🌊The Fintech Wave(#31)

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Apr 11, 2022

Welcoming 12 new members of the Fintech Wave community who have joined us since Monday.

TLDR; US Private Equity fund acquired MANGOPAY. £120M for Jaja Finance. Fast is shutting down. Bolt acquired Wyre. Solana is now the 3rd biggest network for NFTs.

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Europe News and Funding

US Private Equity fund acquired🤝MANGOPAY

MANGOPAY, a payment solution for e-commerce businesses, has been acquired for €75M by private equity fund Advent.

Looking at the MANGOPAY website, they are pretty similar to Stripe, but only focused on e-commerce and the European market. Pricing is also similar, there is no setup fee, so they take % from each transaction - 1.8% + 0.18€. Looks like a very good deal for e-commerce. MANGOPAY is available in 31 countries in EU Economic Area.

£120M for Jaja Finance💳

KKR (2nd biggest private equity fund in the world) took over the controlling stake in Jaja finance a few months ago. Now they are investing another £120M to fuel the company’s growth.

Jaja Finance is building lending products for consumers. Currently, they offer a simple mobile app with credit cards for UK customers. Compared to another similar startup, Jaja Finance website gives almost zero information for the new potential customers. There is nothing about cashback, APY, etc. With that UX there is a long way for them to become a leader in the UK credit card business (official mission of the company).

Americas News and Funding

Fast is shutting down🛑

Just a week after some of Fast’s financials become public, the startup is shutting down. After $120M of investment in the 1-click checkout button, Fast wasn’t able to reach any meaningful revenue. Below is the CEO statement.

Bolt⚡ acquired Wyre

Bolt is also a 1-click check-out button (like the Fast above), but Bolt is not shutting down. They just did a $1.5B (cash and stocks) acquisition of Wyre. Wyre is the crypto payment stack for the digital/crypto economy.

Also, this is the largest (non-SPAC) acquisition of a crypto company. With Wyre, Bolt will be able to add crypto payment capabilities to its checkout technology. Bolt is valued at $11B, although it has less than $50M in revenue. I think that with this acquisition, Bolt now has the real chance to turn profitable in the future as more and more people are looking to pay with crypto and Bolt could be the first choice among eCommerce stores.