Hi all, Julie here. Happy Wednesday! I'm just over here trying to get a grasp of everything that has happened in fintech over even just the past 24 hours. We knew 2021 would be busy and exciting, and boy it sure isn't dissapointing so far.

The News

Plaid's Future

In case you didn't hear, the Department of Justice raised some issues with Visa's plan to buy of Plaid (which was announced a year ago today). Yesterday, Visa and Plaid decided not to go through with the deal since the court procedings would be both costly and time consuming. What's more, Plaid is almost certainly worth a fair bit more today than the ~$5B that Visa was going to buy them for a year ago since Plaid powers so much of the digital fintech space that's grown exponentially over the same time frame. So it's probably in Plaid's best interest to walk away from this. And by the sounds of this story from Dan Primack, that's exactly why they did.

The question then becomes what does Plaid do now. Do they stay private? Do they try to go public? Do they do a SPAC like Chamath is basically begging them to? I dont think even Plaid knows the answer to this quite yet. In any of these cases, however, Plaid's future is arguable very bright. Even brighter than it was two days ago when the world thought the deal was still going to happen.

And obviously, current investors and board members of Plaid are pretty excited to get an even bigger return on their investment ;)

Affirm's First Day of Trading

Well, we all knew shares of Affirm would have a nice pop at the IPO given what other public offerings have done in the past 12-months. But wow, what a day! The stock priced Tuesday night at $49 a share, and began trading at $90.90 per share on Wednesday. After rising to ~$103, it ended up settling just above $97 to end the day. The big questions for the company now are how many bikes Peloton can keep selling (~30% of Affirm's business comes from Peloton), where else Affirm can expand (personal loans? mortgages?), and if it can become a full fledged bank with a great tech stack. Those answers will determine not only if it's worth the current price tag, but if it can continue to grow even if the Buy Now, Pay Later market stalls.

Oh, and Shopify is pretty happy about Affirm's IPO too.

So.Much.Funding.

Payments company Rapyd announced a $300M round led by Coatue, with Spark, Avid, general Catalyst, Tiger Global Management and others also participating. I mean, 2020 was a pretty big year for online payments, so I'd assume that helped them a bit when raising this round. As businesses try to quickly move financial services and similar activities online, companies like Rapyd have seen a surge in demand. Rapyd’s customer base now numbers about 5,000 businesses and it said it's currently adding around 500 each week.

Speaking of payments, Checkout.com raised $450M at a $15B valuation. Oh, and Tiger was in this one too as the lead. The startup does a whole bunch of things in the payments space. Fraud detection, speeding up payments, processing transactions etc. I actually didn't know this fun fact until reading about this news: Checkout.com was basically bootstrapped until a massive series A. Oh, and they hired A TON last year, going from 440 at the start of 2020 to around 940 today.

MORE PAYMENTS FUNDRAISING! Did I miss some sort of memo where every payments company was supposed to announce funding this week? Good Lord.

This time it's Modern Treasury raising $38M in a round led by Altimeter Capital. And of course, just like every other payments company said, this round came after "explosive growth" over the past year. The startup has focused on the B2B market, helping businesses better understand their balance sheets on a daily basis, make real time payments, and manage their banking activities.

Finally, a funding round that isn't payments related. Blend, the company known for its software that helps process mortgages, raised $300M and doubled its valuation from five months ago. Oh, and Tiger was in this one too. Y'all been busy! I think the big question for Blend now is how well its products outside of mortgages will catch on. It obviously saw a ton of demand from banks for its white-labeled mortgage product, but what about home equity, deposit accounts, and other types of loans?

And while we all talk about consumer facing banking a ton, the business banking space is undergoing some big changes as well. That led Rho to raise a $15M round from M13 Ventures, Torch Capital, and Inspired Capital. Right now, Rho is focused on helping high growth businesses with their banking services. As someone that now has to deal with this a bit, I can tell you that it certainly needs some work.

Stytch, an early stage startup focusing on user authentication, announced a $6M seed round (yes, MILLION, could you imagine if I was typing that a couple of years ago?!). Benchmark led the round with participation from Index, and angel investors like Plaid's Willian Hockey (the co-founders worked at Plaid before starting this new venture).

Digital Payments in Pakistan

Interesting news in the digital payments space (I know, but this is the last payments story I promise). Pakistan announced a new government-run instant digital payment system in a cash heavy society. The system will allow merchants, businesses, individuals, fintechs, and government entities to send and receive near real-time payments through the internet, mobile phones and agents.

The announcement is several years coming, with the State Bank of Pakistan collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build the product. In the Reuters story on the announcement, Bill Gates said: “I hope that in years to come we will look back and see this new digital public good as an important contribution to our shared goal of giving all people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty."

He should get into fintech.

Spruce Expansion

Real estate startup Spruce announced a new white-label offering meant to help the residential real estate closing process. It essentially allows others to run their own title agencies, creating a white labeled product of what Spruce itself started out doing. Obviously tech has become even more important in real estate over the past year as people were confined to their homes and unable to travel or go to office. So rather than meeting with an agent in person to sign papers, get tours, and do a bunch of the other things that were traditionally done face to face, having a system like Spruce to runs parts of the process online has been that much more important.

Community Highlights​
Fintech Today community member Alex Cohen and his wife are having a baby! If that little one is even half as sassy as Alex is...

I also love this early photo of #TeamAffirm.

Career Corner

As always, here are two fintech jobs we're highlighting today!

1. ​Account Manager, Modern Treasury: After raising this new round of funding, Modern Treasury is looking for someone who will be critical to its customers’ success as they implement, build, expand, and deepen their relationship with and dependence on Modern Treasury. You will also help its technical teams stay close to customer needs and market trends.
2. ​Investing Role, ARK Invest: ARK is looking for someone to join its investing team support its Internet and Fintech strategies. You will conduct original research on innovative financial technologies and next generation internet technologies, while providing coverage of companies in the fintech ecosystem. An understanding of the Asian market and related companies is a plus.

That's all for today. Premium subs, we're launching another new writer tomorrow, so be sure to check your inboxes at 6pm ET! Otherwise, see everyone again on Friday for our end of the week news!

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Julie VerHage is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.

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