Hello Fintech Friends,

This week I caught up with some former colleagues now at Marqeta, Worldpay, Stripe, Salesforce, and Recurly in-person to talk about the future of payments innovation. It reminded me how valuable it is to be able to have these kinds of conversations in-person. In-spite of all the future of remote work hype these days, I think working face-to-face will still ultimately win out.

Open role spotlight

Vayu, a stealth-mode startup founded by former Bread Finance CTO/COO Daniel Simon, is looking to hire a Fintech Product Manager in New York.

Financings

• Scandinavian challenger bank Lunar raised a €40 million Series C and plans to enter the buy-now-pay-later lending space.
• UK challenger bank Lanistar raised £15 million in new funding.
• Silent Eight, which uses machine learning to combat financial crime, raised a $15 million funding round.
• Mexican challenger bank Klar raised a new $15 million round of funding.
• Freelancer-focused challenger bank Lili raised a $15 million Series A.
• Zest AI, which offers software for lenders to evaluate risk in their models, raised $15 million in funding.
• Possible Finance, a short-term installment lender working to disrupt the payday lending space, raised an $11 million round.
• Pulley, which is building a cap table management tool to rival Carta’s, raised a $10 million Series A from Stripe.
• No-code AI platform Signzy announced a $5.4 million strategic investment from Mastercard.
• San Francisco startup Kettle launched to create a reinsurance product that predicts losses from wildfires, and raised $4.7 million in seed funding.
• Wirex, which offers a contactless card for crypto payments, raised £3.7 million in a crowdfunding campaign.
• Cloud-based card payments processor Silverflow announced a €2.6 million seed round.
• insha, a German neobank that gives users access to financial services that align with moral principles (such as Sharia-compliant products), raised a €2.5 million seed round.
• PayByCar, an in-vehicle payment platform, raised a $2 million pre-seed round.
• FinLocker, a personal finance manager, announced an equity investment from Transunion and new commercial partnership agreement.
• Global Processing Services, a payment processor that works with neobanks, announced a strategic investment from Visa.
• Point-of-sale platform PredictSpring raised a strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures.

Exits and M&A

• Ant Financial’s dual listing was given regulator approval in Hong Kong this week; the firm is expected to raise $35 billion.
• Australian shareholder registry firm Link turned down a A$2.76 billion takeover offer from Carlyle Group, but is open to other buyers.
• Chinese wealth management fintech Lufax will seek up to $2.36 billion in its US IPO.
• First Citizens Bank announced that it will buy CIT, in a deal valued at $2.2 billion that will make the combined entity the 19th largest bank in the US.
• Sun Life Financial will pay $338 million for a controlling stake in Crescent Capital.
• Mortgage lender and servicer AmeriHome will IPO, at a valuation of up to $1.3 billion.
• Mortgage company Guild announced an IPO priced at $15 per share.
• Mortgage originator Caliber Home Loans will IPO, offering 23 million shares at a price range of $14-16 per share.
• American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. announced that Brookfield will acquire 20% of the business for $37 a share - a 15% premium on the stock price.
• Payments platform Syncapay acquired the North American assets of collapsed payment service provider Wirecard.
• Private equity firm Thoma Bravo will acquire financial risk management firm AxiomSL.
• Canadian mortgage business Filogix acquired Doorr, a point-of-sale mortgage application software.
• Financial information service Factset announced its acquisition of Truvalue Labs to expand its ESG data offering.
• Moody’s Corporation announced its acquisition of Acquire Media to strengthen its KYC offering.
• Lee Equity Partners will acquire Simplicity Group, a financial products distribution business, from Aquiline Capital Partners.
• Accounts receivables payment service providers Versapay and Solupay announced that the two companies will merge.
• PayPal is said to be in advanced talks to buy a crypto custody firm, including with BitGo, as it adds cryptocurrency functionality for its users in 2021.
• Wells Fargo is exploring a sale of its asset management arm.
• Allworth Financial is expected to sell itself soon to Lightyear Capital and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
• Deutsche Bank is looking to sell IT services division Postbank Systems, possibly to India’s Tata Consultancy Services.

SPACs

• Payments service provider Billtrust announced that it will go public through a merger with the South Mountain Merger Corp SPAC, in a deal valued at $1.3 billion.
• Payments firm Paya will go public through a merger with FinTech Acquisition Corp III.
• Fintech SPAC Lefteris Acquisition filed to raise a $225 million IPO.
• Yellowstone Acquisition, a SPAC targeting the financial services sector, raised $125 million but sold fewer units than expected.