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The Front Page of Global Fintech

The the largest fintech community in the world. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest in news opinions, and all things financial technology.

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This Week in Fintech (10/24)

This Week in Fintech (10/24)

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.