Almost a month into 2022, the FinTech sector has been continuing its strong growth seen during the last year and is already firing on all cylinders in this new year.
Up to 40 FinTech deals were reported on by FinTech Global last week, representing another red-letter week for the industry.
The sector is establishing its firm presence in several key geographical markets, with recent research by FinTech Global detailing Australian FinTech deal activity more than tripled last year to 205 transactions.
In other big news this week, banking giant J.P Morgan entered an agreement with PayTech firm Viva Wallet to acquire an ownership stake of approximately 49%, subject to regulatory approvals.
Here are the 40 firms that raised new funding last week.
Creditas lands $260m amid Latin American FinTech boom
Online lending solution provider Creditas has raised $260m in Series F funding, reaching a valuation of $4.8bn.
Fidelity Management and Research Company became a new key shareholder for Creditas. Spanish FinTech fund Actyus and Greentrail Capital, QED Investors, VEF, SoftBank Vision Fund 1, SoftBank Latin America Fund, Kaszek Ventures, Lightock, Headline, Wellington Management and Advent International, via their affiliate Sunley House Capital, also participated in the round.
Creditas aims to improve the lives of individuals in Latin America across three ecosystems: auto, home, and employee benefits. Creditas’ offering includes digital insurance and consumer solutions. The new capital raised will allow it to accelerate its strategy across its three ecosystems.
Route joins unicorn club with $200m fundraise
Post purchase experience platform and delivery insurance provider Route has closed a $200m Series B round, propelling the company to a $1.25bn valuation.
The round was led by a large London-based investment firm. Other investors in this round included Eldridge, Madrona Venture Group, Riot Ventures, Banner Ventures, FJ Labs, Endeavor, JAWS Capital, 75 & Sunny Ventures, and individual investors including ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman and founders or executives from Venmo, Squarespace, Zillow, Flexport, Elevate Brands, and Net-a-Porter also joined this round.
The funding will support its growing product and engineering teams to continue developing new technology and features. It plans on using the funding to expand its offices in both Silicon Slopes, Utah and Los Angeles, opening new offices in New York and Miami, and adding to its staff in nearly every department.
Cybersecurity training service ThriveDX scores strategic funding
Cybersecurity training platform ThriveDX received a total of $100m in strategic investments from Prytek Holdings.
With the capital injection, ThriveDX has stated it plans to accelerate its presence in US, Europe and Asia.
ThriveDX works alongside academic institutions and corporations to create professional development programs in digital technology. Its courses include cyber and information security, data science and analytics, software engineering and digital marketing.
It also has a SaaS platform entirely focused on cybersecurity training. The end-to-end solution equips people with the necessary training to avoid cyber threats, including phishing.
Crypto tax platform CoinTracker earns unicorn status
Crypto tax and portfolio tracking platform CoinTracker netted $100m in its Series A investment, putting its valuation at $1.3bn.
Accel led the round, with commitments coming from General Catalyst, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator Continuity, 776 Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Intuit Ventures, Kraken Ventures, as well as Former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Coinbase board member Gokul Rajaram, Affirm early investor Jeremy Liew and Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz.
Plans for the capital involve hiring high-calibre staff as well as increasing its coverage of exchanges, chains and popular cryptocurrency segments and bolstering its services for tax professionals and enhancing its customer support.
B2B e-commerce app Chari secures bridge round
Morocco-based B2B e-commerce startup Chari has closed a bridge round of funding which could see it reach a $100m valuation.
Founded in 2020, Chari is an e-commerce and FinTech app for traditional retailers in French-Speaking Africa.
The app allows them to order any consumer goods they sell and get delivered for free in less than 24 hours. Chari is also a financial services provider for these retailers, offering them microloans.
Berlin’s Moss hits $573m valuation
Spend management platform Moss has reached a €500m ($573m) valuation after the close of its Series B round on €75m.
Tiger Global and A-Star joined the Series B round, which comes just six months after its former capital injection.
Its growth plans include the launch in the UK, following a successful release in the Netherlands. Moss is also eyeing other markets to launch its services later this year.
Hunters catch $68m to bolster SecOps
Security operations center (SOC) platform Hunters has secured $68m from a Series C funding round headed by Stripes.
Hunters has developed a SOC platform that aims to support security trams in automatically identifying and responding to incidents that matter across an entire attack surface. The product is meant to replace security information and event management products.
According to Hunters, it intends to use the money raised to improve its products and services, invest in talent and boost sales.
India-based M2P Fintech scores Series C1
Financial infrastructure firm M2P Fintech has bagged $56m in its Series C1 funding round.
The investment was led by New York-based private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners. Commitments also came from MUFG Innovation Partners, Tiger Global and Better Capital.
With the capital, M2P hopes to deepen its technology and grow its team. Funds will also be used to expand internationally.
365 Business Finance secures £55m
365 Business Finance has raised £55m in debt and equity funding, as it aims to quadruple its lending to SMEs over the next two years.
The London-based provider of revenue-based finance said it has already seen significant growth in demand, with demand more than doubling from pre-Covid levels.
365 Business Finance said its proprietary technology platform and unique automatic collections process have enabled it to buck the trend for SME lenders in the UK, maintaining market-leading credit performance and reaching “record levels of origination”.
OneShield receives $50m follow-on investment
Core software solutions provider to insurance firms OneShield Software has received a $50m follow-on investment.
The round was led by Pacific Lake Partners with participation from existing investors, including Bain Capital Credit, Maven Equity Partners, WSC & Company, and Peterson Partners. The firm will use the funding to accelerate investments in product innovation and talent acquisition.
OneShield offers SaaS and standalone cloud-based enterprise-class policy management, billing, claims, rating, business intelligence, and smart analytics software solutions for P&C insurers and MGAs.
Credit score FinTech SavvyMoney rakes in $45m
FinTech SavvyMoney raised $45m from a growth investment round last week headed by growth equity firm Spectrum Equity with participation from TransUnion.
SavvyMoney provides free credit scores, reports and daily monitoring to educate users. The company claims people are able to understand their credit score, review concrete ideas for improving it and better their financial health through their platform.
KKR backs Philippine B2B platform GrowSari
GrowSari, a B2B e-commerce platform serving micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines, will receive $45m in Series C funding from global investment firm KKR.
KKR’s investment will support its expansion into more regions across the Philippines and strengthen its financial services capabilities.
Founded in 2016, GrowSari is a B2B platform that helps the Philippines’ small physical retail stores access a wider range of products and value-adding services. This allows the stores to provide local communities with more comprehensive offerings, including digital services.
Moneyfarm herds £44.1m Series D
WealthTech Moneyfarm secured £44.1m in Series D funding from investment firm M&G following a recent partnership between the two companies.
Moneyfarm is a digital wealth management company that offers online financial advisory and execution services, with a focus on ETF based portfolio management. It previously bagged £36m from its Series C round in September 2019.
According to Moneyfarm, the funding raised will allow the company to expand its product proposition and build out its new B2B2C proposition through further strategic partnerships.
SaaS provider T-REX gets claws on $40m
T-REX Group, a SaaS provider for the asset-backed financing industry, has closed its Series C round on $40m.
Riverstone Holdings and Riverstone affiliates led the round.Following the close of the investment, T-REX will become part of Riverstone’s Decarbonization Growth Equity platform.
T-REX was created to solve the absence of modern technology to power complex asset finance and the need for tools to accelerate investment into energy transition.
Hong Kong-based Babel Finance closes Series A
Babel Finance has closed its Series A on $40m to support the development of its crypto finance platform.
The investment was led by Zoo Capital, Sequoia Capital China, Dragonfly Capital, BAI Capital and Bertelsmann and Tiger Global Management. Existing Babel investors also committed capital.
Babel claims to be one of the world’s biggest crypto financial service providers. It offers crypto lending, asset management and prime financing to institutions and qualified investors around the world.
CyberTech Censys scores $35m in Series B
Continuous attack surface management Censys has scored $35m in its Series B funding round.
Intel Capital, the investment division of technology giant Intel, served as the lead investor, with commitments also coming from Google Ventures, Decibel and Greylock Partners.
Capital from the round will help Censys accelerate its R&D, engineering, product and sales operations.
Security startup Slim.AI secures $31m Series A
Cloud-native security firm Slim.AI has bagged $31m from a Series A funding round co-led by Insight Partners and StepStone Group.
Also participating in the round was Knollwood, Decibel Partners, FXP, boldstart Ventures and TechAviv Founder Partners. Following this round, Slim.AI has raised a total of $37.6m since inception.
Slim claims its mission is to help application developers create, build, deploy and run their cloud native apps with zero friction, complexity and waste.
Ascend bags $30m in equity and $250m in debt
Ascend, which claims to be the first modern insurance payments platform, bagged $30m in its Series A alongside a further $250m in a lending commitment.
The Series A investment was led by Index Ventures, with commitments coming from Distributed Ventures, NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures, First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, FirstMark Capital and a wide range of angel investors.
The $250m lending commitment was facilitated by Hudson Structured Capital Management and will help Ascend finance insurance premium loans for both commercial and personal lines.
Ascend’s payments APIs and no-code products automate the end-to-end insurance payments process, everything from online point of sale with buy now, pay later financing to the distribution of commissions and carrier payables.
Blockchain tech firm Chrono.Tech nabs $30m
Australian blockchain technology firm Chrono.Tech pulled in $30m for its latest investment, as it looks to bolster its offering.
The investment round was led Mark Carnegie, an Australian venture capitalist, alongside an unnamed European family office.
With the recent funding, the company hopes to scale and develop its services and products offered to the HR and crypto payroll sectors. Funds will also be used to bolster its efforts in the workforce management space.
Sayata extends Series A with $30m
Sayata has raised an additional $35m to the previous $17m raised just five months ago in its Series A round. The Series A round, which began in August 2021, now totals $52m.
Sayata explained that its proprietary technology automates the time-consuming process of finding and securing business insurance. Brokers are freed from the manual tasks of hunting for quotes, shuffling applications, and the lengthy back and forth with insurance providers to finalise coverage.
The company said it will use the funds to accelerate the addition of new business insurance lines fulfilling the promise that brokers will always be able to quickly and easily find any business coverage for their small and medium-sized (SMB) clients regardless of market conditions.
Compound leaves stealth with $25m Series B
WealthTech Compound closed a $25m Series B round led by Greenoaks and angel investor former Stripe product manager Lachy Groom.
Compound provides wealth management for startup employees, helping them figure out what their stock options actually mean, forecast their value over time and optimise against things like potential taxes.
The company launched two weeks ago and they currently have 200 startup employees as customers.
DigitalOwl lands Series A for medical tech
InsurTech firm DigitalOwl has raised $20m in a Series A round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Ibex and Fusion VC.
The company’s machine learning platform interprets medical records and assists underwriters and claim adjusters.
DigitalOwl said it addresses the issue of slow and antiquated processes for reviewing medical records.
Addition backs PQShield in $20m Series A
Cybersecurity firm PQShield secured $20m from a Series A funding round led by investor Addition.
PQShield claims it is pioneering the development and commercial roll-out of advanced, quantum-ready cryptographic solutions for hardware, software and communications.
The investment will be used to fuel further product development, hiring as well as to expand its presence in the US and EMEA and to launch in new markets including Japan. The company is also looking to double its team by the end of 2022.
PayTech Interchecks lands $16m Series B
Instant payment infrastructure and service provider Interchecks has raised $16m in a Series B funding round. The funding was co-led by Senator Investment Group and Standard Investments.
The funding will be used to further the firm’s mission to power instant money-movement for FinTech, online gaming and digital asset ecosystem applications. The company will also expand its ability to support Visa Direct, RTP, stablecoins, compliance as well substantially grow headcount.
Interchecks claims its goal is to simplify and enhance payouts and compliance for organisations globally. The company offers a suite of on-demand payout options include instant deposit, direct deposit, digital check and paper check.
Banking platform Tuum lands €15m Series A
Tuum has scored €15m in a Series A round of funding, with Portage Ventures leading the round.
Tuum has developed a cloud-agnostic core banking platform enables banks, FinTechs and non-financial firms to roll-out new financial products and services without much hassle.
The recent round will enable it to continue investing in product innovation and support global growth, focusing initially on strengthening its presence in the EU and the UK. It will also fund essential R&D efforts to continue enhancing and expanding the Tuum product portfolio, and will also deploy the funding towards further investment in its team and projects to double its team to 140 employees by the end of this year.
InsurTech Laka scores €10.6m funding
Bicycle insurance platform Laka raised €10.6m in a Series A led by US mobility investor Autotech Ventures.
Also taking part in the round were Ponooc, ABN AMRO Ventures, Creandum, 1818 Ventures, LocalGlobe and Elkstone Partners.
Laka provides insurance for retail and commercial customers such as delivery fleet riders, cyclists, e-cargo bike drivers and commuters. Customers who use Laka are not required to pay upfront premiums and are instead charged on the cost of claims submitted by the collective of customers from the previous month.
According to Laka, it will use the new funding to help it expand over Europe and will launch in Belgium, France and Germany in the first half of 2022. It will also expand its product offering to e-mopeds, e-scooters and e-cars to serve partnerships across Europe.
Robinhood co-founder backs FinTech Nala
Tanzanian FinTech Nala has raised $10m from a seed fundraiser headed by investment firm Amplo.
Accel, Bessemer Partners and DFS Lab also took part in the round. A number of angel investors took part including Monzo CTO and co-founder Jonas Templestein, Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vladimir Tenev and more.
Nala provides a personal finance app to users across Tanzania and to make its services more widely available, it is trying to address barriers people have from access financial services.
ArmorCode scores $8m seed
ArmorCode has bagged $8m from a seed funding round led by Cervin Ventures.
ArmorCode developed an AppSecOps platform that the company claims enables organisations to ship securely and ship fast. The platform provides security and development teams with the visibility, actionable insights, automation and integration needed to build and scale effective and efficient AppSec programs across entire organisations while cutting cyber risk and exposure.
ArmorCode will use the influx of funding to extend its AppSecOps platform capabilities and expand its go-to-market efforts.
Scribe bags $7m seed funding
Software supply chain security firm Scribe Security has raised $7m from a seed round headed by Elron Ventures.
Also participating in the round were various other investment vehicles such as Tal Ventures and YYM Ventures.
Scribe provides an end-to-end software supply chain protection platform designed to provide security throughout the full product lifecycle. The company claims its platform can help organisations build, distribute and maintain internally developed code, while also enabling them to check the authenticity, provenance and reputation of third-party components.
SOMA.finance lands $6.5m seed
Digital assets marketplace SOMA.finance has closed a seed funding round and raised $6.5m.
The round was headed by Animoca Brands. SOMA.finance is a globally compliant multi-asset DEX & token issuance platform capable of trading and listing crypto assets, tokenized equities, ETFs, STOs and NFTs.
According to SOMA, it intends to use the new funding to offer its service globally such as the ability to list Regulation CF, Regulation, D, Regulation S, and Regulation A offerings.
Onramper snares $6m seed
Onramper, a firm aiming to provide crypto-enabled applications with an easy-to-use fiat onramp, has inked $6m from a seed funding round.
The funding round was led by EQT Ventures and saw participation from Backed VC and TRGC.
Onramper supports all currencies and payment methods in the fiat gateways aggregated within the platform. The gateways can be accessed through one widget, which is free to use and easy to integrate. The new funding will be used to accelerate the product roadmap and quadruple headcount over the next six months.
Crypto infrastructure dev Voltage scores seed
Bitcoin infrastructure company dev Voltage has closed its seed funding round on $6m.
Trammell Venture Partners led the investment, with commitments also coming from Craft Ventures, GV, Stillmark, Cavalry Asset Management, Strategic Cyber Ventures, Fulgur Ventures, Tenzing.vc and more.
With the funds, the company hopes to hire a VP of engineering, senior frontend engineer, infrastructure engineer, backend engineer, operations manager and a business development.
Crypto investment hub Flint bags $5.1m
Flint has raised $5.1m from a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and GFC.
Flint is a crypto investment solution that targets users who are looking to diversify a portion of their wealth into crypto. A key part of the company mission is to ‘educate the market about the basics of cryptocurrency, its benefits and associated risks.
The new funding will be used to speed-up bringing early users on board, enhancing the product based on early feedback, design and product functions and hiring for senior positions across engineering.
OZÉ secures capital for African small business
FinTech startup OZÉ, which provides digital record-keeping tools with embedded finance products to MSMEs across West Africa, raised $3m in a pre-Series A. The round was led by major venture capital fund Speedinvest.
OZÉ, which now has a client base of more than 125,000 business owners, will use the funds to expand the capabilities of its platform and increase access to affordable finance in Ghana and Nigeria through its partnerships with well-known commercial banks.
Crypto payment service BCB Group secures $4.5m
Crypto-dedicated payment service provider BCB Group secured $4.5m in a strategic funding round led by North Island Ventures and Blockchain.com Ventures.
Funds from the raise will help BCB Group to move ahead with initiatives such as BCB Treasury, a service aimed at helping companies invest into bitcoin as a treasury asset. Another new feature is BCB Wealth Partners, which is a crypto service for private wealth clients.
BCB offers accounts and payment processing technology for digital asset institutions, including Bitstamp, Coinbase, Galaxy and Kraken.
Cyber startup Saporo nets $2.7m pre-seed financing
Swiss cybersecurity firm Saporo raised $2.7m in pre-seed funding round led by Session VC and Lightbird Ventures.
Saporo has developed technology that it claims enables any organisation to model and measure its resistance to anticipate attacks and make better-informed decisions about managing its risk without the need to think like an attacker.
According to Saporo, the pre-seed funding will be used to expand the team to 12 people this year, with hires to be made in data science, engineering development and security research.
Zenjuries pulls in $2.2m financing
InsurTech Zenjuries, provider of worker compensation automation software for handling claims and reducing loss costs, has raised $2.2m.
Zenjuries said its workers’ compensation software is transforming workers’ compensation insurance by automation that enables employers, employees, insurers, agents and third-party administrators to improve their workers’ compensation experience and reduce their losses.
The InsurTech plans to use the capital to fund future growth in the company, including its transition from a software only product to a “white glove” customer experience where the software is supplemented by “Zenpro” personnel that ensure that the insurers, policyholders, agents and other interested parties can realise the substantial savings in loss costs that can result from using the software appropriately.
Everything – the FinTech bringing premium bonds to Gen Z
Everything, a startup that claims it is reinventing premium bonds, has raised €2m from a group of angel investors, on its mission to create a better financial experience for younger generations.
The round of funding involved Merama CEO Sujay Tyle, Frontier Car Group founders Peter Lindholm and Ricardo Donoso, and Axel Arigato co-founder Albin Johansson.
Everything was founded in 2021 by Adam, Michael and Thorir who believed that money should be rewarding, exciting and social, and were uninspired by the options out there today for everyday finances. The company claims to be at the intersection of finance and social interaction and wants to build a financial experience tailored to younger generations.
Saudi FinTech Sanad Cash scores $1.6m in seed round
Sanad Cash, an-demand payment and spend management platform, has scored $1.6m in its seed round.
Participation to the round came from Impact46 Seed Fund, BIM Ventures, Hala Ventures, Derayah Ventures and unnamed angel investors from the country.
This capital injection will help Sanad bolster its position in Saudi Arabia and hire new staff.
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