VCs double down on fintech Coast, which aims to be the Brex for ‘real-world’ industriesThe expense management arena is a crowded one, with well-funded players such as Brex, Ramp and Navan all clamoring for market share.
While Coast declined to divulge hard revenue figures, CEO Simon told TechCrunch that it saw about 550% increase in annualized revenue and payment volume growth in 2023.
That growth prompted its existing investors to double down on the company, while attracting a new backer as well.
Today, Coast is announcing that it has raised an additional $25 million in venture capital and $67 million in debt financing.
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Despite all that growth, Eric Gylman, the co-founder and CEO of Ramp thinks that the industry, and companies like his, are just scratching the surface.
Glyman and his current co-founder Karim Atiyeh launched their first fintech startup, Paribus, back in 2014.
The company raised a mere $2 million before getting snapped up by Capital One.
When the team was building Paribus, the generative AI technology to craft the emails was still relatively rudimentary and the rest of the company’s AI technology was built on very simple language models.
The startup has raised more than $1.7 billion from venture capitalists and was last valued at $5.8 billion in August 2023.
Nala set out to offer remittance services, it’s building a B2B payment platform too It says, this is to guarantee reliability to its app users and businesses making payments into and out of AficaPayments company Nala pivoted to offer remittance service in 2021, tapping the growing money transfer market in Africa, and demand for reliable and affordable services.
For markets like Kenya, they have integrated with mobile money service M-Pesa enabling users living in the diaspora to pay local bills directly.
However, building the service on the payment rails of other providers meant that the fintech could not guarantee dependability.
This drove the decision to develop its own platform that directly integrates with banks and mobile money providers.
The remittance business growth coincides with reports that remittance flows to sub-Saharan Africa will continue on a growth trajectory.
Moove, an African mobility fintech that offers vehicle financing to ride-hailing and delivery app drivers, has raised $100 million in a funding round as it plots expansion into new markets.
Moove says it plans to use the new capital to expand its revenue-based vehicle financing platform to 16 markets by the end of 2025.
Moove takes a two-pronged approach to vehicle financing.
The vehicles provided to Moove customers vary from traditional options like Toyotas and Suzukis to electric vehicles (EVs) such as Teslas.
The vehicle financing startup operates large EV fleets in the UAE and the U.K.
Miami-based Onyx Private, a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that provided banking and investment services for high-earning Millennials and Gen Zers, is terminating its bank operations.
Y Combinator has listed the company as “inactive” on its on its website, something Santos could not explain.
Santos claimed that Onyx had been exploring the idea over the past year and had made developments with some partners.
Santos today declined to disclose how many banking customers Onyx had.
Although a source told TechCrunch that regulatory issues may have played a part in this decision, Santos dismissed that, telling us that no regulatory issues caused the startup to shut down its direct-to-consumer banking operations.
Appzone is one of the standout local fintech software providers for banks and fintechs, providing better pricing and flexibility.
As such, it rebranded to Zone, a licensed blockchain-enabled payment infrastructure company–and carved out its original banking-as-a-service business into a separate standalone company, Qore.
Today, Zone, its blockchain network that enables payments and acceptance of digital currencies, is announcing that it has raised $8.5 million in a seed round.
Therefore, the fintech is developing an interoperable payment infrastructure using blockchain technology — known for its ability to scale infinitely — to connect banks and fintech companies, facilitating transaction flow without intermediaries.
“We are excited by the potential for Zone’s technology to be replicated across borders to advance payment innovation globally.
This week, we look at Griffin Bank getting its license ahead of some heavy hitters, and we go inside Stripe’s annual letter, some funding rounds, and more!
The banking-as-a-service company managed to do something that even the region’s most valuable fintech company, Revolut, hasn’t been able to do yet — obtain a banking license.
Granted, as Mike Butcher writes, banking licenses are difficult to come by (Griffin’s took a year), but Revolut has talked about securing a banking license for the past three years.
Now that Griffin has a banking license, it offers a full-stack platform for fintech companies to offer banking, payments and wealth solutions via automated compliance and an integrated ledger.
In a new SEC filing, Reddit’s IPO involves around 22 million shares, priced between $31 and $34.
Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is investing $80 million in Perfios, an Indian fintech that provides real-time credit underwriting solutions to banks and other financial institutions.
The new investment values Perfios at a valuation of over $1 billion.
Bengaluru-based Perfios provides real-time data aggregation and analysis tools to financial institutions, enabling them to streamline their customer journeys and make more informed decisions.
Perfios said it delivers 8.2 billion data points to banks and other financial institutions every year to facilitate faster decisioning, and processes 1.7 billion transactions a year with an AUM of $36 billion.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of Canada’s largest pension funds, has ramped up its interest in India in recent years.
Why does every startup want to help you get paid?
Then I wrote about Remofirst, a startup out to take on the likes of Deel and Rippling, too, securing $25 million in Series A funding.
Also, Tage wrote about how UAE-based RemotePass announced it had raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by Istanbul-based 212 VC.
Paris-based business banking startup Qonto is using an undisclosed portion of its cash reserve to acquire Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform.
Argyle raises $30M to expand automated income, employment verificationSynctera raises $18.6M in Series A-1 funding (TC covered Synctera’s Series A here.)
And it is using an undisclosed portion of its cash reserve to acquire Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform.
Qonto originally started with online business accounts with debit cards specifically tailored for small and medium businesses.
After a while, Regate will be integrated in Qonto directly to improve several accounting automation features of Qonto, such as invoicing, accounts payables, accounts receivables, etc.
Qonto finds itself in a different position from Payfit, another French unicorn (or former unicorn) that provides a software-as-a-service tool focused on payroll.
As many fintech startups are struggling to raise a new funding round, Qonto could become a consolidator in the space.
