Hey Fintech Friends,

Amid bank runs, an AI frenzy, and a shifting venture landscape, one concept quietly drew attention from fintech investors in Q1: Carbon credit markets.

For new readers, Signals is the premium subscriber edition of TWIF designed to get you away from the headlines and to explore the larger trendlines. Each quarter, we break down four key questions on fintech activity:

1. Which concepts are getting funded?
2. Where are exits, M&A, and SPACs concentrated?
3. Which firms are raising debt and venture funds for fintech?
4. Which products were launched over the last quarter?

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Overall activity

Fintechs raised a total of $12.1 billion in Q1, over half of which was comprised of Stripe’s nail-biting, employee-RSU-triggering Series I. Excluding Stripe from the dataset, fintech funding decreased by $114 million, or 2%, from the prior quarter.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 ticked up 7%, Bitcoin climbed 70%, and public fintechs investors seem to be refocusing their attention from high revenue growth to profitability:

Let’s dive into fintech activity in Q1.

Which concepts are getting funded? 🤑

Funding was relatively even across rounds as fintechs closed chunkier late-stage deals, with Series D and Series E round sizes ballooning by 98% and 183% respectively over the prior quarter. Notably, Rippling notably pulled off an emergency $500 million Series E in twelve hours to cover payroll for 50,000 employees whose incoming funds were frozen overnight during SVB’s collapse.

Areas that saw the highest activity were:

• Payments B2B & B2C, led by Stripe’s $6.5B Series I, PhonePe raising $650M (and becoming India’s most valuable payments company), and Till Payments’ $70M Series D.
• Payroll & employee benefits, Rippling’s $500M Series E, Rain’s $66 million Series A, and Rankmi’s $48 million Series A.
• Consumer financing, led by Kredivo’s $270M Series D, KreditBee’s $100M Series D extension, and Tabby’s $58M Series C.
• Investment infrastructure, led by Juniper Square’s $133M Series D, Equisoft’s $125M raise and Masttro’s $43M raise.
• Defi infrastructure, led by Taurus’ $65 million Series B, Coincover’s $30 million Series B, and CyberX’s $15 million raise.