Hello Fintech Friends,

To all of our readers in the US and around the world - Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy the downtime this long weekend with a super-issue from us, condensing the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday reads into one newsletter.

(And don't forget to RSVP to the Fintech Formal.)

💼 Fintech Job of the Week

• Looking for your next adventure in fintech? Come check out our job board and join our Talent Collective.
• Employers: Want to get in front of 80,000+ weekly readers? Post a job here.

💬 Quote of the Week

📊 Stat of the Week

"European fintech lending startups have racked up over €11B in debt facilities in 2023 to help them lend to consumers and businesses. [...] Based on findings from 95 in-depth interviews and due diligence of 27 fintechs, credit fund WinYield found that [...] less than 10% of the fintechs interviewed had staff with previous relevant credit experience. Common underwriting models were composed of a black box using basic regression analysis with no human overlay to assess the actual viability of loans. WinYield found in many cases that delayed payments were running up to 10% of the entire fintech lenders portfolio, this is four times higher than in bank SME portfolios [...] many fintech lenders are running an uneconomical business. It was clear that most will never become profitable. This was largely because marketing and operational costs were significantly underestimated while the market opportunity was dramatically overhyped." (Source)

📖 Read of the Week

Over $1 billion has recently been invested into data and analytics for AI-driven investing platforms and strategies, according to CB Insights. The question remains: will the arms race to implement AI in wealth management benefit the nimble upstarts, or entrench the quick-to-react incumbents? Quartz investigates, in AI is headed where the money is: asset management.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

The Visa Foundation pledged $100 million to support underserved and women-led SMBs in APEC economies, while Visa corporate exceeded its three-year goal of digitally-enabling 50 million SMBs globally, reaching 67 million SMBs.

Mastercard received formal approval to begin domestic payment processing in China, enabling the credit card network to issue yuan-denominated banks cards.

Capital One is facing a lawsuit from customers who believed they were tricked into signing up for bank accounts that claimed to offer Capital One's 4.3% APY, when they actually received just 0.3%.

The EU is introducing new PSD3 regulation that will require companies with deposits (ie: neobanks) to better segregate accounts in order to mitigate against the risk of partner bank failures.

Singapore's regulatory Project Guardian is collaborating with Chase and Apollo to tokenize invetment portfolios and use blockchains to execute trades.

The Reserve Bank of India raised risk weights on unsecured personal loans in order to cool the rise in fintech lending.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Uniswap launched its crypto wallet for Android users. Zeal, a digital wallet for managing crypto and interacting with web3 and defi apps, also came out of stealth.

Vemo rolled out a new feature to let groups track and split expenses:

Cashfree Payments, an Indian API banking solution, launched a no-code KYC solution for businesses, while account-to-account payments provider Vyne launched a no-code solution to enable merchants to automate, manage and verify payouts with no integration.

Apple Pay launched open banking as a read-only account-linking method in the UK:

Fils came out of stealth with an ESG payments app in the MENA.

Revolut rolled out bond market trading for European customers.

Adyen launched small business lending in Australia.

📰 Other News

Binance pled guilty to anti-money laundering controls failures, agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines, and its CEO Changpeng Zhao agreed to step down.

NuBank continues to grow, passing 90 million customers in the third quarter as profits soar.

Starling signed Romania's Salt Bank as the first customer for its banking-as-a-service platform.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Regions Bank partnered with Self Financial to make Self's credit-building and financial health tools available to Regions customers.

Stripe partnered with Alaska Airlines to introduce tap-to-pay for in-flight payments.

👎 The Bad News

The CFPB reached a settlement with personal lender Enova for debiting consumers’ bank accounts without authorization, and barred the lender from offering short-term loans.

Paystack laid off 33 employees outside of Africa.

Zazuu, a UK fintech for African remittances, shut down.

The SEC turned its attention to Kraken, suing the crypto platform for operating an unlicensed securities exchange.

HMBradley shut down its consumer business and pivoted to B2B, selling its tech to banks.

💸 Venture Financing

1. Indy, a French automated tax platform for businesses (below), raised €40 million.
2. Silverflow, a cloud-based payments processing platform, raised €15 million.
3. Kiwi, a UPI-based credit card provider in India, raised a $13 million Series A.
4. Panoptic, a perpetual options platform for DeFi, raised a $7 million seed round.
5. Phare Health, an AI-enabled financial operating system for healthcare organizations, raised £2.5 million.
6. Fence, a Spanish debt management software, raised a €1.8 million pre-seed.
7. Scalestack, a data enrichment, prioritization and activation platform for RevOps, raised $1 million.
8. Happy Money, a personal loan provider, raised a strategic round of undicslosed size.
9. Monzo is in talks to raise up to £500 million at a £4 billion valuation from Alphabet's Capital G.
10. Knight Fintech, a banking infrastructure solutions provider, is in talks to raise $25 million.

💵 Debt Financing

• TRIVER, a UK provider of short-term working capital loans to small businesses via open banking, raised £20 million in lending debt.
• Spanish and Mexican personal lender ID Finance secured a €12 million line of credit.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

• Figure, the mortgage and personal lending platform co-founded by SoFi founder Mike Cagney, is working with banks including Goldman Sachs JPMorgan and Jefferies on an IPO for its lending arm. Figure is considering its LendCo division public in the first half of 2024 at a valuation of $2 billion to $3 billion.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

• Petal, the consumer credit card provider that a year ago spun off its B2B underwriting data business Prism (and, disclosure, where I once worked) is reportedly in talks with potential acquirers. The company was last valued at $800 million in 2022.
• Bullish, a crypto exchange operated by former NYSE President Tom Farley, acquired crypto media site CoinDesk in an all-cash deal. Terms weren't disclosed, but CoinDesk was acquired by Digital Currency Group for $500,000 in 2016.
• Canadian software provider Vencora will take Swiss digital banking platform Crealogix private at a $95 million valuation.
• UK long-term savings and retirement business provider Phoenix took a stake in venture capital investor Antler.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

• Indiana-based bank First Financial will buy Tennessee-based SimplyBank for $73.4 million in cash to grow its Southeast U.S. footprint.
• Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni sold off Banca Monte Paschi di Siena to Jefferies and UBI for $1 billion.
• Asset manager Rithm Capital finished its long-contested acquisition of Sculptor Capital Management.
• Private equity giant Blackstone is the leading bidder to win a $17 billion portfolio of commercial-property loans from the FDIC sale of Signature Bank's debt.
• UK bank Barclays is exploring an acquisition of British food retailer Tesco's banking operations.

🌎 Fintech Around the World

The Hard Things About Subscription Payments in Africa

Report predicts boom in Apac's wealthtech market

Canadian fintechs demand open banking action

📚 Deeper Reads & Features

How vertical can win against embedded | Why brands shouldn't build fintech products

Jacob Haar on debt investing with impact

The Fed's Michael Barr on Real-Time Payments and the Basel Endgame

JPMorgan Chase tops the bank AI index

Americans are getting ‘ripped off’ by big banks, Robinhood CEO says

Dogs Who Are More Excited Than Humans for Thanksgiving Dinner

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