Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

FinovateEurope 2023 in Pictures

FinovateEurope 2023 in Pictures
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2023

Whether you attended FinovateEurope last week or were taking it all in via Twitter, there was a lot to glean from the event. With an agenda packed full of demos, panel conversations, fireside chats, and keynote presentations, attendees were able to catch up on the very latest in fintech and banking news and trends. They also had the opportunity to foster old relationships with fintech friends and make new connections.

For a bite-sized way to re-live the memories from FinovateEurope, look no further. We’ve distilled the event into a handful of highlights that help summarize the event via pictures. If you’re looking for a content summary, check out our top three takeaways from earlier this week.

Demetrio Migliorati, Head of Innovation at Banca Mediolanum, during his Keynote Address: Industry Transformation: Tokenisation & Digital Assets

Investor All Stars Panel: Where Is The Smart Money Investing In Fintech? Featuring: Triin Linamagi, Founding Partner at Sie Ventures; Luis Valdich, Managing Director at Fintech Investing at Citi Ventures; Hélène Falchier, Partner at Portage; and Kevin Chong, Co-Head & Partner at Outward VC.

Martin Hyde, EMEA Payment Partnerships Lead at J.P. Morgan Payments, at his Keynote: How Embedded Payments Will Change The Future Of Financial Services.

Prasangi Unantenne, Head of Implementation at Wise Platform, during her session: Landing Your First Bank Customer

Zil Bareisis, Head of Retail Banking at Celent, during his session: Analyst All Stars: How Financial Services Have Been Changed Forever

FinovateEurope 2023 Best of Show winners: 10x Banking, FinTech Insights by Scientia, NayaOne, TAZI AI, and Your Juno.

Book signing with Leda Glyptis, Author of Bankers Like Us.

Women in Fintech Breakfast Briefing featuring panelists Magdalena Kron, Global Head of Rise Digital Innovation & CTO Group Innovation at Barclays Bank (Moderator); Nitzan Solomon, Head of Transaction Monitoring, AML & Fraud at Revolut; Chantal Swainston, Founder of The Heard; Veronique Steiner, Head of High Growth Tech & Head of Technology, Media and Telecom for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at J.P. Morgan; Angela Yore, Managing Director at SkyParlour (European Women Payments Network).

You can view the entire photo album on Finovate’s Flickr page.

Photo by FRANKYDEE

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Mangopay Acquires Payment Orchestrator WhenThen

Mangopay Acquires Payment Orchestrator WhenThen
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Mangopay acquired Whenthen for an undisclosed amount.
  • The acquisition comes four months after Mangopay bought fraud detection and prevention company Nethone.
  • The two acquisitions are facilitating the launch of Mangopay’s five new products, including Fraud, FX, Orchestration, and Integration; and two new solutions, including Rental Marketplaces and Retail Marketplaces.

Payment technology company Mangopay announced it has acquired payments orchestration startup WhenThen, and has already merged the Ireland-based company’s technology into its own. Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed.

Under the agreement, WhenThen’s employees and products are now operating under the Mangopay brand. WhenThen Co-founder Kirk Donohoe has been brought on to Mangopay’s team to serve as Chief Product Officer.

WhenThen was founded in 2021 to help merchants integrate, test, build, and orchestrate payment experiences through its no-code editor. The company offers a range of payment solutions, including Checkout, Tokenization, Fraud, and PaymentOps.

Mangopay offers a modular approach to e-wallet, payments, and multi-currency payout technology; as well as solutions for C2C, B2C, B2B, and crowdfunding marketplaces. With WhenThen’s technology integrated into its own tools, Mangopay customers will be able to build and configure payment flows such as smart routing, increase local conversion rates, add new payment methods at checkout, store and access customer card data, and leverage payment insights via an operations dashboard.

“Acquiring WhenThen enables Mangopay to rapidly accelerate its payment capabilities whilst providing the best payment experiences in the market,” said Mangopay CEO Romain Mazeries. “It represents a strategic asset for our growth plans, following the acquisition of Nethone in 2022 that strengthened our fraud capabilities.”

Today’s announcement marks Mangopay’s second acquisition. The company bought fraud detection and prevention company Nethone in November of last year. The two purchases have already helped Mangopay broaden its offerings. The company is planning to launch five new products, including Fraud, FX, Orchestration, and Integration; and two new solutions, including Rental Marketplaces and Retail Marketplaces.

Mangopay was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Luxembourg. The company counts Vinted, LeBonCoin, Chrono24, and Wallapop among its clients.

Photo by Keira Burton

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J.P. Morgan Acquires Aumni, Investment Analytics Provider

J.P. Morgan Acquires Aumni, Investment Analytics Provider
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, JP Morgan Chase, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • J.P. Morgan is acquiring investment analytics tool Aumni.
  • While terms of the deal are undisclosed, CNBC reports that J.P. Morgan will pay around $232 million for Aumni.
  • J.P. Morgan expects the buy will bolster its private markets platform for companies, their employees, and investors.

J.P. Morgan has agreed to acquire Aumni, an investment analytics tool for private capital markets. Announced today, the deal is expected to close in the first half of this year. While financial terms of the deal are undisclosed, CNBC reports the deal will be valued at $232 million.

Aumni’s investment analytics platform leverages AI to extract and analyze deal data buried in legal agreements. The company serves 300 institutions, including venture capitalists, family offices, and university endowments helps firms compile investment data reports, facilitate limited partner reporting, identify co-investors, generate equity financing summaries for each investment in their portfolio, and more.

Founded in 2018, the company has evaluated more than $600 billion in capital across more than 17,000 private companies. Aumni counts names such as Sapphire Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Berkeley Law among its clients.

“We’re thrilled to see this collaboration come to fruition as J.P. Morgan first invested in Aumni in 2021 and quickly realized shared synergies of providing more transparency to the private markets,” said J.P. Morgan Head of Digital Investment Banking, Head of Digital Private Markets Michael Elanjian. “Aumni’s market-leading data structuring and portfolio monitoring solutions, combined with the capital raising and cap table management services of Capital Connect and Global Shares, further enhances the ecosystem of digital solutions that J.P. Morgan is building for companies and investors in both growth and later-stage private markets.”

J.P. Morgan expects the buy will bolster its private markets platform for companies, their employees, and investors. Also contributing to the mission of building a private markets platform are the firm’s launch of Capital Connect, a match-making platform that connects entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and limited partners; and its acquisition of share plan management software company Global Shares.

“Together, we can create a best-in-class suite of services for private market participants, enhancing the experience for all current and future clients,” said Aumni CEO Tony Lewis. Aumni will maintain its headquarters location in Utah and will continue to serve its existing client base.

Photo by Yash Savla on Unsplash

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eToro Lands $250 Million at $3.5 Billion Valuation

eToro Lands $250 Million at $3.5 Billion Valuation
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, eToro, Funding
  • eToro landed $250 million in funding at a $3.5 billion valuation
  • The investment boosts the company’s total funding to $573 million.
  • Today’s funding comes from an agreement made during eToro’s cancelled SPAC transaction.

eToro announced today it received $250 million in funding in a round that values the social trading and investment network at $3.5 billion. Investors in the round, which boosts eToro’s total funding to $573 million, include ION Group, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Velvet Sea Ventures, and existing investors.

In 2021, eToro planned to go public via a merger with FinTech Acquisition Corp. V, a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal worth $10 billion. That deal was cancelled in 2022 and, according to eToro’s update, today’s funding “stems from an Advance Investment Agreement which eToro entered into in February 2021 as part of its proposed SPAC transaction.”

Today’s investment will help eToro with its plans for growth over the next few years. “Our 2023 to 2025 strategy focuses on scaling our brokerage business in our key markets and increasing profitability via revenue growth and cost management,” said eToro Founder and CEO Yoni Assia.

Along with today’s funding announcement, eToro released highlights of its fiscal year 2022 performance. The company has 2.8 million funded accounts, up 17% from 2021. The company’s accountholders paid commissions totaling $631 million– a figure that is down from the company’s 2021 performance, but up 5% from 2020.

Adding to its busy 2022, eToro made two acquisitions, picking up options trading app Gatsby for $50 million and acquiring portfolio management tools provider Bullsheet for an undisclosed amount. The company increased its footprint for digital asset operations, receiving a Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) registration in France, joining the registry of cryptoasset providers in Italy, and securing a New York BitLicense and Money Transmitter License.

As for long-term plans, “eToro will continue to focus on profitable growth while helping to drive progress towards a world where everyone can invest in a simple and transparent way,” said Assia.

Photo by Jared Schwitzke on Unsplash

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Zeta and Featurespace Partner to Combine Card Processing with Fraud Detection

Zeta and Featurespace Partner to Combine Card Processing with Fraud Detection
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Featurespace, Zeta
  • Zeta and Featurespace are partnering to create a solution that combines credit card processing and fraud detection.
  • The new offering will be made available to U.S. credit card issuers.
  • The solution will be available out-of-the-box and will enable issuers to test and launch features in days, rather than weeks or months.

Modern core banking technology provider Zeta and fraud prevention company Featurespace are joining forces today. Under the partnership, the two are offering U.S. credit card issuers a solution that combines credit card processing and fraud detection.

Zeta was founded in 2015 to offer modern card processing for banks and embeddable banking for fintechs. The company’s Tachyon Credit offers banks modern credit card programs and spending tools to help boost engagement, increase scale, and decrease fraud. Additionally, Zeta enables fintechs to offer their own credit cards with spending controls and multi-factor authentication.

Zeta CEO and Co-founder Bhavin Turakhia described the company’s issuer clients as “demanding,” and said the company is enabling issuers to iterate on their credit card products faster to test and launch features in a matter of days. “With this solution available out-of-the-box to our clients,” said Turakhia, “their credit card holders will be protected against existing and future fraud attempts seamlessly while reducing the number of genuine transactions declined.”

U.K.-based Featurespace will offer its fraud detection engine that combines AI, behavioral networks, and rules-based decisioning to help organizations identify fraud without negatively impacting the customer experience. Featurespace’s flagship solution, the ARIC Risk Hub, secures more than 50 billion transactions per year across 500 million consumers located in 180 countries.

Combined, the two companies will unlock a range of capabilities for credit card issuers, including out-of-the-box availability, pre-built workflows, real-time transaction authorization, custom decision rules based on risk scores, real-time access to all transaction fraud events, and more.

Zeta was voted Best of Show at FinovateWest Digital 2020 and has more than 1700 employees and contractors located across the U.S., U.K., Middle East, and Asia. The company’s 35+ customers have issued more than 15 million cards on its platform. The California-based company has raised $280 million and last year was valued at around $1.5 million.

Featurespace has more than 70 clients, including HSBC, TSYS, Worldpay, RBS NatWest Group, Danske Bank, ClearBank, and more. Founded in 2005 by a university professor and his PhD student, Featurespace has raised $108 million, including its most recent investment of $37 million received in 2020.

“The partnership between Zeta and Featurespace brings together two of the most capable solutions across the industry in each’s segments,” said Carolyn Homberger, President of Americas at Featurespace. “We are very impressed with the way Zeta is rethinking the issuer processing stack from the ground up, utilizing modern and flexible architecture to provide outstanding new capabilities to Issuers. We’re extremely excited to bring our joint solution to market in the U.S.”

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki

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India’s PhonePe Receives $200 Investment from Walmart

India’s PhonePe Receives $200 Investment from Walmart
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • PhonePe raised $200 million from Walmart.
  • With this latest tranche, the India-based company maintains its $12 billion valuation.
  • The new investment brings PhonePe’s total funding to $650 million.

Just one month after raising $100 million, India-based PhonePe announced it closed a $200 million investment. With the new round, PhonePe’s pre-money valuation remains flat at $12 billion.

Today’s investment boosts the payments application expert’s total funding to $650 million, placing it more than halfway to reaching its $1 billion capital raise target. In its announcement today, PhonePe noted that it is expecting further progress toward the $1 billion goal, saying it is expecting more funding “in due course.”

PhonePe will use today’s funds to build and scale new businesses including insurance, wealth management, lending, stockbroking, Open Network for Digital Commerce-based shopping, and account aggregators. The investment will also help PhonePe grow UPI payments in India, including UPI lite and Credit on UPI. “We are excited about the next phase of our growth as we build new offerings for Indian consumers and merchants, along with enabling financial inclusion across the nation,” said PhonePe Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam.

“We are excited about PhonePe’s future and have confidence in how it continues to expand its offerings and provide access to financial services for Indians at scale,” said Walmart International President and CEO Judith McKenna. “India is one of the world’s most digital, dynamic and fastest growing economies, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to continue to support PhonePe.”

PhonePe was founded in 2015 and was acquired by Walmart-owned Flipkart in 2016. The company counts around 450 million registered users, a total that accounts for nearly one in three adult Indians. In 2017, PhonePe began offering investing tools, mutual fund products, and insurance tools.

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Stripe Lands $6.5 Billion in Funding at $50 Billion Valuation

Stripe Lands $6.5 Billion in Funding at $50 Billion Valuation
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Stripe received $6.5 billion in Series I funding, along with an updated valuation of $50 billion.
  • The $50 billion valuation is almost half of the company’s peak valuation of $95 billion received in 2021.
  • Today’s investment will not be used to fuel company growth, but will instead be used to provide liquidity to employees and address employee equity awards withholding tax obligations.

Stripe announced a $6.5 billion Series I funding round today. Alongside the financing round, the payments processing company also unveiled an updated valuation.

The investment comes from existing Stripe shareholders– including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital. New investors GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek also contributed to the round, which boosts Stripe’s total funding to $8.7 billion.

Stripe also unveiled that it is now valued at $50 billion. This number is notably lower than the company’s peak. Stripe’s valuation rose to $95 billion in March of 2021, making it the most valuable U.S. startup. In July of 2022, the company’s valuation began tipping downward to $74 billion, and earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that Stripe was valued at $63 billion.

Unlike most venture funding rounds, however, today’s investment will not be used to fuel company growth. Instead, as Stripe notes in its announcement, “The funds raised will be used to provide liquidity to current and former employees and address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards.” This liquidity will offset the issuance of today’s round’s new shares, and therefore will not result in a reduction of the percentage of ownership that current investors hold in the company.

Founded in 2010, Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars each year and offers a range of products– including a suite of global payments solutions, banking-as-a-service offerings, and revenue and financial management tools.

Photo by Jonathan Borba

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GPT-4 Has Arrived. Here Are 6 Things You Should Know about the New Iteration.

GPT-4 Has Arrived. Here Are 6 Things You Should Know about the New Iteration.
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: List series, Thought Leadership

If you need a break from bank failure news, here’s something refreshing. OpenAI’s GPT-4 was released yesterday. The new model is the successor to GPT-3.5-turbo and promises to produce “safer” and “more useful” responses. But what does that mean exactly? And how do the two models compare?

We’ve broken down six things to know about GPT-4.

Processes both image and text input

GPT-4 accepts images as inputs and can analyze the contents of an image alongside text. As an example, users can upload a picture of a group of ingredients and ask the model what recipe they can make using the ingredients in the picture. Additionally, visually impaired users can screenshot a cluttered website and ask GPT-4 to decipher and summarize the text. Unlike DALL-E 2, however GPT-4 cannot generate images.

For banks and fintechs, GPT-4’s image processing could prove useful for helping customers who get stuck during the onboarding process. The bot could help decipher screenshots of the user experience and provide a walk-through for confused customers.

Less likely to respond to inappropriate requests

According to OpenAI, GPT-4 is 82% less likely than GPT-3.5 to respond to disallowed content. It is also 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5.

For the financial services industry, it means using GPT-4 to power a chatbot is less risky than before. The new model is less susceptible to ethical and security risks.

Handles around 25,000 words per query

OpenAI doesn’t measure its inputs and outputs in word count or character count. Rather, it measures text based on units called tokens. While the word-to-token ratio is not straightforward, OpenAI estimates that GPT-4 can handle around 25,000 words per query, compared to GPT-3.5-turbo’s capacity of 3,000 words per query.

This increase enables users to carry on extended conversations, create long form content, search text, and analyze documents. For banks and fintechs, the increased character limit could prove useful when searching and analyzing documents for underwriting purposes. It could also be used to flag compliance errors and fraud.

Performs higher on academic tests

While ChatGPT scored in the 10th percentile on the Uniform BAR Exam, GPT-4 scored in the 90th percentile. Additionally, GPT-4 did well on other standardized tests, including the LSAT, GRE, and some of the AP tests.

While this specific capability won’t come in handy for banks, it signifies something important. It highlights the AI’s ability to retain and reproduce structured knowledge.

Already in-use

While GPT-4 was just released yesterday, it is already being employed by a handful of organizations. Be My Eyes, a technology platform that helps users who are blind or have low vision, is using the new model to analyze images.

The model is also being used in the financial services sector. Stripe is currently using GPT-4 to streamline its user experience and combat fraud. And J.P. Morgan is leveraging GPT-4 to organize its knowledge base. “You essentially have the knowledge of the most knowledgeable person in Wealth Management—instantly. We believe that is a transformative capability for our company,” said Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Head of Analytics, Data & Innovation Jeff McMillan.

Still messes up

One very human-like aspect of OpenAI’s GPT-4 is that it makes mistakes. In fact, OpenAI’s technical report about GPT-4 says that the model is sometimes “confidently wrong in its predictions.”

The New York Times provides a good example of this in its recent piece, 10 Ways GPT-4 Is Impressive but Still Flawed. The article describes a user who asked GPT-4 to help him learn the basics of the Spanish language. In its response, GPT-4 offered a handful of inaccuracies, including telling the user that “gracias” was pronounced like “grassy ass.”

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

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Tilia, a Payments Platform for Digital Economies, Raises $22 Million

Tilia, a Payments Platform for Digital Economies, Raises $22 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Payments platform for digital worlds, Tilia, has raised $22 million.
  • The funds come from South Korea-based Dunamu and J.P. Morgan Payments.
  • Tilia offers a compliant way for digital content creators to receive micropayments and mints fiat-pegged currency that can be used in virtual economies.

Tilia, a digital payments platform for games and virtual worlds, announced this week it received $22 million in funding.

Today’s funds come from South Korea-based Dunamu. Combined with the funds that existing investor J.P. Morgan Payments invested in Tilia in October of 2022, the venture round boosts the company’s total raised to $22 million. Tilia will use today’s round to scale its platform and address the demand for payments in digital economies.

Originally founded in 2019, Tilia was spun out of Second Life creator Linden Lab in 2022. The California-based company’s payments platform is the backbone for online economies such as those found in online games, creator platforms, social commerce, and other digital worlds. Tilia enables creators to receive direct payouts by processing user-generated content transactions and microtransactions, allowing them to monetize their operations. For games and virtual worlds, the company mints branded tokens that are compliant in the U.S. and have a fixed conversion rate to fiat currency.

Along with today’s news, Tilia also announced two new appointments. The company brought on Brad Oberwager as CEO and Catherine Porter as Chief Business Officer. Oberwager has served as Executive Chair at Tilia for the past two years.

“Today’s payments infrastructure was built for traditional commerce – it hasn’t caught up with the new way of living and working in a digital, creator-driven economy,” said Oberwager. “At Tilia, we have a massive opportunity to unlock new revenue streams for both online creators and the platforms they build in, whether they are gaming worlds, social platforms, or next generation marketplaces. As I take the helm at Tilia, my focus will be on providing a payments system that enables these expanding digital economies.”

Photo by RODNAE Productions

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Sezzle Revisits Plan to Publicly List in the U.S.

Sezzle Revisits Plan to Publicly List in the U.S.
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Sezzle
  • Sezzle announced plans to publicly list on the Nasdaq by the end of September.
  • The company will continue to sell common stock on the Australian Stock Exchange.
  • The news comes two years after Sezzle’s original announcement of plans to publicly list in the U.S.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) technology provider Sezzle announced on Monday it plans to list publicly in the U.S. on the Nasdaq, while continuing to sell common stock on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company originally listed on the ASX in 2019 using Chess Depositary Interests (CDIs), which are traded on the ASX to allow non-Australian companies to list their shares on the exchange. Prior to listing on the Nasdaq, Sezzle plans to remove the Foreign Ownership Restricted on United States Person Prohibited tag from the CDIs to allow participation from U.S. investors.

“A listing on the Nasdaq is a natural evolution for Sezzle given the company is already filing the necessary reports with the SEC,” said Sezzle Chairman and CEO Charlie Youakim. “Although we are not seeking to raise capital as part of the Nasdaq listing, we are excited to expand the universe of potential investors to the United States.”

Sezzle plans to list in the U.S. no later than the end of September 2023.

Avid fintech nerds may have a sense of déjà vu reading Sezzle’s headline today. In fact, it echoes a news post we published in 2021: Sezzle Plans to File for U.S. IPO. According to that release, “Plans for the public listing are still in early stages. Details, such as the timing, price, and use, have not been revealed.” Sezzle’s release today revisits the plan for a U.S. IPO, but with more concrete details.

Sezzle was founded in 2016 and the company’s growth ballooned alongside the increasing interest in BNPL in 2020. In turning its focus from growth to profitability, Sezzle has made significant cost-saving efforts, including exiting a handful of foreign markets and cutting 20% of its North American workforce. Last February, we reported that fellow BNPL player Zip planned to acquire Sezzle. The deal was terminated in July in light of macroeconomic and market conditions.

Photo by cottonbro studio

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4 Potential Impacts the SVB Fallout May Have on Banks

4 Potential Impacts the SVB Fallout May Have on Banks
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Thought Leadership

The fintech industry experienced quite a dramatic weekend of fast-breaking news regarding the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). By now, you’ve likely heard that the Biden administration stepped in this morning to facilitate a move that will offer SVB’s 40,000 customers full access to all of their deposits.

Banks, startups, and even tangentially related businesses are breathing a collective sigh of relief this morning. However, the move does not bring the industry back to business-as-usual. Below are four potential implications of SVB’s misstep.

FDIC Deposit Insurance to Increase

Regulators are not calling today’s move a “bailout” because the funds being used to make SVB customers whole did not come from consumer taxpayer dollars. “All depositors of the institution will be made whole,” the FDIC said in a statement. “Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.” This means that banks* will bear the responsibility to recoup these funds via increased FDIC insurance rates.

More (closer to) full reserve banks

We likely won’t see banks convert to full, 100% reserve banks (that is, banks that keep all customer reserves in cash). It is possible, however, that SVB’s failure may motivate banks to keep more consumer cash on-hand, operating closer to a full reserve bank than they previously were in order to mitigate risk. If this is the case, banks would have less funds to lend, making it difficult for consumers and businesses to get loans.

Increased opportunities

One of the first lessons taught in business school is that where there are challenges, there are opportunities. This is certainly the case here. HSBC picked up SVB’s U.K. unit for £1, and everyone from Elon Musk to JP Morgan and PNC are considering purchasing SVB’s U.S. arm. Additionally, businesses have cropped up marketing to former SVB clients, offering them working capital loans. Even Mr. Wonderful is in on the action.

Uncertainty reigns supreme

If you’ve read about SVB in the news today, it’s likely you also read about Signature Bank, which was shut down by New York state regulators on March 12, and Silvergate, which closed its doors on March 8. Combined, these events mark three U.S. bank failures in a single week. Though regulators have been quick to step in, the events have shaken investors and consumers alike.

*Interestingly enough, banks are indeed taxpayers– meaning that the responsibility for repayment technically does fall on taxpayers.

Photo by Tara Winstead

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APEXX Global Raises $25 Million to Expand into North America

APEXX Global Raises $25 Million to Expand into North America
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • APEXX Global has raised $25 million in a Series B round.
  • The funds come from existing investors Forward Partners, Alliance, and MMC Ventures.
  • APEXX Global will use the new investment to expand further into North America and to boost product development.

Global payment solutions company APEXX Global has raised $25 million in Series B funding. The investment, which comes from Forward Partners, Alliance, and MMC Ventures, brings APEXX’s total amount raised to $37.1 million.

“I’m delighted to announce that we have successfully closed our Series B funding round,” said APEXX Global Co-founder and CEO Peter Keenan. “Since day one we’ve been laser-focused on our mission to build the world’s leading payment orchestration platform and deliver clear benefits to merchants. We‘ve seen strong growth across international markets, delivering significant cost savings and transaction conversion benefits. We look forward to using these funds to further consolidate our position in driving the future of global payments.”

APEXX Global, which currently holds offices in New York, London, and India, plans to use the funds to expand further into North America via its New York office. The company will also leverage the investment to boost product development.

APEXX offers a payment orchestration layer to help merchants optimize their payment stack. The company’s payment gateway enhances the global payment processing experience by processing payments locally to help circumvent foreign exchange fees on cross-border transactions.

In addition to traditional payment methods, APEXX enables businesses to offer alternative payment methods to their end customers. The company currently partners with more than 120 alternative payment methods, including Apple Pay, Klarna, Alipay, and PayPal. Allowing users to pay using their preferred method not only enhances the user experience, but it also has the potential to increase sales.

“We’ve seen good momentum in terms of customer growth, and we are delighted to continue to back Peter and his talented team as they work with merchants to rethink payments and save money,” said MMC Ventures Chairman and Co-founder Alan Morgan. With today’s agreement, Morgan will also take a seat on APEXX’s board of directors.

Photo by Monstera

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