Daily Fintech Crunch: 18/05/2022

Dear All -

Welcome to the last edition of the Daily Fintech Crunch is its current avatar. Over the last couple of weeks, we have received some great feedback on - frequency of the newsletter, content and topic mix, structure, look & feel, branding, etc.

We are now going to take a couple of weeks off and return in early June with our 2.0 version of the newsletter which might resonate with you all. Before I get into sharing the news-bites in this edition, I would like to thank all the subscribers and those who took out the time to share their candid and excellent feedback. We can only evolve with your help (or else we are only shooting in the dark).

Now back to 'crunch' for today:

⚡ What’s New in Fintech

• According to various news sources, Interswitch, a Nigerian digital payments startup, and Africa's second unicorn have raised $110 million to help it expand its market reach.

• Dock, a Brazilian financial company, has secured $110 million in expansion capital, valued at over $1.5 billion.

• At its recent fifth Annual Grand Meeting, the Fintech Association of Malaysia (FAOM) chose Wilson Beh as its new president for the 2022/2023 term (AGM).

• The Saigon-Hanoi Bank (SHB) has chosen Temenos, a financial software firm, to help it speed its digital transformation.

• The Hanlon Financial Systems Center, which opened on April 17, 2012, marked the 10-year anniversary of the Stevens Institute of Technology.

• Cellulant, Africa's biggest payments provider, was honored with the Award for Excellence in Embedded Fintech at the 7th Africa Fintech Summit in Washington, D.C., held in conjunction with the IMF and World Bank's Spring Meetings last month.

• Huntington Bancshares' subsidiary, Huntington National Bank, recently purchased Digital Payments Torana, Inc., a B2C payment fintech firm located in San Francisco, in order to improve its digital capabilities.

• The European Commission will conduct a virtual conference on Monday to commemorate the start of the Fintech Challenge for Ukraine.

• The Fintech IPO Index hit an all-time low this week, plummeting 27% for the week and increasing its year-to-date loss to about 50%.

• Affirm's market capitalization has dropped to $5 billion, down 89 percent from its November peak. On Thursday, the company is likely to report a net loss of $156 million on revenue of $345 million.

• CoverGo, an insurtech startup, has raised $15 million in a Series A fundraising round.

• The Confederation of British Industry has launched a new campaign dubbed 'Winning with Fintech,' which aims to inspire businesses to utilize fintech to drive future growth.

• PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, and Clay Point led a $50 million Series B fundraising round for Paymob, one of Egypt's major merchant financial services platforms.

• Juni, a Swedish FinTech company, has chosen B4B Payments, a UK payment solutions provider, to deliver their unique financial services offering for eCommerce businesses. This is part of a new B4B service aimed at helping FinTech firms grow their offers more quickly.

• Qoala, an Indonesian insurtech startup, has secured US$ 65 million in a Series B fundraising round headed by Eurazeo, a European investment group.

• Singapore’s neobank YouTrip announced that it has launched its new corporate card “YouBiz” which is powered by Mastercard for SMEs.

• In the final closure of its current funds, East Ventures, an Indonesia-focused venture capital firm, raised a total of US$ 550 million.

• Investree, an Indonesian B2B marketplace financing platform for MSMEs, is slated to acquire an 18.4 percent minority share in PT Bank Amar Indonesia, a licensed commercial bank backed by Singaporean conglomerate Tolaram.

• TIFIN, a fintech platform, announced that it has secured $109 million in a late-stage fundraising round led by Franklin Resources and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, valued at $842 million.

💸 Crypto & DeFi

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of Coinbase rival FTX, said that he had bought 56,273,469 shares in Robinhood or around 7.6% of the company's ordinary stock.

• Bitcoin went below $26,000 for the first time in 16 months, part of a bigger cryptocurrency sell-off that saw the whole market lose more than $200 billion in a single day.

• TerraUSD, the "algorithmic stablecoin" whose demise triggered a multibillion-dollar selloff across crypto markets, has switched off its blockchain and been delisted from key exchanges, effectively shutting down the project.

🧠 Metaverse & NFTs

• As the firm doubles down on metaverse, Meta has renamed its digital payments platform Facebook Pay to Meta Pay.

• Metaverse Global Congress, a new event hosted by Questex, brings together innovators, marketers, and strategists to explore the future of cyberspace.

• OpenSea stated today in a series of blog postings that it is putting out tools to "enhance authenticity" on the digital marketplace.

📑 Report of the Day

• In this report about Fintech and VCs, Fintech businesses raised $29.3 billion in VC across 1,233 transactions in Q1 2022, a 7.3 percent fall in deal value from the previous quarter. However, this is an increase of 13.8 percent year over year. Payments businesses continue to account for the greatest share of deal value, with $9.1 billion, up 12.4 percent year over year. Stripe's direct competitor Checkout.com raised the highest investment of the quarter in the category, a $1.0 billion Series D at a $40.0 billion post-money value.

• According to this report, Fintech is transforming one of Scotland's most vital economic sectors. It is a big disruptor in the financial services industry and will determine the digital economy's future. It has the potential to transform the way individuals and companies interact with money, as well as to build a more effective and robust financial system.

Hope today's crunch is both insightful and useful. We will be back soon; thanks again for being part of this growing family of fintech fans.

Arjun Vi Singh