Courtesy of a round featuring new investor WSV – a joint venture fund of Walden International and Korean firm SKTA – online financing solutions marketplace BankBazaar has raised $6 million in new equity funding. The company will use the capital, which adds to an existing Series D round, to help market its contactless personal finance solutions as it continues its expansion in India.
In a blog post at the company’s website, company CEO Adhil Shetty noted that the current global public health crisis is fueling pre-existing trends in favor of contactless transactions. “In the post COVID-19 world, the demand for contactless finance is going to grow exponentially,” Shetty said. “(T)his round of funding will help us accelerate our plans to implement contactless access to credit.” He added that the investment, which also featured participation from the company’s existing investors Amazon, Sequoia India, Experian, and Eight Roads, represents an endorsement of the company’s “vision of contactless finance as the future of personal finance” as well as BankBazaar’s ability to make that happen.
An alum of FinovateAsia (learn about our upcoming all digital FinovateAsia event next month), BankBazaar offers an unbiased online marketplace for instant, customized rate quotes on a variety of credit products from loans to credit cards. The company, called “the Credit Karma of India” by WSV General Partner Andrew Kau, is headquartered in Chennai, India, and was founded in 2008.
Also adding new capital to its coffers is Tink, the open banking enablement platform based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company, most recently demoing its technology on our stage at FinovateEurope last year, announced this week that it has received a strategic investment from PayPal. This week’s funding, amount not disclosed, represents the second time PayPal has invested in the company; PayPal made its first strategic investment in Tink in June 2019.
As part of the agreement, PayPal will integrate Tink’s open banking and account aggregation technology into some of its customer-facing user experiences. The extended agreement between the two companies now includes all countries within the European Economic Area (EEA).
“PayPal is one of the world’s leading finech companies, serving more than 330 million consumers and merchants in more than 200 markets worldwide,” Tink co-founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén said. He added, “as Europe’s leading open banking platform, we are looking forward to continuing to support PayPal as they extend and enhance their services across the whole of Europe.”
It is an understatement to say that Tink has had a big year on the capital-raising front. The company began the year closing a $100 million round led by a pair of new investors Dawn Capital of London and HMI Capital of San Francisco. In addition to the company’s funding news, Tink partnered with Nordea to integrate its technology into the bank’s mobile app, acquired Spanish account aggregation specialist – and fellow Finovate alum – Eurobits Technologies, and teamed up with BNP Paribas to become the firm’s preferred partner in Europe.
Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Central and Southern Asia
- DBS Bank India teams up with TCIL to facilitate real-time payments for truck drivers.
- BankBazaar raises $6 million in new funding.
- Hindustan Times profiles Hyderabad-based fintech Quickcredit.
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Latin American open banking startup Belvo raises $10 million in new funding from Founders Fund and Kaszek Ventures.
- On-demand insurance technology leader Trov partners with Seguros Sura Brazil to bring on-demand insurance to Brazil.
- Santander InnoVentures leads $5 million funding round for Latin American alternative lender a55.
Asia-Pacific
- A few weeks ago we wrote about the rise of QR-code payments in many markets around the world. This week brings news that Japan’s JCB has partnered with FIS to power its cross-border QR code payments, initially between Vietnam and Thailand.
- Aleta Planet and Zhongguo Remittance partner to launch new online money transfer service, Aleta China Express, to make it easier to send money from Singapore to China.
- Gojek, an Indonesian ride hailing service turned payments and financial services superapp, earns investment from Facebook and PayPal.
Sub-Saharan Africa
- Nigerian digital bank Sparkle launched this week after securing its license from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
- Forbes profiles Fara Ashiru Jituboh, co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Nigeria-based financial services “super-connector” Okra.
- 6DOT60 introduces its digital rands platform in South Africa.
Central and Eastern Europe
- Cloud banking platform Mambu partners with low-code platform provider VeriTran.
- Sovcombank of Russia unveils online mortgage loans.
- Alior Bank looks for for mobile-banking focused startups to fill the ranks of this year’s ten-week accelerator program.