Hello Fintech Friends,

I think I am in the wrong business, which is working in fintech but not starting an endless slew of new companies. There seems to be a bottomless supply of capital to invest in fintech startups these days and it shows no signs of abating.

33 fundraises this week may be the new record. I’ll bet we break it next week.

Please find another week of financings and transactions below.

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💵 Financings

• Robinhood competitor Public.com is raising $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation.
• BharatPe, the Indian service that allows offline merchants to accept digital payments, raised $108 million at a $900 million valuation.
• Small business 401(k) provider Human Interest raised $55 million in additional Series C funding.
• Nymbus, a banking-as-a-service provider, raised a $53 million Series C.
• Symend, an alternative financing solution for bill payments, picked up a $43 million Series B extension.
• Northmill, a Swedish neobank, raised $30 million.
• UpEquity, a mortgage origination platform, closed a $25 million Series A.
• Libeo, a French B2B payments platform, raised a €20 million Series A.
• CapBay, a peer-to-peer supply chain financing platform out of Malaysia, raised a $20 million Series A.
• Neobank Fair, focused on underserved consumers, raised $20 million.
• Commercial banking technology provider Trade Ledger raised a £13.5 million Series A.
• Mesh Payments raised a $13 million round for its cardless corporate payments technology.
• Capitalize raised a $12.5 million Series A to help consumers manage retirement investments.
• SoLo Funds, which wants to replace payday loans with a “community-based, market-driven model for individual lending,” raised $10 million.
• Globacap, an alternative asset management platform, raised a $9 million Series A from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
• Alternative credit card startup TomoCredit raised $7 million.
• Digital banking and lending startup Milo raised $6 million in seed funding.
• Hubx, a UK business-to-business capital platform, raised $5.5 million.
• Millions, an anonymously-owned fintech startup that claims to be giving away millions of dollars on Twitter, raised $3 million.
• Pngme, an African financial data platform, raised a $3 million seed.
• Tickr, an investment app for retail investors to gain exposure to impact companies, raised £2.5 million in funding.
• Ledn, a Canadian savings and lending platform backed by digital currencies, raised a $2.7 million funding round.
• Wombat, a UK fractional investing platform, raised a £2 million seed round.
• Zeta, a fintech focused on couples and families, raised a $1.5 million pre-seed.
• Level, which provides financial services to gig workers, raised a $1.5 million pre-seed.
• Colombian startup Treinta raised $500,000 for its microbusiness financial app.
• Safepay, a Pakistani digital merchant payments solution, raised an undisclosed amount from Stripe.
• Koa, a Kenyan savings and investment platform, raised an undisclosed amount from Catalyst Fund.
• Stir, which develops a ‘CFO suite’ of creator tools for influencers, raised from Andreessen Horowitz at a $100 million valuation.
• Seba, a Swiss digital bank, will issue its Series B shares to investors entirely on a blockchain.
• Klarna is looking to raise $500 million at a $30 billion valuation.
• Monzo is in the market to raise another £50 million.
• Merchant acquiring startup Pollinate is in talks to raise $50 million.
• The UK’s Longevity Card kicked off a £415,000 crowdfunding campaign.
• (While this newsletter covers fintech, and not crypto, it is notable that DeFi blockchain network Celo raised $20 million to build a decentralized peer-to-peer Venmo competitor.)

☯️ Exits and M&A

💻 Fintech

• Online mortgage lender LoanDepot priced a downsized IPO, raising $54 million at $14 compared with plans to offer at $19 to $21.
• Private equity firm AnaCap sold Czech neobank Equa to the Czech legacy bank Raiffeisen Bank International.
• National credit reporting agency Equifax acquired open banking transaction data and analytics company AccountScore.
• Options trading tech provider DASH Financial Technologies agreed to be acquired by ION Investment Group.

🏦 Bank

• Natixis, a French bank plagued by issues following the financial crisis, will be taken private by its parent and majority shareholder, the financial group BPCE, in a $4.5 billion deal.
• Private equity group Lone Star (which owns Germany’s IKB Deutsche Industriebank and Portugal’s Novo Banco) is considering taking private Natwest’s Irish division, Ulster Bank.
• Private equity firms Carlyle and Certares settled their lawsuit over a failed AmEx Travel bid.

💲 Investment Management

• Private equity firm TDR Capital made a bid for Arrow, which purchases defaulted customer accounts from retail banks. The bid would value the firm at £540 million.
• Private equity firm Ares scrapped its $4.9 billion bid for Australian wealth manager AMP.

📈 SPACs

• MoneyLion will merge with Fusion Acquisition Corp. at a post-transaction enterprise value of $2.4 billion (and an estimated equity value of $2.9 billion from the contribution of up to $526 million in cash proceeds from the transaction).
• Opportunity Financial, a platform focused on consumer credit enablement, agreed to merge with the FG New America Acquisition Corp SPAC, which would value the combined enterprise at $800 million.
• Austerlitz Acquisition I, Bill Foley’s fintech-focused SPAC, filed to raise $500 million.
• Ex-SoFi and current Figure CEO Mike Cagney filed for a $250 million IPO for his SPAC, Figure Acquisition I.
• Freedom Acquisition I, a fintech SPAC led by former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, filed for a $250 million SPAC.
• EJF Acquisition, a fintech SPAC, filed for a $250 million IPO.
• FinTech Evolution Acquisition filed for a $200 million IPO.
• Evo Acquisition, a SPAC focused on financial services, priced a $109 million IPO.

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