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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Before jumping into the content of this post, I’d like to recognize and thank our military veterans and their families for their continued sacrifice.
The Association of Military Banks of America (AMBA) is launching a new debit card called the Patriot Card.
The card is launching in partnership with digital accounts and payment processing company MOCA Financial.
AMBA will donate a portion of the interchange generated by every swipe of the Patriot Card to military and Veteran support organizations and causes.
The Association of Military Banks of America (AMBA)unveiled a new debit card today called the Patriot Card. AMBA, a military bank trade association, is launching the new payment card through a partnership with digital accounts and payment processing company MOCA Financial.
The Patriot Card aims to offer Veterans a safe, flexible, and reliable card that they can use to receive, spend, and save their government benefits. Features of the new card include a virtual card option, fee-free person-to-person transfers, card-to-card transfers, and low fees.
AMBA will donate a portion of the interchange generated by every swipe of the Patriot Card to military and Veteran support organizations and causes.
“AMBA is thrilled to offer Veterans a new, safer, and more flexible option to receive payments and manage their finances,” said AMBA President and CEO Major General (Ret.) Steven J. Lepper. “We teamed with MOCA because they share our determination to help Veterans achieve financial success. The Patriot Card will provide Veterans who prefer not to use bank or credit union accounts to manage their money an alternative that is equally safe and secure.”
Transactions made using the Patriot Card will be routed across either VISA’s network or the Armed Forces Financial Network (AFFN). AFFN serves consumers of more than 375 military banks and defense credit unions and will enable users of the Patriot Card to access more than 800,000 ATMs and 2.3 million retail locations across the globe.
“We’re honored to be able to play such a monumental role in serving Veterans worldwide,” said MOCA President Shawn Sinner. “We hope that this advancement continues to make life easier for Veterans, Military, Military Spouses, and families.”
Financial inclusion has been a rising hot topic in the past few years. Providing underserved populations with the tools they need to manage their finances and build their wealth has been a top goal across many banks and fintechs, especially those focused on credit and underwriting.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Gregory Wright, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Experian. Wright was a keynote speaker at this year’s FinovateFall event in New York. He offered key takeaways from his keynote, discussed opportunities for banks when it comes to financial inclusion, and talked about how they can prepare and plan to scale their operations.
Key takeaways from his keynote
I talked about innovation in three parts. The first part was about innovation with purpose. I think being mission-driven and wanting to have an impact in the world helps drive not only what you want to do as a business, it helps drive growth and [has an] impact on consumers and who you serve in the communities you live in. And that also can drive employee engagement; they love to work on something that actually has meaning beyond just making money.
The second part is innovation through scale. So, think about platforms. Think about global scale, how we leverage platforms and data, and cloud computing, and modern APIs so that you can innovate faster, get products to the market faster, and really have an impact not only for your business, but for your clients.
And in the third part, we talked about innovation with analytics. We live in this new world where cloud computing, advanced APIs, and modern APIs pull data from multiple data sources. [They are] able to do that in real time with advanced analytics and automating model deployment. We can bring together things that we’ve never been able to bring together before. That enables us to do analytics and credit scoring in ways we’ve never been able to do before.
On how banks and fintechs can leverage data and technology to drive financial inclusion
So, let’s just talk for a minute about conventional credit scoring. Today, the conventional credit scores can score about 81% of the U.S. population. That’s one-fifth that are not being scored or that are credit invisible. With ExperianLift, we can score between 93% to 96% of the U.S. population. That is a step change in performance. And that’s because we use more data, better analytics, bringing it all together in a big data platform and making it live instantly for consumers. So lenders, banks, fintechs– they need to be doing that every day to score more people, drive financial inclusion, and have better business outcomes.
How do we represent consumers in their time of need? There are one-to-two million credit reports pulled every day. These are the most important financial moments in consumers’ lives. We can help represent that. And I know fintechs want to create a consumer experience that is delightful, seamless, digital, easy. And with analytics and big data platforms, they can make that happen. We can help partner with fintechs to use things like Experian Lift, or, even better, Experian Boost, where we’re allowing consumers to come in, connect their bank account, add data to their credit report in real time based on the bills they pay, and improve their credit score before they even apply for something. We’ve worked with a lot of fintechs to figure out how we not only allow consumers to contribute to their credit report and get a better outcome, but also we can help them with better analytics and scores to score more consumers and get to a better outcome. This is not only good for consumers, because they get to a better financial outcome, it’s good for them. They’re scoring more people, getting to “yes” more often, and helping build their business.
What should companies implement now to prepare for future growth?
It comes down to what they’re trying to do and how they want to grow. I really advocate for innovating with purpose. [They should think] about how they want that consumer experience to feel and what that consumer journey is. How do they make it more digital, more seamless? How do they get to “yes” more often?
And again, we’ve talked about the platform capabilities from Experian that can help them. We’ve talked about how we can go from analytics and model development all the way to production through the Ascend platform. Things that normally take nine-to-twelve months to get a new score into market, into production, through compliance, and through their IT queue suddenly, we can do that in one platform from the analytics to deployment in real time. That’s something that any lender, any bank should be doing because it’s going to help get to “yes” faster, deploy better models in real time, pull data sources from not just the credit bureau but from anywhere. That means you can drive better customer outcomes, get to “yes” more often, not add more risk, and eventually build great businesses.
J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard partnered to launch Pay-by-Bank, an ACH payment tool that leverages open banking.
Billers who offer consumers an option to a pay via ACH can integrate Pay-by-Bank into their existing payments page.
Pay-by-Bank is currently in a pilot phase with a small number of U.S. billers, but will be rolled out to more billers in 2023.
Today’s news proves you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks. ACH, a technology that is 50+ years old, is getting a makeover with open banking.
J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard have joined forces this week to launchPay-by-Bank, an ACH payment tool that leverages open banking and consumer-permissioned data to make it easy for users to pay bills directly from their bank accounts.
“We realized years ago that the way people think about money and commerce is changing,” said Mastercard North America Executive Vice President Chiro Aikat. “They want to pay and get paid how they choose, where they choose and when they choose. We’re excited by this new partnership with J.P. Morgan Chase, and our opportunity to empower people with enhanced payment experiences.”
Billers who offer customers an option to pay using ACH can integrate Pay-by-Bank into their existing payments page. Customers who opt to use the new technology will be prompted to find their bank, complete the bank’s account login process, and share their bank account information with JP Morgan Chase.
Pay-by-Bank makes for a better user experience. Consumers will no longer need to type in their routing and account number each time they go to pay a bill. As for the billers, they will not be faced with the liability of storing consumers’ account information.
“Billers and consumers both get greater payment choice,” said Aikat, “but the partnership also propels payments innovation on two fronts — in the ease of the user experience and in the security of data sharing.”
J.P. Morgan Payments Head of Payments and Commerce Solutions Max Neukirchen echoed this sentiment. “The technology behind Pay-by-Bank reduces the likelihood of unauthorized transactions and frees our clients from the need to retain — and the responsibility to securely maintain — consumer banking information,” Neukirchen said.
As an additional benefit to consumers, Pay-by-Bank leverages machine learning to estimate the optimal time to initiate the payment based on the consumer’s historical transaction behavior and risk patterns. This helps reduce the risk of non-sufficient funds for the consumer and helps ensure the merchant receives the payment on time.
Pay-by-Bank is still in a pilot phase with a small number of U.S. billers and merchants, but J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard anticipate they will expand the program next year.
Update: Binance has called off the agreement to buy FTX.
If you’ve spent any time reading fintech news in the last 24 hours, you know that Binance has agreed to buy the non-U.S. unit of FTX. For those in the crypto world, this is a big deal. Why? It’s a riches-to-rags story– almost like crypto’s moment of an Enron-like collapse.
The downfall of FTX is part of a long story, which multiple outlets have already covered in great detail. Here are the highlights. FTX is considering a sale because it is reportedly facing liquidity problems. The crypto exchange’s cash flow issue is the result of the devaluation of its digital currency, FTT. The coin is currently trading at just under $3.50.
What happened?
Why has the value of FTT been destroyed? FTX minted FTT to lend to Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading platform founded by FTX owner Sam Bankman-Fried. Alameda Research borrowed stablecoins against FTT, and sent the stablecoins to FTX. This cycle made it appear that FTT was valuable even though it was essentially nothing more than printed money. Alameda Research has reached insolvency and FTX is now worth nearly nothing, despite the fact that investors valued FTX at $32 billion earlier this year.
FTX rival Binance stepped in earlier this week announcing a non-binding agreement to purchase the non-U.S. unit of FTX. If the deal goes through, Binance will be the largest player in the crypto space. “This elevates Zhao as the most powerful player in crypto,” Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex Solutions told the Financial Times. “Zhao’s view of the world will matter a lot more, in terms of how he wants to interact with regulators and policymakers . . . the weight of his views will be much more powerful.”
What this means for fintech
Crypto is down all around Cryptocurrencies were having a tough year already. Many outlets were referring to this year as a “crypto winter,” a time during which cryptocurrency values have been depressed when compared to prior periods. This scandal only intensifies this. According to Forbes, “the total market capitalization for crypto has slid to $860 billion in the last 24 hours.”
Expect more regulatory scrutiny Cayman Islands-based Binance and Bahamas-based FTX may be beyond any meaningful regulatory scrutiny. However, this event has caught the eyes of regulators across the globe. Yesterday, in fact, Republican member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee Patrick McHenry issued a statement imploring Congress to take action. “For years, I have advocated for Congress to develop a clear regulatory framework for the digital asset ecosystem, including trading platforms,” said McHenry. “The recent events show the necessity of Congressional action. It’s imperative that Congress establish a framework that ensures Americans have adequate protections while also allowing innovation to thrive here in the U.S. I look forward to learning more from FTX and Binance in the coming days about these events and the steps they will take to protect customers during the transition.”
Consolidated industry Experts have suggested that crypto wallets will eventually be whittled down to a handful of meaningful players, just as Apple and Android serve as the two main operating systems. If Binance’s acquisition of FTX goes through, the two players will be Binance for non-U.S. wallets and Coinbase for U.S. wallets.
Overall, there are lots of lessons to be learned from this, and more will come as the story develops. Perhaps the top takeaways are the simplest ones. Be ethical. Be honest. Be humble.
Tonik is adding two new loan products to its suite of banking tools.
The new offerings include Flex Loan, an unsecured personal loan, and Big Loan, a home equity line of credit.
Tonik received the first digital bank license issued by the Philippines’ central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
Tonik is one of the first neobanks in the Philippines. Today, the Singapore-based fintech announced it is adding two new lending products to its existing suite of digital banking tools.
The new offerings are called Flex Loan and Big Loan. Flex Loan is an unsecured personal loan that doesn’t require collateral and offers borrowers up to $4,300 (Php 250,000) at a rate of 2.49% monthly interest for a term of up to 24 months. Big Loan is a home equity line of credit of up to $43,000 (Php 2,500,000) that enables users to borrow against the equity on their home when they offer their property to the bank as collateral.
“Powered by our purely digital platform and the most competitive market rates, Flex Loan and Big Loan offer accessible, safe, and badly needed credit for the huge underserved market in the Philippines,” said Tonik Founder and CEO Greg Krasnov. “With these new loans, we are excited to speed up efforts in accelerating credit inclusion in the country.”
Big Loan may be Tonik’s most notable new product. That’s because home equity lines of credit are relatively new to the Philippines. Tonik’s Big Loan offering marks one of the first fully digitalized collateral product available in the Philippines. Once the borrower applies for the loan and submits the necessary paperwork, Tonik makes the funds available within seven business days.
Tonik’s other banking tools include Stash, a savings account; Group Stash, a group savings account; Time Deposit, a high-interest savings account; Quick Loan, its flagship personal loan; and physical and virtual debit cards.
Tonik received the first digital bank license issued by the Philippines’ central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Founded in 2018, and with offices in Singapore, Manila, and Chennai, Tonik has raised $175 million from top international investors, including Sequoia India, Point72 Ventures, and Mizuho Bank.
Checkout.com and Shieldpay announced a partnership this week.
The collaboration will bring Checkout.com’s merchant clients more transaction processing options, including digital escrow.
This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating.
Global payments platform Checkout.com and digital payments solutions provider Shieldpay have aligned this week. The two have joined forces to offer B2B merchants more transaction processing options.
In addition to straight-through processing, or processing transactions without manual intervention, merchants using Checkout.com will have access to Shieldpay’s payment engine and digital escrow capabilities. Shieldpay’s technology helps businesses add trust, transparency, and extra security when conducting transactions online. In an era when digital payments fraud is at an all-time high, it is essential for both the buyer and the seller to instill trust in the payments process, especially when dealing with high-value transactions.
“Together with Shieldpay, we’re bringing our merchants even more value and flexibility for their B2B transactions,” said Miyesa Hussain, Strategic Partnerships at Checkout.com. “Shieldpay’s digital escrow technology is truly innovative and further enhances the payout process for our customers. We’re excited to see where this partnership takes us.”
Shieldpay’s digital escrow tool was created to protect buyers and sellers across multiple deal types– including M&A, supply chain payments, capital raising, domain name transfers, real estate transactions, and more. The company offers KYC and KYB checks on all parties, full transparency, and flexible and efficient contracts. Leveraging this tool, Checkout.com customers can hold funds in safeguarded accounts until both the buyer and the seller are satisfied that the conditions of the transaction have been met. Once they approve the transaction, the money is then transferred to the verified merchant or the marketplace customer. Shieldpay can also help marketplaces disburse funds to submerchants.
This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating. Shieldpay has already helped a handful of Checkout.com’s merchant clients manage complex payments. As an example, the two provide the payment flow for in-person digital payment acceptance company KodyPay*. In the arrangement, Checkout.com acts as the acquirer and provides a payment gateway facility to accept payments, while Shieldpay provides seller verification and disbursement.
“We are both on a similar mission as payments innovators and the services that our platforms offer to the market work in perfect harmony, said Shieldpay Head of Partnerships Daniel Dunne. “With these key drivers aligned, we are looking forward to the future of this partnership and growing together, and we are now envisioning new opportunities to further collaborate.”
*In other news, KodyPay announced a $5 million Pre-Series A financing round.
2022 is marking the beginning of an economic downturn. Consumers are feeling the pain associated with high inflation, corporations are seeing decreased stock performance, and startups are experiencing lower funding amounts, lower valuations, and lower M&A numbers.
The volume of fintech merger and acquisition activity in the first three quarters of 2022 has so far totaled $116 billion. This is down significantly when compared to the volume the sector saw last year, which totaled $349 billion. In fact, the 2022 year-to-date amount is the lowest M&A volume since 2017, when M&A volumes totaled $90.5 billion.
When it comes to the number of deals, FT Partners found that there have been 998 fintech M&A deals so far this year. This is down when compared to last year’s total of 1,486. However, the deal number is already higher than those in any of the past 10 years. In fact, 2020’s total deal number is only 969.
SEON is giving away its fraud prevention tools for free.
The free tier will include up to 2,000 API calls each month at a rate of two queries per second.
“We’re determined to tackle fraud head on,” said SEON CEO and Co-founder Tamas Kadar. “This version will help us to serve a greater number of online businesses than ever before, and it is a major step towards building a truly fraud free world.”
Online fraud prevention platform SEON‘s mission is to democratize the fight against online fraud for businesses of all sizes. Today, the Hungary-based company is furthering its efforts toward this goal by giving away fraud prevention tools for free.
The Forever Free version of its online fraud prevention software will support up to 2,000 API calls each month at a rate of two queries per second and includes email support from SEON’s customer service agents.
“We’re determined to tackle fraud head on,” said SEON CEO and Co-founder Tamas Kadar. “This version will help us to serve a greater number of online businesses than ever before, and it is a major step towards building a truly fraud free world.”
SEON has always offered businesses free access to its technology via a 14-day free trial. Starting today, after a user’s trial period expires, they will automatically be converted to SEON’s Forever Free plan. Businesses that want more capabilities can convert to SEON’s Pro plan, which offers more API calls and responses around 10 queries per second, for businesses with higher transaction volumes and a need for a faster speed.
“As a company, we make it tough for fraudsters by intelligently combining real-time social signals, phone, email, and IP lookup details with device intelligence and machine learning to uncover fraud patterns and discover revenue opportunities. We enable fraud prevention teams to go further with access to insightful, real-time data from one source.”
SEON doesn’t think of itself as a typical fraud prevention company. The company’s business model is based on a product-led growth (PLG) strategy via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which makes the technology more accessible to a wider range of businesses.
“Sadly, for too long, this level of protection has only been available at a very high price point. That’s why for years, we’ve strived to make our service as accessible as possible. Through our ‘forever free’ option we’re able to go even further in that effort,” Kadar added.
The second half of the year has been a busy one for SEON. In the past couple of months, SEON has formed partnerships with SaaS anti-money laundering company, Lucinity and AI-powered decisioning platform, Provenir. And in the last few weeks, the company has made several updates to its system, including improving the accuracy of its IP, BIN, email, phone, and platform checks.
Open banking company MX and real-time payments player Orum have formed a partnership.
The agreement integrates Orum’s money movement API with MX’s instant account verification and balance check capabilities.
Combining these technologies will enable fintechs to embed real-time payment capabilities into their own offerings.
Open banking company MXannounced a partnership with real-time payments player Orum this week that will enable it to provide real-time payments and money movement capabilities for fintechs.
The agreement integrates Momentum, Orum’s money movement API, with MX’s instant account verification (IAV) and balance check capabilities. This combination will enable fintechs to embed instant payments capabilities for transactions in any direction, at any time.
“More than ever, fintechs and verticalized payments companies are looking for innovative solutions that automate and simplify money movement, from unlocking instant and risk-mitigated on and off ramps, to optimizing the customer experience through instant availability of funds and payouts,” said Orum Chief Revenue Officer Rouzbeh Rotabi. “By partnering with MX, Orum is further enhancing the ability to offer the best experience for developers who value simplicity and security, and end-customers who want instant funds availability.”
Orum offers a unified money movement API that uses in-house payments intelligence to manage risk and orchestrate complex, multi-rail transfers. The company offers settlement in as little as 60 seconds. This is the first partnership announcement I’ve seen from Orum, which offers use cases for crypto exchanges, brokerage firms, gig platforms, insurance companies, consumer lenders, and banks. Founded by Stephany Kirkpatrick, the company entered the market with its flagship product, Foresight, in 2020. To date, Orum has raised $82.2 million in funding from the likes of Inspired Capital, Bain Capital, Accel, Canapi Ventures, and others.
Founded in 2010, MX has positioned itself in the open finance space, offering account aggregation and data access products alongside its mobile banking and money management tools. When used in conjunction with Orum’s instant payment technology, MX’s IAV and balance check capabilities will help fintechs verify and aggregate consumers’ financial information quickly and securely.
“Orum offers fintech and financial institutions access to smarter, simpler, and faster payments,” said MX Executive Vice President, Channel Partnerships Raymond den Hond. “MX and Orum’s shared commitment to enabling best-in-class financial experiences and outcomes through cutting-edge platforms makes this a natural partnership. We are excited to grow and expand our capabilities together to meet the most pressing needs of fintechs and payments companies.”
Once the deal is finalized, Bluefin and TECS will serve a combined 34,000 merchants and close to 300 global partners in 55 countries. And for both Atlanta, Georgia-based Bluefin and Austria-based TECS, the acquisition will expand their geographical footprint.
“We are delighted to welcome TECS’ employees, customers and partners to Bluefin,” said Bluefin CEO John M. Perry. “This combination brings together two companies that focus relentlessly on meeting merchant needs for next-generation payment processing and management as well as the secure exchange of PHI and PII data with PCI-validated encryption and tokenization.”
Bluefin will leverage the purchase to offer its customers omnichannel payments and smartPOS capabilities, which will be integrated into the company’s existing payments and data security suite. TECS clients will benefit from added data security solutions, as well as additional resources for its TECS product and solution suite.
Founded in 2007, Bluefin offers encrypted and tokenized payments for point-of-sale transactions. Additionally, the company’s data security platform, ShieldConex, tokenizes payments, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and Protected Health Information (PHI) entered online. Last month, the company appointed a new CRO to fuel its growth. And, earlier this fall, Bluefin partnered with commercial hardware manufacturer Sunmi.
Amazon is launching a merchant cash advance tool in partnership with Parafin.
The cash advance ties repayment to a percentage of the Amazon seller’s Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS).
The program launches today for select U.S. businesses, and it will be available more broadly by early 2023.
Right on the heels of launching its own insurance marketplace, Amazon is taking another step into the fintech realm. This time the online retailer is taking aim at small business financing, unveiling a financing tool for sellers on its own platform via a partnership with Parafin, a fintech that offers a merchant capital-as-a-service for online marketplaces.
Leveraging Parafin’s technology, Amazon is launching a merchant cash advance tool that offers eligible Amazon sellers a cash advance that ties repayment to a percentage of sellers’ Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS). The service offers approved merchants capital ranging from $500 to $10 million in a matter of days, and does not limit borrowers to a fixed term, require credit checks, or charge late fees.
Because the merchant cash advance tool is based off a seller’s GMS, the financing does not work like a traditional loan. Repayment is only required when a seller makes a sale. There is no minimum payment, no interest, and no collateral required. Instead, Amazon charges merchants a fixed capital fee.
“Amazon is committed to providing convenient and flexible access to capital for our sellers, regardless of their size,” Amazon WW B2B Payments and Lending Director and General Manager Tai Koottatep. “Today’s launch is another milestone in strengthening Amazon’s commitment to sellers, and builds on the strong portfolio of financial solutions we already provide. This latest offering significantly expands sellers’ reach and capabilities, and broadens their access to capital in a flexible way—one that helps them control their cashflow, and by extension, their entire business.”
Amazon is launching the financing program to select U.S. businesses today, and it will be available to “hundreds of thousands” of eligible sellers by early 2023. To qualify, sellers must have at least three months of sales history on Amazon.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in California, Parafin’s mission is to democratize access to growth capital. The company has raised a total of $244 million, including its most recent round of $60 million raised in August. Earlier this year, Crunchbase added Parafin to its Emerging Unicorn Board, its list of companies valued above $500 million but less than $1 billion.
For many in the fintech industry, there are few things as scary as the economy right now. High inflation, lowered investor and consumer confidence, and political tensions are all contributing to an uncertain future.
One of the largest impacts of this pullback in the fintech industry is seen in the drop in venture capital funding, the lifeblood of privately held companies. The lack of funding is giving startups of all sizes a shorter cash runway, which is leading to employee downsizing and increased exit activity.
We turned to CB Insights, which recently dropped its Q3 2022 State of Venture report, for some statistics that help tell the story of today’s funding environment in fintech and beyond. Here are some of the high-level takeaways:
71% drop in new unicorns in the third quarter of this year
Across the globe, there were only 25 newly minted unicorns in the third quarter of 2022. This is the lowest count since the first quarter of 2020, when the pandemic first began. It is worth noting that 14 of the 25 new unicorns are U.S. based. The total number of unicorns across the globe is now 1,192.
38% drop in fintech funding QoQ
Looking at the fintech sector specifically, fintech funding across the globe dropped to $12.9 billion. This dip– a 38% drop– marks the lowest quarterly funding amount in nine quarters. The last time fintech funding was this low was in the second quarter of 2020, when fintech funding totaled $12.2 billion.
42% drop in median deal size for late-stage rounds this year
So far in 2022, the median size of late-stage deals has totaled $29 million. This represents a 42% drop from last year’s total of $50 million. This year’s median late-stage deal size is similar to the median size of mid-stage deals, which totals $30 million. Interestingly, this median mid-stage deal size is on-par with the median mid-stage deal size of 2021, which also totaled $30 million.
56% fewer investments from top 3 investors
According to CB Insights, last quarter’s top three investors are quieter this quarter. Tiger Global Management, Gaingels, and SOSV made 109 investments this quarter. This figure is 56% lower than the number the investors made in the second quarter of this year. Notably, Tiger Global Management, which has been the number one investor in the past three quarters, did not even rank among the top 10 investors this quarter.
A bright light
Things are not all gloom and doom this Halloween. Looking at the bright side, while fintech funding is dropping, it is still above pre-pandemic levels.
As an example, in the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic truly exploded, quarterly fintech funding totaled $11.3 billion. That’s $1 billion lower than today’s level. Going back even further, in the first quarter of 2018, quarterly fintech funding totaled $9.6 billion.
So perhaps it’s best to look at these drops as a market reset, instead of as the fintech world coming to an end.
