Uzbekistan's first unicorn is a fintech (TWIF 3/30)

Hello Fintech Friends,

What a week!

Fintechs raised 27 new equity rounds this week, with the largest coming from Uzum, Uzbekistan's first unicorn at a $1.16 billion valuation. (And speaking of... I just went to Uzbek restaurant Farida in Manhattan for the first time and it was great – I highly recommend it.)

We were also excited to see BoxGroup and Avid Ventures co-lead the latest round for Fintech Fund portfolio company Coast*, which is building an expense management card for 'real-world industries,' beginning with smart fleet cards that can be locked to fuel-only or enabled for different expenses. (And thanks for the article mention, Mary Ann! 👋)

Coast is verticalizing expense management starting with fleets, Navan began as a vertical solution for travel, Brex started out with a corporate card for life sciences – what other interesting verticals did corporate spend platforms start with before expanding to category winners?

Elsewhere, Julie VerHage-Greenberg sat down with Frank Rotman and Nigel Norris, the co-founders of QED Investors and founding fathers of Capital One, to dig into fintech, their personal ups and downs, advice to founders, what they expect the biggest innovations to be over the next decade:

Lastly, someone just reshared this great open source list of BaaS banks and processors in our TWIF Whatsapp and I wanted to share it here:

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

2023 saw a 94% decline in funding to Irish fintechs, according KPMG. (Source)

💸 Venture Financing

Uzum, an Uzbek e-commerce startup offering online shopping, fintech and food deliveries, raised $114 million at a $1.16 billion valuation, becoming Uzbekistan's first unicorn.
FundGuard, a startup that provides a cloud-based, artificial intelligence-powered accounting platform for asset managers, raised $100 million in new funding.
Global Screening Services, a London-based regulatory compliance platform that helps financial institutions meet their global sanctions obligations, raised $47 million.
Fieldguide, which is building AI accountants, raised $30 million.
NewRetirement, a company building software to help 70,000 people create financial retirement plans, raised $20 million.
Coast*, an expense management provider for real-world industries, beginning with fleets, raised an additional $25 million in equity and $67 million in debt financing.
ZayZoon, an Earned Wage Access provider for small and mid-sized businesses, raised a $15 million Series B extension.
MyPrize, a crypto casino supporting multiplayer games, raised $13 million at a $140 million pre-launch valuation.
peaq, a blockchain infrastructure provider for real-world applications, raised $15 million in pre-launch multi-tranche funding.
ALEX, a Bitcoin-specific decentralized finance layer, raised $10 million in funding.
Keeyns, a Dutch tax tech company, raised €10 million in funding.
Goalsetter, a financial education platform focused on helping families learn how to spend, save and invest, raised a $9.6 million Series A.
Nominal, a company using generative AI to bridge ERP systems and financial management, raised a $9.2 million seed round.
Midas, which is bringing real-world assets onto the blockchain, raised $8.75 million.
ValidMind, an AI model risk management platform for financial services, raised $8.1 million in seed funding.
Scaleup Finance, a Danish firm which enables startups to streamline financial planning and analysis and automate financial reporting, raised an $8 million pre-Series A.
Rails, a self-custodial crypto exchange that allows users to trade perpetuals while maintaining self-custody, raised a $6.2 million seed round.
Copilot, a budgeting and personal financial management app, raised a $6 million Series A.
nsave, a Swiss firm making banking in Switzerland accessible to people in countries with unstable banking sectors, raised $4 million in seed funding.
Umoja, a builder of user-friendly crypto investment tools for retail investors, raised $4 million.
Quantmatix, an Irish “market GPS”, to help traders and investors to inform and time investment decisions, raised almost €3 million.
OrdinalsBot, a bitcoin inscriptions infrastructure provider, raised a $3 million seed round.
Belong, a UK wealth-building platform for professionally-employed millennials, raised a £2.95 million pre-seed.
Flowpay, a Czech fintech predictive AI to help small and medium-sized enterprises access better operational funding, raised a €2.1 million seed round.
Mortgage Brain, a UK mortgage broker sourcing platform, raised £1.5 million in strategic capital from stock trading infrastructure platform Fintel.
Ameetee, a platform for financial institutions to offer their clients private market investment opportunities, raised a $1 million seed round.
Iznes, a pan-European, blockchain-based asset management network, received a strategic investment from financial market infrastructure provider Euroclear.
Qoala, an Indonesian insuretech, added PayPal as an investor.

💵 Debt Financing

Fetch, an app that lets consumers scan receipts to earn rewards, raised $50 million in debt capital from Morgan Stanley Private Credit.
Float, a program for card-linked installment loans to encourage responsible credit card usage, secured an $11 million facility from Standard Bank.

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