Stripe starts the clock on Schrödinger's IPO (TWIF 1/29)

Joelle Storet, L'Audace

Hello Fintech Friends,

We had a great guest writeup this week from Lakestar investor Youmna Sirgi on what the launch of the Wise platform tells us about fintech bundling. If you’re interested in the transition from direct to embedded fintech services, and what happens to an ecosystem when everyone starts referencing common service providers, I’d give it a read!

Also, for anyone in New York next week, I’ll be joining a panel with fintech rockstars Nicole Casperson, Willa Tellekson-Flash, and Tom White at Barclays’ Rise incubator. Come by and say hi!

👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Will they? Won’t they? Fintech giant Stripe hired Goldman and JP Morgan to set a one-year timetable on deciding whether to go public or to sell employee shares in a private transaction.
Chinese financial literacy education provider QuantaSing priced a $40 million American depository share IPO on the Nasdaq.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Regulatory risk intelligence firm Corlytics (not Cardlytics) acquired SparQ, a regulatory monitoring platform spun out of ING for €5 million in total compensation.
Vencora, a Canadian fintech rollup platform, acquired Quarzo Tecnología, a Costa Rica-based provider of software for savings funds, mutual funds and cooperatives.
Small business financial health platform Nav acquired the assets of Nuula, a business-focused credit provider.
Law firms Orrick and Buckley are combining to form a joint fintech law firm.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Global financial services provider Apex Group announced that it will acquire the Irish depositary business of Bank of America.
The Qatar Investment Authority boosted its stake in Credit Suisse from 5.6% to 6.87%.

The Fintech Fund
GP: @nikmilanovic

The Fintech Fund is a $10M fund investing in the top 1% of fintech and decentralized finance startups globally. Its led by Nik Milanović, who previously spent 10 years as a fintech operator as Head of BD at Google Pay and other roles. pic.twitter.com/6Rck4oac2u
— Signature Block (@signatureblock_) January 24, 2023

Happy Open Banking / 1033 SBREFA comment due date 🎂
— Reggie (@ReggieCYoung) January 25, 2023

“65% of customers expect primary banks to be fully online in the next 5 years”

But I thought fintech Twitter decided neobanks are dead https://t.co/4JlkGdMZfy
— ~JON (@joncoffey) January 23, 2023