We are rounding up this week with an overview of the latest insights in fintech area! Throughout this relatively quite week we collected fresh pieces of Finding Rounds and News. Enjoy reading!

Funding rounds

• Mynt (Taguig, Philippines) recently raised $300 million (EUR 265.2m) during an international funding round, bringing its total valuation to over $2 billion. The new funding expands its war chest to further invest in innovation and set the bar higher for digital cash use in the archipelago. The company saw an exponential increase in its user numbers from 20 million in January 2020 to 46 million as of June 2021. Mynt’s existing investors — Globe Telecom, Manila-based Ayala Corp., and US investment firm Bow Wave Capital, as well as angel investor Itai Tsiddon and venture capital firm Amplo Ventures — also participated in the latest funding round. Read more.

• Jupiter (Mumbai, Maharashtra), industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s consumer-focused neobank, has raised about $86 million (EUR 76.04m) in a new financing round as the Bangalore-based startup gears up to offer its customers lending and wealth management services. Tiger Global, QED and Sequoia Capital India co-led the two-year-old startup’s Series C round, Gupta told TechCrunch in an interview. The new round values the startup at $711 million, up from about $300 million in its August Series B funding. Read more.

• Transigo (Richmond, Virginia), a fintech company, provider of SaaS software that enables cross-border B2B marketplaces to provide point-of-sale financing to its buyers, announced it had successfully secured a $70 million (EUR 61.8m) funding facility from two publicly listed companies in Israel. This facility will allow Transigo to expand its point-of-sale SaaS platform to major B2B marketplaces in Asia in the first quarter of 2022. Read more.

Fintech News

• Fintech bosses accuse Starling Bank’s Anne Boden of stifling innovation (The Times)
  Anne Boden, the chief executive of Starling Bank, has been accused by more than 50 fintech company founders of stifling innovation after she said that Britain’s open banking regime had failed. The group, which includes the bosses of the fintech firms LendInvest, Zopa and Nested, wrote to MPs this week describing Boden’s comments during a Treasury select committee hearing as “uncompetitive and typical of banks trying to thwart the future of innovation in financial services”. Read more.

• Asia Vets proposes acquisition of fintech firm that will result in reverse takeover (Straitstimes)
  Catalist-listed Asia Vets Holdings has entered into a sale and purchase agreement to acquire 100 per cent of the ordinary shares in Aldigi Holdings, a fintech company, that will result in a reverse takeover. In a bourse filing on Thursday (Dec 30), the company said that the proposed acquisition will let the group capture opportunities within the “fast-growing financial and technology business”, in line with its plan to enhance revenue by venturing into a high-growth sector. Read more.

• Fintech StartUp Spocto Solutions onboards AdvaRisk to offer fraud detection (Indianfoline)
  Spocto Solutions Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading collectech solution provider, had introduced contactless collections for banks and NBFCs, covering all kinds of loans, is now entering into a strategic partnership with Mumbai-based AdvaRisk, a fintech organisation that provides a platform focussed on fraud prevention, detection, investigation, and recovery. The loan fraud is estimated to grow to new highs. Post-pandemic incomes have reduced due to lockdown and job cuts; banks have to resort to more fool-proof methods to evaluate and monitor frauds with further stringent technical checks and balances. Read more.

______

Subscribe to our newsletters if you want to find out more about weekly news and insights.