fintech News of 09/27/20

Valar Triples Down On Petal, Leading $55m Series C Round Into The Credit Card Disruptor

Sometimes raising venture capital can be as simple as talking to your existing investor and having them wire over another check. When we last caught up with Petal in January 2019, the startup was hot off its $30 million Series B round and was ...

How Robinhood And Chime Raised $2b+ In The Last Year

Last night Robinhood , the American fintech unicorn that provides free securities trading services to consumers via an app, announced that it raised an additional $460 million in its previously-known Series G . That round is now worth $660 million ...

Singapore-Based Syfe, A Robo-Advisor With A Human Touch, Raises $18.6 Million Led By Valar Ventures

Dhruv Arora, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based investment platform Syfe Syfe , a Singapore-based startup that wants to make investing more accessible in Asia, announced today that it has closed a SGD $25.2 million (USD $18.6 million) ...

x1 Card Is A Credit Card Based On Your Income, Not Your Credit Score

There are many reasons why you could have a good or a bad credit score. But if you’re just entering the job market, you may end up with reliable income and a low limit on your credit card. X1 Card wants to solve that by setting limits based on ...

A Conversation With Tunde Kehinde Of Lidya On Finance And The Digital Divide

Small and medium businesses have been some of the hardest hit in the Covid-19 pandemic. And all that has been as true in emerging markets as it has been for SMBs in the developed world. Tunde Kehinde has had a front-row seat witnessing and ...

Jefa Is A Challenger Bank For Women Without A Bank Account

Meet Jefa , a startup that is building a challenger bank specifically designed for women in Latin America. The company is building a product that focuses on solving the problems that women face when opening a bank account and managing it. It is ...

Klarna Raises $650 Million At A $10.6 Billion Valuation

Fintech startup Klarna has raised a mega-round of funding led by Silver Lake. The company is raising $650 million at a post-money valuation of $10.65 billion. Klarna says it is now the highest-valued private fintech company in Europe following ...

Thunes, A Fintech Startup Serving Emerging Markets, Raises $60 Million Led By Africa-Focused Helios Investment Partners

Thunes , a Singapore-based startup developing a cross-border payments network to make financial services more accessible in emerging markets, announced today it has raised a $60 million Series B. The round was led by Africa-focused firm Helios ...

Financial Institutions Using Plaid Exchange Can Share Instant Account Activity

A few months ago, Plaid unveiled Plaid Exchange , a product that helps financial institutions build and maintain an API that other developers can use. The company is iterating on that product and now updates account activity in near real-time. ...

In A Post-NDA World, Does Transparency Help Founders Identify Conflicts Of Interest?

Once upon a time, fintech founders could pitch 10 investors before closing a round in a relatively hushed way. Entrepreneurs could even ask VCs to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to keep their information confidential. Today, everyone is a ...

Railsbank Is Buying Wirecard Card Solutions, The UK Arm Of The Disgraced Fintech

Looks like another chapter is opening up for Wirecard, the disgraced fintech out of Germany that collapsed into insolvency earlier this year after facing a huge accounting scandal and subsequently failing to make payments on $1.5 billion in loans ...

Fondeadora Is A Mexican Challenger Bank That Just Raised $14 Million

Meet Fondeadora , a fintech startup based in Mexico City that wants to build a full-stack neobank. The company just raised a $14 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures , Google’s AI-focused venture fund. Founded in 2018, the company ...

Alexa Von Tobel: Eliminating Risk Is The Key To Building A Startup During An Economic Downturn

Launching a company, even in the best of times, is one of the most challenging exercises a person can go through. In an economic recession, it can seem downright impossible. But founders across the country, and indeed across the globe, are in the ...

Payments Services Company Finix Adds $30 Million To Its Series B

Finix , a startup that provides payments-related services to other companies, announced it has extended its Series B financing with a $30 million investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and American Express Ventures . The fintech ...

Investment Tech Won’T Solve Systemic Wealth Gaps, But It’S A Good Start

Dean Sterrett Contributor Share on Twitter Dean Sterrett is the co-founder, COO and head of product at LEX Markets , a commercial real estate securities marketplace for institutional and traditional ...

AI As A Blueprint For Fintech Startups

Marc Gilman Contributor Share on Twitter Marc Gilman is general counsel and VP of compliance at Theta Lake . He is also an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law. More posts by ...

InfraDigital Helps Indonesian Schools Digitize Tuition And Enrollment

In Indonesia, about half of adults are “underbanked,” meaning they don’t have access to bank accounts, credit cards and other traditional financial services. A growing list of tech companies are working on solutions, from Payfazz, ...

How To Diagnose And Treat Machine Learning Models Afflicted By COVID-19

Anupam Datta Contributor Share on Twitter Anupam Datta is co-founder, president and chief scientist of Truera , and also a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Justin Lawyer ...

Robinhood Raises $200m More At $11.2b Valuation As Its Revenue Scales

Robinhood announced this morning that it has raised $200 million more at a new, higher $11.2 billion valuation. The new capital came as a surprise. Astute observers of all things fintech will recall that Robinhood, a popular stock trading ...

Six Toronto VCs Discuss COVID-19 And The Post-Pandemic Era

As North America’s fourth-largest city, Toronto is one of the world’s top startup ecosystems. After spawning companies like Eventbrite and Crowdmark, Ontario’s capital has attracted international talent that complements its ...