Hello Fintech Friends,

News broke this week of two massive potential rounds. Mercury,* the business-focused neobank with over 200,000 customers and $500 million ARR, is reportedly in talks with Sequoia to raise money at a $3 billion valuation, double its 2021 valuation. Conversely, the UK's Rapyd, a provider of payments, mobile wallets, money transfers, card issuing, and fraud protection, is also reportedly raising $300 million at a $3.5 billion valuation – a 60% drop from its 2021 valuation of $9 billion.

Meanwhile, payment processing giant Stripe is considering yet another secondary sale at an $85 billion valuation while open banking data platform Plaid plans to allow $300 to $400 million in secondary share sales in a deal brokered by Goldman.

Private markets are the new (old?) public markets.

If those aren't enough for you, here are 29 more fintech fundraises that happened this week.

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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💸 Venture Financing

• Tabby, the Saudi buy-now-pay-later platform, raised $160 million at a $3.3 billion valuation, becoming MENA's most valuable fintech and setting the stage for an IPO.
• ToneTag, a payment solutions provider, closed a $78 million round.
• Sardine secured $70 million to enhance productivity for fraud and compliance teams.
• Zeta, an Indian provider of banking software to banks and fintech startups, raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation.
• Candid Health obtained an additional $52.5 million to streamline medical billing.
• Financial risk management platform Validus received a $45 million growth equity investment.
• Sgnl raised $30 million for a novel approach to ID security based on zero standing privileges.
• Proxymity attracted $26 million from major banks for its investor communications platform.
• Plasma secured $24 million to launch its own blockchain focused on stablecoin generation.
• Libeen obtained $25 million to build a homebuying platform.
• Comulate raised $20 million to build a platform to enable better financial management for insurance companies.
• Finmo secured $18 million to expand its treasury management services.
• Datalign raised $9 million in seed funding to accelerate AI-powered financial advisory solutions.
• Legends obtained $15 million for its decentralized finance platform.
• InvestNext secured $15 million in a Series B round to enhance its real estate investment platform.
• Raenest received an $11 million investment to build out its platform in Nigeria, which offers freelancers virtual USD, GBP, and EUR accounts.
• Beam raised $11 million for its construction fintech solutions.
• Fifteenth secured $8.25 million in seed funding to focus on founder-centric complex tax solutions.
• Affinity obtained $8 million to scale digital banking in Ghana.
• Trayd raised $4.5 million in seed funding for its construction payroll platform.
• Integral secured €63 million to streamline accounting, taxation, and payroll for small businesses.
• Era raised $6.2 million to pioneer AI-powered wealth care with Agentic AI.
• ETFbook obtained €4 million in Series A funding.
• Bluebook secured €2.4 million for its AI-powered accounting solutions.
• Limited raised $3 million in pre-seed funding to redefine global banking through stablecoins and self-custody.
• Mundi secured $2.5 million for its capital markets platform.
• Vigil raised $1.3 million to enhance its modern data platform for the annuity industry.
• OneID, a UK provider of bank-verified digital identification services, secured new funding.
• Datox secured pre-seed funding to simplify regulatory reporting for financial services firms.

New Report: Insights on Security, Compliance, and AI for UK Businesses from Vanta. Read the report to find out more and how you could be missing out.

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