Don’t miss this week’s 29 FinTech deals that raised $823m

Don't miss this week's 29 FinTech deals that raised $823m

Countries around the world were represented in this week’s 29 FinTech deals, which raised a combined total of $853m is raised.

Seven countries were represented in this week’s ten biggest deals. While the US led the charge with four (Arta, Island, Laika and Brightside) other countries were Algeria (Yassir), Hopper (Canada), Ramp (Poland), Mendel (Mexico), Blnk (Egypt) and Agrolend (Brazil).

The biggest funding round of the week was raised by Algeria’s Yassir, which is a super app that provides rideshare, food delivery and banking services. The company raised capital from BOND, DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital and more. It operates as an all-in-one ecosystem that helps customers manage all their daily activities.

Super apps are becoming increasingly popular around the world. WealthTech company Currencycloud recently released a free ebook exploring what a super app is and why they are taking the world by storm. These types of services became big in China, through providers like WeChat, and have since cropped up around the world.

A reason these have become so popular is that they allow streamlined management for consumers, but also better serve consumers that have been unserved by traditional financial institutions.

A recent report from PYMNTS found that 72% of consumers are interested in a super app. Respondents to the survey from the UK were the most eager for these types of apps, with 74% expressing interest.

The popularity of these apps has been reflected in venture capital. France-based Lydia, which describes itself as a financial services super app, recently reached a $1bn valuation after raising $100m. While South Korea’s Toss reached a $7.4bn valuation after closing a $410m round.

Going back to the top ten deals of this week’s funding rounds. A range of sectors were present. WealthTech accounted for three of the deals (Yassir, Arta and Brightside), while marketplace lending was represented by two companies (Blnk and Agrolend).

Other sectors in the top ten were PayTech (Hopper), Ramp (cryptocurrency), CyberTech (Island), RegTech (Laika) and Infrastructure & Enterprise Software (Mendel).

As the fears of recession looms over the world, marketplace lending companies might come into hot demand. Many businesses have just recovered from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic but are once again faced with the fight for survival. Many of these companies might look to lending for their support.

FinTech Global spoke to SME Finance CEO and co-founder Mindaugas Mikalajūnas about the role of SME lending during their market downturn. With SMEs making up the lion share of companies, there will be a lot seeking support, however, Mikalajūnas believes traditional players are not the best ones to help.

He said, “Thanks to all these tools, they can evaluate the creditworthiness of SMEs faster and more accurately. What’s more, alternative financiers are better at developing unique processes to be as close as possible to the client. This means creating the simplest possible financing process: digital onboarding, for example, enables any small business to get financing online. There is no need to submit paper documents or go to meetings. The process of obtaining financing is simple and fast.” To get more insights from Mikalajūnas, read the interview here.

One of the biggest funding rounds from this week was raised by Mexico’s Mendel. The company offers B2B corporate spend management and raised $60m in equity and debt financing. Founded in 2020, Mendel provides a corporate expense management platform that enables businesses to keep track of employee business spending.

FinTech Global released an analysis earlier this week exploring Mexico’s FinTech sector. It found that PropTech companies are making the lionshare of the country’s FinTech sector. The segment saw a surge in deal activity in Q3 2022, taking up 37% of all FinTech deals.

Without further ado, here are the 29 funding rounds from the past week.

North African super app Yassir lands $150m

Yassir, a North African “super app” providing rideshare, food delivery and banking services, has raised $150m in Series B funding.

The investment was led by BOND, with participation from DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital, Stanford Alumni Ventures (aka Spike Ventures) and Y Combinator, among other strategic investors.

Founded in 2017, the super app provides three core services: ride hailing, food and grocery delivery, and financial services.

An all-in-one ecosystem, the app provides its customers a single point solution for managing all of their day-to-day activities, from travelling to work to ordering groceries and meals. These services generate revenues for more than 100,000 partners, which include drivers, couriers, merchants, wholesalers, among other gig workers and vendors.

Yassir also offers financial services. The company pointed to a 2018 report by McKinsey & Company on growth and innovation in African retail banking, which found that more than half (57%) of Africa’s population lack any form of a bank account.

In addition, among African banking customers, 40% prefer digital channels for transactions. By providing consumers in Africa with a mobile banking solution, as part of a more comprehensive suite of services, Yassir said it is meeting an important need in the market, one where 50% of the population already have mobile internet access.

The company operates in six countries and 45 cities, where it is used by more than 8 million users.

Capital One backs travel FinTech Hopper

Hopper, an online travel booking app, has raised $96m in equity funding from Capital One to support its growth and entry into social commerce.

Last year, Hopper pulled in $170m in a Series F funding round fuelled by Capital One alongside launching Capital One Travel for the banking giant’s cardholders.

Founded by Frederic Lalonde, a former vice president at Expedia, Hopper’s platform predicts flight and hotel prices and alerts travellers of new deals allowing them to freeze the price of a flight for up to two weeks.

The mobile-first travel marketplace leverages data and machine learning to develop FinTech solutions for customers to travel and save money. Through its B2B initiative, Hopper Cloud, the company is syndicating its solutions, infrastructure, and agency content.

According to a report from BetaKit, Hopper president Dakota Smith said the firm plans to invest in a few areas, including Hopper Cloud, social commerce, and international market expansion. Capital One is also extending the length of its existing strategic partnership with Hopper.

Smith also reportedly declined to share Hopper’s exact valuation but said the round values the company at over $5bn.

Arta, the family office for everyone, exits stealth with $90m

Arta is a new financial management platform that aims to become the family office for everyone, not just the rich. The company has launched out of stealth mode, with $90m in equity.

The funds were supplied by Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit, Coatue and over 140 angel investors. These include tech and finance leaders Eric Schmidt, Betsy Cohen, Michael Miebach, and Jeff Dean.

Arta states that the ultra-wealthy employ teams of professionals that leverage sophisticated financial strategies and can invest into opportunities locked off to ordinary people. These teams are called family offices and Arta is on a mission to become the family office for everyone else.

The platform was created to become a financial home for people. It allows customers to aggregate assets, build portfolios and get expert advice for financial planning. It leverages AI to enable intelligent investing in public markets and has opened access to alternative assets, such as private equity, venture capital and real estate funds.

Its platform also offers an AI-managed portfolio that allows users to create personalised, automated portfolios that back stocks, bonds, options and leverage. Other features include accessing credit against assets, networking opportunities with other investors, and performance-based fees.

Crypto to fiat app Ramp closes Series B on $70m

Ramp, which is building the payment rails to connect crypto to the global financial system, has closed its Series B funding round on $70m.

Mubadala Capital and Korelya Capital co-led the round, with commitments also coming from Balderton Capital and Cogito Capital. 

With the capital, the crypto to fiat company hopes to enhance its product line, add local fiat currencies and payment methods, expand into new territories and hire more staff.

Ramp was co-founded by CEO Szymon Sypniewicz and CPO Przemek Kowalczyk in 2018. Its full-stack payment solution allows users to buy cryptocurrencies inside any application or website. It describes its operations to a similar service to how PayPal and Stripe offer a unified purchase experience across any e-commerce site.

Despite the turbulent market, it has increased the total number of unique users by over 600%.

Its crypto to fiat services are available in over 150 countries and provides a streamlined experience to convert to and from fiat and cryptocurrencies. It supports wallets, exchanges, NFT marketplaces and gaming companies.

Island bags $60m for its enterprise browser

Island, which has built an enterprise browser that boosts online security and compliance, has closed a $60m extension to its Series B round.

Georgian served as the lead investor to the round, which values the company at $1.3bn. Alongside funding, Georgian is providing Island with its expertise in deep data science to further accelerate the security and productivity functionality of the Island Enterprise Browser.

This investment comes shortly after Island closed its initial Series B round on $115m. The investment was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Stripes and Sequoia.

This new capital injection will help Island reaffirm its mission to redefine the role of the browser for enterprises.

Island Enterprise Browser allows organisations to protect users and data at the very point where they interact with SaaS and internal web applications.

Through the browser, security teams fully control the last mile, from basic protections such as copy, paste, download, upload, and screenshot capture, to more advanced security demands such as data redaction, watermarking and multi-factor authentication insertion.

Through this, teams can prevent data leakage, safe access for contractors and BYOD workers, and full governance over privileged user accounts.

Corporate spend management startup Mendel secures $60m

Mendel, a Mexico-based B2B corporate spend management company, has raised $60m in equity and debt financing.

The capital came from Industry Ventures, Infinity Ventures and Victory Park Capital. Existing investors ALLVP and BTV, also participated.

Mendel first launched its operations in Mexico in 2021 after raising $35m in Series A funding from Infinity Ventures and ALLVP.

Founded in 2020, Mendel provides a corporate expense management platform that enables businesses to keep track of employee business spending. The firm offers unlimited issuing of both physical and corporate cards as well as a credit line to finance business expenses and invoice tracking features.

Mendel’s vision is to return agility to the corporate segment so that it simplifies its expense reporting processes and saves two of the most important resources in any organisation: time and money.

According to Mendel, the role of CFO’s and strategic financial decisions have become increasingly dynamic in the last decade, but management of data and digital tools have not evolved at the same pace.

Mendel will use the capital to “double down” in growth and speed up the development of its corporate spend management platform in the Mexican market.

Compliance firm Laika lands $50m in Series C

Laika, an enterprise-ready compliance platform, has scored $50m in a Series C funding round.

The round was headed by Fin Capital and saw participation from Centana Growth Partners, ThirdPrime, Canapi and J.P Morgan Growth Equity Partners.

Following this recent funding raise, this brings the funding raised by Laika to a total of $98m.

New York-based Laika is a compliance platform that lets growing companies compete on the same level as any large organisation.

 

The firm helps companies design stage-appropriate controls, obtain infosec certifications/audits like SOC 2 or ISO 27001, stay compliant with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR, and build trust with enterprise customers for whom security is a fundamental must have requirement.

Laika also offers solutions for supporting the corporate procurement process, integrated penetration testing, automated security questionnaires, RFPs, and vendor assessments and employee background checks.

According to Laika, it plans to use the newly raised capital to support its continued product development and accelerate sales, marketing and strategic partnerships.

Brightside nets $33m to boost employee financial care

Brightside, a financial care platform for employers, has closed its Series B funding round on $33m, as it looks to enhance its AI-powered solution.

Obvious Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, served as the lead investor. Other commitments came from Clocktower Technology Ventures and Chestnut Street Ventures.

Existing Brightside backers, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Trinity Ventures, also joined the round.

Funds from the round will help the FinTech company bolster its growth and development of platform enhancements.

This Series B comes after a strong growth period for Brightside. It grew its 2021 revenues by around 800% last year and is on track to grow it by nearly ten-times in 2022. It has also increased its headcount by over 150% this year, and plans to hire 200 more people in the coming year.

A report from AmeriLife claims that seven in ten Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Brightside stated this not only impacts their home life, but also business performance.

It pointed to a study from PwC that found financial stress impacts everything from mental and physical health to workplace retention and productivity. The report claims that financially stressed employees are twice as likely to seek a new job and 76% say financial worries have a negative impact on their productivity.

Brightside gives employers the tools to help improve the financial health of their workforce. Through the platform, an employer can give their employees a single destination to address personal finance needs with unbiased, individualised and hands-on support.

The platform, which leverages behavioural science and financial models, combines a human and digital approach to financial health. It helps to address financial needs by finding community and government assistance programs, arranging payment plans, discussing debt consolidation options, creating savings plans and providing other practical, substantive support and more.

Egyptian FinTech Blnk scores $32m in funding

Blnk, a FinTech startup that enables instant consumer credit, has raised $32m across equity and debt funding and securitised bond issuance.

The combined pre-seed and seed funding rounds of $12.5m was led by Abu Dhabi’s Emirates International Investment Company and Sawari Ventures. Also participating were several local and international investors.

The $11.2 million debt funding was secured from a number of leading local banks. The $8.3 million securitised bond issuance was underwritten by National Bank of Egypt and Banque du Caire, making Blnk the youngest Egyptian startup to securitize its loan book.

Blnk has developed a digital lending platform that empowers merchants of all sizes to instantly underwrite and finance their customers’ purchases at the point of sale. With only a National ID and in as little as 3 minutes, consumers can access financing to purchase a wide range of products or services, including electronics, furniture and automotive services, paying over instalments ranging from 6 to 36 months.

According to Blnk, the funds will support further development of Blnk’s Artificial Intelligence-powered lending infrastructure and the financing of the company’s fast-growing portfolio of customers.

Brazil’s Agrolend secures $27m to support farmers

Agrolend, a Brazil-based financial institution focused on serving farmers, has raised $27m in Series B funding.

According to a report from FinSMEs, the round was led by Lightrock, with participation also from Valor Capital, Continental Grain Company, SP Ventures, Provence Capital, Barn Invest, Yara Growth Ventures and Mago Capital.

Led by CEO Andre Glezer, Agrolend is on a mission to revolutionise the agribusiness market for small and medium-sized rural producers in Brazil.

The company aims to do this through the granting of sustainable credit, necessary to finance the development of agricultural productions and encourage investment in equipment and technology, which increase their productivity and profitability.

Agrolend operates through partnerships with industries and distributors of ag inputs, equipment, and farm implements, and also works with agtechs in the financing of technology.

Through an electronic platform, farmers have access to credit, and operations are originated and formalised in a digital environment and can be accessed through a smartphone.

Agrolend is present in more than 10 Brazilian states and in several segments such as soybeans, corn, coffee, sugar cane, fruits, livestock and dairy cattle.

This funding will enable the company to target an increase in its loan book for the 2023/24 crop season, through extending its services to a client base of up to 10,000 small-to-medium sized farmers across Brazil.

AXA Venture Partners backs Mytraffic for location analytics

Mytraffic, a France-based provider of location analytics, has raised €30m ($26m) in Series B funding in a round led by AXA Venture Partners (AVP).

Created in 2015, Mytraffic offers a SaaS platform which provides accurate and dynamic information about physical locations: shopping centres, streets and city centres.

Mytraffic helps over 400 clients across seven European countries (France, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands).

Retailers (McDonald’s, Amorino, The Body Shop), real estate operators (JLL, Nhood, Redevco) and city authorities (Montpellier, BME Brussels, Karlsruhe ME) currently use its platform to select the best locations to open stores, monitor the performance of their real estate assets, attract visitors, and negotiate leases.

The round takes the total equity raised by Mytraffic close to €45m. The company said this is thanks to historic investors such as Alven which led the Series A in 2021, and Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet’s Kernel fund, which led the seed round.

My traffic said the capital wull support the development of its location analytics platform and accelerate its growth across Europe.

Digital insurer Glow bags $22.5m to help small businesses shine

Glow, a digital insurance agency for small businesses, has raised $22.5m in Series A funding to offer more cost-effective and up-to-date policies to businesses.

The round was led by Cota Capital. AV8 Ventures, Markd, Startup Venture Capital, Maiden Re, and others also participated in the round.

Based in San Francisco, Glow strives to ensure small businesses have the right coverage for all their insurance needs at lower cost, not just when they purchase, but every year.

Glow said the financing will fund innovation in its digital insurance platform, and to expand into more states across the nation, serving small businesses across more vertical industries.

According to the digital insurer, traditional insurance has moved up-market, leaving small businesses behind.

These agents, the company said, often have a “blunt-instrument approach” to insurance, quoting policies that may not be the best fit for the company based on very few details about the business and its employees. This “one size fits all” approach can lead to overpaying.

Instead, Glow uses technology to look more deeply at data like job codes that can more accurately reflect the risk of a business. This is what allows the company to offer a policy that results in a more cost-effective option than local agents typically provide.

In addition, traditional agents often “sell-and-forget,” locking customers into renewals and walking away without re-examining whether their business, number of employees, or employee roles have changed.

Glow said its platform ensures that a company’s coverage is always up to date, at the lowest possible cost now and a year from now.

Veriti arises from stealth with $18.5m

Veriti, a security posture management company, has emerged from a period of stealth with $18.5m raised in two funding rounds.

The round was led by Insight Partners and saw participation from investors including NFX and AMITI.

Established in 2021, Veriti helps organisations maximise their security posture while ensuring business uptime.

Integrated with the entire security stack, Veriti’s unified security posture management platform continually and proactively monitors exposure to threats and provides actionable remediation paths for security gaps across the organisation’s infrastructure and attack surface.

Veriti says it has designed its Unified Security Posture Management platform based on feedback from CISOs and IT directors from multiple industries, to provide them with visibility, monitoring, and actionable insights.

According to Veriti, it plans to use the new financing to increase product functionality and scale its business.

CyberTech Wib bags $16m to accelerate growth

Wib, a cybersecurity firm focused on API security, has landed $16m in a funding round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Also participating in the round was Venture Israel, Techstars, Kmehin Ventures and a number of other existing investors.

Wib claims its holistic API security platform is the only solution to provide complete visibility across the entire API landscape, from code to production, helping unify software developers, cyber defenders and CIOs around a single holistic view of their complete API domain.

By delivering rigorous real-time inspection, management, and control at every stage of the API lifecycle, Wib can automate inventory and API change management; identify rogue, zombie and shadow APIs and analyse business risk and impact, helping organisations to reduce and harden their API attack surface.

Wib claims the investment will be used to enhance Wib’s pioneering holistic API security platform and accelerate international growth as it expands operations across the Americas, UK and EMEA.

Tellus closes seed to make savings through real estate

Tellus, which stylises itself as a smart savings platform powered by real estate, has closed its seed funding round on $16m.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and follows a $10m SAFE (simple agreement for future equity).

Other participants in the seed round are All-Stars Investments, Alumni Ventures, Decent Capital, Vectr Ventures, West Arrow and Westwood Ventures. Also joining the round were notable angel investors, including the co-founders of YouTube, Lime Bike, and Sereno Group Real Estate.

With the funds, the smart savings platform plans to scale its team and enhance its platform.

Founded in 2016, Tellus was built to help more people and families have better control of their personal finances and address the widening wealth gap.

It stated that with inflation at a 40-year high, and estimates claiming the pace of inflation will have savings in 8.7 years, people need other avenues to put their money to work. Tellus is the alternative. It leverages US single family home loans to offer users higher yields than typical savings accounts, along with access to regular withdrawals.

It claims that its savings solutions pay on average up to 22-times more than traditional savings accounts.

The company generates yields by providing single-family loans to American borrowers in prime cities. Mortgages are overcollateralized and the interest is awarded to customers through the app.

Its app also helps users budget funds, set financial goals, and accelerate their savings, modernising wealth-building through real estate.

Worldr bags seed round to boost compliance in communications platforms

Worldr, a zero-trust architecture for collaboration and communications platforms, has bagged $11m for its seed round.

Molten Ventures, which was formerly Draper Esprit, served as the lead investor. Other commitments came from existing investors IQ Capital and Playfair Capital.

It also saw support from specialist funds Pretiosum Ventures, Navigate VC and national security focused MD One Ventures. Notable angel investors also joined the seed round, including Blackstone senior MD Alex Walsh, former HSBC COO and CIO Hussain Baig, and Bain & Co ex-vice chairman John Theroux.

With the support of the capital, Worldr is pursuing its mission of creating a software-agnostic architecture that will sit across an organisation’s entire environment to maintain data sovereignty when shared across communication platforms. It supports data sovereignty for information shared via Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Outlook, Slack and more.

To support its growth ambitions, the RegTech company is expanding its presence in the US with a dedicated office in New York. This office will bolster its relationship with Microsoft, as part of the Independent Partner Network.

It is also growing its operations in the Middle East, with the creation of a dedicated team based in Dubai.

Worldr points to data that states companies experienced 31% more cyber attacks in 2021, compared to 2020. Coupled with the rising data localisation requirements amid global sanctions and an increased pressure on compliance and auditing from regulators, there is a greater need for data sovereignty.

This is where Worldr comes in. It has built an enterprise-level security and compliance architecture that stores all communications and files within the customer’s own environment. It bypasses a third-party provider’s own servers and allows organisations to retain full ownership of their enterprise data.

Savvy collects $11m as it modernises human financial advice

Savvy, which is on a mission to modernise human financial advice through technology, has collected $11m for its Series A-1 funding round.

Berkeley’s The House Fund served as the lead investor, with commitments also coming from partners at Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Brewer Lane Ventures, Jordan Park and many others.

The idea for Savvy came after the real experiences of its co-founder and CEO Ritik Malhotra. Malhotra had gone through the arduous process of finding a financial advisor, transitioning accounts and working with advisors on a daily basis. He said, “I couldn’t help but think how painful the experience must have been for them, let alone for myself.”

Malhotra added that while this was just a one-time process for him, financial advisors around the world are using slow account migrations, compliance checks and paperwork.

Savvy was created to solve these problems. It supplies the wealth management industry with technology and automation. It provides investors with one unified and integrated place that has everything they need to service clients. This includes CRM, investment management and financial planning.

Through intelligent automation, advisors can refrain from doing repetitive tasks and focus on more meaningful duties.

Anzen is the new InsurTech changing business insurance

Anzen is a new InsurTech company that is on a mission to rebuild the business insurance space, with a focus on the Directors and Officers (D&O) or Executive Liability Insurance lines.

The company has raised $10m in seed funding, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz to support the development of its platform. Other commitments to the seed round came from MS&AD Ventures, Tokio Marine, and over 30 leading seed investors and founders/CEOs.

Anzen, which means safety in Japanese, is also launching the Anzen Management Operations suite (MgmtOps). Included in this is a first of its kind Safety Auditor, which was created to track and automate employee compliance.

Its vision is to offer an insurance product with software that helps keep companies safe and freeing staff to focus on more important tasks.

Current D&O and executive liability insurance products are slow and analog to buy, according to Anzen. As a result, it has built a modern experience that connects a company’s system with just a few clicks and helps them quickly get cover, with the best protection and risk prevention software.

Agent IQ lands $10m in Series A

Agent IQ, a provider of digital customer engagement for financial services, has bagged $10m in a Series A raise.

The round was led by Mendon Venture Partners and saw participation from Acronym VC and Sierra Ventures, as well as innovative banks such as FNBO.

Agent IQ has focused its attention on the retail and commercial banking market with a commitment to helping financial institutions ensure that digital banking remains highly personal for customers.

Through its cost effective, AI augmented, scalable Lynq digital engagement platform, Agent IQ enables banks and credit unions to establish and grow happier, more loyal, more profitable relationships with customers and members.

Darwinium scores $10m in seed funding haul

Darwinium, a US-based startup specialising in customer protection, has netted $10m in a seed funding round led by Airtree and Blackbird.

Darwinium claims it offers a new approach to customer interaction, designed to delight not insult, detect not disable and automate not overload.

The firm said it provides security and protection at scale, with low-touch integration and immediate control. A decision control platform that is future-proofed against new and evolving business challenges.

In addition, Darwinium’s platform identifies bad behaviour in real time by continuously assessing users’ digital interactions across websites, applications, and APIs.

Darwinium combines internal cybersecurity tools with fraud-prevention tools, in a single view. The startup aims to prevent account compromise and online fraud by bringing together previously disjointed security controls.

The company says its solution has already been adopted by organisations in the banking, ecommerce, gaming, payments, and travel sectors. Darwinium currently has locations in California, London and Sydney.

The firm plans to use its newly raised funding for expansions in the product and customer space.

FinTech doola scores $8m in funding raise

doola, a New York-based FinTech, has raised $8m in a funding round headed by Nexus Venture Partners.

Also taking part in the financing raise was investor Y Combinator Community Fund as well as others.

doola helps users form and run their US business from anywhere, fast, and in just a few clicks.

The company handles LLC formation and helps users get set up with a US bank account, a US mailing address, a US business phone number, a US tax filing and a US business bank account amongst other things.

According to the firm, the new fundraise comes right after a profitable year and the launch of doola Banking — an accessible way for LLCs around the globe to bank and build credit in the US. This sparks a new era for the company as the company focuses on democratising access to the US financial ecosystem for all.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinmetro hits $180m valuation

Cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinmetro has reportedly raised $7m in an investment round that puts its valuation at $180m.

The capital was supplied by three unnamed angel investors, as well as over 100 existing shareholders, according to a report from Coindesk.

With the funds, Coinmetro plans to grow its operations in the US, UK and Europe. The cryptocurrency exchange platform is also building a range of passive income products that will help its customers cope with high inflation and interest rates.

This is an interim funding round and will be followed by a Series A round, which is set for the first quarter of 2023.

Coinmetro is a cryptocurrency exchange platform that allows users to buy, trade and invest into crypto. Users can instantly buy coins with credit cards, leverage real-time asset data, trade on low fees and automatically copy professional traders.

Atlar nets $5m to automate business banking

Atlar, a Sweden-based FinTech automating business banking, has raised $5m in seed funding led by Index Ventures.

The round also saw participation from La Famiglia VC, Cocoa VC and a number of angel investors, including Revolut CFO Mikko Salovaara, former executive vice president of global sales at Adyen Thijn Lamers and N26 CFO Jan Kemper.

According to Atlar, every year, an estimated €260trn moves through European banks in the form of payouts, insurance premiums, deposits, loan payouts, and much more.

Staggeringly, the company said much of this is done manually: through payment files uploaded to banks, finance teams matching line items one by one with internal books, or hacked-together software solutions propped up by engineers.

While FinTech tools have provided innovation for companies when it comes to accepting payments and ‘open banking’, Atlar said that similar developments have not arrived to enable payments flows that begin in a company’s own bank accounts, this is what the startup is looking to change.

Atlar lets businesses connect to its platform via an API, which in turn connects to their banks.

Businesses’ can then automate all of their payment activities, including initiating transfers, reconciling transactions, handling direct debits, and more.

This reduces the labour demanded to maintain money flows and business records; in turn, that means payments don’t get skipped and man-hours are freed up for more consequential and strategic work, Atlar said.

KodyPay closes pre-Series A to transform payment acceptance

KodyPay, which is helping to simplify in-person payment acceptance, has raised $5m in its pre-Series A funding round.

The capital was supplied by unnamed, new strategic investors and existing backers.

The PayTech company aims to bring the ease and optionality of online payments to brick-and-mortar businesses. Through its all-in-one mobile app for tablets and physical card machines, it provides a one-stop, fully integrated payment solution.

Clients can leverage the technology to accept physical card payments and online orders. It also accepts various non-card payments, these include buy now, pay later, e-wallets, open banking and cryptocurrency.

 

Other notable features of the platform are custom checkout options, QR code ordering and more.

It claims that clients can save up to 60% on processing costs and see up to a 20% increase to staff tips.

Following a trial in October 2021 and a public beta launch in July 2022, the company has recorded strong growth. It now boasts gross payment volumes in excess of £100m on an annualised basis, after increasing by an average of 90% month over month. It has over 500 venues signed up in the UK and is expecting strong growth next year.

With the fresh funds, the PayTech company hopes to scale its team across the UK and invest into its strategic partnerships to release new product features.

Web3 platform Xternity lands $4.5m in pre-seed funding

Xternity, an Israeli provider of a Web3 platform for games, has scored $4.5m in pre-seed investment.

The round was headed by Jibe Ventures, Secret Chords, Vgames, NFX and Flori Ventures.

According to FinSMEs, Xternity provides a platform that enables game developers to work with many blockchains simultaneously at scale while having a unified code experience, add NFT assets, and game economy layers while focusing on their core mission.

The company announced its open BETA which provides games with Multi Chain API, Embedded and customised wallet, NFT platform at scale, and Web3 CRM tool which is already integrated with leading blockchain networks, including Polygon, ImmutableX, Solana, and Celo.

 Xternity plans to use the funding to boost the adoption of Web3 by WEB2 games.

Martian, a web3 wallet, recently landed $3m in a pre-seed funding round headed by investor Race Capital.

Also participating in the round were FTX Ventures, Superscrypt, Jump Capital and Aptos.

Martian aims to help users cut through the noise with its simple web3 wallet. In just a few steps, Martian users can start interacting with decentralised applications on Aptos, to buy, swap tokens or collect different NFTs.

Elsewhere, Tactic recently raised $11m in funding as it continues its mission to simplify financial operations for businesses in web3.

Tatic claims the funds will position it to help enterprises navigate the evolving regulatory landscape when it comes to financial compliance.

Cherry launches from stealth to automate accounting

Cherry is a new FinTech startup launched out of stealth that aims to automate accounting and transaction processes.

Alongside the launch out of stealth, the FinTech company has raised $4m in seed funding. The investment was led by NFX, a seed-stage venture capital firm that is based in San Francisco.

It raised the capital to scale its digital business network, hire more staff and onboard thousands of new customers.

Cherry stated that businesses are currently inundated with dozens of accounting and payment systems to manually process invoices and payments from vendors and customers. These systems all operate in a silo and require manual qualifiers, data entry and for all accounting teams to reconcile at the end of a month.

This is the problem Cherry launched to resolve. It acts as a centralised network that processes payments and automates the transfer of records. Its platform works with all banks and payment types, including checks, ACH, EFT, bank wires, and credit and debit card payments.

It is also compatible with over a dozen accounting applications, including Quickbooks, Sage Intacct, Yardi, Netsuite, Workday, AppFolio, SAP, Acumatica, RentManeger, and others.

Since its launch in February 2022, it has processed over 100,000 transactions worth $350m.

Lab 1 rakes in £1m ($850,000) from funding raise

Lab 1, a UK-based firm focused on cyber intelligence, has bagged £1m in a recent investment raise.

The round was led by Alan Morgan, MMC Ventures, Cris Conde and EIC fund SyndicateRoom.

According to FinSMEs, Lab 1 discovers, quantifies and contextualises stolen data on the web and dark web, helping companies visualise exposure and risk in near real time, on any company, across their entire global supply chain.

The company collects compromised and exposed data information on over 20 data classes such as credentials, PII, code and documents, and feeds them into CiGraph, a contextual knowledge graph of global supply chain breaches.

To make it simpler for security teams to turn breach information into action, Lab 1 offers Blast, a real-time alerting service; Radius, a detailed breach incident report, and Fallout, an analysis of the compromised data, including impact assessment combining multiple different data sets to unearth hidden threats and risks. Company Reports present a connected view of all information.

According to Lab 1, it intends to use the newly raised capital to accelerate its product engineering and growth.

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