FinTech Startup Funding Alert: Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m

#fintech #bank #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #lending #lendingsolutions #lendingtech #startups #smesector #smes #fundingalert #startupfunding

Formerly known as Margo Bank, the newly named Memo Bank, a French fintech, is launching its exclusive business offering, which is set to tap small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Alongside its launch and lending licence, the start-up has landed a €20 million funding round led by Paris-based, BlackFin Capital Partners | Investors in Financial Services, and existing French investors, Daphni and Bpifrance Digital Venture.

The bank targets SMEs that generate over €2 million a year and houses more than ten employees. Its key focus will be on delivering paperless credit lines to businesses in just a few days, directly competing with France’s online lenders, rather than the country’s neobanks.

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Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m - FinTech Futures

Memo Bank has launched its business offering which is set to tap SMEs, in addition to obtaining a licence and securing a €20 million funding round.

Startup Strategy: Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options

#MSME #SME #lendingsolutions #lending #credit #fintech #startups #startupstrategy

Santander’s invoice and expenses app, Asto, has partnered with alternative UK lender, Funding Options, to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Funding Option’s CEO, Simon Cureton, calls Asto “one of a new breed of ambitious and innovative lenders laser-focused on providing truly flexible finance solutions for businesses”.

Key takeaway:

Partnering with e-commerce giants would give lending company a better access to financial strength of the sellers on these platforms.

The above fintech venture broke into lending last year when it partnered with eBay to off loans to the 200,000 UK SMEs which sell their products through the ecommerce giant’s platform.

The app connects to eBay’s data to measure sales and cash flow to identify prospective customers and shape its credit decisioning process.

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Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options - FinTech Futures

Asto, Santander's fintech app, has partnered with alternative UK lender Funding Options to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and SMEs.

Fintech Card Solutions: Mastercard set to acquire Finicity for $825m

#fintech #openbanking #lending #mastercard #visa #mergersandacquisitions

Mastercard has agreed to buy Finicity, a financial data aggregation start-up Plaid, for $825 million.

If performance targets are met, Finicity’s existing shareholders will earn up to $160 million on top of the sale price, taking the total value of the deal to $985 million.

This follows a similar move by rival Visa in January, which saw the card issuer giant buy data aggregator fintech Plaid for five times the price of Finicity at $5.3 billion.

Much like Plaid’s open banking services, Finicity allows financial services firms to gain financial insights around payments, account and asset verification, and transactions.

The card issuer giant also wants to focus on improving credit decisioning, and envisions that the integration of Finicity’s account owner verification tools will speed up automated clearing house (ACH) and real-time payments.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that Visa’s acquisition of Plaid is being investigated by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). This raises questions over Mastercard’s acquisition of Finicity, and whether it too will fall under regulatory scrutiny over potential impacts to competition.

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Mastercard set to acquire Finicity for $825m - FinTech Futures

Mastercard is buying Finicity, a financial data aggregation start-up, for $825m. Existing shareholders will earn up to $160m on top of the sale price.

Credit focused fintech startup Upgrade raises $40 mn after reaching $100 mn run rate

Upgrade, Inc., a credit-focused fintech startup, announced that it has raised a $40 million Series D round that the company says gives it a $1 billion valuation. The company is a fintech startup with a credit-focus today, though it intends to add more neobank-like tooling in Q3.

Key takeaways:-

1. Upgrade, Inc. has a different philosophy than some credit card providers, in the view of its founder and CEO, Renaud Laplanche. “Banks have an incentive to keep customers in debt as long as possible,” he said during an interview with TechCrunch. Upgrade, Inc., in contrast, offers lower rates — cards starting at 6.9%, under what the CEO described as a market-normal entry rate of 12% to 13% — and set repayment periods for debts so that customers don’t wind up in a credit cycle that never ends, sapping them of financial health.

2. One constant in the fintech world is the offering of more services to existing customers, helping drive up their lifetime value (LTV) and thus making their cost to acquire (CAC) more palatable.

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Credit-focused fintech startup Upgrade raises $40M after reaching $100M run rate

This morning Upgrade, a credit-focused fintech startup, announced that it has raised a $40 million Series D round that the company says gives it a $1 billion valuation. The Upgrade round slots neatly into a few trends TechCrunch has noted in recent quarters, including fintech startups raising at ne...

Europe's most valuable fintech startup Klarna sees surge in its revenues during coronavirus pandemic

Klarna, Europe’s most-valuable private fintech, has seen its top line swell during the global lockdown, as retailers and shoppers flock online.

Klarna is one of several ‘buy now, pay later’ companies that give customers the option to pay for online purchases belatedly, either in a single repayment or in instalments. This can help fuel retail sales and, in return, each new retailer pays Klarna an upfront contractual fee, as well as commission on each transaction (and loan).

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Klarna revenues surge during coronavirus | Sifted

Klarna, Europe's most-valuable private fintech, has seen its top line swell during the global lockdown, as retailers and shoppers flock online. Klarna's commercial vice president, Luke Griffiths, told Sifted in an interview that the Swedish 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) provider had profited from the disruption of recent months.