🌊The Fintech Wave #63

Welcome all to another Fintech Wave edition; it’s number 63 already!

TLDR: BaaS just got closer. Danish challenger bank got fresh funding. Neobank spent $100 mil to acquire banking licenses for all 50 states. Price’s Law (you will love this is you have your own company).Elon Musk and his opinion on OpenAI (which he co-founded btw)

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European News and Funding

Lunar

Danish challenger bank Lunar raised 35€ million from its existing shareholders for additional expansion in the Nordics.

This fresh capital comes after the news of additional 40 layoffs in January, adding to 50 in an initial round of cuts last year.

If you are not following Nordics that closely, Lunar had a very interesting 2022…sort of.

Lunar's ambitions of Nordic-wide growth were dented by the collapse of a €132 million acquisition bid for Norwegian counterpart Instabank, after it fell short of "capital requirements" and failed to secure Norwegian regulatory approvals.

However, investors are still bullish on the company and it’s believed that Lunar has around 500k accounts across Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Banking as a service just got closer 💪

London-based embedded finance platform Omnio has raised €9 million in an ongoing fundraise targeting €12 million.

Founded in 2018, Omnio is a cloud-driven banking-as-a-service platform. It enables financial service providers and others, such as consumer brands, to build, manage and report on retail financial products using digital software.

What is so special about Omnio 👇

Two things: its current size and a real chance of becoming an IPO company.

Currently, Omnio software is deployed by 135 financial institutions and 1.5 million end users of credit union services, consumer brands and banking.

They also understand that for having a successful IPO they need a bit more muscle.

Last October they announced Omnio to be combined with Swiss Bankers and Nordiska to create a pan-European financial solutions group.

Pan-European financial solutions group sounds much better than just Omnio 😉

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Americas News and Funding

Varo Bank

Varo Bank is one of the few digital banks that has its own banking license, so it’s always interesting to see the bank’s financial results. Also, rumor said that Varo Bank spent $100M to get the banking license in all 50 states.

Q4 revenue ended at $26.6M (5% increase QoQ), but average revenue per user is pretty low - around $5. They have to increase that. The bank was able to cut the quarterly loss to ($32.5M), but the full-year loss is at $236M which is huge. They already had layoffs, but there is still a long way to profitability. Here are some report highlights.

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Crypto Bites

Interesting stats about stablecoins

Jeremy Allaire @jerallaire

The case for stablecoins going mainstream has never been stronger. The data speaks for itself. Thanks @paddi_hansen

Patrick Hansen @paddi_hansen

1/16 Stablecoins are undeniably crypto's killer use case atm and going to mainstream faster than any other application. Don't take my word for it, look at the data 🧵

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Tweets and Threads of the Week

First time I heard about Price’s Law, but it makes sense👇

Terrence Rohan @tmrohan

In a company with 100 employees, 10 will produce half the work. This is Price’s Law: 50% of the work is produced by the square root of the total employee base.

Musk’s view on OpenAI (which he co-founded)👇

Sar Haribhakti @sarthakgh

Cofounder of OpenAI on OpenAI

Netflix’s co-founder on success 👇

Marc Randolph @mbrandolph

Actually, my definition of success is a bit different:

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful @kevinolearytv

You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.

Exactly this👇😂

Bucco Capital @buccocapital

My tax guy asking why I did 3,000 trades last year just to lose money