🌊The Fintech Wave #58

Dec 19, 2022

Hi all, welcome to the last weekly recap in this year. Last week was especially great week for europan fintechs - 5 of them raised over €220M.

Banks could close you are account if you were depositing money to FTX, as some Twitter users are reporting. Of course, in that case, the bank will send you the check with the money you had in the account, but still, it is unpleasant to experience.

Cole @cole0x

Bank just closed and emptied my accounts due to previous FTX wire deposits If your bank account ever touched FTX, good chance it's getting closed

European News and Funding

Primary Portal - $5.3M

Novicap - €200M

Bling - $3.5M

Bondval - $15M

UTROG - $5M

The Spanish fintech scene is ramping up🚀

Almost every week some startup in Spain raised tens of millions of euros. Last week, Barcelona-based Novicap raised €200M to provide end-to-end working capital solutions to SMEs, mid-market corporates, and public administrations.

For example, if some company needs to wait 60 to receive payments for the invoice, the company can borrow the money from Novicap with only 0.2% monthly interest and keep the liquidity until the invoice is paid. Businesses can borrow up to €20M within 48 hours. The company recently announced it already passed €1B in transactions and it was on the list of the 1,000 fastest-growing European companies.

Prepaid debit card for kids💳

Bling, fintech for kids and teens, raised €3.5M Seed round led by Peak and La Famiglia. Berlin-based fintech wants to learn kids how to handle, save and invest money. This is a great idea and European market is huge - there is over 80M people under 18 years old.

Bling offers debit card, mobile app and educational content. The idea is that parents send pocket money to kids debit card and then track spending via app or limit spending. To use the cards, kids has to be at least 7 years old😂 Pricing is very fair: €2.99 per child.

Finanical community focused on women’s investing📈

Interesting startup coming from Paris - RYSE - community driven fintech that wants to empower women to invest. They are currently raising €1M via crowdfunding campaign.

The startup wants to create some kind of certification for financial institutions (banks, asset managers, investment platforms,etc) which would mean that institution is supporting women in investing. Based on their website, there will be questionnaire with 30 criterias that will help analyize if insitution is qualified.

Then RYSE highlight the financial players and investment products that have qualified for its certification, brining them more users and revenue. Pretty interesting concept, but we will see how the execution will look like.

Americas News and Funding

Lendbuzz got another line of credit💰

Regions Bank approved a $135M credit line for Lendbuzz, an AI-based fintech lender focused on the car industry. The company already raised $100M earlier this year.

Lendbuzz is serving customers who cannot obtain car financing using a regular credit system. For example, new immigrants cannot finance a car because they don’t have a credit score, so this is where Lendbuzz comes into play - they use alternative data to try to accurately assess the creditworthiness of consumers.

Crypto ₿ites

UTORG is enabling crypto purchases inside the app or website ₿

Crypto startup with a weird name raised a $5M Seed round. We really like this product - they have 2 business models - for private and for business use.

For personal use, they offer the easiest way to buy crypto with a credit card with no hidden fees. The checkout page is so simple and you can buy up to $1000 worth of crypto in a single transaction.

For businesses, they offer solutions to accept crypto payments in online stores or inside the app. They support 187 countries and 26 local fiat currencies. Really excellent product, bullish on this startup.