Revolut moves into travel 🧳; Soldo eyes European domination🇪🇺; Fidelity for Gen Z & Millennials 😎

Good Morning FinTech. 6/30

Good morning Everyone,

Trust your week is going well thus far. To make it even better, let’s hit the 3 stories for today:

Revolut moves into travel 🧳

Revolut Stays 🏨 A new feature called Stays lets users book hotels and other accommodation through its app.

Cashback 💸 Customers can receive up to 10% cashback on bookings made through Revolut, the company said. Revolut has set aside £70M to offer users 10% cashback on all holiday accommodation booked through its app. You got to spend that $800M somewhere, right? 😎

Expansion 🚀 Revolut Stays is now available to customers in the UK with plans to expand the booking feature across Europe and the US. The FinTech is also aiming to become a one-stop travel tool with airfare, rental cars, and other related products.

✈️ THE TAKEAWAY

A one super app you need 📲 Revolut Stays falls in line with the challenger’s ambitions to create the global super app. All in one place, all within Revolut. While it might be hard to challenge the likes of Expedia and Booking.com, travel is a massive industry. Even if it takes a small % of the $2.9 trillion market, it should be worth the effort…

Soldo eyes European domination🇪🇺

Series C 💸 Soldo, a European business expense automation platform, has closed an oversubscribed $180M Series C funding round led by Temasek, with new investors Sunely House Capital, Citi Ventures also participating.

Solid growth 📈 Since the FinTech’s last funding round in July 2019, Soldo has seen the spend volume on its platform increase 4X and now counts more than 26,000 SME customers in over 30 countries, including Mercedes Benz, Gymshark and Brooks Running.

With new cash at hand, Soldo plans to expand into new markets and further tap into the $170B European market.

✈️ THE TAKEAWAY

Business expenses are still a pain 😬 Weak spending controls are costing European businesses circa 2% of their annual turnover through the pandemic (Soldo data). It’s about time to eliminate that, and Soldo wants to be at the forefront of this.

Fidelity for Gen Z & Millennials 😎

It’s for the new generation 🍼 Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at the new generation of “everyday investors,” has closed on $58M in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

“The Fidelity for Gen Z and millennials,” closed on Series B just five months after it raised a $12.5 million Series A led by General Catalyst.

Some numbers 📈 The startup, which describes itself as “a new-guard active investment manager,“ launched its first investment strategy in February of 2018 and today has 30k users. 

Titan’s platform grew by 500% in the last 12 months, largely organically, according to the company, which expects to cross its first billion in assets under management later this year.

At the time of its last raise in February, Titan co-founder and co-CEO Joe Percoco said the startup was approaching $500M in assets under management and was cash-flow positive last year. 

✈️ THE TAKEAWAY

New generations need new solutions. Fidelity is old, while Titan is new. It claims to be is the first DTC, mobile-first investment platform where everyday investors, irrespective of wealth, can have their capital actively managed by investment experts in long-term strategies. Consumer investing is on the rise, and younger generations are embracing more risks and trying out different frontiers (i.e. crypto). If it executes well, it will be very interesting to see how Titan will fit in the likes of Coinbase, Robinhood and etc. Stakes are high for all.

🔎 What else I’m watching

• Derivatives 💸 Digital wealth manager and neo-broker Scalable Capital is moving into financial derivatives, including leveraged products. The demand was high, so they delivered.

• Regulation 💭 US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told regulators it is critical that the government establishes and adopts a framework for digital currency stablecoins, Reuters reported.

• Wise & strong 💪 Newly listed FinTech powerhouse Wise, aka Transferwise, has recorded a 43% uplift in revenues for the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter in 2020, according to a trading update from the firm. 

• Stablecoin patent 🔎 Unlike fiat currency-pegged stablecoins, Yuga Coin intends to be solely pegged to government debt such as bonds and treasury notes.

💸 Following the Money

• Fabric, a headless eCommerce platform, has raised $100M in Series B funding led by Stripes

• The payments FinTech InComm Payments announced that it is investing in Instant Financial, a company that provides fee-free earned wage access (EWA) solutions. Instant helps employees access to part of their wages immediately following their shifts by tapping their smartphone. InComm did not disclose the size of its investment.

• Singapore-based cross-border payments provider Thunes has announced the acquisition of Limonetik, a European payment methods platform.

• Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily has announced the first closing of its $51M Series B funding round, taking its total investment to date to $69M. 

👋 That’s it for today! Thank you for reading and have a productive Thursday! And if you enjoyed this newsletter, invite your friends and colleagues to sign up:

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