This Week in Fintech (10/31)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Please find another exciting week of fintech financing events, mergers, acquisitions, and - you guessed it - SPACs all below.

Open role spotlight

Ziina is building the killer peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant payments app for the MENA, and is looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer.

Financings

• Conductor, a Brazilian payments processor, raised $150 million in new funding ahead of an anticipated US IPO.
• White-labeled trading platform provider Drivewealth raised a $56.7 million Series C.
• PrimaryBid, a UK startup that aggregates stock orders from small investors, raised $50m in new funding from backers including the London Stock Exchange.
• Nordic challenger bank Lunar raised $40 million in new funding.
• Tomo Networks, a digital mortgage startup, raised a $40 million seed round.
• Jiko, a neobank that registered a charter and bought Mid-Central National Bank, topped up its funding to $40 million.
• Finova Capital, an Indian lender to the unbanked, raised $35 million in new equity.
• Bluefin, a payment encryption technology provider, raised $25 million in growth funding.
• Fabric, which creates financial planning tools for families, raised an  $18 million Series B.
• Clarity AI raised $15 million for its impact investing evaluation platform.
• Wise, which enables companies to provide bank accounts to their own customers, raised a $12 million Series A.
• Wayflyer, a revenue-based financing platform for e-commerce companies, secured a $10.2 million seed round.
• StreetShares, which enables small business loans from financial institutions, raised $10 million in funding.
• Transcend, which provides business optimization software for financial institutions, raised a $10 million Series A.
• Tiliter, building a cashierless checkout technology using computer vision for barcodes, raised a $7.5 million Series A.
• RealBlocks, an alternative investment access platform, raised a $7 million Series A.
• Gig Wage, which is building banking and financial tools for gig economy workers, raised a $7.5 million Series A from legacy financial services provider Green Dot.
• GetVantage, an Indian revenue-based financing platform, raised a $5 million seed round.
• Spend management platform Teampay raised a $5 million Series A-1.
• Finmark, a financial modeling software platform for startups, raised $5 million in seed funding.
• Secureframe, a compliance platform for SOC and ISO audits, raised $4.5 million.
• Funding U, a student loan startup for students from underrepresented groups, raised $4 million in new equity.
• SUMA Wealth, a financial education platform for the Latinx community, raised $1 million in pre-seed funding.
• UK payments tech provider Icon Solutions received an undisclosed investment from JP Morgan.

Exits and M&A

• Ant Financial raised $34 billion in the world’s largest IPO.
• Driven by lower net interest margins as rates compress, paired with its 2018 Fed consent order not to grow assets, Wells Fargo is looking to sell off its $10 billion student loan book.
• Private equity firm Ares Management is in talks to buy Australian wealth manager AMP, which would value the embattled firm at $5 billion - a 70% drop since its 2018 highs.
• Payment technology provider Worldline is recruiting banks to sell its $3.5 billion payment terminals unit.
• Chinese wealth management fintech Lufax opened below its IPO price in the US, but still raised $2.4 billion.
• Nordic Capital is exploring a sale of its Itiviti electronic trading platform, which could be valued at up to $1 billion.
• Loyalty program provider Alliance Data will acquire buy-now-pay-later platform Bread for $450 million
• Australian bank Westpac sold its stake in buy-now-pay-later firm Zip for $337 million, days after entering into a strategic relationship with its rival Afterpay.
• Private equity firm AnaCap took a 60% stake in Market Pay, the fintech arm of French grocer Carrefour, for €300 million.
• Financial technology holding company Repay Holdings will acquireCPS Payment Services, a business payments and accounts payable automation platform, for up to $93 million.
• UK lottery solutions provider NeoGames plans to IPO in the US, raising up to $90m.
• Brazilian state-owned bank Caixa Economica Federal is considering a US IPO of its digital bank.
• Visa will acquire Latin American payments service provider YellowPepper, after leading its $12.5 million Series D in 2018.
• Consumer financial products marketplace Nerdwallet acquired small business lending referral platform Fundera.
• Credit Karma is in talks to divest its tax-preparation business - possibly selling it to Square - in order to head off antitrust action against its new parent, Intuit. Intuit has aggressively lobbied to prevent Americans from accessing free tax-prep solutions, which would threaten its profitable TurboTax product; concerns arose when Intuit’s acquisition of Credit Karma was announced that it would shut down the latter’s free tax prep product.
• Financial services institution American International Group plans to spin off its life and retirement planning units.
• Bank of Montreal is exploring a sale of its asset management operations.
• Scandinavian payments processor Nets Group acquired CCV Schweiz, a Swiss point-of-sale terminal market.
• Celero Commerce, an e-commerce solutions provider acquiredTransNational Payments, an electronic payments technology platform.
• Private equity investor The Carlyle Group will take a majority stake in Calastone, the world’s largest funds network.
• Risk and compliance solutions provider NAVEX Global bought market ESG data provider CSRware.
• Caliber Home Loans and Amerihome, two mortgage providers, both delayed their IPOs due to increasing market volatility.

SPACs

• FinTech Acquisition V is the sixth SPAC targeting a fintech acquisition opened up by The Bancorp.
• Concord Acquisition is raising $250 million to target a financial services or fintech company.
• Kingswood Acquisition lowered its $125 million IPO target deal size by 17%.

Pressure on Wells Fargo’s net interest margin income. (Source)