The Fintech Wave🌊 (#3)
NerdWallet IPO, new European unicorn, and big Crypto announcements
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Fintech Wave🌊 This is your weekly source of what’s going on in the Fintech world in Europe and North America. Feedback is welcome (you can contact us at fw@fintechwave.co) and if you like this newsletter please share with friends and encourage them to SIGN UP HERE.
TLDR; France has a new fintech unicorn🦄. NerdWallet💰files for IPO. Crypto startups are raising money🔗. Stripe is building a crypto team. Coinbase is building an NFT marketplace. Keep reading for details👇
Europe News and Funding
Simplifying meal🍔 vouchers distribution
In some European countries, employers must provide meal vouchers for their employees. Managing that is a nightmare, so Swile just raised another $200M to provide a full-service solution for employee benefits. The company is offering meal vouchers via debit cards and providing the mobile app with a spend management tool. Currently, the company hold around 13% of the market share in France.
SoftBank led the round, and Swile's valuation is now over $1B. Riches are in the niches.
2 months old startup raised $14M👏
B2B payments startup Mondu, which is funded in August this year, just raised a $14M Seed round. Where is the catch to raise such an amount in a short time? Combine 2 hot things - BNLP offer for B2B marketplaces - customers will have flexible net payment terms; all automated without paperwork. We have to admit - genius idea.
North America News and Funding
NerdWallet files for IPO📈Must read story👇
One of the most popular financial websites in the USA, NerdWallet, files for IPO. . Started in 2009 in the middle of the financial crisis, as a blog about personal finance, Nerdwallet grew to 39 million users per month, generating more than $350M in annual revenue. Started Nerwallet with $800 and Excel. The first year he made $75 and lived on Subway sandwiches while working up 20 hours per day. The website started with a credit card comparison and is now the biggest website for comparison of all financial products for consumers. 2nd year, the company made around $60K, and Chen knew he is onto something. The number of visitors and revenue started to double each month in the mid-2010. In 2015, NerdWallet raised $105M. NerdWallet is making money via affiliate marketing - financial services companies pay NerdWallet when its readers sign up for a credit card or similar product after clicking through the NerdWallet site. Also, NerdWallet claims that any partnerships or sponsorship don’t affect their recommendations and advice.
$70M of funding for embedded💳 finance startup
In the last few weeks, investors are putting money into fintech infrastructure startups like there is no tomorrow. Alviere just raised $70M to make it easy for any brand to deliver financial products to its customers and employees. They offer already build white label solutions, so any client can embed financial products into their business: savings accounts, debit cards, gift cards, loyalty solutions, currency exchange, etc. Just a few years ago this was unimaginable to do without traditional banks and any business can do it within days. The fintech revolution is real.
Crypto ₿ites
Safe adoption of cryptoassets🔗
We all know that cryptocurrencies are sometimes used as payment tender for illegal activities and it is hard to track the sources/end-user on the blockchain. There is a number of blockchain analysis companies that are trying to tackle that problem. Safety is the key to the mass adoption of cryptoassets across financial services. London-based Elliptic just raised $60M to make digital assets more secure and to bring compliance to crypto assets. The startup is providing blockchain analysis, training, and compliance for financial institutions, fintechs, crypto, and government agencies.
It is getting easier for institutional investors to join the crypto world
Cryptocurrency broker, SheeldMarket, raised $10M to help institutional investors to buy and sell crypto. SheeldMarket is already an EU-registered broker which means that they can offer their services to other financial institutions while respecting all regulations. Their product is focused on the EU market. Building crypto trading infrastructure from zero is too long and expensive and that is the main selling point of SheeldMarket. Financial institutions can just buy white label solutions from SheeldMarket and offer crypto to their customers. This is good news since the EU is already behind the USA in terms of crypto adoption and needs to catch up as soon as possible.
Stripe is betting on crypto again
Stripe is entering the crypto world again. Guillaume Poncin, who will lead the team, announced it on Twitter. The company will build the future of Web3 payments. Since every Stripe product is the best in its class, can’t wait to see what they will build in the crypto. Worth mentioning that Stripe abandoned Bitcoin payments in 2018, due to its slow transaction times and rising fees.
If you are interested in joining the Stripe crypto team, you can check open roles here.
Coinbase is building an NFT🖼️ marketplace
With the rise of NFTs in the last few months, it was just a question of time before Coinbase decide to enter into the game. Coinbase helped millions of people to buy bitcoin, just because the app was simple to use. They will try to do the same for NFTs. Although there are already few NFTs marketplaces, it is still fairly hard for beginners to mint, discover and purchase NFTs. This is a huge announcement, especially for the artists and the creator community. NFTs prices will go to the moon.
You can sign up for a waitlist here.
