Hello Fintech Friends,

2021 was the "risk on year" in fintech venture.

And 2022 was the hangover. Funding dried up and investors stopped taking calls from all but the safest fintechs, as high-profile explosions like Fast, Bolt, FTX, TomoCredit, and Synapse had a chilling effect on the sector. This left a lot of strong founders with great ideas and strong tracton stranded in between rounds – but when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and so it was refreshing to see African crypto exchange Yellow Card – which sits at the intersection of two fintech sectors investors had written off as 'too risky – raise a $33M Series C this week on the back of transaction volumes hitting $3B.

Hopefully we see more funds returning to Africa soon, because if this week's Lagos Fintech Meetup was any indication, the ecosystems from Lagos to Nairobi to Cape Town to Cairo are still going strong:

TWIF Lagos Fintech Happy Hour (October 2024)

465 new items added to shared album

Google Photos

And on the other end of the spectrum, if you missed Jevgenis' great monthly writeup on how public fintechs are growing – and how the TWIF Index is outperforming the broader market – you can check it out here:

Signals: it’s been a good year for public fintech companies

Hello, Fintech Friends! September was a quiet month. It’s one of those “off-season” months when companies have completed reporting their previous quarter and are focused on delivering great results for the upcoming earnings season. So the most notable event of the month was the Federal Reserve (finally) cutting the fed

This Week in FintechJevgenijs Kazanins

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

(PS: Have feedback for us? 👍👎 Let us know!)

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📊 Stat of the Week

A study from Innovate Finance and Vested Impact found that 98% of fintechs improved productivity in the UK, 39% are increasing and promoting financial inclusion, and 26% are dedicated to protecting data privacy.

💸 Venture Financing

• Contabilizei, a Brazilian startup which automates accounting for small businesses and self-employed professionals, raised $125 million.
• Agrolend, a Brazilian agricultural lending company, raised a $53 million Series C.
• Vanilla, a provider of estate planning software for financial advisers and wealth management firms, raised $35 million.
• Yellow Card, a crypto platform launched in Nigeria in 2019, which has since become Africa's most-funded crypto exchange, raised a $33 million Series C.
• Bitnomial, which is building a regulated derivatives market for digital assets, raised $25 million led by strategic investor Ripple.
• Tebi, a financial platform for independent hospitality and retail businesses founded by Adyen alums, raised €20 million.
• Omnea, a platform that leverages AI to give companies more control over their procurement spend, raised a $20 million Series A.
• Solv, a bitcoin staking protocol, raised $11 million.
• Kick, an AI for bookkeeping startup, raised a $9 million seed round.
• Predicate, a startup to facilitate crypto transaction approvals, founded by two Celo alums, raised $7 million.
• Concourse, an AI to automate financial tasks, raised $4.7 million.
• Acquired, a payments platform specialising in recurring commerce, raised £4 million.
• Diesta, a British payment operations provider for the insurance industry, raised a $3.8 million seed.
• MyFO, a platform for family offices and wealth management professionals, raised a $3.5 million seed round.
• OCTA, a Dubai-based accounts receivable management for small businesses, raised a $2.25 million pre-seed.
• Kyriba, a treasury management and liquidity provider for enterprises, sold off a minority stake in the business to General Atlantic at a $3 billion valuation.
• Marketnode, a Singapore-based digital market infrastructure provider, raised strategic funding from European exchange Euroclear.

💵 Debt Financing

• Asset manager Blue Owl agreed to buy up to $2 billion of consumer installment loans from fintech lender Upstart. 
• Wealth platform and student lender SoFi reached a deal to use $2 billion from Fortress Investment Group for the origination of personal loans.
• Neobank TBC in Uzbekistan raised a $10 million credit facility to bolster its loans to customers. 

💰 Venture Funds

• Rerail, an angel fund for fintech startups, closed $20 million. 

Join leaders from JPMorgan, E*TRADE, Atomic, Revolut and more at The Big Deal, a virtual charity poker tournament with live dealers and curated tables. Compete with your industry peers for bragging rights and a chance to choose the charity for a $1,000 donation. Free to sign up — presented by april.

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