Fintech News | TechCrunch

AI Friends, deepfake foes, and which Tiger Global partner is leaving now

Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan, Devin Coldewey — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:30:00 +0000

AI hardware has taken on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace — a pendant that gives you an AI friend to talk to and … that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware products that have come to market lately – like Humane’s Ai Pin […]

Fintech Execs from Synctera, Unit, and Treasury Prime discuss the future of BaaS at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

TechCrunch Events — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:58:37 +0000

The serious, long-term negative impact of the bankruptcy of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) fintech Synapse will be significant “on all of fintech, especially consumer-facing services,” one observer has said. In the wake of that company’s collapse, other startups in the space are working hard to prove that not all BaaS are created equal. As partners to fintechs, […]

Fintech giant Stripe keeps on buying

Mary Ann Azevedo — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 17:05:00 +0000

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at Stripe’s easy-peasy acquisition, the role fintech played in Clio’s latest raise, the latest with digital banking startup Mercury, and more. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big […]

FranShares has a new approach to passive income, letting people invest in franchises for as little as $500

Mary Ann Azevedo — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Historically, passive income has been associated with investing in real estate such as rental properties. FranShares is a Chicago-based startup that wants to offer investors another form of passive income: the chance to invest in franchises for as little as $500. For the unacquainted, a franchisor is a party that owns and licenses a franchise […]

Stripe’s easy-peasy acquisition and why is Twitch still losing money?

Rebecca Bellan — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:37:37 +0000

Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look […]

Stripe acquires payment processing startup Lemon Squeezy

Mary Ann Azevedo — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:55:44 +0000

Payments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a merchant of record, Lemon Squeezy calculates and pays global sales tax for digital products, handling legal processing and fees in every country. It primarily serves SaaS and software businesses. In a […]

Egypt’s MNT-Halan banks $157.5M, gobbles up a fintech in Turkey to expand

Tage Kene-Okafor — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 07:31:39 +0000

MNT-Halan, a fintech unicorn out of Egypt, is on a consolidation march. The microfinance and payments startup has raised $157.5 million in funding and is using the money in part to fund the acquisition of another fintech, Tam Finans, to expand into Turkey. Tam Finans provides financing to micro-enterprises and SMEs. It currently operates 39 […]

Revolut receives long-awaited UK banking license

Romain Dillet — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:08:44 +0000

This is a significant milestone for the London-based fintech company, particularly since it has been trying to secure this license since 2021.

CRED launches personal finance manager for India’s affluent

Manish Singh — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:31:00 +0000

CRED, an Indian fintech startup, has rolled out a new feature that will help its customers manage and gain deeper insights into their cash flow, as the startup seeks to drive engagement through personal finance tools. Known primarily for its credit card bill payment and consumer lending service, the new feature of the Bengaluru-based startup […]

Digital banking startup Mercury abruptly shuttered service for startups in Ukraine, Nigeria, other countries

Christine Hall, Mary Ann Azevedo, Tage Kene-Okafor — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 17:19:53 +0000

Digital banking startup Mercury informed some founders that it is no longer serving customers in certain countries, including Ukraine.

The next fintech to go public may not be the one you expected

Mary Ann Azevedo — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 17:05:00 +0000

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at Human Interest’s path toward an IPO, fintech’s newest unicorn, a slew of new fundraises, and more. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big story SMB-focused 401k provider […]

TigerBeetle is building database software optimized for financial transactions

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

After doing some consulting for Microsoft to develop protections against zero-day exploits, software engineer Joran Dirk Greef worked with Coil, a web monetization startup in San Francisco, to help build its payments infrastructure. At the time, Coil was using a traditional database to store and process transactions. But Greef had the insight that a specialized […]

Fintech Fragment eases ledger problems, nabs $9M from Jack Altman, BoxGroup, others

Christine Hall — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Fragment's digital ledger API applies real-time, double entry accounting to find where things aren’t adding up.

Pesa unlocks new markets to keep remittances flowing to emerging economies

Annie Njanja — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 07:33:24 +0000

Founders of Pesa, a remittance fintech, know too well how costly, inaccessible and unreliable remittance services drive people to opt for risky informal channels — like WhatsApp groups — to transfer money. Their firsthand experience using informal channels and realizing how prevalent their use was among Africans living in the diaspora after settling in Canada […]

Paytm loss widens and revenue shrinks as it grapples with regulatory clampdown

Manish Singh — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 06:21:31 +0000

Indian fintech Paytm’s struggles won’t seem to end. The company on Friday reported that its revenue declined by 36% and its loss more than doubled in the first quarter as it continues to grapple with a regulatory clampdown that has significantly curtailed business at its payments bank subsidiary. Once the poster child of India’s startup […]

Fintech startup Coast lands $40M just 4 months after its last $25M raise

Mary Ann Azevedo — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Coast, a startup that describes itself as “a financial services platform for the future of transportation,” has raised $40 million in Series B funding — just four months after announcing a $25 million venture round and $67 million in debt financing, the startup has told TechCrunch exclusively. Back-to-back fundraises were common prior to and during […]

How a B2B payments startup won Max, Jack and Sam Altman, JP Morgan as investors

Christine Hall — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 21:09:37 +0000

Slope's founders both have a background in AI, so large language models power the company’s underwriting infrastructure.

Ethereum co-founder’s warning against ‘pro-crypto’ candidates: ‘Are they in it for the right reasons?’

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 20:04:42 +0000

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, issued a warning on Wednesday against choosing a candidate purely based on whether they claim to be “pro-crypto.” In a blog post, Buterin said it’s more important to scrutinize a candidate’s broader policies to ensure they support cryptocurrency’s underlying goals, including internationalism and protection for private communications. “If a […]

Matera raises $100M from Warburg Pincus to help the US catch up to Brazil in instant payments

Mary Ann Azevedo — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

To say that Pix, the instant payment system created by the Central Bank of Brazil, has been a resounding success is an understatement. With Pix, money moves directly between core banking systems of different financial institutions. Adoption has been widespread and ubiquitous. The country’s residents have the ability to even pay street vendors using the […]

Sequoia bets big on Stripe, LatAm fintechs clean up and one African startup’s outsized Series A

Mary Ann Azevedo — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:05:00 +0000

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at Sequoia Capital’s effort to give its LPs liquidity on the firm’s investments in Stripe, how LatAm fintechs are still catching investors’ attention, a sizable Series A from an African startup, and more. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to […]