Monday Fintech News #2 - World Cup & insurance
How some companies benefit from the recession 📉 and what the World Cup ⚽️ brings to tech? 🤔
Happy Monday everyone, a lot has happened last week, here is a short debrief on that last fintech action! 🔥🔥🔥
The fintech ecosystem is moving fast, with changes across every sub-sector (payments, markets, retail, etc.) every day. To help you navigate them I decided to launch the Fintech Weekly Briefing, a newsletter including the top news of the week and M&A updates.
Top 3 news
Wealth management - Arta Finance & Ctrl Alt launch offers aiming at the democratisation of the access to alternative asset finance 🤑
After raising over $90M, Arta launched its operations in the US. The plan is to expand beyond the US as soon as the regulatory approvals are met. $10,000 will be necessary to gain access to the platform, allowing users to create their own investing game plan, get liquidity without selling stock and share financial knowledge. Ctrl Alt, has launched with a similar model, but with a starting investment as low as £10, with a system of digital shares, as they plan to “tokenise” their assets.
What it means: While fractional shares allowed democratisation of investment in the stock market, this mostly doesn’t apply to alternative assets. This market has been growing significantly in the past years (Assets under management in private capital in 2015: $4.08tn, in 2021: $8.90tn, Preqin is forecasting $17.77tn for 2026) and yet, remained reserved to professional investors and HNWI. Companies like Arta and Ctrl Alt might bring a solution to reduce the barrier of entry to this investment class and provide access to liquidity in an illiquid market, however an obvious risk is the volatility this might generate, much like personal trading platform led to higher volatility in public markets.
Sources: Fintech Future, PR News Wire, FinextraInsur-tech - Embedded insurance is coming, offering products for e-commerce and retailers led by French-based, Sequoia-back Evy 🇫🇷 🌳
While Apple offers AppleCare for its products, and FNAC and Darty offer insurance and warranty for products they sell, traditional online retailers don’t always have the ability to offer such protection for their products. Evy is an insurance broker offering a turnkey protection solution for goods and services (such as warranties, damage and theft) through leading insurers. The company solely offers its solution online 🧑💻, but it aims to reach physical stores 🏪 as well. The company is differentiating itself from global leaders by offering custom-made products that meet retail’s demand and a simple and fast API-based integration. 🛠 Clyde, Extend and Neat have developed similar solutions.
What it means: After the boom 💥 for embedded finance, that aims to integrate financial products and processes seamlessly into everyday life in a personalised way (like Klarna’s lending offering on a retailer website, or Uber’s payment solution directly on the app), embedded insurance is following the trend, as this proves efficient for all parties: insurers open a new channel of acquisition, retailers upgrade their offering and customers can choose to be insured without additional steps. On the other hand, this offering responds to demand for less “single-use” products (with players like Back Market or second-hand clothing platforms), as this will incentivise users to repair their product instead of buying new ones.
Sources: TechCrunch, Silicon Canals
To learn more about embedded insurance, click here.The 2022 FIFA World Cup ⚽️ is kicking-off. here are the fintech you will see there:
Pay with your face 😐 : Qatar National Bank and POP ID (supported by Visa) have developed a facial recognition solution allowing customers to authenticate payments using their face, without a physical device (once users are enrolled). This will be piloted by Three Flat White Specialty Coffee branches. ☕️
Crypto.com has become an official sponsor for the event, hoping to drive awareness around the cryptocurrency trading platform.
The FIFA partnered with Algorand to bring a blockchain-supported wallet solution to the event. The company will also assist the FIFA in developing its digital assets strategy.
What it means: As event organisers are keen to reduce friction for clients / users, large scale events are a great platform for tech companies (especially fintech) to showcase their latest developments and solutions.
Sources: The Fintech Times, Fifa, Ambcrypto,
Mergers & Acquisitions news
Much like other sectors of the tech industry, fintechs are impacted by the recent economic downturn 📉, VC funding in Q3 2022 is $13bn globally, down 63% year-on-year (from $35bn) and more companies are announcing lay-offs (Chime, Stripe, Chargebee, Opendoor, Pleo, etc.). Others however, are seizing the opportunity to acquire companies, or even raise funds! 💸
Some Q3 fundraisings
Klarna (Sweden 🇸🇪) - $800m growth round (valued at $6.7bn) led by Silver Lake Partners & Sequoia Capital
wefox (Germany 🇩🇪) - $400m (value $4.5bn) led by Horizon Venture
Satispay (Italy 🇮🇹) - €320m (valued $1.1bn) led by Block & Tencent
Some Q4 fundraising and M&A
Jeeves (US-based 🇺🇸 , credit-backed business payments solution) raised $180m at a $2.1bn valuation.
Digital asset firm Bakkt 🇺🇸 announce acquisition of Apex Crypto, a cryptocurrency trading platform, for a maximum purchase price of $200m.
Visma (Norway 🇳🇴 )to acquire Likvido (accounting software)
Ramp (UK-based 🇬🇧 crypto-fiat payment gateway API) raised €72.2m in Series B funding from Mubadala Capital Ventures
Sources: dealroom.co, Techcrunch, Fintech Futures, Tekdeeps, Medium / Blackfin
Thanks for reading! More to come soon 😎
Francis