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Hi all, Julie here.

I’m gonna keep my intro short since there’s a good amount of news to cover today. The only thing I’ll say is 1) you should listen to my latest podcast episode with Adam Hadi of Current on the influencer economy and 2) my episode with Frank Rotman and Ken Lin comes out at 7am ET tomorrow, so you should probably set a calendar alert for that. Or you could simply subscribe and you’ll automatically be alerted to all of this great content ;)

Bill.com Might Be Acquiring Divvy

The corporate credit space is getting exciting! After two massive raises from Brex and Ramp, it looks like Utah’s Divvy is exploring an exit to Bill.com. The deal is expected to be announced Thursday around the same time the company reports earnings. Will be interesting to listen in to the earnings call regardless of whether it’s announced or not since analysts will certainly be asking about this regardless. The transaction is expected to be north of $2B if it does indeed go through.

Berkshire Won't Be Buying Dogecoin

Surprise surprise, Charlie Munger isn’t a fan of crypto. At the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting this past weekend, Munger didn’t mince words, calling the run up in Bitcoin disgusting. “I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.” Perhaps this is why Berkshire has underperformed for the past decade.

Tala Partners With Visa, Bitso Becomes LatAm’s First Crypto Unicorn, and a Digital Dollar

In other crypto news, emerging market financial services startup Tala just launched a big partnership with Visa to help underbanked populations get into the crypto market. Along with Circle and the Stellar Development Foundation, Tala will be exploring how to make it easier for underbanked populations to buy, store and use crypto currencies. The first coin they will be exploring is USDC, the stablecoin governed by the Centre Consortium. Tala customers will have access to USDC in Tala’s digital wallet and its partnership with Visa will enable Tala to offer Visa cards linked to Tala’s digital wallet. This means customers will be able to easily spend against their USDC balance at any of the 70M merchants that accept Visa.

LatAm cryptocurrency exchange Bitso has raised a $250M funding round valuing it at $2.2B. This appears to make it the first crypto startup in the region to hit the unicorn milestone. And of course, fintech funding behemoths Tiger and Coatue led the round. More on Tiger later...

Central Bank digital currencies, oh my. Earlier this week, the U.S. nonprofit Digital Dollar Project said it’s launching five pilot programs over the next 12 months to test the potential uses of a U.S. central bank digital currency. This is the first time we’ve seen something like this in the US (though Asia has started exploring a CB currency as well). The Fed has been a bit more cautious and skeptical on a move, working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a technology platform for a hypothetical digital dollar, but chair Jerome Powell said last week that it is “far more important” to get it right than to be fast. Fair.

Tiger Roars

Tiger Global, which you’ve heard about in this newsletter a lot lately with the number of fintech deals it’s doing, is raising a new $10B fund. With investments in companies like Brex and Public.com, fintech is just one of a few sectors that the team is making big bets in. In just these first few months of 2021, Tiger has taken part in 100 investment rounds, according to this story in the Financial Times. This new fund would be the largest raised by an independent fund manager for minority investments in technology start-ups. If you want to learn more about Tiger and their strategy, I highly recommend this piece from FTT community member Everett Randle.

Expensify IPO

Expense management software startup Expensify put out a press release saying it has submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC for an IPO, though there wasn’t much info on what the price and size of the offering would be quite yet. The company rolled out a concierge travel virtual assistant last year that probably didn’t get as much use as the team was expecting, but with the vaccine rollout in full swing and travel seeing a big uptick, this could be a nice source of growth heading into an IPO.

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Not one, not two, but THREE great job postings today:

1. ​Commercial Director at Unlimint Games Services: Unlimint launched almost 11 years ago with an ambition to help entrepreneurs accept and make payments to scale their business, by combining deep tech expertise with local insights. Today, with a team of more than 300 people and 14 offices located worldwide, the company has become one of the leading providers in the industry and is now offering fast-growing innovative businesses a constantly evolving business interface, designed to bring the financial world of tomorrow closer and to blur the line between traditional banking, digital wallets, and cards payments. Unlimint Game Services is looking for an experienced Commercial Director to join the team remotely or in its Frankfurt or Limassol office. If you are looking to find a rewarding career within a young international team of driven individuals, want to keep abreast of gaming industry trends, players and market conditions, while getting paid for your expertise, then this position is for you!
2. ​Product Marketing Lead, Cash App: Cash App is hatching a Product Marketing function and looking for a seasoned Product Marketing Lead to build and scale the team. This team will be responsible for crafting and executing on scalable and measurable go-to-market strategies and campaigns for Cash App’s growing portfolio of financial products and services. Cash App is consistently among the Top Finance Apps in the US and is focused on making money more relatable, instantly available, and universally accessible for everyone.
3. ​Enterprise Sales (Financial Services) at Nova Credit: Nova Credit, which is focused on helping immigrants get access to credit, is looking for someone to join its stellar Go-To-Market team. With deep product and industry knowledge, these leaders are focused on bringing Nova Credit into an ever-broadening set of businesses. Within its Enterprise Sales team, you will play an essential role in building, unlocking, and winning its relationships with financial institutions - specifically, banking institutions, credit unions, and fintech lenders. You will be responsible for executing Nova Credit’s entire sales process, from initial prospecting, to direct client negotiations, through to contract execution, and ultimately transitioning accounts to its Solution Architects (for implementation) and Customer Success (for ongoing account management) teams. Your focus will be on developing & leading large, complex, new enterprise deals and building strong, high-stakes, trust-based relationships. And you'll help shape how it engages, designs, and builds products for the best brands in banking.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 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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