Exits & Deep Reads

Two years after a $9B SPAC fell through, Circle files for IPO 🚀 (TWIF 1/14)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Want to work with This Week in Fintech?

We're looking for a few great people to help us expand our events and manage our partnerships. If that sounds like you, please reach out!

workwith@thisweekinfintech.com

📺

Sponsored Content

Without access to precise, detailed, and consistent merchant information needed to authorize credit card transactions most accurately, card issuers lose billions of dollars of interchange revenue each year. Enter Spade, the fastest and most accurate provider of real-time merchant intelligence for the card ecosystem, helping companies like Mercury, Sardine, Ramp, and Unit authorize more transactions, create innovative card products, and improve fraud model performance by over 15%.

Learn more here.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

📖 Reads of the Week

I love Matt Browns' writeup to start the year, Fintech from first principles. I think he does a great job summarizing the success path of some of the most robust fintechs of the last decade:

"Today’s winners started with wedges that increased accessibility:

1: Start with a wedge product that expands accessibility for new segments.

2: Improve cost over time with scale.

3: Expand to two or more adjacent products, especially if their value props can subsidize one another."

Elsewhere:

2024 predictions from Fintech Business Weekly’s Jason Mikula

FT Partners' CEO Monthly FinTech Market Update & Analysis (January '24)

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

USDC stablecoin issuer Circle filed a confidential S-1 to the SEC for an IPO. USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, with a $25 billion market cap. Circle previously planned to go public via a SPC in 2021, with a February 2022 valuation reported at $9 billion, but the deal fell through.
MobiKwik, an Indian provider of digital payments, credit, investment and insurance products, is looking to raise about $84.2 million in an IPO. This is also the second time the company has filed; it previously sought to raise $250 million via IPO in 2021. It's BNPL product saw credit disbursals of $490 million in 2023.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

China's Ant Group is reportedly preparing to acquire Dutch payments firm Multisafepay for $200 million in order to expand further into Western markets.
Etherscan, a leading blockchain explorer for Ethereum that founded in 2015, announced its acquisition of Solscan, a similar infrastructure provider for Solana.
Private equity firm Great Hill Partners is looking for a buyer for One, a payments platform that’s used by insurance carriers, and has hired an advisor to run a process for the fintech. One is expected to sell for $1 billion to $2 billion.
Bloomerang, a fundraising platform, acquired Qgiv, a rival.
Open banking solutions provider Trustly completed its acquisition of European recurring payments provider SlimPay.
Sovos, a compliance technology solutions and services provider, acquired Aatrix, a company which specializes in payroll tax forms.
Thompson Reuters put in a bid to acquire Sweden's Pagero, the developer of an e-document platform to simplify e-invoicing and digital transformation in finance, for $627 million.
Italian financial services specialist DoValue is in talks with Elliott Management to buy its Gardant servicing unit.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

BlackRock announced that it will buy to buy private-equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion in cash and stock.
Genstar Capital recapitalized Cetera Financial, a San Diego-based independent broker-dealer.

Figure 3 on the UK's recent Future of Payments Report highlights a key challenge for open banking payments

50% of consumers want a payment method they are familiar with. pic.twitter.com/fYLeAhEUYZ
— Michael Jenkins (@MJenkins88) January 5, 2024

Every time I see these stories I think about this picture pic.twitter.com/1vJQC6cYWj
— Simon Taylor (@sytaylor) January 5, 2024

In Q3 2023, after several quarters of heavy losses, Klarna posted an operating income. Is there a reason to think that Affirm $AFRM will not be able to reach GAAP profitability? pic.twitter.com/qCT3Xiahjz
— Jevgenijs Kazanins (@jevgenijs) January 7, 2024

tell a short story in one picture pic.twitter.com/vP4sr1k1D9
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) January 9, 2024

Some key quotes from @HesterPeirce's 🔥🔥🔥 statement on the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs (honestly makes me wonder if it's ever awkward in the SEC office 😂):

"Today marks the end of an unnecessary, but consequential, saga."

"For reasons I have explained many times before,…
— Laura Shin (@laurashin) January 10, 2024