Acquisitions, acquisitions, acquisitions! (TWIF 4/30)

Are fintech IPOs back? They may be soon! Kaspi, Kazakhstan's publicly-listed fintech superapp valued at $1.4 billion, is preparing for a U.S. IPO that may come this year.

Private equity giant Vista is in the market to raise $6 billion from credit funds to refinance the debt of financial software provider Finastra.

Belvo, the Latin American open finance platform, announced its first acquisition of Skilopay, a Brazilian payment institution specializing in payment services through PIX.

Pan-African compliance and KYC / IDV solution Smile Identity announced the acquisition of Inclusive Innovations, the parent company of Appruve, a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software.

Korean fintech giant Kakao Pay, one of the country's largest online payment services, acquired an interesting minority stake in Siebert Financial, a brokerage firm based in New York, for $17 million, giving it 19.9% of the company.

Gemini and Arrington are both bidding to buy failed crypto lender Celsius.

Binance, meanwhile, called off its $1 billion deal to acquire the assets of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager.

Delta Capital is getting into decentralized finance with its acquisition of capital markets blockchain firm SETL.

Founders Forum Group acquiredTech Nation, a UK group for entrepreneurs that had supported Monzo, Revolut, and Thought Machine.

Tradeweb, a fixed-income marketplace, made an A$125 million offer for Australian government bond and interest rate derivatives trading platform Yieldbroker.

It emerged this week that JP Morgan has invested in or outright acquired more than 40 fintech companies since early 2021.

The European Payments Initiative, a joint venture set up by European banks to rival Mastercard and Visa's card networks, announced the acquisition of iDeal – a Dutch payment network – and Payconiq,a mobile payments app supported Belgian and Dutch banks.

German stock exchange Deutsche Börse made a €3.9 billion bid for Danish financial software developer SimCorp.

German bank Deutsche Bankannounced that it agreed to buy UK boutique investment bank Numis for $511 million.

Swiss bank Zürcher Kantonalbank has held potential takeover talks with troubled asset manager GAM.

US regional bank PacWest Bancorp is looking into selling off its lender finance arm.

HSBC is under pressure from shareholders to spin off its Asia business.

Specialized custody solutions provider Millennium Trust is exploring a sale that could value it at $8 billion.