Ripple builds up its Fortress (TWIF 9/10)

The first big upset of the season

Hello Fintech Friends,

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Join TWIF and the teams at i80 Group, Core Innovation Capital, Pacific Western Bank, and Method for fintech happy hour with Nik and Cristina. Register here.

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Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

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📖 Read of the Week

Is It Time to Worry About Consumer Debt? What Is Going On in Seven Charts

☯️ Exits

Fintech M&A sees more take-privates in the future

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Ripple, the global crypto payments network, announced that it will acquire crypto regulatory compliance and custody provider Fortress Trust. The purchase price was undisclosed, but a source revealed that it will be less than the $250 million it paid for custody provider Metaco in May.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia entered an agreement to acquire cloud-based invoice lending platform Waddle, with whom it has a current partnership.
Stori, the Mexican provider of “a credit card for everyone,” will acquire fintech MasCaja in order to get a banking license.
Clear Junction, a cross-border payments provider, acquired Altalix, a UK-based fiat-to-crypto gateway solution.
Dubai bank Emirates NBD took a stake in Swiss trade finance and treasury network Komgo.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Australian consumer lender Pepper Money signed an agreement to acquire HSBC’s NZ$1.4 billion mortgage portfolio in New Zealand.
The Ontario Teachers’ Fund agreed to acquire UK wealth manager 7IM from Caledonia Investments for £450 million.
UBS is looking to reopen talks with private equity firms for Credit Suisse’s securitized products business.
Barclays Bank is looking into selling off its $2.5 billion UK payments business.

A tiny technical change that will reshape payments:

Visa allows banks and payment companies can pay each other with Stablecoins.

This will make dollars lower cost, lower risk and 24/7.

How? 👇

📰 Visa is making USDC Stablecoin settlement available on the fast and cheap… pic.twitter.com/7bYUrISBvp
— Simon Taylor (@sytaylor) September 5, 2023

There has been some talk on here about idea recycling in fintech, and it's a fair point.

There *are* some interesting, new products being built, but there are also a lot of the same companies being pitched that have been tried again, and again, and again, and again...

(eg:…
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) September 7, 2023

Nobody will hear this but in Brazil the launch of PIX has been a huge growth driver for $V $MA 🐐 https://t.co/GET34V9mC3
— Jerry Capital (@JerryCap) September 7, 2023

A top VC’s @a16z healthcare investment thesis is in FINTECH and not HEALTHCARE DELIVERY.

Pretty telling about the state of 🇺🇸 healthcare, isn't it?

10 years ago when I started in Digital Health, almost everyone was working to build a better healthcare delivery system.

Using…
— Joshua Liu (@joshuapliu) September 5, 2023