PayTechs shine in last week’s FinTech funding rounds

FinTech Global reported on 38 FinTech funding rounds this week, with companies from across the broad spectrum raking in eye watering amounts to help aid their growth.

Taking home the biggest slice of the investment pie this week was APAC-based PayTech Xendit, with the company pulling in a huge $300m in Series D funding. The continuing rise of CyberTech funding amounts also continued this week, with Pathlock bringing in investment of $200m.

Alongside the continuous humming along of the FinTech sector, industry giant Klarna faced a potential big setback this week when it was reported that it was about to suffer a valuation drop of $30bn, as it prepares to seek fresh investment. The Swedish BNPL company was previously valued at $46bn when it closed a $639m investment in June 2021.

Here are this week’s funding rounds.

Xendit closes Series D on $300m

Southeast Asia-focused payments infrastructure platform Xendit has closed its Series D funding round on $300m.

Xendit, which styles itself as the “Stripe of Southeast Asia”, will continue to invest in new markets, expand its business line and enhance its platform. It also plans to enter Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Xendit has built an extensive tool suite of payment tools, including over 20 payment method support, checkout tools, automated payments, on-demand payouts, refunds, risk management, platform payments, remittance, online stores and much more.

With the close of the round, the FinTech company has raised a total of $538m in total funding. Its most recent investment round was a $150m Series C, which had put its valuation at $1bn.

Pathlock raises $200m following M&As

Pathlock, an access orchestration solutions provider, has revealed it has raised $200m in funding following a recent spate of mergers and acquisitions.

Pathlock integrates into over 100 applications out of the box. The company’s platform monitors all user access permissions for SoD conflicts and data security controls across applications from one panel, while also monitoring all user activities to make sure people are using those permissions appropriately.

Pathlock recently announced mergers with ERP data security firm Appsian as well as Security Weaver, which is a firm that provides governance, risk and compliance management (GRCM) software for SAP.

Pathlock also acquired Belgium-based GRCM provider CSI Tools and SAP security business SAST Solutions.

Pathlock also raked in $200m from a funding round headed by Vertica Capital Partners. This funding, the firm claims, will enable it to further expand application governance and data security capabilities.

Thought Machine scores $160m

Cloud-native banking technology developer Thought Machine has reached a $2.7bn valuation after the close of its Series D on $160m.

Thought Machine previously raised $200m for its Series C in November 2021. While the valuation was not revealed at the time, it claims the new valuation is a 100% increase.

With the round closed, the company is eying global expansion initiatives, building on its strong performance in New York, Singapore and Australia. It is looking to boost its presence in Asia Pacific, particularly in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines.

Capital will also be used to invest into its technology and extend the capabilities of its core banking platform.

Modulr scores $108m Series C

Embedded payments platform Modulr has raised $108m in a Series C funding round headed by investor General Atlantic.

Modulr claims it is a pioneer in the provision of embedded payments across a wide range of vertical markets. Its technology allows companies to build payments directly into their own platforms without needing to build complicated payment systems, become regulated themselves or manage the complexities of payment network membership.

The company claims it intends to use the funding to accelerate its geographic footprint and extend its client and partner coverage in existing and new market verticals in the UK and Europe.

Unit bags $100m to become FinTech unicorn

Unit has hit a valuation of $1.2bn, which it claims makes it the first banking-as-a-service platform to reach unicorn status.

It reached the milestone after the close of its Series C round on $100m.

Global software investor Insight Partners led the round, with participation also coming from existing investors Accel, Better Tomorrow Ventures, and Flourish Ventures. Also joining the round was Moving Capital and Stepstone, marking their first contributions to Unit.

Unit has earmarked the capital for product development and expand its offering to release credit services in partnership with its bank partners. Unit will launch business credit cards in the next three months, with other similar products to follow soon after.

MarketFinance receives £100m debt line

MarketFinance, which working capital offers UK SMES, has received a £100m debt line from Deutsche Bank to help more SMEs access working capital.

It also announced it is expanding its lending capacity to include under-served SMEs, such as the UK’s 3.2 million sole traders and partnerships, offering competitive rates and terms. According to MarketFinance, a UK SME borrower will have access to between £10,000 and £500,000 within 24 hours of applying.

MarketFinance was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. Its FinTech platform offers business loans and working capital to UK SMEs.

The company reached profitability in 2021, which it claims was driven by the business demand for working capital during the pandemic.

Dutch BNPL in3 wraps up $85.3m

Dutch buy now pay later service provider in3 has scored $85.3m in its Series B funding round.

With the capital, the FinTech company is eyeing a launch in Germany soon and will process transactions on a larger scale.

Launched in 2018, in3 gives consumers the ability to pay for products within three instalments without interest or other hidden costs. Its customers include Kwik Fit, EP, La Souris, Matt sleeps, Dekbed-Discounter, among others.

Panzura snares $80m Series B

Multi-cloud data management platform Panzura scored $80m for its Series B funding round, which was backed by private equity firm Kayne Partners and CIBC Innovation Banking.

With the fresh capital injection, the FinTech company hopes to scale its operations to support its clients. Its customers include Disney, Milwaukee Tool, BBC America, AmeriHome Mortgage, US federal government agencies, and multiple NFL and MLB teams.

It also plans to add another 150 team members by the end of the year, with openings in its engineering, marketing, HR, finance and sales teams.

Panzura provides clients with a true cloud data management platform that helps them protect their data from ransomware and other cyber threats. It does this through immutable storage and simplified data management.

Elwood Technologies bags $70m in Series A raise

Elwood Technologies, which offers institutional-grade access to digital markets, has scored $70m in its Series A round.

The FinTech company has earmarked the capital to help it meet the needs of institutional clients by expanding its product offering and global operations.

Elwood Technologies was designed to simplify the entry to digital assets for institutional investors. Its full-stack solution offers seamless execution and deep liquidity, diverse market connectivity, full reporting and analytics, dedicated customer support and access to a broad range of instruments.

Its infrastructure has been perfected over three years and is used by FinTechs, asset managers and FI clients.

Cornami rakes in $68m

Cornami, a firm helping organisations encrypt data to protect it from post-quantum threats, has bagged $68m from a Series C round.

According to Security Week, Cornami offers a software-defined TruStream Computational Fabric architecture designed to enable high-performance real-time computing for critical and complex applications.

Cornami said that its technology can deliver scaled performance for massive datasets, helping firms accelerate Fully Homomorphic Encryption to keep data protected from post-quantum threats.

Crypto platform Voyager Digital scores $60m

Crypto trading platform Voyager Digital has raised $60m through a private placement of common shares.

With these fresh funds, the company hopes to capitalise on its strategic plan, but it did not outline what this is.

Following the close of the investment, the company will have $225m of available liquidity, comprised of $175m in cash and $50m in crypto.

The US-based FinTech company was founded in 2018 with the aim to bring transparency, cost-efficiency and choice to the cryptocurrency market. Its platform offers a secure way to trade over 100 different crypto assets.

Deel raises $50m to boost unicorn valuation

Global payroll solution Deel has reportedly raised $50m, which brings its valuation to $12bn.

The decacorn raised the capital from Emerson Collective, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Y Combinator, according to a report from Coverager.

Impressively, Deel has more than doubled its valuation in less than seven months. Previously it has reached a $5.5bn valuation in October 2021 following the close of a $425m Series D.

Deel, which was founded in 2019, provides businesses with a tool to automate onboarding, payroll and compliance for a team anywhere in the world. Its technology lets teams create customised contracts, meet local laws and compliance through a network of local experts, and streamline the whole payment process with a click.

Solidus Labs raises $45m from Series B

Solidus Labs, a provider of crypto-native risk monitoring and market surveillance, has raised $45m in Series B funding led by Liberty City Ventures.

Solidus Labs focusses on addressing crypto market integrity. In light of mounting regulatory and public pressure to protect users and investors and improve market integrity standards and investor protection in digital asset markets, Solidus reports massive demand for its solutions, and has more than quadrupled its team since the beginning of 2021.

In March 2022, the firm unveiled its all-in-one crypto-native risk monitoring suite – titled HALO – built from the ground up to address the new challenges presented by crypto and DeFi and enable institutional and mainstream adoption. HALO currently services dozens of leading crypto and DeFi platforms, financial institutions and regulators, monitoring more than 1 trillion trading events per day in more than 150 markets and protecting upwards of 25 million crypto market participants and investors.

The platform deploys over 50 different proprietary market abuse typologies, shielding investors and safeguarding crypto businesses from new threats unique to the crypto and decentralised finance space.

FirstClose collects $35m

FirstClose has collected $35m in funding to bolster its data and workflow solution provider for mortgage and home equity lenders.

With the capital, FirstClose plans to expand its financial services footprint to leverage property data intelligence, industry-leading partners, and technology.

Based in Texas, FirstClose offers underwriting workflow automation technology, point-of sale software and data services for the US home equity and mortgage markets. It claims its services reduce the time to close home equity lines of credit and mortgages for over 400 banks and credit union customers.

LatAm FinTech Nomad scores $32m

Nomad, a Latin American FinTech helping Brazilians establish bank accounts, has raised $32m in financing.

Nomad was represented in the round by Foley & Lardner, which was led by its partner André Thiollier.

Founded in 2019, Nomad currently has around 300,000 customers and aims to acquire 1 million new customers by the end of the year.

The company claims this recent round of funding will be used to invest in new technology, launch new products and expand its operating team.

Upfin brings €30m

Upfin, a venture capital firm that is aiming to support the Nordic FinTech community, has bagged €30m to back early-stage startups across the region.

According to Finextra, Upfin is backed by a sovereign wealth fund, a pension fund and a financial services union with the aim of investing in 15 to 20 FinTech businesses.

The company claims that there is room to bring on additional investors for a further second close.

To support the company’s search for FinTechs, Upfin has formed a partnership with Copenhagen FinTech – a non-profit – which has a massive network of corporate and VC partners in the region.

Seclore snares $27m in Series C haul

Data-centric security platform Seclore has reportedly raised $27m in its Series C funding round.

This funding will help Seclore expand its team and grow its customer base in North America.

The RegTech company offers data centric security and rights management solutions. Its features include email encryption, data-centric audits and analytics, insider threat protection, IP protection, mobile work security and Microsoft 365 data security.

Its technology helps companies meet compliance with GDPR, NIST, RBI, CCPA, SDAIA and many others.

Column Tax inks $21.7m Series A

Personal income tax software platform Column Tax has reportedly raised $21.7m in its Series A funding round.

The company’s API gives users personalised, secure and powerful income tax experiences. Its Tax Refund Unlock solution empowers US customers to get advance access to their tax returns in monthly payments, as well as file their taxes in a few clicks.

The FinTech company previously raised $5.1m in its seed funding round late last year. The round was also led by Bain Capital Ventures, with support also coming from South Park Commons, Core Innovation Capital, and Operator Partners.

The report from Forbes claims Column Tax grew its annual contracts value by 15-times between the seed and Series A round.

Jay Z-backed FinTech Altro collects $18m

US-based FinTech Altro, which aims to help people build credit, has raised $18m in a Series A funding round led by Pendulum Holdings.

Altro, which started out as Perch Credit, was founded in 2019 by Michael Broughton and Ayush Jain. The duo shared the belief that credit access should be free. They came up with the idea of helping people build credit through recurring payment forms such as digital subscriptions to Netflix or Spotify.

Now, Altro plans to use its new capital to continue growing its credit and financial literacy programme as well as grow its team. For example, Altro is focused on educating users through a catalog of over 350 educational audio clips covering topics like cryptocurrency, investing and trading. Watching the snippets, the company says, not only allows users to become more financially savvy, but also positively impact users’ scores the more they engage.

Sustain.Life pulls in $16m seed

Sustain.Life, the platform empowering small- and medium-sized enterprises to take impactful climate action, has raised $16m in seed funding.

Launched in 2021, Sustain.Life provides ESG tools that empower organisations to future-proof themselves by embracing sustainable business practices that manage carbon emissions, reduce costs and help distinguish them to customers, partners, investors and recruits.

Sustain.Life said it “democratises sustainability” by making it easier and more affordable to measure, manage and report carbon emissions and environmental impact. It empowers teams without expertise to start measuring environmental impact from internal operations, and scale across large organisations and global supply chains, replacing spreadsheets and turning black box estimates into auditable and verifiable data.

The company explained that while many of the world’s largest corporations have the resources to implement sustainability programs, small and medium-sized enterprises—which constitute a larger percentage of the market—often lack the resources to do so. This is the market the sustainability software company is targeting.

Coinshift squeezes $15m from Series A

Coinshift, a treasury management and infrastructure platform for crypto businesses, has scored $15m in its Series A.

The FinTech company provides DAOs and crypto businesses with a treasury management and infrastructure platform to help manage cash reserves, general financing and overall risk.

The version 2 of its technology was created in collaboration with leading Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. This new version will let users manage multiple Gnosis Safes for multiple chains under one organization to enable significant time saving and achieve transparency in treasury operations, it said.

One of the biggest changes is that users can now add multiple safes to a single organisation across multiple chains.

CertifID collects $12.5m in Series A raise

 CertifID, which helps prevent wire fraud in real estate deals, has reportedly collected $12.5m in its Series A funding round.

With the funds, the RegTech company plans to extend scale its fraud recovery team. Capital will also support the launch of a solution that stops fraud in mortgage payoffs. Funds will also help offer greater support for commercial real estate transactions and enable transfer between validated funds.

CertifID, which was founded in 2017, following a personal experience for co-founders Thomas Cronkright and Lawrence Duthler. The duo previously owned Sun Title, a title agent based in Michigan, was an early victim to wire fraud.

The RegTech company helps verify banking information and insure every transaction so they can save time and reduce risk for transactions. It claims business email compromise attacks are increasing, with over 6,000 businesses targeted each month.

Pemo inks $12m

UAE-based Pemo, which offers an all-in-one spend management solution to businesses in the region, has scored $12m in funding.

The FinTech company supports businesses across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.

Its platform is tailored to SMEs needs and currently offers digitised invoices, automated approval flows, one-click invoice payments and real-time cash flow monitoring.

Upcoming features include physical and virtual prepaid cards that can be topped up and distributed to employees. With an integration with the Pemo app, the prepaid card will automatically categorise employee expenses, capture receipts for each transaction and offer businesses owners full visibility of spending.

The company was founded by serial entrepreneurs, and Rocket Internet and Google alumni, Ayham Gorani, Valerie Konde, Alessandro Duri, and Saed Ghorani.

Dig pulls up $11m in seed financing

Dig Security, a cloud data security firm, has emerged from a period of stealth with $11m in seed funding.

Israel-based Dig claims it has developed the industry’s first data detection and response (DDR) solution, providing real-time visibility, control and protection of data assets across any cloud.

According to Dig, its platform sues cloud data attack models to detect, analyse and respond to threats. It alerts organisations about anomalous or suspicious activity, helping them prevent data exfiltration and misuse of data by employees.

Recognise Bank brings in $8.7m in new capital

Recognise Bank has revealed it will benefit from £8.7m in new capital following a recent round fundraising by the City of London Group, the former’s parent company.

Recognise Bank provides SMEs with digitally enabled relationship-led banking, offering a flurry of unregulated lending options via a network of relationship managers across the UK. To date, the bank has secured £100m in lending from a pipeline of £1bn worth of applications.

In addition, Recognise’s personal savings accounts have topped the best-buy tables, attracting £95m in deposits to date.

According to Recognise, the new capital will be used to support continued business lending, as well as the creation of a new team to further accelerate the bank’s digital innovation, including the creation of new products and fresh revenue streams.

Circit inks €6.5m Series A

Circit, an audit confirmations and open banking platform, has completed a €6.5m Series A funding round.

Founded in 2017, Circit helps auditors to verify company assets and liabilities in real-time and at source. The company claims its platform is the first of its kind to be directly regulated for open banking under the PSD2 regulation.

Circit standardised electronic audit confirmations in many of the largest accounting firms and has created a network of validated banks, lawyers, large corporates and SMEs who joined the platform to communicate with auditors during their complete search of a firm’s banking arrangements and possible legal liabilities held on its balance sheet.

According to Circit, it will use the funds to continue expanding its offering to users on all sides of the platform and to invest in accelerating the inherent network effects that have been created by global organisations joining as customers.

CyberTech devOcean rakes in $6m

Israeli CyberTech startup devOcean has emerged from a period of stealth with a cloud-native security operations platform and $6m in seed funding.

devOcean claims that its security-as-a-service platform collects insights from all cloud and security tools to provide information on potential risks and their effect on cloud applications.

The company said that this unified view of critical threats helps security team prioritise mitigation and allows CISOs to assign teams responsible for patching specific vulnerabilities or dealing with issues.

devOcean’s platform also provides recommendations on addressing risks efficiently and enables security teams to automate workflows and easily assign tasks to the relevant teams. The firm currently has 15 employees.

Cachet inks €5.5m

Cachet, a Tallinn-based InsurTech focused on platform worker insurance, has raised €5.5m to expand to gig workers across Europe.

Cachet said it solves this issue of a platform worker’s employment-related data being spread across multiple platforms by aggregating the data across platforms.

The company provides motor insurance for ride-hailing drivers as well as regular consumers, and delivery rider insurance that covers personal injury and property damage, accidents and medical expenses.

The funding will be used to grow the company’s team, improve its technology and data models, and expand within Europe. Cachet has an insurance distribution license that has been passported to most of the EU countries and currently operates in Estonia, Latvia, and Poland, while also serving customers in the UK, Lithuania, and Finland.

In addition to Bolt and Uber, it also works with platforms like Upsteam, Citybee and Cleanify. In Estonia, the company’s first market, Cachet holds 40% of the app-taxi segment’s market share.

Neptune Mutual bags $5.3m

Neptune Mutual, a marketplace for parametric coverage protection of digital assets, has closed a private funding round of $5.3m.

Neptune Mutual provides a marketplace for parametric cover protection of digital assets against hacks and exploits.

Stakeholders can choose to assume one or multiple roles, for example, a cover pool creator can also choose to become a liquidity provider.  Cover pools are open to anybody who is looking either to purchase a cover policy for digital asset protection, or anybody looking to earn rewards by providing liquidity to cover pools of projects they support.

A policyholder is guaranteed a payout in case of an incident resolution, without having to make an individual claim for proof of loss, and above all without having to worry whether this claim will be accepted or denied.

Investors pour $5.2m into FinTech Gravystack

Gravystack, a financial literacy app for children, has raised $5.2m in a seed round led by Altrus Capital and a pool of private investors.

Graystack is set to launch mid 2022 with a banking and gamification engine designed to incentivise children and teens to earn and manage money. The app also allows parents to supervise their children’s account activity and set flexible controls.

Serial entrepreneurs Scott Donnell and Travis Adams founded the “FinTech solution for the whole family” to help children build a financially independent future.

Swedish WealthTech Findity inks $4.9m

Swedish expense management company Findity has raised SEK 50m ($4.9m) as it bolsters its international expansion efforts.

With the fund, the FinTech company plans to expand internationally and boost product development efforts.

It is also going through a comprehensive rebrand to bring its two brands together under Findity. Its other brand was Companyexpense.

Findity offers products for expense claims, entertainment, mileage and per diem, which are currently used by over 30,000 customers.

Rencore picks up $4m

Rencore, which fosters governance of cloud collaborations, has picked up $4m in its Series A funding round, which was led by Capnamic.

With the funds, the company hopes to scale its product offering and extend the international reach of its services. It also hopes to hire more staff and bolster its partner distribution channel.

Rencore is a B2B software company that gives companies the tools to control their cloud collaboration technologies. Its technology can simplify, automate and accelerate their governance, risk and compliance processes.

Its tools connects with Microsoft 365 services to offer a central portal, it then monitors the environment and details findings into a report and dashboard, it then offers a pre-defined set of governance rules to spot violations, and finally, it will automate the handling of various levels of violations based on the organisation’s process.

Cyscale scores €3m seed

Cyscale, which provides complete cloud visibility, has reportedly raised €3m in its seed funding round, which was led by Notion Capital.

With this capital injection, Cyscale plans to expand its teams in Romania and the UK – its current team is comprised of 15 people. By the end of the year, its goal is to have an engineering team of 25 and a further 10 people in other roles. After three years, Cyscale hopes to have a team of 250 people.

Cyscale empowers companies to map, secure and monitor cloud assets across platforms. It also helps meet compliance with CIS, ISO 27001:2013, SOC 2, NIST 800, NIST CSF, PCIDSS, CCPA, GDPR, HITRUST and HIPAA.

FinTech Finku raises $2.8m seed

Indonesia-based FinTech platform Finku has reportedly raised $2.8m in its seed funding round.

This capital will help Finku expand across Indonesia, with the ambition to be the country’s first responsible lender by expanding to offer responsible credit. It also plans to combine low-interest rates, transparent fees and suite of personal finance tools so users can improve their finance management, it said.

Additionally, Finku is looking to release a new credit solution that will let users access credit facilities for their daily needs.

Founded in 2021, Finku is a personal finance mobile app designed so consumers can better manage their finances through financial tools. Its goal is to remove financial illiteracy in Indonesia.

InsurTech Skyline gathers $1.75m

InsurTech parametric specialist Skyline Partners has gained $1.75m in funding from West Hill Capital, a specialist corporate finance and VC firm, bringing the total raised to $3.5m.

The oversubscribed round will support Skyline’s continued expansion, following its reported increasing traction in the market with leading brokers looking for innovative parametric solutions.

Skyline first operates as a regulated, specialist parametric MGA, then as a parametric structuring agent for complex and innovative deals for brokers and insurers, and lastly as a software provider for tech-enabled parametric solutions, with its INSDEX platform, a proprietary geospatial intelligence technology.

The InsurTech has developed and launched several parametric products for clients with a wide variety of applications, including natural disasters for financial institutions, cost of violence for SMEs, and climate risks for agriculture.

Investment app Portfolio raises £1.5m

Portfolio, an investment app based in Manchester, has raised £1.5m from a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign.

The round of investment was open only to listeners of The Property Podcast – which is a show hosted by the company’s co-founders.

Portfolio was able to raise £1m within 9 hours of the campaign, before closing the round two days later on £1.5m, following investments from 817 investors. The campaign valued the business at £55m.

Portfolio is an app that enables people to invest through their phones and access the potential benefits of the property market without the challenges of deposits involved in buy-to-let.

Quantifeed closes Series C

Quantifeed, which claims to be Asia’s leading digital wealth management solution developer for financial institutions, has closed its Series C round on an undisclosed amount.

This capital has been earmarked to enhance Quantifeed’s solutions for advisors, portfolio managers and end-customers. It hopes to enrich its portfolio design, advice and trading engines, as well as enable wealth management across a broader spectrum of asset classes, such as structured products, private equity and digital assets.

Additionally, the WealthTech company has its sights on hiring talent from Asia-Pacific, with a focus on Japan and Southeast Asia.

Quantifeed, which is led by its co-founders Alex Ypsilanti and Ross Milward, gives financial institutions, including banks, brokers and insurance companies, with the digital tools to growth their wealth management services.

GIST secures investment from FNZ

GIST, which offers impact data and analytics, has received a strategic investment from global wealth management firm FNZ.

Alongside supporting the growth of GIST, FNZ will help the FinTech company build upon the existing collaboration between the pair.

As part of this, GIST’s sustainability data will be integrated into FNZ Impact, a sustainable investment solution. This integration will supply investors with accessible and transparent sustainability data.

FNZ Impact supports over 650 of the world’s leading financial institutions and 8,000 wealth management firms in 21 countries. It helps financial institutions provide their clients with hyper-personalized, transparent information around the environmental and social impacts of investment portfolios. It also offers them the capability to optimise their portfolios on their own goals.

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