Funding

BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon

BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BondIT, Daily news, Funding
  • Fixed income technology innovator bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding.
  • The investment round was led by BNY Mellon and brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.
  • bondIT made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2016.

Credit analytics and fixed income technology company bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding. The strategic investment was led by BNY Mellon and featured the participation of existing investors, as well. BNY Mellon will join bondIT’s Board of Directors as part of the investment. Valuation information was not provided when the funding was announced but, according to Crunchbase, the funding brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.

“This investment will help us accelerate innovation and offer clients a unique holistic solution for fixed income investing,” bondIT founder and CEO Etai Ravid said. “As bond investors are keen to lock in higher yields, our versatile technology and data-driven approach can help them increase automation to improve efficiency and performance, and better mitigate risk.”

Headquartered in New York and Herzliya, Israel, bondIT provides front office investment technology. The company leverages data science, explainable AI, and other advanced technologies to enable its customers to build, analyze, and manage investment portfolios. bondIT’s technology helps its clients accomplish in minutes what previously took hours or even days. Predictive credit analytics enable bondIT customers to anticipate potential changes in corporate credit risk and take advantage of potential investment opportunities before they manifest themselves in the market

“Collaborating with bondIT will allow us to deliver innovative digital solutions for fixed income investors by enabling investment professionals to explore new investment options more easily through the use of AI, further expanding their portfolio optimization capabilities for clients,” BNY Mellon MD John Goodheart said.

bondIT’s relationship with BNY Mellon extends back to 2021, when bondIT participated in BNY Mellon’s startup accelerator program. In the months since then, bondIT added David Curtis as Partner and Head of Global Client Business, and teamed up with MEAG, the asset manager of Munich Re and ERGO. The MEAG partnership, announced almost exactly one year ago, will digitize MEAG’s credit risk workflows. The Munich, Germany-based company will also use bondIT’s Scorable Credit Analytics to enhance its own credit research processes. A component of bondIT’s fixed income technology solutions suite, Scorable Credit Analytics analyzes more than 250 data points a day and translates raw data from a wide variety of financial and market data sources to provide actionable insights for investors.

“Working with bondIT is another important step in driving technological progress across our organization,” MEAG CIO of Public Markets Prashant Sharma said. “We aim to continuously increase the quality and efficiency of our investment process, and technology plays a crucial part in this.”

Photo by Pixabay

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X1 Card Raises $15 Million, Adds In-App Stock Purchasing

X1 Card Raises $15 Million, Adds In-App Stock Purchasing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to more than $60 million.
  • Along with today’s announcement, X1 is also unveiling a new in-app stock investing tool that will enable cardholders to purchase stocks using points.
  • X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members.

Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million this week. The funds bring the company’s Series B round to $40 million and elevate its total funds to more than $60 million. The investment was led by Soma Capital and included contributions from Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) and Kyle Vogt.

While the self-described smart credit card did not provide an exact valuation, the company said that today’s round increases X1’s total valuation by more than 50% over where it stood four months ago, when the company raised $25 million in Series B funding.

X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members. One such new feature is X1’s new investing platform that enables cardholders to buy stocks in the X1 app using their rewards points. X1 will guide investors by recommending stocks based on the cardholder’s spending habits, risk preferences, investment goals, income, and time horizon. The new capability will begin rolling out to select cardholders in the coming weeks.

The company said in the press release that it has future plans to expand the stock purchasing features “to compete with more traditional investment options.” Based on this, we can expect features common to Acorns and Robinhood such as spare change investing and automatic investment deposits.

For a card with no annual fee, X1’s rewards are hard to beat. The company offers cardholders 2x points on every dollar spent, 3x points on every dollar spent for the year if transactions exceed $15,000, and 4x points on each dollar for one month of purchases for each referral. X1 has paid out more than $10 million in rewards points since exiting its beta last October.

“With X1, we want to build an iconic and enduring consumer finance brand in an industry that’s long overdue for disruption,” said X1 CEO and Co-founder Deepak Rao. “We’re honored by the reception our card has continued to receive and to have raised this funding from Soma Capital, an early investor in more than 20 unicorns. With our innovative new investing platform, we’re excited to reimagine yet another sector in the consumer financial market.”

Outside of its rewards structure, X1 has other unique features that help differentiate itself in the crowded credit card market. The company has a stainless steel card and offers users virtual card numbers that they can set to expire on a specified date in order to avoid forgetting a subscription or a free trial period. The former automatically expires after one use, while the latter automatically expires 24 hours after it is activated.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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Canadian Cross Border Payments Innovator Buckzy Raises Series A Funding

Canadian Cross Border Payments Innovator Buckzy Raises Series A Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Buckzy Payments, Daily news, Funding
  • Canadian real-time cross border payments company Buckzy has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding.
  • The investment was led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures, and featured participation from new investors Luge Capital and Blue 9 Capital, as well as existing investor Revel Partners.
  • Buckzy made its Finovate debut in 2019 at FinovateFall.

In a round led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures, Canada-based real-time, cross border payments company Buckzy has secured $14.5 million in Series A funding. Valuation information was not immediately available. This week’s investment takes the company’s total equity funding to more than $23 million, according to Crunchbase.

“This round of financing is a validation of Buckzy’s vision to create an intelligent and automated international payment system,” Buckzy CEO Abdul Naushad said. “We’re on a mission to build the plumbing for real-time money movement globally, the same way high-speed internet fundamentally shifted the communications industry.”

New investors Luge Capital and Blue 9 Capital, and existing investor Revel Partners, also participated in the round. Luge Capital General Partner Karim Gillani will join Buckzy’s board as an advisor.

Buckzy offers real-time, cross border payments and Banking-as-a-Service capabilities via an embedded finance platform. The platform offers multi-currency bank accounts, local settlement accounts, and real-time FX quoting and booking. A licensed money transfer company, Buckzy has signed up more than 140 bank, neobank, and fintech customers since going live with its platform in 2020.

Calling the cross-border payments market a $150 trillion market globally – and one that is still underserved – Mistral Ventures Partners Managing Director Code Cubitt praised Buckzy for its ability to deliver “a much better customer experience, more automation, and lightning-fast payments.” Cubitt said the company had “the right blend of experience, expertise, and insight to build the next generation of cross border payments.”

Buckzy’s funding news comes at the same time that the company announced the appointment of Seema Rai Nair as VP of Customer Success and Network Expansion. Nair will be responsible for growing the company’s partnership network of banks, fintechs, ecommerce platforms, and other financial service providers.

“Demand for real-time and near real-time international payment services is rising around the world, and companies are increasingly turning to alternative providers such as Buckzy to address their need for fast, secure international payments,” Nair said in a statement.

Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Buckzy was founded in 2018. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York the following year.

Photo by Andre Furtado

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Greenwood Raises $45 Million to Bring Digital Banking to Black and Latino Communities

Greenwood Raises $45 Million to Bring Digital Banking to Black and Latino Communities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Diversity in Fintech, Funding
  • Greenwood, a digital banking platform catering to black and Latino communities, raised $45 million in new funding this week.
  • The funding round was led by Pendulum, an investing and advisory platform for founders of color.
  • Atlanta, Georgia-based Greenwood was named after the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was known as “Black Wall Street” in the early 20th century due to its high concentration of black-owned businesses.

In a round led by Pendulum, a strategic growth investing and advisory platform for founders of color, digital banking platform Greenwood has secured $45 million in new funding. A digital banking platform designed to meet the needs of members of the African-American and Latino/Hispanic communities, Greenwood will use the funding to advance its goal of closing the wealth gap between ethnic minority and majority populations and enable African-Americans and Latinos to more readily build generational wealth.

“Our vision is to make Greenwood the premier destination for black and Latino wealth creation and regeneration while keeping community connection and collective professional advancement at the center,” Greenwood chairman and co-founder Ryan Glover said.

Joining Pendulum in this week’s funding were a host of new investors including Cercano Management, Cohen Circle, The George Kaiser Family Foundation, and NextEra Energy. Existing investors Bank of America, Citi Ventures, PNC, Popular, Truist Ventures, TTV Capital, and Wells Fargo also contributed.

Greenwood also announced the launch of a new offering that takes advantage of its recent acquisitions of The Gathering Spot and Valence, a pair of African-American owned private membership networks for black professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporations. The offering, called Elevate, gives its members access to The Gathering Spot’s private membership network – including the organization’s physical clubhouses in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. – as well as Valence’s professional networking platform and recruiting database. The launch of Elevate is geared toward helping Greenwood fulfill both the community building and career advancement components of its mission.

“Greenwood is poised to create new outcomes and equip our communities with the resources they have been systematically excluded from in the pursuit of economic opportunity,” Pendulum CEO and co-founder Robbie Robinson said.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Greenwood has more than 100,000 customers on its platform, and more than one million individuals in its combined community including The Gathering Spot and Valence. The fintech offers a digital bank account with no hidden or overdraft fees, a Mastercard debit card, support for P2P transfers, two-day early wage access, and a global ATM network. Greenwood also provides opportunities for its customers to help communities in need via programs like Feed a Family (in partnership with Goodr), donations to non-profits such as the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and NAACP from customer spare change round-ups, and monthly small business grants of $10,000 to African-American or Latino/Hispanic owned businesses. The platform also offers financial education and information designed for black and Latino audiences via its Greenwood Studios operation. Greenwood’s banking services are provided courtesy of a partnership with Coastal Community Bank.

The name of the digital banking platform was inspired by the Greenwood District, a historic African-American community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that, in the early 20th century, featured one of the greatest concentrations of black businesses in the U.S. Known as “Black Wall Street”, the community was the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in which a mob of white Tulsans destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the Greenwood District. The attack was described as the “single worst incident of racial violence in American history.” Hundreds were hospitalized and estimates of the number of Oklahomans killed ranged from 75 to 300.

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U.S.-based Neobank Novo Secures $125 Million in Series B Funding

U.S.-based Neobank Novo Secures $125 Million in Series B Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Miami, Florida-based neobank Novo raised $35 million in funding, taking its Series B funding round to $125 million.
  • The Series B raises Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.
  • The latest capital infusion comes from GGV Capital, which manages more than $9 billion in investments across North America, China, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Israel.

An additional $35 million investment brings the total raised by Miami, Florida-based fintech Novo to $125 million. The latest infusion comes courtesy of strategic investor GGV Capital, and brings Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.

In a statement, Novo CEO and co-founder Michael Rangel highlighted the new functionality of the Novo Platform and the “tens of thousand” of small business customers the company has onboarded. Rangel also praised GGV as “instrumental” in helping other technology companies (“from Airbnb to Square”) scale their businesses, and said he believed the support of the firm would help Novo reach “millions more small businesses in the coming years.” Note that GGV Capital Principal Robin Li will join Novo’s board of directors as an observer.

With more than 175,000 small business customers, Novo offers a free business checking account with free ACHs and incoming wires; a Novo Virtual card; no hidden fees; and an application process that can be completed in less than 10 minutes. Novo also provides online small business banking services including the ability to send and track invoices; as set aside funds for taxes, payroll, and more via its Novo Reserves feature. Novo is partnered with Middlesex Federal Savings, which provides FDIC coverage of Novo deposits up to $250,000.

Additionally, as of 2021, the company has offered Novo Apps, a comprehensive apps marketplace to enable SMEs to customize their banking experience; Novo Boost, which gives small businesses same day access to payments received through Stripe; as well as Express ACH that enables same day processing of ACH payments.

GGV Capital Managing Partner Hans Tung underscored Novo’s “ecosystem approach” to providing banking services to small businesses, freelancers, and gig economy workers. “They’ve built a robust, intuitive platform that allows SMBs to connect all of their business and financial applications to their Novo account,” Tung said.

Novo’s latest investment comes as the company announces surpassing $12 billion in lifetime small business transactions. Founded in 2016, Novo was named one of the “Next Billion-Dollar Startups” of 2022 by Forbes earlier this year.

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Digital Engagement Solution Provider Agent IQ Secures $10 Million in Series A

Digital Engagement Solution Provider Agent IQ Secures $10 Million in Series A
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Agent IQ, Funding
  • Digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding.
  • Agent IQ’s technology helps bankers develop more meaningful customer relationships by blending enabling technologies like AI with human talent, expertise, and empathy.
  • Agent IQ made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring and returned to the Finovate stage in September for FinovateFall.

In a round led by Mendon Venture Partners and featuring participation from Acronym VC, Sierra Ventures, and FNBO, digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The investment, according to Crunchbase, takes the company’s total capital raised to $18.5 million.

Agent IQ CEO and co-founder Slaven Bilac said that the critical task of developing meaningful customer relationships can be lost in the drive toward the convenience and speed of digitalization. “Agent IQ exists to change this narrative,” Bilac said. He added that the company will “leverage this capital to lead community banking toward an environment where customers derive the same level of personal benefit through the digital channel as they traditionally did through the branch, while enabling banks and CUs to differentiate themselves with personal, seamless, and efficient service.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2015, Agent IQ offers digital platforms that help their clients enhance customer relationships and customer satisfaction. Agent IQ’s solutions also help companies become more efficient, which leads to greater profitability and lower costs. With an approach that supports augmenting the human banker with technology rather than trying to replace human bankers with technology, Agent IQ effectively blends innovations like AI and machine learning with the critical customer engagement features of human empathy and creativity.

“The company is at the forefront of relationship banking,” Mendon Venture Partners Founding Partner John Clausen said, “helping banks engage customers in ways that they have come to demand.”

Agent IQ’s funding news comes just a few months after the company demoed its Lynq platform at FinovateFall in September. Lynq enables financial services consumer to choose and engage with a personal banker across all digital channels. The technology features configurable, built-in Augmented Intelligence that helps bankers better connect, engage, and support their customers. At the same time, the platform helps them become more efficient by automating typically mundane, manual tasks. Lynq offers video chat, AI-powered real-time insights, and messaging capabilities with the ability to translate real-time to more than 100 languages.

Agent IQ began the year with news that Texas-based Extracto Banks would deploy its Lynq digital assistant and chat service. This made Extracto Banks the first financial institution in Texas to partner with Agent IQ. The institution’s EVP and Chief of Strategic Design Chris Kincaid said that Agent IQ’s technology gave the bank “a transformational approach to meeting our customers where they are.”

Photo by Miguel Acosta

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Lloyds Banking, Legal & General Take Minority Stake in Open Data Innovator Moneyhub

Lloyds Banking, Legal & General Take Minority Stake in Open Data Innovator Moneyhub
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Moneyhub
  • Legal & General and Lloyds Banking Group have invested $40 million (£35 million) in open data and payments platform Moneyhub.
  • Along with the equity capital, Moneyhub received an additional $5.7 million (£5 million) debt facility courtesy of Shawbrook.
  • Moneyhub made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2015 in London. Samantha Seaton is CEO.

The $40 million (£35 million) in funding raised by open finance and payments platform Moneyhub will give minority stakes to investors Legal & General and Lloyds Banking Group. The two backers will leverage their relationship with Moneyhub to enhance their own offerings with Moneyhub’s open data technology. At the same time, the capital, along with an additional $5.7 million (£5 million) debt facility courtesy of Shawbrook, will enable Moneyhub to speed development of its products in areas ranging from pensions and payments to affordability and Data-as-a-Service. The funding will also support Moneyhub’s plans to further international expansion.

“(The) new investment helps us signal a step change in the way the financial services industry thinks about Open Data and the possibilities it presents,” Moneyhub CEO Samantha Seaton said. “Understanding and utilizing customer transaction data for the benefit of the customer’s financial wellbeing not only helps businesses fulfill their Consumer Duty regulatory obligations, but also empowers them to create further opportunities.”

Moneyhub enables companies to transform data into personalized digital experiences and initiate payments. Offering both APIs and its customizable Open Data Platform, Moneyhub serves businesses in industries from pension companies and wealth managers to banks, lenders, and insurance companies. Moneyhub boasts seamless, single source connectivity to thousands of financial institutions in 37 countries, helping ensure its clients can build a comprehensive portrait of their customers’ financial needs, habits, and goals.

Moneyhub’s largest funding round to date, this week’s capital infusion is part of a larger fundraising effort and follows a 2021 investment of $18 million led by Peter Wood, founder of Direct Line and Esure. At the time, the funding was the largest secured by a female fintech CEO in Europe that year. Moneyhub currently has more than $63 million in capital raised, according to Crunchbase.

Moneyhub made its Finovate debut in 2015 at FinovateEurope in London. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Bristol, the company also announced this week that it was teaming up with SME health and wellness care provider MorganAsh. The support services provider will use Moneyhub’s technology to access customer financial data to enhance their ability to provide real-time consumer vulnerability assessments. The partnership will also help MorganAsh fulfill its obligations for Consumer Duty, a requirement issued by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority in July that governs implementation of open finance/open data products.

“Consumer Duty and Open Finance herald a new era of customer-focused firms and financial resilience,” Moneyhub Business Development Director Vaughan Jenkins said. “Smart, forward-looking businesses will seize this moment and benefit from it.”

Photo by Laura Tancredi

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Cinchy Lands $14.5 Million in Funding

Cinchy Lands $14.5 Million in Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Cinchy, Daily news, Funding
  • Data access and control firm Cinchy received $14.5 million in funding this week.
  • The series B round was led by Forgepoint Capital and brings Cinchy’s total funding to $24.2 million.
  • As part of the investment, Forgepoint Managing Director Leo Casusol and Senior Associate Reynaldo Kirton will join Cinchy’s Board of Directors.

Cinchy, a fintech that is focused on helping firms set their data free, announced this week it received $14.5 million in a Series B funding round. This brings the Canada-based company’s total funding to $24.2 million.

Led by Forgepoint Capital, the investment brings Forgepoint’s Managing Director Leo Casusol will join Cinchy’s Board of Directors. The firm’s Senior Associate Reynaldo Kirton joins the board as an advisor. 

Cinchy was founded in 2017 to leverage data fabric to help banks access data from apps and other silos and assemble it within an easy-to-access data network. Today’s investment will help the company seize a recent spike in demand for data fabric and data mesh solutions.

“Our mission is to liberate and harness the power of data, giving it back to teams and organizations to accelerate digital transformation and growth,” said Cinchy CEO and Co-Founder Dan DeMers. “This latest round of funding helps us expand our team and release new offerings that include pre-built dataware solutions designed to help organizations instantly liberate both trapped data and siloed SaaS applications.”

Cinchy– whose clients include TD bank, Colliers International, AIS, and Natixis– has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Company to Watch and a Top Growing Canadian Company by The Globe and Mail. The company most recently demoed at FinovateFall 2021 and won best of show for its demo at FinovateFall 2019.

Photo by Neale LaSalle

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SKU Data Network Company Banyan Secures $43 Million in Series A Funding

SKU Data Network Company Banyan Secures $43 Million in Series A Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, BANYAN, Daily news, Funding
  • SKU data network company Banyan raised $43 million in Series A funding.
  • The round consisted of $28 million in equity and $15 million in venture debt, and gives the company a total of $53 million in equity funding.
  • Banyan made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 in New York, and returned to the Finovate stage this year for FinovateSpring in San Francisco.

In a round led by Fin Capital and M13, SKU data network company Banyan has raised $43 million in funding. The Series A round includes $28 million in equity and $15 million in venture debt, taking the total equity capital raised by Banyan to $53 million. In addition to Fin Capital and M13, the round featured participation from FIS Impact Ventures, Bridge Bank, Interplay, and TTV Capital.

The financing will be used to help accelerate Banyan’s technology and infrastructure growth. Banyan enables retailers and financial institutions to leverage enriched, item-level data capabilities to boost consumer engagement and financial wellness, as well as improve business expense management. The company offers the world’s largest SKU data network, which helps “unlock a new world of valuable information in the form of item-level receipt data,” according to Banyan founder and CEO Jehan Luth. Luth added that the funding was “evidence of market validation for Banyan as the first to deliver the next level of Precise Commerce applications to merchants and financial services.”

Banyan’s network is used by both Fortune 150 corporations as well as convenience stores. The company’s solution suite enables dramatic reductions in the time spent on expense reports by integrating item-level purchase data into banking and expense management apps. Banyan’s technology also provides shopping and loyalty offers that help merchants and their partners better target the offering of incentives, keying on the specific item, category, and aisle-level categories they want to reward. Fin Capital founder and managing partner Logan Allin said that Banyan’s solutions help businesses “re-imagine the experiences they can bring to consumers.”

Banyan demonstrated its Enrich solution at FinovateSpring earlier this year. At the conference, Banyan showed how its technology enables banks, fintechs, and their retail partners to use item level data to drive both everyday spending and top of wallet behavior. Relying on both API calls for individual transactions and batch calls for unlimited records, Banyan’s at-scale network lets retailers share receipt data with banks and fintechs to make financial apps more impactful for the digitally-oriented financial services customer.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey, Banyan has processed more than $400 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV), more than 10.3 billion in bank and fintech partner transactions, and more than 10.4 billion in purchase receipts from network retailers. The company also has more than four million UPCs catalogued in its network.

Earlier this year, Banyan introduced new Chief Marketing Officer Andrea Gilman, formerly SVP with Mastercard. This spring, Banyan announced a rebrand – including a new logo and a website refresh – to reflect what Luth called the company’s “defined path to disrupt and change the retail landscape while bringing new benefits to consumers.”

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

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Digital Bank Nerve’s New Strategic Partnership Comes with Up to $7 Million in New Funds

Digital Bank Nerve’s New Strategic Partnership Comes with Up to $7 Million in New Funds
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Digital bank for creatives, Nerve, is partnering with London-based Talenthouse, a firm that helps artists find work with global brands.
  • Talenthouse’s money management platform, TalentPlus, will leverage Nerve’s embedded banking technology to expand into the U.S.
  • To facilitate TalentPlus’ U.S. launch, Talenthouse will invest up to $7 million in cash and shares in Nerve.

Digital bank Nerve is furthering its reach this month via a partnership with Talenthouse, a London-based firm that helps creatives find work with global brands. Under the agreement, Talenthouse will leverage Nerve to launch a business banking solution for TalentPlus, its in-house financial app built for creators.

As part of the deal, Talenthouse will invest up to $7 million in cash and shares in Nerve. This partnership and investment will help Talenthouse launch TalentPlus in the U.S. next month and expand into the U.K. and Latin America in 2023.

“This is a significant step into the U.S. market for Talenthouse,” said Talenthouse CEO Clare McKeeve. “We plan to recreate this financial services model across several markets in the near future including the UK and Latin America. We have been incredibly impressed by and have huge confidence in the Nerve team, underlined by our significant strategic investment.”

Money management platform TalentPlus was launched in 2021 from a pilot program called ElloU. The platform seeks to offer participants in the creator economy banking tools that support their needs in ways that banks fall short. The company’s partnership with Nerve will enable it to add personal banking tools to its product lineup.

This aligns closely with Nerve’s offerings. The digital bank was launched in 2020 to serve the unique financial needs of musicians, artists, and other creatives. The Texas-based company’s mission is to help creators build sustainable businesses by lowering the cost for organizations to pay creators. Nerve’s partnership with Talenthouse marks the first time its embedded banking tools will be used on a private-label basis.

“We are super excited about collaborating with Talenthouse and the TalentPlus team to drive innovation for creative businesses and delivering financial services to an underserved community,” said Nerve CEO John Waupsh. “This partnership will expand our payments and banking services to Talenthouse’s U.S.-based creators, dramatically improving the financial services available to the creator economy.”

Photo by Brett Sayles

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NorthOne Raises $67 Million to Become the Digital Finance Department for Small Businesses

NorthOne Raises $67 Million to Become the Digital Finance Department for Small Businesses
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Small business banking tools company NorthOne pulled in $67 million in funding this week.
  • The Series B round increases the company’s total raised to more than $90 million.
  • NorthOne has big ambitions, and is seeking to be “the digital finance department powering every small business in America.”

Small business banking tools company NorthOne landed $67 million in a Series B funding round this week. The investment boosts the New York-based company’s total funds to more than $90 million.

New and existing investors, including Battery Ventures, Don Griffith, Drew Brees, Ferst Capital Partners, FinTLV, Next Play Capital, Operator Stack, Redpoint Ventures, Tencent, and Tom Williams, participated in the round.

NorthOne was founded in 2016 to offer small businesses an approachable digital banking experience. The company said that the funds will enable it to raise the standard of products and services that business owners should expect from their banking partners.

“Through an obsessive focus on our customers’ needs, we’ve been able to predictably build a business banking experience that unlocks an incredibly strong product-market fit,” said NorthOne CoFounder and CEO Eytan Bensoussan. “As our customers grow, their problems evolve beyond the bank account. By connecting the data layer between accounting, receivables, payables, lending, payroll—all the financial operations—and the bank account ledger, we can provide a transformative offering that’s always felt out of reach for our customers: a world-class finance department built for their business.”

NorthOne, whose services are powered by The Bancorp Bank, has big ambitions. The fintech is aiming to be “the digital finance department powering every small business in America.” To reach this goal, the company is currently working on building new capital and credit products, faster payment solutions, and more integrations.

Photo by RODNAE Productions

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Airwallex Raises $100 Million at $5.5 Billion Valuation

Airwallex Raises $100 Million at $5.5 Billion Valuation
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Cross border payments company Airwallex raised $100 million on a valuation of $5.5 billion.
  • The funding round was an extension of the company’s Series E round. Airwallex has raised a total of $900 million in funding.
  • Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Airwallex was founded in 2015. Co-founder Jack Zhang is CEO.

Cross-border payments company Airwallex has emerged from its extension Series E round with an additional $100 million in capital and its $5.5 billion valuation intact.

“The valuation underscores investors’ confidence in Airwallex’s core business value and fundamentals,” Airwallex CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang said. He added that the market environment going forward remained “challenging in the foreseeable future,” but said the investment would help fuel the company’s objectives with regards to growth, product expansion, and talent acquisition. “By strengthening the breadth of our global reach and product offering, we can better empower our customers to unlock new market opportunities,” Zhang said.

The investment takes Airwallex’s total capital to $900 million. Participating in this week’s funding were existing investors Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Lone Pine Capital, Hermitage Capital, 1835i Ventures, and Tencent. Other investors included Australian superannuation fund, HostPlus, and a pension fund based in North America.

Airwallex’s payments and banking platform helps businesses accept payments, move money around the world, and enhance their financial operations. The company also offers a business account that features global accounts, borderless cards, transfers and foreign exchange, payment links, business expense reconciliation, and integration with accounting platform Xero. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Airwallex has enjoyed revenue growth of 184% in the past year and is currently processing nearly $50 billion in annualized transactions.

Named Startup of the Year in the U.S. FinTech Awards and FinTech of the Year at the Asia FinTech Awards, Airwallex announced in August that it was committing an additional HK$2.25 million ($286,650 USD) into its Hong Kong SMEs Initiative. Launched in April, the effort is designed to help small businesses recover from the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic. This latest commitment brings Airwallex’s total support of the initiative to HK$4.5 million ($573,300 USD).

Photo by Harry Shum

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