The great consolidation continues (TWIF 3/31)

When Jimi Hendrix Got Kicked Out Of The Beatles’ Apartment

Hello Fintech Friends,

AmEx, Deserve, Lightspeed, Railsr, and ChowNow all joined the fintech game of musical chairs this week with proposed and announced sales and acquisitions.

Also, sharing a few more great community resources on BaaS and sponsor banks:

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

Thank you to Sheel Mohnot and Tilman Ehrbeck for resurrecting this great 2020 article on the US and LatAm vs. EU neobank models, and how market environment, business model, industry structure, and economics and regulatory context drove diverging outcomes.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Ibotta, which helps brands deliver digital promotions and offers cash-back rewards to consumers on their everyday purchases, plans to go public. Revenue grew 52% year-over-year to $320 million in 2023 while net income margin grew 12%.
British commodities broker Marex Group filed for IPO in the US, and said revenue for 2023 rose to $1.24 billion from $711 million in 2022, while profit after tax for the same period jumped to $141 million from $98.2 million.
US neobank Chime, last valued at $25 billion in 2021, is targeting a 2025 IPO.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

The Great Consolidation https://t.co/NmRo1W9iyK
— Jake (@iamjakestream) March 17, 2024

American Express Global Business Travel acquired rival CWT, a business travel and meetings manager, for $570 million. The acquisition would grow its customer count from 20,000 to 24,000.
Deserve, the credit card and co-brand issuing platform, is considering different strategic options including a sale, after the company's biggest customer, crypto firm BlockFi, went into bankruptcy. The company was last valued at $500 million in 2021.
Restaurant point of sale provider Lightspeed is considering options including going private so that it can focus more. The company is valued at $2.1 billion.
Embedded Finance, the parent company of formerly bankrupt European banking-as-a-service provider Railsr, proposed a merger with money management solutions provider Equals Group.
ChowNow, an online ordering platform and marketing service for local restaurants, acquired Cuboh, a Y Combinator-backed point-of-sale platform that consolidates all orders from delivery apps into one place.
Private equity firm BharCap acquired Oak Inventory Finance, a commercial lender dedicated to delivering floorplan finance solutions to manufacturers.
Abrigo, a provider of compliance, credit risk, and lending solutions for financial institutions, acquired TPG Software, a specialist in investment accounting and management solutions.
Private equity firm Bregal Milestone sold its stake in CUBE, an automated regulatory intelligence provider.
Alight sold off its Professional Services Segment and Payroll & Human Capital Management Outsourcing businesses to an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital for $1.2 billion.
Treasury Intelligence Solutions a provider of cloud-native cash management, liquidity and payment solutions, secured a majority growth investment from Marlin Equity Partners.
Media conglomerate Axel Springer is exploring a sale of popular German finance site and trading platform finanzen.net.
Able, a document AI and client engagement provider, was acquired by risk software and analytics company Moody's.
Private equity firm Advent is looking to sell the European identity authentication business of Idemia as part of a breakup plan that will see each of the French biometrics company’s three units being sold separately.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Nigeria's Access Bank plans to acquire National Bank of Kenya from private equity firm KCB Group.
Nationwide Building Society in the UK confirmed its offer to acquire Virgin Money UK for £2.9 billion.
HSBC completed the sale of its C$13.5 billion Canadian unit, HSBC Bank Canada, to Royal Bank of Canada.

Visa and Mastercard announced a merchant settlement today that has been a long time in the works (the origin case began 19 years ago in 2005). I won't repeat the specific provisions (check out @scottew's feed for a great summary) but it's fascinating to think through how the…
— Ben Brown (@b6nbrown) March 27, 2024

Credit card rewards continue to get richer - to the extent that sometimes it's hard to make sense of the P&L supporting these products. For example, Robinhood is now building a waitlist for its Robinhood Gold Card, a Visa Signature product issued by Coastal Community Bank, which…
— Ben Brown (@b6nbrown) March 27, 2024

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Sponsored Content

Big if true.

Just over the last two years @twifintech we’ve seen large deals get done, rounds get filled, acquisitions occur, and even (believe it or not) a literal marriage as a result of the community we’ve built.

This from a long time partner of ours recently: https://t.co/kwDNMqKnXY pic.twitter.com/LbGycWVEcp
— Alex (@CallMeGillette) January 24, 2024

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