Fundraises

The Midas Touch (TWIF 8/23)

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Midas is building the Robinhood of Turkey. This week, they raised an $80 million Series B – the largest ever round for a Turkish fintech.

I got to grab coffee with founder and CEO Egem Eraslan a couple years ago in Istanbul and hear his vision for building the largest investment platform in his corner of the world. I was impressed: The median user is much older than on American investment platforms, and one of the new products that they were finding particular success with was managed retirement accounts.

Though he initially resisted, Egem has diversified the options into multiple assets including crypto. It's exciting to see more local winners in the global neobroker race.

More close to home, I was happy to be able to share the announcement from our friends at Cascading AI*, who this week announced a $29 million Series A to transform lending by enabling banks and lenders to originate more loans with 90% less manual effort. Many companies are talking about how they incorporate AI into financial services – Casca is actually doing it.

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm

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Stat of the Week

Gold recovered sharply and the dollar fell on news that the Federal Reserve would take a dovish stance on persistent inflation and signaled a potential rate cut.

Venture Financing

MIDAS secured $80 million in Series B funding to expand its fintech services in Turkey, marking the country's largest-ever fintech investment.
IVIX raised $60 million in Series B financing to further its AI-powered platform fighting financial crime such as money laundering and sanctions evasion.
Wellth raised $36 million in an oversubscribed Series C to scale its health-plan–focused daily care motivation platform.
Casca* (below) raised $29 million in funding to replace legacy systems with its AI-native loan origination platform.
NG.CASH closed $26.5 million in Series B funding to broaden its Brazilian consumer fintech platform offering real-time payments, cards, insurance, installment plans, and AI interfaces.
Tote.ai raised $22.6 million in funding to accelerate its AI-native point-of-sale system tailored for fuel and convenience stores.
Basic Capital raised $25 million in Series A capital to reinvent 401(k) plans by allowing use of private credit within retirement accounts.
AND Global raised $21.4 million in Series B funding to support its Mongolian fintech initiatives (specific product/services not detailed).
ONERWAY raised $10 million in Series A+ funding to enhance its UK-founded global payments infrastructure offering cross-border merchant acquiring, payouts, card issuance, and AI-driven solutions.
Loop Crypto raised over $6 million in a strategic funding round to accelerate its infrastructure enabling merchants to accept stablecoins alongside fiat seamlessly.
Iniciador raised $6 million in seed funding to build a Brazilian payment solutions provider.
Legion (supported by VanEck and Brevan Howard Digital) led a $5 million funding round into the startup revamping ICOs (specific company name given as “Legion,” which is an ICO-focused startup).
Street Wallet raised US$350 000 to expand its South African digital-payment platform that enables informal traders to accept cashless payments via simple QR-code cards and SMS.