This week was all about funding rounds. Fintech raised billions of dollars from investors this week with N26 and FTX leading the way. Plaid is making waves in payments, we now have a bitcoin futures ETF and Facebook launched its digital crypto wallet. Here are what I consider to be the top ten fintech news stories of the past week.
Plaid Pushes Into Payments Business After Scuttled Visa Deal from The Wall Street Journal – Plaid is teaming up with a bunch of big names in payments such as Square, Stripe and Marqeta to create a “pay with bank account option” at checkout, going head to head with Visa and Mastercard.
SEC-approved Bitcoin futures ETF goes live from LendIt Fintech News – After years of trying, a bitcoin futures ETF finally launched this week. The Proshares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (Ticker BITO) is not a true bitcoin ETF, it is focused on bitcoin futures, butit was celebrated widely by the crypto community.
Facebook selects Coinbase as custody partner for its Novi cryptocurrency wallet from Markets Insider – Facebook launched Novi, its digital crypto wallet, this week and selected Coinbase as the custody partner. It also selected Paxos (USDP) as the stablecoin for transactions.
PayPal is in late-stage talks to acquire Pinterest from CNBC – Pinterest was not on my fintech M&A bingo card (it clearly should have been) but PayPal is in advanced talks to buy the social media company as it bets on the future of social commerce.
Two Crypto-Lending Firms Ordered Shut by New York’s James from Bloomberg – This may have been the strangest story of the week, not because the New York Attorney General sent cease and desist letters to two crypto companies, but because it got at least one of the companies wrong (Nexo does not operate in New York). There is real mystery as to who they were actually trying to target here.
FTX raises $420 million in funding round with backing from 69 investors including Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital from The Block – The crypto exchange FTX (formerly Blockfolio), the one with the ads starring Tom Brady and his wife, has raised another staggering amount of money making it more than $1.3 billion in equity funding closed in the last four months.
Challenger bank N26 raises $900 million at $9 billion valuation from TechCrunch – It seemed to me that N26 was falling behind a little after they withdrew from the UK and have failed to get much traction in the US but this funding round will help put them back on track. The CEO said their focus is now squarely on Europe as they look to go public in “3 to 4 years”.
Brex just signed a term sheet for $300M at a $12.3B valuation from TechCrunch – Brex has signed a term sheets for a big new funding round at a higher valuation, just six months after closing a round at a $7.4 billion valuation.
Fanatics Digital Collectibles Firm Candy Valued at $1.5 Billion from Bloomberg – Let’s not forget NFTs in this week’s funding frenzy. Candy Digital, a collectibles marketplace for NFTs, was just formed in June and is now a unicorn (is that a record?). The $100 million investment was led by Softbank and Insight Partners and included the likes of Peyton Manning on the cap table.
Fixed-income titan Pimco is starting to embrace cryptocurrencies, CIO says from CNBC – The world’s largest fixed income asset manager has waded into crypto with some of Pimco’s hedge funds already trading in digital assets and will gradually invest more.
Every Thursday the LendIt Fintech News team and a special guest discuss the news of the week live on LendIt TV, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We have now made the show available in podcast format – just click on the audio player below.
