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Fintech Fundings: 17 Companies Raise $167 million Week Ending Nov 28
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Yesterday, as we began looking forward to FinovateEurope, we heard news from a 2014 alum, Advanced Merchant Payments (AMP).
AMP, a company that provides banks with alternative lending options for small-and-medium (SMB) businesses, pulled in a fresh $5 million this week. The funding, a first for the Hong Kong-based company, comes from SBT Venture Capital.
AMP operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, and has recently expanded into the UK, participating in London’s Level39 fintech accelerator. It plans to use the funding to further internationalize and scale the business.
Founded in 2009, AMP helps financial institutions offer financing to small business customers by managing some or all stages of the loan process, including:
AMP debuted its small business lending solution for banks at FinovateEurope 2014.
Here are the deals in order of size from Nov. 15 to Nov 21:
What do wonders of the world, deadly sins, the Harry Potter series, and Financeit’s funding have in common? They all come in sets of seven (at least for now).
Financeit’s seventh round of funding comes from BEST Funds, which is adding an undisclosed amount to the $21.4 million Financeit has raised since its 2007 launch.
Previous rounds include $13 million in November 2013, along with $8.4 million in angel funding received in five rounds from 2007 to 2012.
The new installment comes a few months after the Toronto-based company launched its point of sale financing solution in the United States. This is no small feat, given the hurdles of complying with U.S. regulations. Financeit plans to use the funds to expand growth in the new market.
Host Card Emulation (HCE) solutions company, SimplyTapp, is making it easier for banks to place their own tap to pay functionality in customers’ hands.
To further this mission, two investors, Blue Sky Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, recently contributed $6 million in Series B funding to the Austin-based startup.
Other funding rounds include a $1.4 million Series A round last November and a $200,000 seed round in February of 2013. Its total funding now tallies just over $7.5 million.
Check out SimplyTapp’s video from FinDEVr San Francisco 2014, where it explains HCE.
We have only been tracking fintech investments across all companies since Aug 1. But I’m pretty sure that even if we’d been doing it for 20 years, there would never have been a month as frenzied as October.
Online security companies are always working to stay one step ahead of fraudsters. Socure, a New York-based company is out to fight these malevolent deeds with an approach it calls Social Biometrics.
As it turns out, it pays to be good. The company just closed a $2.5 million round of funding this week. Investors include:
This, added to Socure’s $2.2 million Seed round it generated in March, brings the company’s total funding to $4.7 million.
Socure’s fraud detection solution uses people’s social behavior across networks to determine the authenticity of their identity. See their debut of Social Biometrics at FinovateFall 2013.
Card-linked offers company, Cardlytics, closed a $70 million Series F round yesterday. The round was led by Discovery Capital, who will appoint a representative to Cardlytics’ board.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, with this newest installment, the Atlanta-based company has raised a total of $170 million since it was founded in 2008. Past investors include:
The company plans to use the funding to develop products that analyze data in new ways. It will not only help the merchants, who pay Cardlytics to list their offers, but it is also good news for its 400 bank partners.
This includes Bank of America, who uses the company’s technology to power its BankAmeriDeals (below). This year, Cardlytics anticipates the banks’ cut of payment it receives from merchants will add up to $20 to $25 million.
The company plans to go public within the next 18 months. According to Cardlytics co-founder and President, Lynne Laube:
“We want to be ready to take advantage of the market, and getting ready for an IPO takes work.”
Check out Cardlytics’ demo from FinovateFall 2013, where it debuted its Gelocation Application.
A German platform where users save and invest money towards their long term goals has brought on some funding of its own this week.
Vaamo announced yesterday it closed a $3.2 million (€2.5 million) Seed round. The investment was led by Route 66 Ventures, the same firm that furnished U.S.-based D3 Banking with $7 million last week. The remaining funds have come from business angels.
This round comes a year after its angel round of $635,000 (€500,000), which brings vaamo’s total funding to $3.8 million (€3 million).
According to vaamo co-founders Thomas Bloch, and Oliver Vins, the funding will be used to hire more talent, specifically for marketing, customer service, and engineering. It will also be used to bolster marketing efforts to improve customer acquisition.
Vaamo is opening to the public today after spending about four months in private beta. It currently has 250 customers saving real money on its goals-based platform. It is limited to German residents only, but vaamo has not excluded the possibility of expanding its usage across borders.
Here’s the math: D3 = Data Driven Digital Banking. The funding amount = $7 million.
Today, D3 Banking announced it raised $7 million in venture funding from Route 66 Ventures, a private investment firm focused on emerging financial services companies.
The Nebraska-based company reports that in the next 60 days, existing investors and a subordinate VC will contribute another $3 million, finalizing the round at $10 million.
The $10 million projected in this round, along with previous Angel investments of $6 million, will bring D3’s total funding to $16 million.
Since its launch in 2007, D3 Banking (formerly Lodo Software) has built a customer base of 225 institutions that use its digital financial management tools.
D3 expanded beyond financial management tools last year when it launched a comprehensive digital banking solution at FinovateSpring 2013. The first customer to roll out the new solution plans to go live with it in the next 30 days. Additionally, D3 is in talks with a number of other institutions who are interested in deploying the new solution. According to CEO Mark Vipond, now is the perfect time for the company to bring in its first round of Venture funding.
D3 will use the new capital to expand its sales and marketing team, invest in other product innovations, and deploy a SaaS-based solution for FIs that prefer on-premise deployment.
Check out D3 Banking’s video from FinovateSpring 2014 where it demonstrated the money movement tools added to the comprehensive solution it introduced last year.
We’ve only been tracking fundings on a weekly basis for 11 weeks. But I don’t think there have been many weeks in history, if any, that the money flowing to the fintech sector was bigger. A total of $314 million in equity investments went to 18 companies (in addition, 4 companies received undisclosed new investments). Even without Mozida’s massive $185 million, it was still a huge week.