• Charitable giving app Daffy has received $17.1 million in funding.
• Daffy was co-founded by CEO Adam Nash, former president and CEO of Wealthfront.
• In the U.S., individuals gave more than $324 billion to charitable organizations in 2020.

Aside, the company behind charitable giving app Daffy, has secured $17.1 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ribbit Capital and featured participation from XYZ Capital and Coinbase Ventures, along with more than 50 angel investors including Amy Chang and John Lilly. The company will use the funds to help scale Daffy and bring additional product innovations to market to help encourage more people to participate in charitable giving.

“People want to be generous and help those less fortunate than themselves, but we are all busy and life gets in the way,” explained Daffy CEO and co-founder Adam Nash. “My co-founder Alejandro and I believe that all of the innovations that have helped us shop, save, and plan, Daffy can also use to help people make giving a habit.”

Americans are often credited for being among the most generous charitable givers in the world. One study by Giving USA revealed that individuals in the U.S. gave more than $324 billion to charities in 2020. That said, Nash believes there remains a “Generosity Gap” between what Americans give to charities and what they would give if the process were easier. The company cites a study by the Stockholm School of Economics that suggested that something as simple as pre-commitment – agreeing in advance to make a charitable contribution – can boost an individual’s contribution amount by as much as 32%.

To this point, Daffy works by encouraging users to provide a charitable giving goal for the year and asking them to take the “Daffy Pledge” to set aside money on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis to reach that goal. As the funds accumulate, Daffy invests the money in one of nine portfolios – rather than having the money sit in low-to-zero interest-bearing cash accounts. When the goal is reached, user can access the funds to make their tax-deductible donation to one of more than 1.5 million U.S. charities available via the Daffy platform. The company said that 40% of its users take advantage of the “Daffy Pledge” option for regular contributions.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Daffy takes its name from the acronym DAF, which stands for donor-advised fund. These funds are tax-deductible accounts specifically designed for charitable giving. Assets from cash to stock to cryptocurrencies can be placed in a DAF and donors can take immediate tax deductions on those contributions.

“Daffy takes many of the amazing innovations we’ve seen in fintech to a large new space, charitable giving,” Ribbit Capital Managing Partner Micky Malka said. “Within seconds, you can donate to your favorite causes and charities from anywhere. By building a seamless and habit–forming giving experience, Daffy is not only creating a better way to give, but a better way to live.”

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• DeFi investment startup Pillow raised $3 million in Seed funding
• The company will use the funds to fuel global expansion, build its investment strategies, and grow its user base
• “We want to create a future where accessibility to decentralized finance is democratized,” said company founders

Pillow, a platform that invests in curated DeFi strategies, landed $3 million in funding this week in its first-ever investment round. The Seed round was led by Elevation Capital and a group of crypto angels. Pillow will use the funds to build out DeFi strategies, accelerate global expansion, build up its community of users, and grow the Pillow brand to reach a global audience.

Pillow was founded in 2021 to offer its users an accessible way to earn market-beating interest rates on a range of crypto holdings– including $USDC, $USDT, $BTC, and $ETH– without needing to be experts in the space. “We believe the next big unlock in Web 3.0 is going to come from significantly improving user experiences,” said Elevation Capital Principal Vaas Bhaskar. “Pillow fits right into that theme by abstracting away the complexities of DeFi – and hence making it more accessible.”

To remove the complexity, Pillow’s investment strategies are curated and actively managed. Additionally, the company offers 1-click investing with the potential of high yields and without transaction fees (known in the crypto world as gas fees) and underlying chains and tokens.

“We want to create a future where accessibility to decentralized finance is democratized, if not more than traditional finance. We’re fulfilling this vision by letting our users gain access to DeFi yield opportunities in a simple, safe, and secure manner,” said Pillow founders Arindam Roy, Rajath KM, and Kartik Mishra. “Our users have shown unequivocal faith in our platform in our private access program, and we’re on track to scale this to new heights. We’re grateful for the mentorship and guidance of Elevation Capital as we scale, along with some of the best builders in the Web 3.0 space … We’re elated to have the ecosystem rally behind us as we build our platform and community.”

Though decentralized finance seemed like a futuristic vision of the financial world in 2020, progress toward a decentralized world is quickly picking up steam. The total locked value in decentralized assets has gone from around $20 billion at the start of last year to around $250 billion this year. Additionally, last January, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave the green light to allow banks to use stablecoins. And many countries have either launched, piloted, or are in the process of planning their own bank-issued digital currency (including the U.S. Federal Reserve, which issued a discussion paper on central bank digital currencies last week).

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Earlier this week Routefusion, a company that helps financial services companies with global expansion, raised $10.5 million. The Seed round was co-led by Canvas Ventures and Silverton Partners. Haymaker Ventures, Initialized Capital, Sherwin Gandi, and Aldrin Clement also participated.

The new capital boosts Routefusion’s total funding to over $14 million. The company will use the funds to grow its team and to expand its operations in new markets, specifically in Latin America and Africa, two regions poised for growth. Adding the two new regions will extend Routefusion’s reach to more than 180 countries and more than 150 currencies.

Routefusion was founded in 2018 and helps small to mid-sized fintech companies expand their operations internationally in order to compete with traditional financial institutions and large financial services giants. The Texas-based company offers customers access to more than a dozen different banking and foreign exchange providers. Routefusion’s customers include Synapse, Jeeves, Novel, PaymentLabs, and Wyre.

“Gone are the days when go-to-market meant a domestic launch in one market. Today’s most ambitious fintech companies know that in order to win big, they must launch globally,” said Routefusion Cofounder and CEO Colton Seal. “We understand how to expand a company’s product and financial infrastructure, eliminating the obstacles associated with international payments and banking operations. With Routefusion, companies can embrace the global economy and scale across borders and oceans.”

As competition heats up in the digital alternative banking space, cross-border payments are only expected to grow. In fact, they are estimated to total $156 trillion by next year. Routefusion echoes this growth. The company has experienced a 200% growth in customers and a more than 5000% revenue growth in the past 11 months.

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Digital investment services and infrastructure company WealthKernel secured $7 million in Series A+ funding to start the week. The round was led by XTX Ventures and featured participation from Digital Horizon, Big Start Ventures, and ETFS Capital. The U.K.-based company said that it will use the capital to fuel expansion across Europe.

“I’m incredibly excited to take this next step in WealthKernel’s journey,” WealthKernel CEO Karan Shanmugarajah said. “Our investors’ backing will not only help us bring our product to a wider audience and expand our platform, but also achieve our goal of becoming the leading provider of API-based wealth and investment infrastructure across Europe.”

WealthKernel offers businesses the building blocks they need to power their digital investment offering. From client onboarding and trading to portfolio management and custody, WealthKernel enables neobanks, roboadvisors, PFM apps, and embedded finance platforms to focus on building their brand and customer experience while leaving the heavy lifting to WealthKernel’s all-in-one investing API.

“We often describe what we do as the plumbing for wealth management companies,” Shanmugarajah explained. “The current industry is built on leaky legacy pipes and that leakage directly impacts the savings and pensions of millions of people, particularly those with smaller sums of money. Our mission is to enable the change that makes financial services and investing better for everyday people.”

This week’s Series A+ round is an extension of the company’s $6 million Series A round from 2020. In addition to supporting the company’s growth plans in Europe, the funding will enable WealthKernel to expand its investing infrastructure to accommodate intraday trading, as well. The company currently has $13.9 million in total equity funding according to Crunchbase.

A leading embedded investing solution provider in the U.K., WealthKernel’s platform supports more than 100,000 transactions a month, and more than 72,000 trades per month are executed using its technology. The company’s clients include U.K.-based financial coaching app Claro Money, Sharia-compliant ethical investment platform Wahed, and wealth management service provider Rosecut. More recently, WealthKernel has forged partnerships with GOODFOLIO, an ESG-based investment platform, and investment app Stratiphy, which offers personalized investment and trading strategies. WealthKernel was founded in 2015.

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A fundraising round of $1 billion has given Checkout.com a valuation of $40 billion, more than 20x the valuation the company earned upon its first fundraising three years ago. The investment takes Checkout.com’s total capital raised to $1.8 billion, and the company said that it plans to use the funds to support growth in the U.S. market, launch its marketplaces solution, and strengthen its position in Web3.

“At our core, we help enterprise merchants to navigate the complexity of moving money around the world, whether in fiat currency or bridging the gap to Web3,” Checkout.com founder and CEO Guillaume Pousaz said. “By combining an elegant technology stack with industry expertise and an ‘extra-mile’ approach to service over the past decade, we’ve built deep partnerships with some of the world’s most innovative companies.” Pousaz added that while he considered this week’s investment to be a “validation” of the firm’s work to date, “we’re still in ‘chapter zero’ of our journey.”

Investors in the Series D included Altimeter, Dragoneer, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Insight Partners, the Qatar Investment Authority, Tiger Global, the Oxford Endowment Fund and “another large west coast mutual fund manager.”

With customers ranging from Netflix and Pizza Hut to fintechs like Klarna, Revolut, and Coinbase, Checkout.com offers a full-stack online platform that makes payments easier for global businesses. Enterprise merchants that face significant challenges in moving money around the world have partnered with Checkout.com for its flexible, cloud-based payment platform that offers improved authorization rates, feature parity, and direct connection to local networks in key geographies and for all major alternative payment methods.

Looking forward, Checkout.com plans to launch a solution to service both marketplaces and payment facilitators later in 2022. The new offering will combine identity verification, split payments, and treasury-as-a-service functionality with Checkout.com’s Payouts solution, which helps companies send funds to both cards and bank accounts worldwide by way of a single integration. Checkout.com reports that both TikTok and MoneyGram have taken advantage of the service, with “billions of dollars in payout transactions” processed.

Headquartered in London and founded in 2012, Checkout.com spent 2021 opening new offices in six countries across four continents and making numerous major C-suite additions. These include a new Chief Financial Officer, a new Chief Technology Officer, and a new Chief Product Officer. The company announced an extension of its strategic partnership with JCB in September, and led a $110 million funding round for Saudi Arabian-based fintech Tamara in April.

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Credit card and cash management solutions company Brex closed a $300 million D-2 round today. The round, which values the company at $12.3 billion, was led by Greenoaks Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV).

Brex will use the fresh capital to expand its product portfolio to serve more of companies’ financial needs. The California-based fintech’s funding now totals $1.2 billion.

“Brex is a market disruptor and the opportunity to create economic opportunity for millions of people and businesses globally through innovation in financial products is incredibly exciting,” said Brex Chief Product Officer Karandeep Anand. “The opportunity ahead for Brex is expansive, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to create products that will help our customers grow their businesses.”

Brex was founded in 2017 to create a digital-first business banking solution. The company offers business bank accounts with credit cards that have built-in rewards, spend controls, and expense tracking. The accounts give businesses early access to their online revenue, billpay tools, and integration with popular accounting tools– all with zero fees. The company serves “tens of thousands of businesses” ranging from small private companies to large public brands, including Airbnb and Classpass.

“Brex has always moved fast. But as the company has scaled, they’ve managed to get even faster, accelerating their growth since our last investment,” said Greenoaks Founder and Managing Partner Neil Mehta. “Brex is building a full financial operating system that keeps getting more comprehensive, all of which will delight existing customers and attract new ones.”

In addition to the funding announcement, Brex is also highlighting a noteworthy personnel change. The company appointed Karandeep Anand as Chief Product Officer. Anand comes to Brex from Meta, where he led the business products group, which served more than 200 million businesses globally. Before his start at Meta, Anand spent 15 years at Microsoft leading the product management strategy for Microsoft’s Azure cloud and developer platform.

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