An article in Forbes earlier this month about the traction of digital banks caught my attention. A survey of U.S. consumers conducted by Cornerstone Advisors showed that traction among many of these new neobanks (I use this term and digital bank interchangeably in this article) is not happening as quickly as many of us expected. […]
Today’s News
- TransferWise Raises $292mn in Secondary FundingUK based payments fintech TransferWise has upped their valuation to $3.5bn with a secondary funding raise of $292mn; the round was led by Lead Edge Capital, Lone Pine Capital and Vitruvian Partners, BlackRock, Andressen Horowitz and Baillie Gifford also participated in the round; the company will use the funds to take on 750 more staff […]
- Marqeta Raises New Round at $2 Billion ValuationThe company has finalized their $260 million Series E round which was led by Coatue Management; other investors in the company have included Visa, Goldman Sachs, ICONIQ, 83North and Granite Ventures; the news of the round was first reported back in March; Marqeta currently works with Square, Instacart among many other startups and plans to […]
- Plaid Announces “Plaid Direct” for Better Connections Between FintechsToday, Plaid announced Plaid Direct which aims to make working with digital banks easier; for example, prior to the new offering users could only fund their Venmo account through a connection with a traditional financial institution; Plaid Direct allows fintechs to connect directly to each other; Baker Shogry, head of product at Plaid shared that […]
LATEST PODCASTS
Podcast 199: Bernardo Martinez of Funding Circle USA
Small businesses across the country are still not getting all the capital they need. Many small business owners do not see banks as a viable funding alternative either from a time or ease of use perspective. So, they are turning to online lending platforms in record numbers. When it comes to longer term (three to […]
Podcast 198: Charlie Delingpole of ComplyAdvantage
A travesty of today’s financial system is how easy it is to launder money. Despite billions of dollars in expense and tens of thousands of people attacking this problem banks stop around 1% of money from financial crime. Incremental change is not going to help here, we need a new approach. Our next guest on […]
Podcast 197: Emmalyn Shaw of Flourish
It is one of the great challenges of our time. Despite low unemployment and a booming economy there is still a large sector of the population that is struggling financially. As I wrote earlier this week there is a new breed of entrepreneurs attacking this problem but they need significant amounts of capital to get […]