One third of new unicorns in November were fintechs (TWIF 12/10)

The 40 Best Places to Visit in the Winter

Hello Fintech Friends,

Thank you to Mary Ann Azevedo and the team at The Interchange for bringing my attention to a (surprising) new report from Crunchbase, The Fintech Sector Trotted The Most New Unicorns Onto Our Board In November.

Thought fewer companies are reaching the vaunted $1 billion valuation, 3 of the 9 last month - Tabby, Enable, and InCred - were fintechs. You can read more here.

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

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📖 Read of the Week

In spite of a strong economy, low unemployment, and decreasing inflation, data collated by the Wall Street Journal show that American credit card delinquency and charge-off rates are starting to creep up:

According to new research on the NYC tech ecosystem from Lightspeed, "New York’s growing share of Fintech fundraising grew to 24% as % of total US fundraising in 2023, from <20% in 2017."

And FT Partners published their monthly fintech market overview for December.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Blue Room Acquisition filed for a $200 million SPAC, led by Erick Deneb Flores Garcia, the founder and CEO of Mexico-based financial services firm MKM Bolsa Privada, to target a fintech company.
FG Merger III filed for a $150 million SPAC targeting a financial services company in North America.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Financial information services provider Fitch Group completed its acquisition of credit data provider Bixby Research and Analytics.
Nigerian crypto exchange BitMama has offered virtual banking provider Payday an acquisition at a price point of $1 million of the crypto exchange's equity at a $30 million price point.
Residential sale-leaseback platform EasyKnock acquired home equity investment platform Balance Homes.
French digital payments company Worldline is considering an asset sale to reassure shareholders after a sharp drop in its share price.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Reverence Capital Partners, a financial-services focused private equity group, is seeking buyers for a $2.5 billion minority stake in Osaic, a network of wealth management firms.
It seems to be tough times in British banking... Qatar Holding is offering about 362 million shares – almost half of its holdings – in British bank Barclays, currently a 5% stake.
French bank Société Générale is exiting its non-core holdings, including selling its UK private banking unit.
Austrian banking consortium BAWAG Group is the leading bidder for Barclays' German consumer finance business, at €500 million.
Australian fund manager Perpetual rejected an A$3.1 billion ($2 billion) takeover offer from its largest shareholder.

It's hard to nudge the trajectory of a $500B market-cap co, but the @visa crypto team lead by @cuysheffield has done exactly that. Embracing how crypto intersects with existing financial partners, experimenting new rails at scale and having fun along the way. The TrialPay DNA at…
— Terry Angelos (@terryangelos) December 6, 2023

Why Adyen $ADYEN and Klarna partnership on card processing is a big deal: Klarna reported $87.9 billion in GMV in the last twelve months

Thank you, @Govro12, for pointing this out! https://t.co/JTk0VDWEpi pic.twitter.com/sdbSpKMmWl
— Jevgenijs Kazanins (@jevgenijs) December 5, 2023

Nubank is offering USDC
Soc Gen has created its own stablecoin

Stablecoins are here to stay and becoming a part of the mix https://t.co/l1ecsuRU0U
— Simon Taylor (@sytaylor) December 6, 2023

stablecoins represent 60%+ of all crypto activity across the major latam markets. in the us, we think of crypto as a means of speculation ... outside the us, it's a means of gaining stability.

expect this 60% to become 90%+ over the next decade pic.twitter.com/ASIp9Wz4Vg
— Zach (@zcabrams) December 9, 2023

2021 was a hell of a drug.

- Socure: Raised $150m and valued at $1.3b in 2021.
- ThreatMetrix: Acquired in 2018 by LN for $830m.
- Emailage: Acquired by LN for undisclosed amount.
- Ekata: Acquired by Mastercard for $850m in 2021.
- Kount: Acquired by Visa for $850m.
- Signifyd:…
— Jared Franklin (@jsfranklin221) December 6, 2023