BlackFin Tech weekly — May 15th, 2023
Dear Fintech Folks, we hope you had a fantastic weekend. Let us now take a moment to reflect and look back upon the latest news and trends from the exciting world of fintech.
Last week we spotted 7 deals for a total amount of €36.3m raised, with 3 deals in the UK, 2 in the Netherlands and one in Italy.
Congratulations to ThreatFabric, the fraud detection platform, on its €11.5m Seed, followed by Cable, which secured a €10.1m Series A round. Finally, Viceversa, the revenue-based financing platform raised a €10m Series A.
Let’s dive in:
- The provider of fraud detection solutions and intelligence for the financial services sector, has raised €11.5 million in a Seed Round. The round was co-led by ABN AMRO Ventures and Motive Ventures, with participation from 10xFounders and 14Peaks capital.
- The raise will expand ThreatFabric’s technical capabilities and support its continued growth. In particular, the company will look to further its international expansion and extend its fraud detection layers with behavioural based detection.
Cable :
- Cable raised an $11m Series A round with Stage 2 Capital, Jump Capital and CRV. It provides an all-in-one testing platform for controls put in place to fight financial crime. The company offers an automated insurance product to detect financial crime regulatory breaches and control failures in real-time, but also workflow tools and a risk assessment platform.
- Cable will use the investment to hire new personnel across its product, engineering, data, and go-to-market teams, and execute on its extensive product development roadmap.
- Viceversa, a Milan-based company, raised €10m in a Series A round led by CDP ventures, alongside investments from Azimut Libera Impresa, Kairos Partners, Italian Angel for Growth, and Business Angels.
- Viceversa provides online businesses, including marketplaces and B2C and B2B e-commerce or subscription platforms, with revenue-based financing that grants access to fast capital in exchange for a percentage share of their revenue streams.
- The company, which operates through offices in Milan and Dublin, has reached a total portfolio value of more than €25m, with clients in 6 different countries (Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK).
Congrats also to Odin, Equip, Ravin and Aazzur for their fundraisings!
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, we also observed the following M&A deals:
DIGITEC, the market-leading software provider of FX pricing solutions, has acquired Modular FX, the eTrading services provider. Based in Hamburg, DIGITEC is the company behind the D3 pricing engine, which is used by over 40 banks in different trading centres around the world.
Kin + Carta, the global digital transformation business, has acquired the European arm of Forecast, the data solutions and analytics provider. Forecast’s AI and machine learning technologies will offer Kim + Carta new capabilities for pricing optimisation, demand forecasting, and customer analytics.
And finally, here are the news that caught our eye last week:
Revolut was in the news last week with three main announcements. First, it partnered with Upvest to offer fractional ETF and European stock trading to its customers across Europe.
Secondly, it emerged that the company’s CFO had handed in his resignation for personal reasons. This comes after the company’s CEO, Nik Storonsky, made headlines for expressing his frustration with the company’s years-long battle for a UK banking license.
Lastly, Revolut is reportedly considering an acquisition in the BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) space after Storonsky expressed his interest at the Web Summit Rio conference.
· SEC charges HSBC And Scotia Capital with widespread recordkeeping failures
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged HSBC Securities and Scotia Capital for “widespread and longstanding failures by both firms and their employees to maintain and preserve electronic communications”.
The SEC says both firms admitted its employees “often communicated off-channel” about securities business matters on personal devices and via messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, with neither firm maintaining a record of the “substantial majority” of those conversations.
HSBC and Scotia Capital have acknowledged the SEC’s action and agreed to pay penalties of $15 million and $7.5 million respectively. The SEC added that both firms self-reported the violations after gathering communications from the personal devices of a sample of their employees.
· WhatsApp partners Stripe to enable in-app business payments in Singapore
WhatsApp has partnered up with Stripe to allow Singapore businesses to accept payments directly in WhatsApp chats. By leveraging Stripe’s Connect and Checkout solutions, WhatsApp will provide Singapore customers and businesses with a new feature that allows them to buy and sell directly on WhatsApp, without having to go to another website or app to complete the transaction. The new feature will support payment methods including credit and debit cards and PayNow, a real-time payments method used widely in Singapore.
Local businesses will be able to avail the new feature through the WhatsApp Business Platform, which will include a Stripe account. The feature is currently available to a small number of Singapore-based businesses, with a wider rollout planned in the coming months. The move comes just months after the Brazilian central bank gave Meta the go-ahead to launch its WhatsApp business payments feature in the country.
· Crypto exchange Bittrex files for bankruptcy protection in the US
Cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex’s US entity has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware.
The move comes just weeks after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the company and its co-founder and former CEO William Shihara for allegedly “operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency”.
Following the SEC’s complaint, Bittrex had announced that it would be shutting down operations in the US effective 30 April, saying it was “not viable” to continue operations under the current US regulatory and economic environment.
The bankruptcy filing includes its Seattle-based entity Bittrex Inc and two Bittrex entities based in Malta, as well as an affiliated entity, Desolation Holdings LLC.
The firm says the announcement does not impact Liechtenstein-based Bittrex Global, which will continue operations “as normal” for its customers outside of the US.
Have a great week & see you next week!
