Bitpanda’s billions 🐼; Plaid’s play 👏😎; New bank in UK town🇬🇧🏦
Good Morning FinTech. 25/30
Bitpanda’s co-founders are making it rain…
Good morning Everyone,
And happy Wednesday! I trust your week has been going great thus far. Here’s a mix of 3 stories to kick off your day and make it productive:
Bitpanda’s billions 🐼
The raise 💸 Crypto trading platform Bitpanda has raised $263M, a massive funding round which comes just 4 months after its last 9-figure fundraise. It seems that the huge excitement around cryptocurrency startups is not going anywhere.
The growth 🚀 The funding round was led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which now values the company at a whopping $4.1 billion. This is more than three times the March valuation of $1.2B. The company is thus Austria’s first “unicorn” and most valuable tech startup🇦🇹🦄
Strong numbers 📊 Bitpanda is also growing fast. The company, which has been profitable for 5 years, said to Sifted it has 3 million users and is on track to achieve 6x customer growth year-over-year. At the same time, the company said that revenues will increase sevenfold in 2021 compared with the previous year 👀
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
It’s not about the valuation here… Despite the unicorn status, Bitpanda is more fascinating because of another thing. For a company of this size and age, the three founders still own around 50% of the business. This makes Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek, and Christian Trummer into near billionaires. And it’s not about the money - it’s about the entrepreneurial spirit and network effects for future generations. Huge kudos to team Bitpanda! 🥂
Plaid’s play 👏😎
The news 💥 Financial API provider Plaid just announced funding from J.P. Morgan Private Capital Growth Equity Partners and existing investor Amex Ventures as part of their previously announced Series D, which was led by Altimeter Capital and Silver Lake Partners.
Important partners… 👀 Plaid founder and CEO Zach Perret said in the announcement that the new backers are storied companies intrinsic to the fabric of financial services, and are important partners. Both J.P. Morgan’s Growth Equity Partners and American Express “will be critical in their effort to enable great financial outcomes for consumers and drive innovation in the industry”.
How the tables have turned… The newest funding wouldn’t be that interesting if not for the context. The tables have turned, and I’ve summarised this in a tweet:
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
If you can’t beat them - join them. This simple truth holds stronger today than ever before. Also, with the recent move, JPM has potentially won the lead role in Plaid’s upcoming IPO, which now is inevitable after their and Visa deal fell apart. More importantly, Jamie and the team now have a seat at the table, which will allow them to learn Plaid’s strategy, how it makes money, etc. Well played both 👏😎
New bank in UK town🇬🇧🏦
FCA said yes ✅ Kroo, a UK-based neobank, has just received a UK banking license with restrictions from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
What does it mean? 🤔 The recent authorization’s restrictions mean that Kroo, which plans to launch in 2022 can accept deposits up to £50,000 in total in the near term.
The numbers 📈 The bank claims it has grown organically thus far since its inception in 2019 to have 5,000 prepaid cardholders (an e-money product), with over 20,000 monthly transactions on the platform.
Money 💸 As shared last week, the neobank recently secured a £17.7M investment, taking total funding raised to over £30M.
The USP 🥊 Kroo aims to be what it calls ‘a social bank’, removing the friction from financial interactions with family and friends, and “by reducing the social anxiety and stigma surrounding money management”. Sounds nice, but what about execution? 🤔
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
It’s all about execution. As I have said last week, Kroo aims to be different (which is great), but the execution is what matters the most here. Given they managed to receive a banking license in the UK (which is only the 2nd one this year) in a relatively short timeframe, it appears they know what they are doing. Most importantly (and to repeat myself again), if Kroo can find a synergy between the two (social responsibilities + lending), I’m bullish on them.
🔎 What else I’m watching
The bank branch comeback 🏦 Hundreds of bank branch closures have led to the point where the regulator is now calling on banks to reconsider closures and, according to the Financial Times, this could go as far as to block future closures. In response, The Mail on Sunday reported that the UK’s biggest banks are discussing creating a new generation of shared banking hubs in order to continue providing banking services for the most rural communities.
Access granted 💳 Netherlands-based payments operator PayU has announced that its controlled company Red Dot Payment, a South East Asia-focused online PSP, has received direct acquiring licenses and connectivity to Visa and Mastercard.
More BNPL… 😑 hoolah, an omnichannel BNPL ecosystem in Asia, has partnered with Singapore-based e-commerce platform Jumper.ai to offer conversational commerce to merchants across Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
$2T is back! 😎 The crypto market cap surpassed $2 trillion market capitalization for the first time since mid-May, with bitcoin leading the rally, according to CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin climbed to $48,048 early Monday, the highest level since May 17, joined by Ether and Cardano, which have surged 11% and 53% in the last seven days respectively.
💸 Following the Money
DeFi protocol Ondo Finance, launched by two former Goldman Sachs employees, has raised $4M in a seed funding round.
Blockchain security firm CertiK has raised $24M in new funding from Tiger Global and GL Ventures.
Newly listed FinTech mortgage lender LendInvest has signed a £150M partnership deal with Barclays and HSBC that will see short-term mortgages funded through its digital platform.
HSBC has acquired French insurer Axa's Singapore assets for $575M, part of its strategy of scaling up its wealth-management business in Asia to boost fee income.
👋 That’s it for today! Thank you for reading and have a productive Wednesday! And if you enjoyed this newsletter, invite your friends and colleagues to sign up:
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