Visa goes NFTs 🤯; SoftBank’s first foray into Africa🔥; TikTok & Shopify are paving the way for social commerce 📲
Good Morning FinTech, Weekly Recap 🔁
Good morning Everyone,
And happy Sunday! I’m pretty much certain you had a wonderful week. To make it better, I invite you to take a look at three stories that were moving headlines this week. You can uncover other stories, keep the FinTech pulse daily and get at least X5 more by becoming a subscriber. Join the community here:
And here’s a mix of 3 great stories from this week:
Visa goes NFTs 🤯
The purchase 🤑 Payments giant Visa has bought a female CryptoPunk for around $150,000, taking a step into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as it seeks to learn more about the burgeoning market. CryptoPunk 7610 was bought on August 19, the payments technology company announced Monday.
What is it? 🤔 CryptoPunks, of which 10,000 have been minted, are considered to be the original NFTs. CryptoPunk 7610 is one of 3,840 "female" punks.
The learning curve 👀 Visa's head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, said in a blog post that the main purpose behind Visa's purchase was to learn more about the growing market. "We think NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment and commerce," Sheffield wrote. "To help our clients and partners participate, we need a firsthand understanding of the infrastructure requirements for a global brand to purchase, store, and leverage an NFT."
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
The new type of commerce. NFTs is the new e-commerce, and Visa wants to own it. Online commerce is the lifeblood of card networks like Visa, hence, any new emerging trends in this area should naturally be of their interest. Given the surge in popularity and adoption, NFTs might be a big industry in the future. More importantly, this is arguably the best marketing that Visa could ever do for $150k. Not only everyone is talking about it. Also, it moved the market. Following the news of Visa's purchase, a further 90 CryptoPunks NFTs were snapped up in the next hour for combined sales of around $20M. They continue to grow as we speak. Looks like Visa made a good play, a very good play… 👌🏽😎
SoftBank’s first foray into Africa🔥
FinTech in Nigeria🇳🇬 Giant technology investor SoftBank has made its first foray into Africa, making its first bet in Nigerian mobile payments platform OPay. The firm’s Vision Fund 2 led a $400M funding round for the FinTech company, valuing it at $2 billion and making it one of the most valuable private companies in the continent 🦄
The capital injection from SoftBank also drew participation from existing investors including Sequoia Capital China, Redpoint China, Source Code Capital, and SoftBank Ventures Asia.
The pivot 😎 Founded in 2018, the company started off by providing customers with digital services in their everyday life, from mobility and logistics to e-commerce and FinTech at cheap rates. The “super-app” strategy OPay once had was cut short after its ride-hailing and bike-sharing services were closed down following a government ban in Nigeria and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Right now, it’s the company’s mobile money and payment arm that thrives the most. By simply allowing unbanked and underbanked users in Nigeria to send and receive money and pay bills through a network of thousands of agents.
The growth 🚀 OPay has grown at an exponential rate. Parent company Opera reported that OPay’s monthly transactions grew 4.5x to over $2 billion in December last year. OPay also claims to process about 80% of bank transfers among mobile money operators in Nigeria and 20% of the country’s nonmerchant point of sales transactions. Per Bloomberg, the company’s monthly transaction volumes exceed $3B at the moment.
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
I’ve said this multiple times, and I will say it again… Africa is the next BIG Thing (especially when it comes to FinTech). Still few understand that. After the latest fundraise, OPay is now bigger than GT Bank, the biggest bank in Nigeria (in terms of valuation). FinTech is growing strong in Africa, and it will only get stronger.
TikTok & Shopify are paving the way for social commerce 📲
Match made in heaven 🤝 E-commerce heavyweight Shopify and one of the hottest social media apps of nowadays TikTok have just unveiledTikTok Shopping, bringing organic Shopify product discovery and shopping tabs to TikTok.
The process 👉 Shopify customers with TikTok For Business accounts will have the ability to add shopping tabs to their TikTok profiles and sync their product listings into a mini storefront that links to their online stores during the checkout process.
The partnership is in the pilot phase in the US and UK and will soon be made available to select Canadian Shopify merchants, followed by a wider release in future months.
The impact ☝️ Soon you will only be one click away from buying that Kylie lipstick you saw in a TikTok video. Or alternatively, instead of just posing next to a bottle of protein powder (which sponsors you), you can also link it and your followers can immediately buy it.
✈️ THE TAKEAWAY
This could potentially be a massive move. First and foremost, social commerce is booming lately. US social commerce sales are expected to exceed $35B this year, which is up 36% from 2020. The number is expected to hit $50B in annual sales by 2023. Zooming out, we can clearly see that our purchasing decisions are increasingly being influenced by social media (think not only influencers but your friends and relatives too). And if you were about to remove the current friction, the ads would become even more effective. Your seamlessness ability to buy straight from Insta, TikTok, etc. is extra-valuable for advertisers, which means social giants can charge even more for ads (more effective means more money). Hence, it’s not surprising why lately Twitter, Pinterest, and Snap are also doubling down on shopping features. And it will only get hotter here!🔥
🔎 What else I’m watching
New FinTech IPO 🔔 Payment platform Sezzle said it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for an initial public offering (IPO) to the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, according to a press release. The release notes that neither the number of shares or price has been revealed. The IPO will likely take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market conditions.
Growing institutional demand in the UK for crypto🇬🇧 Research by Nickel Digital, a digital asset hedge fund manager founded by former Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan investment professionals, found that more than 50% of U.K. institutional investors in a survey plan to increase their crypto-asset exposure between now and 2023.
BNPL ads📲 Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Afterpay launched Afterpay Ads. The new advertising solution allows brands to place featured ads across the Afterpay app to enhance retailer promotions, products and offers on a pay-per-click basis.
💸 Following the Money
Taiwan-based blockchain startup XREX has raised $17M in pre-Series A funding led by CDIB Capital Group.
Financial management platform Pry Financial raised $4.2M in a seed round. The company will use the money to improve collaboration on the platform, which launched last year.
Paradigm leads an $8M Series A into DeFi lending company Euler.
👋 That’s it for today! Thank you for reading and have a productive remaining Sunday! And if you enjoyed this newsletter, invite your friends and colleagues to sign up:
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