Stripe raises $6.5B at $50B (TWIF 3/18)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Who wants to partner with us on our first fintech happy hour in Joburg? Drop me and wiza@thisweekinfintech.com a line!

I'd also be curious to hear from founders: which fintech-focused venture capital firm do you think of as having the best reputation? ie: Which is the most supportive, which is the most founder-friendly, who would you be first to turn to for advice, who actually walks the talk?

👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, we may be able to help - come check out our fund, The Fintech Fund (including a link to pitch us). Are you a fintech angel investor? Come join our syndicate.

💸 Venture Financing

1. Stripe officially closed on its newest round of financing, raising $6.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation. For any other startup, this would be a monumental success, but in the case of Stripe, reflects a decline in tech market prices for the private company once valued at $95 billion.
2. PhonePe, the Indian mobile payments giant, raised $200 million from Walmart.
3. Parker, a corporate card provider for e-commerce brands, announced its $31 million Series A, $5.9 million seed round, and $70 million in debt.
4. Apexx Global, a payments orchestration platform, raised a $25 million Series B.
5. Tilia, a payments firm focused on the metaverse, raised $22 million from JP Morgan.
6. Wingspan, a payroll platform for managing freelance workforces, raised a $14 million Series A for its contractor payroll system.
7. CNHC, a Chinese yuan-denominated stablecoin issuer, raised $10 million from backers including Circle.
8. Broom, an Indonesian lender to used car dealers, raised a $10 million pre-Series A.
9. Payabli, a payments API for vertical SaaS platforms, raised $8 million.
10. Vexi, a Mexican neobank, raised an $8 million round of funding.
11. Gener8, a UK-based data control and payment platform, raised £5.1 million.
12. Soul Wallet, a self-custody crypto wallet, raised $3.1 million in seed funding.
13. Alex, a decentralized exchange built on bitcoin, raised $2.5 million.
14. Smooth Labs, a blockchain infrastructure provider focused on parallel transaction execution, raised $2 million in seed funding.
15. Tallarium, an energy market price discovery platform, raised $1.6 million.
16. Chipper, the African p2p payments company, is reportedly weighing a new fundraise against a sale.

KPMG released their Pulse of Fintech report for 2022 with a few takeaways:

• Surging investment in regtech as companies look to technology to help them manage their increasingly complex regulatory compliance obligations
• Rapidly cooling investment in cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges between H1’22 and H2’22, with more challenges expected on the horizon
• Strengthening partnerships between fintechs and incumbent financial institutions, including banks, insurance companies and wealth management firms
• Decreasing number of large deals in H2 ‘22 compared to 2021 and H1’22 as investors waited for valuations to stabilize.

💵 Debt Financing

• Saudi buy-now-pay-later originator Tamara received a $150 million credit facility from Goldman to lend to customers.
• Socure, which provides digital fraud management and ID verification solutions, raised a $95 million credit facility from J.P. Morgan, Silicon Valley Bank and KeyBanc.

Pssst - if you like early-stage fintech investing, come join our angel syndicate.