This week saw 25 deals take place across the FinTech sector. Two high-value raises of $270m and $250m lead the charge this week, accounting for over half of the amount raised by the top 10 deals all together.
This week saw a total of 25 deals take place raise almost $1.1bn collectively. The top 10 deals this week were very diverse, coming from a range of countries and sectors in the industry.
The top two deals this week raised an eye-watering $520m between them, accounting for more than half of the amount raised by all of the top 10 deals combined ($0.992m). These came from Kredivo, a buy now pay later service for consumers in Indonesia and Vietnam, and digital investing giant eToro.
Other significant deals this week include UK-based business lender TradeBridge, which raised $122m, and US-based financial wellness platform Rain, which secured $115m.
Taking fifth place in this week’s top ten, is German RegTech firm IntegrityNext, which raised $107m. FinTech Global Research recently reported that German FinTech deal activity and investment saw a drop in 2022 from 2021 levels.
German FinTech investment in 2022 saw a significant 47% drop to $3.4bn from 2021 levels. FinTech investment in 2022 was still 70% above 2020 levels. German FinTech deal activity saw a less dramatic 24% drop in 2022 reaching 222 deals in total.
This drop was slightly more than a comparable country such as France which saw a 17% drop in 2022. Germany was the second most active FinTech country in 2022 behind the UK and ahead of France which was the third most active FinTech country.
After the fifth biggest deal however, the value of the deals dropped off dramatically, with the next biggest raise coming from ID Finance with $32m. The rest of the deals are of modest values.
The cryptocurrency and blockchain sector fared particularly well this week, with a total of five deals this week, raising a respectable $63.5m. These included decentralised multi-chain wallet Bitkeep; crypto-native algorithmic training firm Auros; crypto Exchange Metatime; Soul Wallet, a California-based startup that is creating an online, self-custodial Ethereum wallet and blockchain venture capital firm Contango Digital Assets.
Here are the 25 deals that took place this week.
Kredivo, a buy now pay later service for consumers in Indonesia and Vietnam, has reportedly raised $270m in an oversubscribed Series D funding round.
Japanese bank Mizuho Bank led the round with a $125m contribution, according to a report from TechCrunch. Existing Kredivo backers Square Peg Capital, Jungle Ventures, Naver Financial Corporation, GMO Venture Partners and Openspace Ventures also participated.
While the valuation of Kredivo was not revealed, the company’s CEO Akshay Garg stated it has increased by between four and five-times in every valuation round.
Additionally, Garg claimed Kredivo drives 3-4% of total GMV for its top e-commerce merchants in Indonesia, compared to 15% to 20% from credit cards.
As for its customer base, Garg did not reveal the exact number, but stated it was around the same number as the credit card population of Indonesia. This figure is around 15 and 16 million, but a survey from Kredivo claims many card holders have multiple credit cards, so the actual number is lower.
Kredivo offers instant credit to up to 30 million people, with products ranging from pay in 30 days or over 3, 6, or 12 months. Its target market is unbanked customers or those who lack access to credit through their existing banks.
Its platform assesses creditworthiness via various data sources, including accounts for banks, e-commerce sites and telcos.
Digital investing giant eToro has reportedly raised $250m in a funding round that values the brokerage at $3.5bn.
ION Group, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Velvet Sea Ventures and others participated in the funding round, according to a report from Reuters.
eToro had planned to merge with a blank-check company, which would have given the FinTech company an $8.8bn valuation. The special purpose acquisition company, FinTech Acquisition Corp V was backed by Betsy Cohen and was liquidated.
eToro is a retail investing platform that allows users to trade and invest
Late last year, eToro acquired portfolio management provider Bullsheet for an undisclosed fee. Bullsheet offers portfolio management tools which enable eToro users to analyse the diversification of their portfolio, in addition to a suite of other tools designed specifically for eToro users.
As part of the deal, eToro will integrate Bullsheet’s offering into its own platform.
Rain, an employee financial wellness start-up, has raised $115m in funding, encompassing $66m in equity and $50m in debt.
According to a report from Finsmes, QED Investors and Invus Opportunities led the Series A with participation from firms including WndrCo, Tribe Capital, and Dreamers VC. The debt facility was arranged by Sound Point Capital Management, LP.
Led by CEO Alex Bradford, Rain provides earned wage access and other financial wellness benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of middle market and enterprise companies across the US.
Through the platform, employers can offer workers on-demand pay or earned wage access. This benefit, also known as “income streaming,” allows workers to access their pay shortly after completing a shift instead of waiting for a payday.
The service is offered free to employers who provide it to their employees as a voluntary benefit. Employees pay a small fee each time they withdraw their earned wages. To promote responsible use, employees are unable to withdraw more than 50% of gross earned wages per pay period.
Rain integrates with existing payroll and timekeeping software used by many middle market and enterprise businesses and automates a payroll deduction flow with the vast majority of systems. It is an integrated marketplace partner of ADP, UKG, and SAP, and is SAP’s first and main earned wage access partner globally.
TradeBridge, a business lender, has received a credit facility of up to £100m from Castlelake, a global investment manager.
This fresh financing, along with existing senior banking facilities, will help TradeBridge’s position in the revenue-based finance space. It will also help the FinTech company expand in the UK healthcare sector.
TradeBridge, which was founded in 2013, offers revenue-based finance to National Health Service pharmacies and dental practices across the UK that are looking to bolster their capital position. Other sectors supported are e-commerce and corporate.
The company supports over 50 countries and has distributed more than $3bn through working capital. According to its website, it has also grown its funds-out by 97% year-on-year.
To give companies the best loan options, TradeBridge utilises real-time trading data and other business information to get a better understanding about the strength of a company.
Castlelake deputy co-chief investment officer Isaiah Toback said, “We look forward to leveraging our experience in revenue finance to support TradeBridge’s origination growth goals.
“And we believe our partnership will help provide an innovative solution to vital healthcare providers while delivering value for our investors.”
IntegrityNext, a firm with a mission to make supply chains more sustainable with better ESG compliance and oversight, has bagged €100m in new investment.
The investment was headed by EQT Growth. The recent raise will fuel the next stage of the company’s development.
According to EU Startups, Munich-based IntergrityNext has developed a sustainability software platform that is dedicated to making supply chains more transparent and compliant.
Founded in 2016, IntegrityNext’s solution supports enterprises to assess risk and monitor a large portion of their supply chain for ESG metrics and compliance, enabling them to meet the demands of stakeholders, regulatory and societal demands.
IntegrityNext plans to use the new funding to embark on the next phase of growth. The firm will also consolidate its position within the German market while also expanding its product to serve upcoming European regulations.
With this new funding, the innovators plan to embark on the next phase of growth. The company will consolidate its position within the German market whilst expanding the product to serve upcoming European regulations.
BitKeep, a decentralised multi-chain wallet, has secured $30m in investment from crypto copy trading platform Bitget.
Founded in 2018, BitKeep provides uninterrupted and reliable non-custodial wallet, swap and NFT marketplace services to its user base of more than 8 million across 168 countries. The wallet supports 90 mainnet networks such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Solana, and over 250,000 types of assets across more than 20,000 dApps.
The partnership with Bitget will give the wallet access to the exchange’s proven technology and security capabilities in the exchange domain, thus helping it improve the stability and security of its services.
By integrating BitKeep’s established 8 million user base, Bitget will receive access to an entirely new audience of potential clients. This is one of Bitget’s crucial moves towards Web3 which foresees linking CeFi and DeFi, transforming the platform from a leading contract exchange to a comprehensive and holistic exchange with its own ecosystem.
According to Bitget, the investment will enable the exchange to extend its range of centralised crypto services into a decentralised ecosystem.
The sister companies will leverage their respective offerings and collaborate on linking CeFi and DeFi. The investment involves the merger of BitKeep Wallet with Bitget’s business domain, significantly bolstering its existing user base and product offering.
ID Finance, a Spain-based FinTech offering retail banking and finance solutions, has raised €30m in funding.
The round was led by a leading UK-based asset manager, Kingsway Capital.
The transaction has been officially endorsed by the Spanish Council of Ministers, after obtaining a favourable review from the External Investment Board. ID finance said it is the biggest investment inflow into a Spanish FinTech so far in 2023.
The transaction includes both a primary capital infusion and a buyout of shares from the company’s early investors. The capital injection is structured as a convertible loan with a maximum valuation of €235m.
ID Finance’s main offering is focused on providing retail banking and finance solutions. The FinTech also prides itself as being among the few financial technology firms in Spain and Mexico committed to measuring and compensating its carbon footprint.
The capital will be invested into the organic growth of the business with a focus on the roll out of Plazo, the company’s flagship financial wellness app, both in Spain and Mexico. Given the strategic importance of the initiative, co-founder Boris Batine will assume the role of CEO of Plazo.
Two, which is helping to make B2B transactions frictionless, has secured €18m in its Series A funding round.
Shine Capital and Antler served as the lead investors to the round. Other commitments came from Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe, The Visionaries Club, Alliance VC and more.
Since its launch in Q2 2021, Two has grown by 243% quarterly and won 79% of competitive sales processes.
The company helps to make B2B payments as easy as a B2C deal. It claims to maximise order acceptance through multiple credit underwriters to assess the same order. Two’s own credit engine is one of the possible underwriters.
The largest transaction it has supported was a €450,000 payment that was end-to-end completed at checkout in under 45 seconds.
Recognise Bank, a digital SME lender and savings provider, has scored £25m in a cash raise from PV27, the firm’s largest investor.
According to Finextra, Recognise – which was fully licensed at the end of 2021 – has raised over £95m in investment to date.
The company has, to date, provided £115m in commercial loans to business customers. Typical loans range from £500k to £5m and options include commercial mortgages, bridging loans, professional buy-to-let loans, with asset finance currently being developed for launch later in the year.
Recognise Bank CEO Jean Murphy explained that the latest injection of capital will underpin a significant expansion in SME lending over the next year.
She added, “Recognise Bank is well placed to significantly grow its lending book over the next 12 months and beyond. Our parallel investment in building our technology capabilities is already delivering service and efficiency improvements, all of which feed through to a much better experience for our lending and savings customers and our excellent broker partners.”
Auros, a crypto-native algorithmic trading and market making firm, has landed $17m in a funding round headed by Vivienne Court.
Also taking part in the raise were Bit Digital, Trovio, Epoch Capital, Primal Capital and a consortium of senior alumni from market making giant Optiver.
Founded in 2019, Auros’ proprietary technology stack was developed specifically for trading and market making of digital assets. Its team comprises veterans with decades of trading and technology development experience across all major asset classes.
Today, Auros is a Strategic Market Making partner for dozens of web3 projects and a leading liquidity provider to more than 30 major centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency trading venues, covering thousands of individual instruments.
This latest funding round will accelerate Auros’ mission to support builders in the web3 ecosystem through further expansion of its Strategic Market Making business, which aims to create healthy, liquid markets for all of its partners.
dope.security, a firm that claims it is the only fly-director secure web gateway, has scored $16m in a Series A led by Google Ventures.
Also participating in the funding round were boldstart ventures and Preface. This funding brings the total amount raised by the firm to $20m.
dope.security said it disrupts the multi-billion dollar SWG market by performing security directly on the endpoint instead of routing traffic through stopover datacentres.
This streamlined approach, the firm claims, improves performance up to 4X, ensuring that decrypted data never leaves the device, and improves reliability by eliminating external dependencies. Designed with a simplistic user experience, the dope.swg can be trialled with a simple visit to the dope.security website and installs in under five-minutes.
The dope.swg lives on the endpoint, performing security checks on-device and never taking sensitive decrypted data offsite. The platform is designed with intuitive workflows and a simplistic user experience, delivering fly-direct and fly privately, analytics and visibility, seamless deployment and instant zero-trust policies.
dope will use the funding to accelerate the adoption of the industry’s first fly-direct SWG, introducing improved performance, privacy and reliability to the cybersecurity space all at the click of a button.
Focalpay, a commerce platform merging payment and retail functionalities, has bagged SEK15m in an investment round.
The funding was provided by Icelandic investor SKEL. Following this raise, Focalpay has secured a valuation of 150m SEK.
Focalpay claims its platform has broken down the boundaries between payment, checkout and back office and unified these traditionally separate flows in one unified solution. As a result, merchants can enjoy lower transaction fees and reduced emissions.
End consumers also get access to a unified basket that can be seamlessly transferred between channels, in addition to account-to-account payment with Focalpay’s Pay by Bank.
Focalpay said that the company was born out of its founders’ frustration over the lack of innovation within the retail and payment industries. Ease-of-use, sustainability innovation was merely buzz words. As a result, Focalpay was born – with the aim to offer merchants a solution that automates the innovative and enables retailers to meet their sustainability goals without having to compromise on the service they offer their communities.
Focalpay will use the funding to continue developing its commerce platform with new features and meet the increasing market demand for the solution.
Kin, a direct-to-consumer home insurance company has raised an additional $15m in Series D funding, bringing the total raised in the round to $109m.
The investment came from Geodesic Capital, QED Investors, and additional investors.
Kin is on a mission to make homeowners insurance more convenient and affordable by eliminating the need for external agents. Kin’s technology platform delivers a seamless user experience, customised options for coverage, and fast, high-quality claims service.
Since the first close of its Series D round in March 2022, Kin said it has continued its systematic, capital efficient growth, more than doubling its gross written premium while making gains in operational efficiency and driving toward profitability.
The additional funding, which was provided using the same terms and valuation as the initial investment, strengthens Kin’s liquidity position and provides the company with the capital needed to significantly expand its offerings and market share moving forward.
Turkey-based Metatime, a crypto exchange, has reportedly raised $11m in its seed funding round.
Yildiz Tekno GSYO served as the lead investor, according to a report from The Block. The Turkish investor acquired a 1% stake in Metatime at a total cost of $150,000.
The rest of the $11m was supplied by 33 unnamed angel investors as part of the sale for MetaCoin (MTC). The sale saw 100 MTC sold at five cents and another 100 million MTC sold at 6 cents.
Metatime is looking to add to its team of 208 people and is also looking to hold several public token sales in the future. An upcoming pre-sale is coming soon, with MTC being offered at seven cents each.
The crypto company aims to establish the largest blockchain ecosystem with a variety of solutions. It is currently building an exchange, wallet, blockchain, NFT marketplace and a stablecoin.
Monite, an API-first embedded finance workflows startup, has raised a total of $10m in seed funding to start “a new wave in embedded finance.”
According to a report from TechCrunch, the round was led by New York’s Third Prime, with participation also from S16, Audeo Ventures and Long Run Capital.
The investment follows a $5m round led by Point72 Ventures in early 2022 and brings Monite’s total funding to $10m.
Monite says it has also received backing from Nium founder Prajit Nanu; Penta co-founder Igor Kuschnir; Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson; Mollie founder Adriaan Mol; ex-PayPal senior executive Phil Valka; and Plaid executive Jason Pate.
The embedded finance FinTech enables companies to connect all of their bank accounts, run invoices, expenses and payments in a single location. Its holistic platform claims it can replace more than 10 accounting tools to streamline processes.
According to recent projections, the B2B payments market is expected to soar to $200 trn by 2028.
Backslash Security, a cloud-native app security solution for enterprise AppSec teams, has come out of stealth with $8m in funding.
The round was led by StageOne Ventures and saw participation from First Rays Venture Partners, D.E. Shaw & Co and a range of security veterans as angel investors.
Backslash claims it is the newest enterprise AppSec solution to provide unified code and cloud-native security by correlating cloud context to code risk, bolstered by automated threat modelling, code risk prioritisation, and simplified remediation across applications and teams.
The company said it was specifically designed to address the persistent, time-consuming and manual ways of discovering and mapping applications code risks, and the cloud-native context gaps left unaddressed by previous generation SAST tools.
The Backslash Cloud-Native Application Security solution provides AppSec teams with security insights and business context to the code risk, while tracking the security posture of different applications and teams involved.
CyberTech startup Oleria has secured $8m in its seed funding round, which was led by Salesforce Ventures.
Commitments to the round also came from Tapestry VC and unnamed angel investors, which include CEOs and CISOs of prominent tech and security companies.
Oleria was founded by former salesforce chief trust officer Jim Alkove and former JumpCloud chief product officer Jagadeesh Kunda. The company aims to create a world where organisations can have both speed of innovation and strong security.
Oleria provides adaptive security solutions that allow organisations to continuously respond to their needs. It claims its technology allows companies to grow whilst ensuring sensitive data is secure.
Toku, a platform seeking to revolutionise the way firms collect payments in Latin America, has scored $7m in a seed funding round.
The raise was led by F-Prime Capital and saw participation from Wollef, Honey Island, FundersClub and Clocktower. A range of angel investors also took part.
Founded in 2020, Toku aims to provide subscription companies with a streamlined, intelligent software solution for collection management.
The platform offers companies full control over their collection process, including the ability to use their own brand image and offer a comprehensive payment solution to their customers. In just over a year, Toku has grown significantly, increasing its revenue by over 7 times, and opening a new market in Mexico.
Fenix24, a cyber disaster recovery firm that is transforming the post-breach restoration process and impact, has raised $5m in funding.
The investment came from Eos Venture Partners, a prominent InsurTech investor. Zach Powell, General Partner of Eos Venture Partners, will join Fenix24 as a board member.
Fenix24, a sister company of Conversant Group, provides a professional cybersecurity force focused exclusively on restoring companies after cyber breach events.
The firm redesigned the recovery paradigm after recognising that traditional breach response could not manage foreign adversaries’ increasingly destructive tactics and the corresponding increase in business downtime and interruption.
Fenix24’s expert-led model focuses on faster, more effective post-breach restoration and drives proven reductions in business downtime.
Eos’ investment will support Fenix24 in serving additional customers and further reducing downtime costs and financial impacts after a cybersecurity incident. With Fenix24, global cyber carriers, brokers and reinsurers can empower policyholders and target the most critical, damaging parts of a ransomware attack post-breach.
Fundpath, a company developing software to connect fund buyers with asset management companies, has landed a £4m investment from Fuel Ventures.
Established in 2021, Fundpath claims it harnesses the power of collective data, AI and technology to modernise the fund-buying process.
The firm said this can be more insightful with relevant engagement improving efficiency, reducing wastage and promoting a low carbon future.
The software aims to save the time of fund buyers’ as they no longer have to contact individual asset management firms and receive irrelevant offers.
Fundpath will use the recent investment to continue developing its software as well as investing in new technologies.
Soul Wallet, a California-based startup that is creating an online, self-custodial Ethereum wallet, has landed $3.1m in seed funding.
Backers of Soul include Game7DAO, NGC Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Alchemy, Ankr, Signum Capital, Struck Crypto as well as a range of angel investors.
According to FinSME, Soul Wallet is building a wallet built on top of the ERC-4337 standard, which is designed to allow verification to be performed by smart contracts.
The company is currently advancing the wallet internally with plans to launch it in Q3 or Q4. Soul Wallet currently has a distributed team across the US, Japan, Thailand and China.
Soul Wallet claims it intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.
Climate tech investment marketplace HeavyFinance has raised €3m in its seed funding round as it looks to bolster European growth.
The investment was led by Practica Capital, a Lithuanian venture capital firm.
HeavyFinance has earmarked the capital for European expansion efforts. It currently serves companies in Poland, Portugal, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria.
As part of this growth initiative, the climate tech company plans to double its team of 33 over the course of the next 12 months.
Alongside growth efforts, HeavyFinance plans to use the funds to accelerate the switch from conventional farming to regenerative practices. This includes enrolling 200,000 hectares of regenerative farmland as part of a carbon farming initiative, as well as creating direct access for businesses looking to offset their carbon footprint.
HeavyFinance aims to tackle the climate crisis through financing and loan schemes for companies in the sustainable agriculture space. Its goal is to help remove one gigaton of CO2 emissions by 2050.
Its financing products are used to support soil health and maintenance to reduce emissions from machinery fossil fuel combustion. This removes CO2 from the atmosphere through the biogeochemical pressures of plants, reduce N2O pollution from excessive fertiliser application. It also improves biodiversity and helps farms become more resilient to the effects of climate change, it said.
Contango Digital Assets, a leading blockchain venture capital firm, has closed its seed round on $1.2m.
To date, Contango has deployed over $7 million to support 50+ Web3 teams and is on track to at least double that figure in 2023.
The seed round has sparked excitement from an assortment of investors, seeing participation from Family Office, Venture Capital and HNW Angel investors alike.
Contango co-founder Mike Grantis said, “This round was an accelerant for Contango. It allows us to place our bets on the growth of the industry, build our presence as a firm and position ourselves as one of the top rising VCs in the Web3 space. We are very excited to work with our newest strategic investors and feel poised to emerge as one of the leading up-and-coming Web3 VCs during this next market cycle.
FinGoal, an insights platform focused on personalisation in banking, has secured an investment from Naples Technology Ventures.
Based in Colorado, FinGoal offers personalisation for digital banking. It can provide users with hyper-personalised advice everywhere they spend money, from insurance to subscriptions to a cup of coffee.
Its platform also allows companies to leverage transaction data to target offers to current users to drive more conversions.
The FinTech company leverages algorithms to understand what banking products and services users need next, as well as how to market the user best.
ClassWallet, a digital wallet technology platform for federal, state and local education and government agencies, has raised a significant minority growth investment.
The funds were supplied by Guidepost Growth Equity. This capital injection will enable ClassWallet to better help state agencies and educational institutions address the rising fiduciary burden with the control and compliance of public fund distribution and management.
Guidepost offers additional industry reach and will support ClassWallet with its go-to-market strategy, product roadmap and hiring.
Founded in 2014, ClassWallet offers efficiency and compliant disbursement of funds to a decentralised user base addressing $25bn of state and federal government and K-12 education funding initiatives.
Through its technology, it enables customers to disburse funds quickly and compliantly at scale, while automating every step of the purchasing and reimbursement lifecycle. By streamlining workflows, ClassWallet helps to ensure compliance, mitigate potential fraud and track spending.
The FinTech company operates in over 27 states and hundreds of school districts.
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