Flowdesk, a French market-maker-as-a-service for crypto and tradfi institutions, raised $50 million.
Pomelo, an Argentinian provider of payment infrastructure, raised a $40 million Series B.
10x Banking, a UK provider of a core banking system, raised £35 million from investors including BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase.
Billink, a Dutch buy-now-pay-later provider, raised €29.5 million from German bank Varengold Bank.
Kashable, a provider of credit and financial wellness solutions to employees, raised $25.6m
Vertice, an expense management tool focused on software spend, raised $25 million.
Panacea, a neobank and provider of loan, banking and insurance services, raised a $24.5 million Series B.
Kiln, a provider of white-label infrastructure-focused crypto staking technology, raised $17 million.
Carmoola, a British car financing platform, raised a £15.5 post-Series A.
Prometeo, a Uruguayan startup building open banking products to function across Latin America, raised a $13 million Series A.
Woo, the provider of a crypto exchange, raised $9 million in order to improve liquidity.
PredictAP, an invoice ingestion & coding solution for real estate accounts payable, raised an $8 million Series A.
Briq, a startup that uses AI to automate finances in construction, raised an $8 million Series B extension at at $150 million valuation.
Upswing, an Indian provider of a multi-bank deposit product, raised a $4.2 million pre-Series A.
Zeal, an Egyptian app which allows users to link a payment method to the app's QR code, raised $4 million.
Tandem, an app for couples to manage their finances together (below), raised $3.7 million.
Canza Finance, a Nigerian cryptocurrency platform, raised $2.3 million to get a banking license and build DeFi products.
Depasify, a Spanish startup bridging traditional financial services and digital assets, raised €2 million.
Truewind, an accounting copilot, raised $1 million.
CollateralEdge, a solution that enables community and regional banks to structure more competitive commercial loans, raised strategic funding.

💵 Debt Financing

Victory Park Capital provided retail finance provider Zip with a new $225 million credit facility.

💰 Venture Funds

ThomVest raised $250 million for a new fund focused on fintech, cybersecurity, and AI.

📖 Reads of the Week

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Kazakhstani provider of online banking, payments, and marketplace Kaspi set terms for its US IPO. The company plans to raise $873 million.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

American Express sold Accertify, whose technology helps retailers prevent credit card fraud, to private-equity firm Accel-KKR.
Encompass Corporation, a KYC provider, acquired two compliance startups - CoorpID and Blacksmith - developed by Dutch bank ING.
Onbe, the former Wirecard North America that merged with daVinci Payments in 2020, is reportedly looking for a buyer. It is valued at around $2 billion.
Ukheshe, African provider of a single API to integrate fully digital financial services, including wallet and payment methods, acquired acquired EFT, a pan-African payment solutions and financial switching provider.
Private equity firm Rockbridge acquired TouchFuse, a platform that allows financial advisors nationwide to manage the full spectrum of their marketing campaigns.
EquiLend, a securities lending platform, was acquired by private equity firm WCAS.
Ascent Technologies, a provider of AI-enabled compliance automation solutions for financial services companies, was acquired by private equity firm Edgewater.
Bain Capital is considering a sale of British payroll firm Zellis that could value the company at about £2 billion.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

UK boutique investment banks Panmure Gordon and rival Liberum agreed to merge, creating Britain's largest investment bank.

Look at this vintage performance for an unsecured consumer loan lender.

Default rates for 2021+ cohorts are 3x-4x of their pre-COV*D cohorts.

Pre-COV*D:
4 year cumulative defaults tapping out at 5%-10%

Post-COV*D:
2 year cumulative defaults tapping out at 15%-20%

A number of… pic.twitter.com/y6lhm1Oyvv
— Rohit Mittal (@rohitdotmittal) January 15, 2024

Just off the phone w/ 2 execs of major processors. The payments competitive environment has changed "merchants don't want new.. they want cheaper". This cost focus has killed the innovation budgets in processors, igniting price competition in a race to the bottom. This also…
— Tom Noyes (@noyesclt) January 17, 2024