BlackFin Tech weekly — April 24th, 2023
Dear Fintech Folks, we hope you’re all doing well. As always, thank you for reading our updates every week. Let’s dive into the latest:
Last week we spotted 19 deals for a total amount of €129m raised with 6 deals in France, 5 in the UK, 4 in Spain 2 in Germany, and 1 in Ireland and Belgium. France was the most active geography for the number of deals while the UK saw the largest amounts.
Congratulations to Mooncard, the corporate expenses management solution, on its €37m Series C, followed by neobank Fintech Farm with a €20.2m Series A. Finally, the credit card loyalty program Yonder raised an €8m Series A.
Let’s dive in:
- Mooncard raised a €37m Series C with existing investors : Blackfin, Partech, Aglaé Ventures and Raise and new ones : Orange Ventures and Portage Ventures.
- Mooncard is a leader in smart corporate cards. The Mooncard card can be used to pay for any corporate expense (business expenses, online purchases, subscriptions) and to automate the administrative management (pre-filling of data, storage of receipts, accounting treatment).
- They attracted more than 6000 entreprises in several countries in Europe (Air France, Cora, Vinci, Zadig & Voltaire, French Army …)
- Fintech Farm has raised a €20.2m Series B with Chrome Capital and Nordstar. The round included equity and a convertible loan. The start up was found in 2020. The company helps to create neobanks in emerging markets. These services provide customers with user-friendly mobile apps and credit products for mass audiences and those with little credit history.
- It has launched three neobanks, so far. These are Leobank in Azerbaijan, Liobank in Vietnam and Fibo in Nigeria. These neobanks offer customers a free credit card, which has 0% interest for the first 45 days. Another of its features is to transfer money thanks to their mobile phone.
- Yonder raised a €14.2million Series A round with RTP Global, Nordzone Business Angels and at the same time, £50M will go towards servicing the credit lines to support their customer growth.
- It is a credit card startup founded by former ClearScore executives. Yonder’s mission is to restore consumers’ confidence in credit, eliminating stress and complexity from the customer experience. Yonder takes a novel approach to evaluating credit suitability which is based on transaction data, using open banking to build a more nuanced, personalised picture of its customers’ spending habits than relying on traditional credit checks alone.
Congrats also to Hokodo, Nextmarkets, TRIVER, Floodlight , mySofie, Swaap, Customs4trade (C4T), Tanso, Spayr, Bitstack, Colbr, Kenzee, Vankor, Rand, Nutual, Veridas for their fundraisings !
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, we also observed some interesting M&A deals:
· ClimateTrade, the blockchain-based carbon offsetting marketplace, has acquired TeamClimate, the carbon offsetting platform. With a strong focus on reaching American consumers, the acquisition will enable ClimateTrade to build on its B2B offering by offering subscription-based carbon offsetting directly to consumers.
· Groupe Apicil, the French insurance provider, has acquired Nalo, the digital investment platform with €400m of AUM. Following the acquisition, Nalo has set a target of growing its AUM beyond €1bn.
· Kayzen Reporting, the regulatory reporting specialist, has acquired Red Deer, the compliance solutions provider. Kayzen will now be able to build on existing reporting and shareholding disclosure services by adding trade and communications surveillance solutions to its product suite.
· Axway, the API management platform, has acquired AdValvas, the provider of e-invoice and e-delivery solutions for accounts receivable and accounts payable.
And finally here are the news that caught our eye last week:
· Credit Agricole and Worldline plan French payments business. Credit Agricole and Worldline have entered discussions on the establishment of a joint venture company to create a major payments player servicing merchants in France.
· Goldman Sachs mulls potential sale of BNPL fintech GreenSky. Goldman Sachs is exploring the sale of its recently acquired GreenSky fintech unit.
· TruthGPT: Elon Musk says he is working on an AI to counter ‘politically correct’ ChatGPT. Musk told FoxNews that he plans to create an alternative to ChatGPT that he is calling “TruthGPT,” which will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
· SocGen digital asset unit launches EUR stablecoin. Societe Generale’s crypto arm — SG Forge — has announced the launch of a stablecoin pegged to the euro on Ethereum called EUR CoinVertible.
Have a great week & see you next Monday!
