Pine Labs considers $1B Indian IPO (TWIF 6/22)

Hello Fintech Friends,

We've got good news as we head into the second half of the year: We're bringing our events to more major cities across LATAM, starting with a Fintech Happy Hour in Sao Paulo next month with our partners Ensemblex.

After Brazil, we'll be in Bogotá, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, and Buenos Aires. Interested in partnering with us and meeting fintech leaders in this part of the global south? Reach out to us at ramon@thisweekinfintech.com or fill out this form!

And if you had fun at our recent Boston and London events, you can relive the days in pictures:

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

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📖 Reads of the Week

"In January 2024, there were 14.41m Open Banking payment transactions in the UK. Whilst this was an increase of 69% year on year (from 8.54m in January 2023), it's still tiny compared to the number of card payments. In the same month, there were over 2 billion card payments. In other words, according to January's data, the ratio of open banking to card payments was 0.7%.

[...] the problem is that Open Banking has focused on the needs of businesses, of merchants. The needs of consumers - currently those who usually pay with cards - haven't been addressed and often seem to have been barely considered. What's required to convince more consumers to move to Open Banking as a payment method?"

(h/t to Alex Johnson for finding this)

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs & SPACs

Indian digital payments giant Pine Labs, which serves over 500,000 merchants in more than 3,700 cities across India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, is considering a $1 billion IPO at a $6 billion valuation. Indian IPOs have raised $7 billion so far this year.
The CEO of debt investment firm ALMA Sustainable Finance raised a $150 million SPAC, Melar Acquisition I, targeting emerging finance companies.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

India’s largest wealth manager, 360 One WAM, will acquire popular Indian mutual fund investment app ET Money for $44 million.
Payments and commerce provider Shift4 will acquire Vectron Systems, a supplier of point-of-sale systems to the restaurant and hospitality verticals in Europe.
Financial software provider Intuit is acquiring Zendrive to expand its usage-based auto insurance.
French employee benefits provider Pluxee will acquire Cobee, a Spanish employee benefits platform.
Indian payments provider Paytm is in discussions with instant delivery app Zomato to sell off its movie ticketing business.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

British grocer Sainsbury's is selling off its outstanding credit card, unsecured personal loan and savings accounts portfolios to bank NatWest. As part of the deal, the grocer will pay the acquiring bank £125 million as well. NatWest will add £2.5 billion of gross customer assets, including £1.4 billion of unsecured personal loans and £1.1 billion of credit cards balances, together with approximately £2.6 billion of customer deposits.
The London Stock Exchange will increase its offering to retail investors through the acquisition of fintech investing app PrimaryBid.
Spanish bank Sabadell postponed the sale of its retailers' payments business to Nexi after becoming the target of a hostile takeover by rival bank BBVA.
Real estate software provider Aareal Bank is selling off its software business Aereon for about €3 billion.

Fintech operating margins continue to trend up (from a Q1 '22 low of 6% to 15% currently), leading publicly-listed internet companies. pic.twitter.com/6OUM9dZeNK
— The Fintech Fund (@thefintechfund) June 23, 2024

I'm curious why Airbnb doesnt have a cobranded card. Of all the companies that *should* feels like Airbnb has the most white space for a unique offering.

They could do 2 programs
1. Consumer Charge Card for guests
2. Business Debit for hosts pic.twitter.com/EYSN61lfMz
— kunle.app (@ay_o) June 20, 2024

The recent evolve consent order is incredibly wide reaching. It ticks all the boxes compared to previous consent orders.

More details below.
Thanks @JonahCrane for your incredible table, and distilling so much info!@mikulaja @NotThatTimD pic.twitter.com/rT6eOFZ5sR
— Esty Scheiner (@scheiner_esty) June 20, 2024

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