Hello Fintech Friends,

A few readers have let us know that the Saturday newsletter gets truncated by inboxes because it’s too long, so we’re going to play around with the newsletter format. This week, we included our Fintech Around the World and Deeper Reads sections on Friday; next week, we may break them out into their own separate Sunday newsletter.

Now for something more fun… who wants to join us in Bogotá on March 23rd?

Please find another week of fintech financings and exits below.

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, we may be able to help - please see our primer for more details and reach out to nik@thisweekinfintech.com.

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💼 Open Role Spotlight

Come find your place on the team at the most inspiring fintech startups! Browse open roles on This Week in Fintech’s job board.

💸 Venture Financing

• ElasticRun, an Indian marketplace that provides SMB financing, raised $300 million.
• Flutterwave, the Nigerian payments infrastructure platform, raised a $250 million Series D at a $3 billion valuation.
• Genesis, a UK low-code platform for financial applications, raised a $200 million Series C.
• Spotter, a financing company for musician back-catalogs, raised a $200 million Series D.
• Funding Societies, a Singaporean digital lender, raised $144 million in Series C+ funding and $150 million in debt.
• Payhawk, a corporate card provider, raised $100 million.
• Akulaku, an Indonesian digital banking platform, raised $100 million from Siam Commercial Bank.
• Atom Bank, a UK neobank, raised £75 million in new funding.
• Check, a payroll infrastructure provider, raised a $75 million Series C from investors including Stripe.
• Sharegain, a UK securities lending company, raised $64 million.
• Found, a self-employed business banking startup, raised a $60 million Series B.
• Thought Machine, a core banking provider, raised £40 million from its newest client, Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo.
• Coast *, a fleet and transportation payments solution, raised a $27.5 million Series A.
• Vitesse PSP, a payment and treasury management platform, raised a $26 million Series B.
• Stitch *, which is building Plaid for Africa, raised a $21 million Series A, including from TrueLayer and PayPal.
• Banked, a pay-by-bank solution, raised $20 million from Bank of America.
• Flow, a provider of private fund formation and management software, raised a $20 million Series A.
• Rainbow, a digital wallet for Ethereum NFTs, raised an $18 million Series A.
• Mundi, a cross-border trade finance provider, raised a $16 million Series A.
• PatientFi, a healthcare payments and lending product, raised $15 million.
• Trullion, an Israeli financial automation and accounting startup, raised a $15 million Series A.
• Tilled, a payfac-as-a-service provider, raised an $11 million Series A.
• Paywallet, a payroll-link remittances company, raised an $8.8 million Series A.
• Wealthy.in, an Indian wealth management platform, raised a $7.5 million Series A.
• Multis, a software layer to help companies manage their crypto finances, raised $7 million.
• Mezubo, a Colombian auto lender, raised a $5.5 million round.
• Cable, a UK service for monitoring financial crime, raised $5.3 million in seed funding.
• Passthrough, a fund management platform, raised $5 million.
• Trace Finance, a Brazilian cross-border banking provider, raised a $4.3 million seed round.
• Earnipay, a Nigerian earned wage access startup, raised a $4 million seed.
• Crowdforce, a Nigerian agency banking provider, raised $3.6 million.
• Fiat Republic, a banking app for the metaverse, raised a $3.5 million seed.
• MoneyHash, an Egyptian unified payments API, raised a $3 million pre-seed.
• Qashio, a United Arab Emirates small business spend management app, raised a $2.5 million pre-seed.
• ViaBill, a buy-now-pay-later provider for physical retail, raised a $120 million combination of equity and debt.
• Lunar, a Danish neobank, received an investment from Will Ferrell.
• CardWorks, a consumer finance servicer and processor, raised strategic funding from Parthenon.

💰 Venture Funds

Everyone gets a fintech venture fund!

• OpenSea launched its own investment arm and grant program.
• Payments and financial infrastructure company Stronghold launched Stronghold Capital to invest $100 million into fintech startups.
• Swedish venture capital firm Wellstreet put together a new $40 million fintech fund.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

• Yesterday, we touched on Affirm’s turbulent stock price and market implications for late-stage private fintechs; as if on cue, today, Chime announced that it will delay its IPO til the second half of the year.
• Safe Harbor, a provider of financial services to the cannabis sector, agreed to go public at an implied $327m valuation
• Berkshire Hathaway released a portion of its Visa and Mastercard holdings and increased its exposure to Nubank.
• Circle, the digital assets payment and treasury infrastructure solution, restructured its SPAC merger agreement with Concord Acquisition at a new $9 billion valuation (where the original was $4.5 billion).

🤝 M&A - Fintech

• Private equity firm Apollo is nearing a deal to buy Worldline’s $2.3 billion payment terminal business.
• Private equity firm Madison Dearborn will acquire MoneyGram, long the target of takeover attempts, for $1 billion.
• Digital currency infrastructure provider Fireblocks acquired crypto payment platform First Digital for $100 million.
• Fintech lender Self Financial announced that it will acquire rent and utilities tracking service RentTrack to expand into credit scoring.
• Core banking conglomerate FIS acquired embedded payments provider Payrix to boost its e-commerce offering.
• Loan servicer Concord Servicing announced an investment from private equity firm Inverness Graham.
• Accounts receivable software provider Billtrust acquired electronic invoicing provider Order2Cash.
• International neobank Revolut acquired Indian money transfer and cross-border currency app Arvog.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

• India’s Axis Bank will buy Citi’s $2.5 billion India retail banking business.
• Spanish bank BBVA acquired a $300 million stake in Brazilian payments provider Neon Payments.
• Blackstone acquired a majority stake in asset and wealth management company ASK.

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