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The Top Ten Biggest Fintech News Stories of 2020

It was a tumultuous year with the pandemic impacting fintech companies in different ways but here are the stories we think were most important

December 30, 2020 By Peter Renton Leave a Comment

Views: 692

As the sun sets on 2020 and we look back at this past year nearly everything is viewed through the lens of the pandemic. Many fintech companies did surprisingly well while others, particularly in the lending space, struggled. When we look at the year as a whole we see that it was M&A activity that consistently showed up in the news, some related to the pandemic, some not. But the biggest story 0f the year, in my opinion, was how fintech came to the aid of millions of small businesses in the PPP. Here are my top fintech news stories of 2020 (with my usual focus on lending and digital banking):

1. With the PPP Fintech Comes of Age

Rob Frohwein, CEO and Co-Founder of Kabbage, said it best on the LendIt keynote stage this year: “Kabbage was built for the PPP”. So, it was was for many fintech lenders in the small business space. Tasked with having to develop new systems for the Paycheck Protection Program in a matter of days, rather than months, the fintech industry responded and helped provide a huge number of small businesses with the loans they needed, saving millions of jobs in the process. It was not just Kabbage, we had Cross River Bank and Square as well as the loans marketplaces like Lendio leading the way.

2. Intuit to Acquire Credit Karma for $7 Billion

Credit Karma has almost singlehandedly increased the awareness of credit scores for tens of millions of Americans over the last decade. Intuit realized the value in the incredibly rich dataset that Credit Karma has created and wanted that, and the huge customer base, for themselves. And they were willing to pay to the tune of $7.1 billion. In the end this deal closed for $8.1 billion earlier this month with Credit Karma having to divest their fledgling tax preparation business, it was sold to Square for $50 million. For more on this deal read this interesting piece in Fortune.

3. Visa to Buy Plaid in $5.3 Billion Deal

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fintech Tagged With: American Express, Credit Karma, Cross River Bank, Intuit, Kabbage, lendingclub, Plaid, PPP, Radius Bank, Upstart, Varo, Visa

Views: 692

Intuit to Acquire Credit Karma for $7 Billion

The latest fintech mega deal has the maker of TurboTax, Mint and Quickbooks acquiring Credit Karma for a reported $7 billion

February 24, 2020 By Peter Renton 1 Comment

Views: 479

We start out the week with yet another blockbuster fintech acquisition. The Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday that Intuit, the maker of Quickbooks, TurboTax and Mint, is close to a deal to acquire Credit Karma for a reported $7 billion. The deal could be announced as soon as today when Intuit reports earnings after the closing bell. [Update: the deal is now official, here is the press release].

Under the deal Credit Karma would become an independent unit inside Intuit with CEO and co-founder, Ken Lin, remaining in charge. Credit Karma was last valued at around $4 billion two years ago and publicly traded Intuit is valued at around $77 billion. The $7 billion deal is expected to be a combination of cash and stock.

What This Deal Could Mean for Intuit and Credit Karma

Intuit has very strong offerings with Quickbooks for business and TurboTax for consumers. While the personal finance tool Mint was groundbreaking a decade ago it has been left to stagnate since Intuit acquired it back in 2009. There have been precious few new innovations in the past decade. This product also operates in a similar way to Credit Karma in that it makes money by recommending products such as credit cards and personal loans. But Credit Karma has done a far better job of this than Mint has ever done so Intuit clearly sees a lot of upside here. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fintech Tagged With: acquisition, Credit Karma, Intuit

Views: 479

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ABOUT LENDIT FINTECH NEWS

LendIt Fintech News, Powered by Lend Academy, has been bringing you all the news and information about fintech and online lending since 2010 when it was founded by Peter Renton. We not only have the industry’s most active news site, but also the largest investor forum and the first and most popular podcast.

We are a team of fintech enthusiasts who have been covering the industry for many years. With a deep knowledge of online lending, digital banking, blockchain, artificial intelligence and more our team covers the daily news and writes in-depth editorials.

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