An investment of $35 million will enable Solutions by Text (SBT), a compliant text messaging platform for consumer finance companies, to power broader adoption of its solution across the consumer finance lifecycle. The growth financing round was led by Edison Partners, and featured the participation of Stifel Venture Bank, a division of Stifel Bank.

In addition to the funding news, Solutions by Text also announced the appointment of former ACI Worldwide executive David Baxter as its new Chief Executive Officer

“Now more than ever, consumer finance organizations are taking a hard look at how to strengthen digital consumer relationships while maintaining compliance with national standards,” Baxter said. “Our opportunity to capture market share through existing and expanded platform capabilities is immense and we’ve assembled an exceptional team and board to turbo-charge this next chapter of growth.”

As part of the investment, co-founder Mike Cantrell and Edison Director Network members Ron Hynes and Nick Manolis will join the Solutions by Text board of directors.

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and maintaining remote teams and offices throughout the U.S. as well as in Bangalore, India, Solutions by Text was founded in 2008. The company’s technology is used by more than 1,400 consumer finance companies – ranging from auto finance and lending to banking – who use SBT’s compliant texting solutions to support origination, servicing, and collection operations. Solutions by Text helps ensure that communication policies and practices are compliant with key regulations such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), including a new Regulation F which went into effect today. The revision clarifies the ability of consumers to stop collection calls and/or text messages and is intended to respond to the rise of new communications methods.

Solutions by Text offers two-way texting to ensure seamless communication with customers, as well as a pay-by-text product, Text Pay, and a customizable URL shortening tool called SmartURL. SBT’s technology can be integrated via the company’s API, which enables access to the full range of the company’s text messaging tools including budgeting, reporting, file imports, message templates, and distribution lists.

“(SBT) is uniquely positioned to scale growth in the fintech market with a team of deep regulatory compliance, messaging, and payments expertise, not to mention a sizable loyal customer and partner base with significant embedded opportunity,” Edison Partners General Partner Kelly Ford said. “Eight in ten U.S. adults use text messaging on a regular basis,” Ford noted. “With Solutions by Text, financial institutions are meeting these consumers where and how they want to be met, and doing so with peace of mind.”

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

Payment card startup Slice received a $220 million Series B investment today, bringing its total funding to $291 million and boosting its valuation to over $1 billion, unicorn status. This is an impressive jump in valuation. According to TechCrunch, the India-based company was valued at under $200 million less than six months ago when it raised $20 million in funding in June of this year.

Today’s round was led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners and saw contributions from Sunley House Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Anfa, Gunosy, Blume Ventures, and 8i. Slice plans to use the funds to expand its product line by launching a payment card for teens. The company is also working on adding support for the country’s real-time payment rails, unified payments interface (UPI), and a digital ID product.

Slice is aiming to disrupt India’s credit card industry by relying on its own underwriting system. The company, which targets millennials, has five million registered users and is currently issuing more than 200,000 cards every month, making it the third largest card issuer in India.

Because of its in-house underwriting, Slice doesn’t require a credit score; anyone over the age of 18 can apply. Credit limits are relatively low, starting at $26 (₹2k). Additionally, the fintech doesn’t charge a joining fee, or an annual fee. Cardholders can get up to 2% cashback on purchases and receive weekly deals from brands such as Amazon and Netflix.

Slice’s name comes from one of its most differentiating features. The company allows cardholders to “slice” all of their bills over the course of three months into multiple installments.

“Slice targets an underpenetrated market in India and seamlessly allows users to make online payments, pay bills and more,” said Insight Partners Managing Director Deven Parekh. “There is a large opportunity in the credit and payment space in India, and Slice is well-positioned to become the leader in the industry. We look forward to this partnership with slice as they continue to scale up and grow.”

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

In an extension of its $200 million Series E financing round, digital payments company Airwallex has secured an additional $100 million in funding. The extension came from Lone Pine Capital and featured the participation of existing investors such as 1835i Ventures and Sequoia Capital China. Now standing at $300 million, Airwallex’s latest funding gives the company a valuation of $5.5 billion. The company has raised a total of $802 million.

“As we approach our sixth anniversary, we want to continue to connect entrepreneurs, business builders, and makers with opportunities in every corner of the world,” co-founder and CEO of Airwallex Jack Zhang said. “This new capital injection will allow us to do just that, fueling M&A opportunities that will accelerate our global expansion plans, pursuing our mission to empower businesses to grow without borders.”

Headquartered in Australia, Airwallex offers a financial infrastructure and platform that enables businesses to manage payments online. The company’s business accounts allow businesses to transfers funds worldwide to more than 130 countries in 31 currencies, at a cost of 0.4% to 1.0% above the interbank FX rate. Airwallex’s business accounts connect seamlessly with online stores such as eBay, Shopify, and PayPal, as well as with accounting packages like Xero, and enable firms to issue virtual “borderless” payment cards to their employees.

Airwallex’s funding comes as the company reports a 1.6x year-over-year revenue increase for Q3, along with annualized revenue of more than $100 million. Launching its virtual employee cards in Hong Kong and the U.K. this past quarter, Airwallex also secured licenses to operate in both Singapore and Malaysia.

“Receiving this approval reflects our robust policies, compliance framework and risk management systems we have put in place,” Zhang said when Airwallex received its Major Payment Institution License by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) earlier this month. “We will continue to work closely with regulators and partners to ensure we facilitate a safe, effective, and transparent way to manage their cross-border financial transaction needs.”

Founded in 2015, Airwallex has recently announced partnerships with Australian digital brokerage company Stake and travel lifestyle brand Cathay. In October, the company was named to the 2021 CB Insights Fintech 250 list for the fourth consecutive year.

Photo by L.Steward Masweneng from Pexels

Alternative credit provider and digital bank Upgrade announced a $280 million investment this week. The Series F round brings the company’s total funding to $600 million and boosts its valuation to $6 billion, which is almost double its last valuation of $3.3 billion in August.

The round was led by Coatue Management and DST Global with participation from Dragoneer Investment Group, Gopher Asset Management, G-Squared, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Old Well Partners, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital, Ventura Capital, and Vy Capital.

Upgrade was founded in 2016 and offers a variety of low-cost personal loans and credit cards that come with rewards ranging from Bitcoin cashback to 3% cashback. Earlier this year the company debuted a checking account with a debit card that pays 2% cashback for common expenses.  

The company differentiates its card, which is issued by Sutton Bank, from traditional credit cards by combining monthly charges into installment plans that the borrower repays over 24 to 60 months. Upgrade structures the repayment this way to get its users into the habit of paying down their balance every month and avoid getting trapped in a continuous cycle of debt.

The funding news comes four months after Upgrade closed its $105 million Series E round. Company CEO Renaud Laplanche said that the round “demonstrates Upgrade’s rapid growth and commitment to delivering innovative financial products that benefit consumers.”

The “rapid growth” Laplanche references has been seen in recent acclamations. Earlier this year the Financial Times selected Upgrade as the fastest growing company in the Americas and the Nilson Report recognized the Upgrade Card as the fastest growing credit card in America, placing Upgrade among the top 50 U.S. credit card issuers.

Since launching its credit card in 2017, Upgrade has delivered $10 billion in total credit to customers via the company’s credit cards and loan products. The majority of this credit has been issued this year alone; the company is on track to deliver $8 billion in credit in 2021.

Upgrade is headquartered in California with an operations center in Arizona and a technology center in Canada. The company is partnered with Cross River Bank and Blue Ridge Bank for credit lines and banking services, NYDIG for Bitcoin rewards, and Sutton Bank for card issuance.

Float, a Canada-based startup that offers a corporate card and spend management solution, landed $30 million (C$37 million) in funding this week. The Series A round was led by Tiger Global and brings the company’s total funding to $34 million (C$42 million).

The funding will help Float with its mission to deliver an end-to-end spend management platform for SMBs. “We want this platform to enable businesses and teams to focus on investing in their growth and eliminate the need to use different banking and software tools to make day-to-day payments… Float’s mission is to simplify spending for companies and teams,” the company explained in a blog post.

Float was founded in 2019 to offer Canadian SMBs a high-limit, no personal guarantee corporate card that is available in three business days or less. This turnaround is impressive when compared to the average four+ week wait time most businesses face to receive their corporate spending cards. Businesses can set custom spending limits, assign cards to employees, and review and approve transactions in real time.

In addition to the card capabilities, Float also offers spend management software that natively integrates with accounting software such as QuickBooks and Xero. The dashboard helps employers track real-time spending and provides an overview of individual, departmental, and categorical spending.

The investment comes at a good time for Float, which has seen significant growth since launching to the public in March of this year. The company now has hundreds of small business clients and continues to experience increased engagement. Float’s total payment volume has increased ~20x since June and its average monthly customer spend has increased more than 6x since March.

Float offers a freemium pricing model with varying features. All tiers come with 1% cashback, 0% FX fees, unlimited users, automatic top-ups, and a $100,000 spending limit. The paid tiers provide custom integrations, team management, and more.

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

Mexico-based Stori landed $200 million this week in combined debt and equity. The investment, which bring the company’s total funding to almost $250 million, will help the fintech provide financial services to its region’s underserved customers.

The $125 million in equity was co-led by GGV Capital and GIC with contributions from General Catalyst, Goodwater Capital, Tresalia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vision Plus Capital, BAI Capital, and Source Code Capital. The $75 million in debt financing comes from Community Investment Management.

The investment echoes Stori’s success in the region. The company has become one of Mexico’s top issuer of new credit cards since February of this year. In fact, more than 2 million Mexicans have applied for a Stori credit card, and that number has grown by more than 10 times in the last twelve months.

And there is still plenty of room for growth. The broader Latin American region has 400 million underserved consumers. “Our mission – empowering financial inclusion for millions of hard-working people – is amazingly meaningful and challenging at the same time,” said Stori CEO and co-founder, Bin Chen. “We are progressing at an unprecedented pace by combining technology, machine learning, data-driven underwriting and an intuitive mobile-based user experience. A lot more will come in our journey to become a top consumer financial franchise in Latin America.”

Stori plans to use today’s funds to triple in size and broaden its product offerings to better suit customer needs, ultimately providing much-needed financial services to Mexico’s underserved citizens. The fresh capital will also help Stori grow its team and double down on training and development opportunities.

While Stori is focused on the Mexico region, the company boasts a global team with offices in Washington D.C., Mexico, and Asia. “Our success since launch is a direct result of having a team who is passionate about our mission to empower upward financial mobility for the underserved population,” said company Co-founder Marlene Garayzar. 

Photo by Andrés Sanz on Unsplash

With locations in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, Meridian Trust Federal Credit Union has announced a partnership with Scienaptic AI. The collaboration with the AI-powered credit decision platform provider will enable Meridian Trust FCU ($569 million in assets; 31,640 members) to enhance its underwriting capabilities to provide faster lending decisions and boost loan approvals.

“At Meridian Trust, we aim to provide our members and community with the best personal service, the highest quality financial products, and the best overall value for a lifetime,” Meridian Trust FCU Chief Lending Officer Michael Barnhardt Jr. said. “Scienaptic’s AI-driven credit decisioning platform will help ensure that our credit union has access to industry-leading underwriting capabilities to approve more loans for our members and further enhance their financial well-being.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, Scienaptic AI leverages both new data sources and new technologies to enable financial institutions to make more accurate decisions about whether and how much financing to provide to credit applicants. Many banks continue to struggle to systematically manage the growing volume of data required for sound credit decisioning. Moreover, the technology necessary to analyze this data requires complex, quantitative, predictive models (and professionals trained in understanding them). Additionally, many financial institutions lack the kind of scalable infrastructure that can handle the volume of data involved in credit-decisioning – and do so in a timely, compliant fashion.

In response to this challenge, Scienaptic AI offers a platform that enables companies to run multiple champion challengers concurrently; merges credit models and strategies in a single, unified workflow; and supports the rapid deployment of new credit models and strategies. Scienaptic claims that its adaptive AI-based platform and pre-built APIs help deliver 15% to 40% more approvals and 10% to 25% fewer losses compared to traditional underwriting methods based on legacy technology. In addition to credit decisioning, Scienaptic’s technology can be leveraged for fraud prevention, financial forecasting, and collections, as well.

“We are pleased to be working with Meridian Trust to help support and strengthen the financing needs of its members,” Scienaptic President Pankaj Jain said. “Scienaptic’s platform will help Meridian Trust to grow their client base and to support the financial goals of its members by making faster credit decisions while minimizing risk.”

Of late, the Scienaptic AI has forged partnerships with Cooperative Teachers Credit Union, Gesa Credit Union and, earlier this month, Levo Credit Union. All of these credit unions have elected to leverage Scienaptic’s AI-powered credit decisioning platform to, in the words of Levo CU VP of Lending Steven Stofferahn, “enhance credit access for members and improve their financial well-being through smarter, faster credit decisions.”

Scienaptic AI has raised $9 million in funding. The company includes TVS Motor Singapore, Pramod Bhasin, and Salil Punalekar among its investors.

Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels

Birmingham, Alabama-based prepaid digital payment solution provider Prepaid Technologies has scored $96 million in funding. The round was led by Edison Partners and StepStone Group, and also featured participation from Stifel Venture Bank and Top Tier Capital Partners.

The company has enjoyed 15,000% straight-line growth in its load value, as well as revenue gains of 9x over the five years since it last raised capital – $5 million in 2016. Prepaid Technologies currently has 1,700+ customers and 450 active partners including banks, payroll processors, payment providers, as well as digital banking platforms, enterprise technology companies, and merchant services providers. The company’s technology enables its customers to access and customize both B2C and B2B payments for payroll, rewards, purchasing, and disbursement.

“We purpose-built our platform to create a turnkey way for companies to configure payments solutions across their enterprise however they operate,” Prepaid Technologies CEO Stephen Faust explained. “Clients access payments through our dashboard technology or integrate solutions into their workflows through our robust API suite. We’re laser-focused on productization and customization that will help to transition more companies to card-based and digital solutions.”

With financial services clients such as CertiPay, Rocket Mortgage, PNC Bank, and Cornerstone – and boasting customers like Delta, Lowe’s, and Samsung more broadly – Prepaid Technologies was founded in 1998. The company acquired Dash, the purchasing card portfolio and expense management solution from Finovate alum Karmic Labs, in 2019. Prepaid Technologies has leveraged this acquisition to launch its MyDashCard app and dashPerks, a cashback rewards program for cardholders.

Prepaid Technologies will use the new capital to fuel market expansion and to continue to develop both its technology payments platform and its customer-focused prepaid solutions. As part of this week’s investment, Edison Partners Managing Partner Chris Sugden will join Prepaid Technologies’ board of directors.

In a statement, Sugden underscored the unique opportunities available to companies like Prepaid Technologies in the current environment. “Loyalty payments and refund programs present an enormous niche opportunity,” Sugden said. “There is both a programmatic vertical opportunity and underserved community opportunity.” He praised the company’s “incredible load volume and data set” as well as the “deep banking and payments expertise” of Prepaid Technologies’ management team.

Perhaps the biggest news in crypto today (besides Burger King’s announcement to give away Dogecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin) is that crypto investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) sold $700 million in stock, boosting its valuation to $10 billion.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier today, noting that DCG’s sell-off is the second-largest in crypto history and makes DCG one of the highest-valued private companies in the sector.

The private sale was led by SoftBank and saw participation from Google, GIC Capital, and Rabbit Capital, who join previous investors Western Union, Bain Capital Ventures, Mastercard, and OMERS Ventures.

DCG has created its own subsidiaries, including digital currency asset manager Grayscale. The company also leverages M&A as part of its strategy, having snapped up blockchain news and research company CoinDesk and crypto exchange platform Luno. Among the many companies in DCG’s investment portfolio are eToro, Kraken, Ripple, and Veem.

DCG was founded in 2015 by Barry Silbert, who said that the deal will allow some early market players to close out their positions in the company and pocket the profits. The new investors are also expected to boost DCG’s technical and operational abilities and broaden its geographic reach. Silbert, who owns around 40% of DCG, has not sold any of his stock.

Before launching DCG, Silbert founded Finovate alum SecondMarket, a firm that enables private companies and investment funds to execute primary and secondary transactions. The company was acquired by Nasdaq in 2015.

Photo by Worldspectrum from Pexels