BlackFin Tech weekly — April 11th, 2023
Dear Fintech folks, welcome to our newsletter! We hope you’re doing great and feel ready to dive into the latest updates from the world of tech, finance, and more, so sit back, relax, and let’s get started.
Congrats to the UK for closing the most deals and the largest amounts.
Last week we saw 13 deals in Europe for a total of 314.6m€ raised with 4 deals in the UK and in Germany, 2 in the Netherlands, 1 in France, Spain and Austria.
Congratulations to the insurtech Quantexa €118m Series C, followed by the payment infrastructure Terrapay in a €91.8m Series B. Finally, the KYC and AML compliance solution Fourthline raised a €50m Series A.
Let’s dive in :
· Quantexa raised €118.4m in a Series E round led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and followed by historical investors. The valuation of the company is now €1.65 billion. As a reminder, in 2021, the company raised a €140m Series D for a €750-€850 million valuation.
· Quantexa’s core products are used for risk and compliance management. It specializes in data analytics and uses AI to develop tools that can aid in verifying user identities, detecting money laundering, and conducting financial investigations. Additionally, Quantexa uses similar techniques to expand user “graphs” for business intelligence and customer relationship management (CRM) purposes.
· Terrapay has raised a $100m Series B round led by IFC and supported by Prime Ventures, Partech Africa, DFC and other investors.
· The funding will help further TerraPay’s global expansion plans, especially across the LATAM and MENA regions, strengthen its existing pay-out network to 150 countries by 2024, support and accelerate its growth, and invest in the marketing and adoption of alternate payment methods for mobile wallets, like Request-to-Pay (an interoperable mobile wallet solution, at a larger scale).
· Fourthline has secured €50m in a Series B round led by Finch Capital with other undisclosed investors.
· Fourthline offers a set of AI-based solutions to help with identity verification, help businesses comply with anti-money laundering rules. Fourthline’s customers include N26, Qonto, Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, NN and Western Union, as well as marketplaces like Wish.
Congrats also Finanzguru, Gedeon, Unitplus, M^Zero Labs, Fis.solutions, Acre, Kashet, Finst, Invopop and Finto.
In addition to the fundraising activity, we also observed some interesting M&A deals over the past week:
· Acorn, the savings and investment app, has acquired GoHenry, the money management solution for six to 18-year olds. The all-stock deal will give the combined companies nearly six million subscribers.
· Tandem, the digital bank, has acquired Loop, the money sharing app. Following the acquisition Loop will offer its users embedded Tandem products, including a range of savings and lending services.
· FinFit, the financial wellness platform, has merged with the US arm of UK-based Salary Finance, the fintech focused on salary-linked savings and loans for employees. The merged workplace financial platform, operating under the FinFit brand, will serve over 10 million US workers and 500,000 US employers.
And here are the news that caught our eye last week, enjoy:
· Dutch online bank Bunq applies for U.S. banking licence. Dutch digital challenger Bunq has applied for a US banking licence with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in New York as the firm looks to expand its services to all 50 states.
· Railsr appoints new CEO, CFO and COO following rescue sale. UK-based embedded finance platform Railsr has appointed a raft of new executives to lead the firm following its recent sale to a consortium of venture capital companies. The fintech has named Philippe Morel as its new CEO, Debbie Lotz as chief financial officer (CFO) and Nick Charteris as chief operating officer (COO).
· Revolut launches ‘Crypto Collections’ for multi token investing. The feature groups the more than 100 tokens available on the Revolut app into collections based on various factors related to their underlying technology, such as NFT, metaverse or gaming.
· EU Rules on Crypto Assets Transfers Set to Tighten. Last week, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted in favour of stricter rules to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and evading sanctions in the European Union (EU). Among the three significant pieces of anti-money laundering (AML) legislation adopted is draft legislation that strengthens EU rules on conducting due diligence on anonymised financial instruments, including transfers of crypto assets.
Have a great week & see you next Monday!
