Startup that wants to take on Wise & Revolut? A closer look 👀; What Visa & MC's fee hikes indicate abt the future of payments 💳; Fractional ownership of alternative assets - the next big thing? 🤔
Good Morning FinTech, March 10
Good day Everyone,
And happy Thursday! Hope you are enjoying your week as much as I do. To make your day better, here’s a mix of 3 super awesome FinTech stories that I’ve prepared for you today. This is the best newsletter issue this week, check it out yourself:
A startup that wants to take on Wise, Revolut & the likes? A closer look 👀
The launch 🚀 Atlantic Money, a money transfer FinTech upstart founded by two early employees of Robinhood has moved out of stealth with a promise to take on the likes of Wise, Revolut, and other similar players with a cheaper offering for larger value transactions.
The backing 💸 To achieve that, the company has raised $4.5M in seed funding from Amplo & Ribbit Capital with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Harry Stebbings’ 20VC, Elefund, Day One Ventures & Susa Ventures. Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, the founders of Robinhood, and Anquan Wang, founder of Webull, also invested.
The pitch 👀 At the core, the startup plans to be cheaper than other foreign exchange service providers. Sounds familiar? Well, Wise aka TransferWise originally appeared on the startup scene with the same promise. By the way, I highly recommend checking out their early pitch deck that I’ve broken down earlier here:
A Wise pitch deck that led to London’s biggest and most successful direct listing ever
The USP 🥊 Atlantic Money aims to correct the imbalance they see in the market (= fixed percentage rates charged by incumbents when sending money abroad) by offering the live mid-market currency rate and a flat fixed fee of £3 for transfers up to £1 million.
Launching initially to UK customers on 9 March, the app will enable customers to send money from the UK in GBP into nine currencies including USD, EUR, AUD, CAD, SEK, NOK, DKK, PLN, and CZK, with new currency corridors being added continuously post-launch.
The service is accessible to anyone transferring money abroad, but its core focus is to facilitate substantial cost-efficiencies for people sending sums over £1,000 who are currently getting the worst deal.
Is that really the case? Let’s take a look: