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Hi all, Julie here.

Right after I sent out the newsletter on Friday, Jordan and I went to meet up with FTT Community Member Will White! For those that don’t know Will, I highly recommend you give him a follow on Twitter. He works with our very own Cokie as co-founder of Lasagna and has experience at companies like Daylight, 11:FS and Monzo. Oh, and he’s lived in more countries than I can count on one hand. AKA: he’s cool, smart AND cultured.

Today's Partner, Treasury Prime

Thinking about launching a card program? There’s a lot to consider.

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Its Cards 101 on-demand webinar can help make things easier by answering questions ranging from details about card types, card issuance challenges and pitfalls, and key components to a successful card program.

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Company News

Nubank IPO

I talked about this on Twitter and then totally forgot to mention it in the newsletter. My bad! In case you missed it, Brazilian fintech giant Nubank is preparing for an IPO on the Nasdaq, according to Bloomberg. The story also said that the valuation would likely be north of $40B. Call me a fintech bull, but I’d easily buy Nubank shares at $40B considering Goldman and Citi both have valuations around $140B. Yes, I know it’s not apples to apples, but Nubank has massive potential *still* and its growth has been staggering (as FTT Expert Jenny Johnston has written).

How Carta Found Its Valuation

Cap table management and valuation software company Carta recently raised $500M at a $7.4B valuation, and it used its own platform to figure out the valuation it should go out at. Carta ran an auction using its own trading platform to sell $100M of its shares to secondary buyers, then used the valuation at which the shares sold — $6.9B — as evidence to primary investors of Carta’s true value. Well played, team Carta, well played.

Funding and Deals

More Tiger Bets

Real estate tech startup Divvy Homes announced a new round of funding that boosted its valuation to $2B. The equity financing was co-led by Tiger Global Management and Caffeinated Capital. Divvy helps renters become homeowners by collecting a deposit equivalent to 1% to 2% of the property’s value, purchasing the home itself, and then charging a monthly payment, up to a quarter of which can be saved toward a down payment, which can help win a mortgage approval. The company says a goal for years to come is launching a 30-year program that would give customers enough time to fully own their homes.

Some numbers:

• More than 750K consumers have applied to Divvy Homes since its 2017 founding.
• Growth has accelerated in the past 6 months with the number of cumulative qualified applicants and acquisitions of homes per month tripling since it last raised in February
• Almost 25K real estate agents work with Divvy, over 3x the number that did 12 months ago

Latam’s Uala Raises Big Round

Argentine financial services startup Uala announced a new round led by Softbank and Tencent with a $2.45B valuation. Launched in 2017, Uala offers a Mastercard branded prepaid card and an app that allows users access to a number of financial services including sending and receiving money, online shopping, withdrawing cash at ATMs and requesting loans. The company has issued more than 3.3M prepaid Mastercards to shoppers in Argentina and some 200K debit cards in Mexico, and says roughly 22% of Argentines between the age of 18 and 25 have a Uala card. The company says hiring is the main reason for the funding, hoping to have more than 2K employees by the end of 2022.

Chime’s New Valuation

I guess the DJ Khaled music videos are working. Chime announced a fresh $750M in its latest funding round and a $25B valuation. The company also announced three new independent board members: Cynthia Marshall, chief executive of the Dallas Mavericks; Jimmy Dunne, vice chairman of investment bank Piper Sandler; and Susan Decker, who is also a board member at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Pretty solid valuation trend for Chime heading into a probable IPO next year.

Crypto Watch

Walmart Looking Into Crypto

Walmart launched a fintech unit not that long ago with Ribbit, and now it’s hiring someone to look into crypto. According to its careers page, the new role includes identifying crypto-related partnerships and investments. I’d forgotten about this, but Walmart actually applied for a patent on a price-stable crypto similar to Facebook’s Libra a couple of years ago.

Figment’s New Funding

Crypto staking startup Figment announced $50M in a new round led by Senator Investment Group and Liberty City Ventures.The company said it plans to scale its team and support more blockchains for staking. It currently supports more than 30 proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains. And for those that aren’t exceptionally knowledgeable on crypto, staking is the process of locking up tokens built on PoS blockchains in order to earn yield. Figment says it has over 100 institutional clients who have staked billions of dollars worth of crypto through its infrastructure.

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We just dropped dozens of amazing roles on our job board from companies such as Truework, Alloy, Coinbase, Affirm, Klarna, Chime and many others! If you’ve had luck landing a job or have roles that you would like to highlight, we want to hear from you!

Congrats to friend and FTT Community Member Tom Brown, who has left Paul Hastings after more than a decade to go full on VC at NYCA! Tom has invested in or advised Upstart, Chime, Ramp, Mercury, Albert, Digit, and more (including Fintech Today). Excited to see you grow in this new role!

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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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