🌊The Fintech Wave #48

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Sep 19, 2022

We are welcoming 56 new members which joined us since last Monday. Pretty active week for funding - Fintechs in the EU and the USA raised more than $1.1 Billion in the last 7 days. The stock market is still in the red.

TLDR: Check out how much investors earned on Figma’s deal. Software for managing software subscriptions. $200M for revenue-based financing startup. Payhawk is launching in the USA market. An app that helps pay off student debt. An arrest warrant for a crypto founder.

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12 fintech companies raised more than $1.1 Billion👏Here is the list👇

Europe

Cledara $20M, software for managing subscriptions
CANDIS $16M, accounts payable software
Claimer $4.2M, claims for R&D credits
Wayflyer $200M, revenue-based financing
Portofino Technologies $50M, crypto trading platform
Ownera $20M, the trading network for tokenized assets

USA

SavvyFi $4.9M, helps pay off student debt
@powerfintech $316M, credit card issuing infrastructure
Ratio $411M, revenue-based financing
Denim $126M, a working capital provider for the freight industry
Payall Payment Systems, Inc. $10M, a cross-border processor for banks
Allocations $5M, alternative investing

We are still not at the bottom

On Wednesday, Sep 13, 2022, the US stock market lost $1.6 Trillion after FED announced an interest rate spike of 75 bps. This is what the market looked like. Not pretty.

How much can early investors earn?

As you probably saw around social media, last week Adobe bought Figma (a designing tool) for $20B. Figma has $400M annual revenue, so they were able to sell it at 50X multiple, which is one of the highest rates ever. Usually, for SaaS (software-as-a-services) multiple is around 10 - to max 20X. But what it’s more interesting is the earnings of the early-stage investors in Figma.

Index Ventures and LightspeedVP were the early investors in the Seed round; they got shares at $0.088. That is an ROI of 45,581%🚀

Greylock VC entered in Series A at $0.199 per share. That is an ROI of 20,101%. Turns out one of the best investments of all time.

European News and Funding

$200M for Irish revenue-based financing💰 company

Revenue-based financing startups are not showing a slowdown in receiving investment. Wayflyer is focused on providing capital for e-commerce startups.

So far more than 1500 businesses used Wayflyer to get upfront cash to finance growth. Wayflyer is providing anywhere from $10K up to $20M of financing within 24h from the application.

To apply for financing business needs to meet the following requirements:

e-commerce business
More than $20K in monthly sales
Be in business for more than 6 months
Be incorporated in one of these countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, or Sweden

Software for managing software subscriptions raised $20M

Companies use more and more software for their operations and pay numerous subscriptions for tens of different vendors. Funny enough, there is a need for software that can track subscriptions😂😂😂 Berlin-based Cledara raised $20 to help with that.

This is especially true in larger companies. It is so hard to track all the licenses employees are using. It is not unusual that companies pay thousands of dollars for software that employees stopped working on, but nobody bothered to cancel the subscriptions. This is where Cledara comes into the game - you can see and track all the subscriptions in one place with analytics (spend, number of users, renewals reminder, etc).

My favorite feature is the ability to issue a virtual card for each subscription. This way you can create a virtual card with a set spending limit for every single subscription.

Pricing starts from $125/month for up to 50 applications. Pretty fair pricing.

Americas News and Funding

Fintech focused on helping people pay off student🎓loans

Currently, student debt in America is more than $1.6 trillion (yes you read that right, trillion) owed by about 43 million borrowers. SavvyFi raised money to help people save and pay off their student debts and include their employees in the process.

The app is pretty simple - the employee creates an account, automatically gets a 529 account, and can start saving right away. If you wonder what is 529 account here is the answer.

529 accounts - investment account that allows savings to grow tax-free if the funds are used for qualified expenses at eligible higher education institutions. It is a very popular savings account, with more than 15 million registered accounts in the USA.

Once the employee has the account, the employer can start with monthly contributions. It is a very good benefit that employers can offer to attract and retain employees. SavvyFi costs $5 per employee per month.

Payhawk💳 entered the US market

The first ever Bulgarian unicorn company, Payhawk, just entered the US market and opened an office in New York City. They will offer spend management solutions and corporate credit cards to customers in the USA.

The US credit cards will run alongside its existing cards in the UK and Europe to support global companies in 32 countries.

Not sure what to say about this move. Everybody wants the USA market because this is where the money is, but there is 10 times more competition than in the EU with a lot of money to spend. They will compete with Brex, Ramp, Mesh Payments, and 10 other companies. It is a really good product and we hope they will have more success in the USA market than N26 and Revolut.

Crypto ₿ites

An arrest warrant⛓️ for the crypto founder

South Korea wants to arrest Do Kwon - the founder of the Ponzi scheme called Terra which issued the Luna Coin. The collapse of Luna actually started the bear market in crypto and people lost billions. Turns out, in the end, Do Kwon might be held accountable for the scam.