Fintech News
- Varo Money – a US based consumer Fintech was granted the national bank charter and received regulatory nod to open Varo Bank N.A. This charter will allow Varo to provide comprehensive, FDIC-insured banking services to customers and is the first-of-its-kind approval for consumer fintech in the United States.
FinTech Funding Continues
- Remitly – a pioneer in cross-border payments, recently announced an $85 million funding round that pushes its valuation to $1.5 billion. With this round the Fintech has officially become a unicorn. The Series F funding round was led by Prosus’ PayU with existing backers such as DN Capital, Generation Investment Management, Owl Rock Capital, Princeville, Stripes, Threshold Ventures, and Top Tier also investing.
- Transferwise – pioneering international money transfer service, has recently disclosed that it is now worth USD 5 billion. This new valuation is a 43% increase from May 2019’s valuation and was achieved through secondary share sales worth USD319 million. This share sale was led by existing investors as well as new ones such as D1 Capital Partners and Vulcan Capital.
- Volante Technologies – a leading provider of cloud based payments and financial messaging solutions has raised USD35 million in growth equity financing from Wavecrest Growth Partners with strategic participation by BNY Mellon, Citi Ventures, PostePay and Visa Inc. The capital raised will be used to drive cloud expansion across multiple market segments and geographies.
- StashAway – a digital wealth management platform for both retail and accredited investors based in Singapore has recently announced that it raised USD 16 million Series C fundraising round led by Square Peg and early investors such as Alibaba and Eight Roads Ventures and new investor firms such as Burda Principal Investments, Hubert Burda Media participating in this round. This round will drive product development and cater to more countries around the region.
BigTech and Banks Collaborating
- Google has partnered with a total of 8 banks in the US to offer digital banking services to bank customers in US. With this partnership Google will provide enhanced user-experience and use data to drive financial insights while the banks will provide digital checking accounts which are FDIC insured. This is in line with Google’s foray into the banking where the company is exploring collaborations with banks through Google Pay.
