​

Hi all, Julie here.

Taking a moment to remember 9/11. While I was only in 5th grade when it happened, part of my time in NY was spent living literally right next to the memorial. I think the biggest hit for me was my first summer interning in the city, and realizing that loads of other people just like me had been interning in the towers years earlier and lost their lives that day. It’s absolutely wild to think that was 20 years ago already. Thinking of all those who lost loved ones that day.

One other quick note before the weekend, my podcast episode with Colin Kennedy from Ramp is now out! Tune in to hear more about what convinced him to leave Stripe for this new role and what we can expect from this seemingly booming company in the coming months and years (hint: product announcements are pretty imminent).

And thanks again to everyone that came to our NY event with TripActions this week! Email jordan@fintechtoday.co if you're interested in sponsoring future events with us in your city.

Today's Partner, Socure

Socure, the leading provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, has been recognized by Aite-Novarica Group as the winner of the 2021 Impact Innovation Awards for Fraud Innovation in the Risk Mitigation Category for its industry-leading Sigma Synthetic Fraud solution.

Trusted by SoFi, Capital One, Public.com and more, Socure’s Sigma Synthetic Fraud solution delivers unmatched predictiveness, detecting and capturing an average of 90% of synthetic fraud in the riskiest 3% of users, with an AUC (accuracy in classifying good applicants from bad) of 97.5%.

The solution allows financial institutions and other enterprises to combat synthetic ID fraud and eliminate astounding monetary losses by enabling intelligent decisioning, which, when paired with eCBSV, facilitates significant capture of synthetic identities.

Learn how to assess your portfolio for existing synthetic identity fraud, and see why 4 of the top 5 banks and 100+ of the largest fintechs use Socure to protect against this growing threat today.

Don't wait until it's too late! Schedule a call now.​

Company News

Amazon Going After POS

According to a report from Insider, Amazon is working on a POS system that would rival that of Square, Shopify and First Data. The new POS system will be able to handle both in-store and online transactions, add Amazon checkout options, and provide inventory and business analytics. It shows a growing ambition for Amazon to move beyond its own brick and mortar locations as well, selling software used by merchants in other stores to check out customers and analyze data. It’s worth noting that the project is said to be in early stages, so we shouldn’t expect this all getting announced in the coming weeks.

Affirm Soars Again

BNPL giant Affirm is seeing shares surge again today after its latest earnings report. The company easily topped revenue and volume expectations for the most recent quarter and gave an upbeat volume forecast for the full year—even without factoring in potential contributions from the latest Amazon partnership. Some figures:

• Revenue for the period rose to $261.8M from $153.3M a year prior, (analysts had been expecting $224.4M).
• GMV increased to $2.5B from $1.2B, while analysts were anticipating $2.2B.
• Affirm expects revenue of $240M to $250M and GMV of $2.42B to $2.52B in the current quarter vs analysts projecting $232.6M in revenue and $2.2B in GMV.

Full disclosure: I own 5 shares of Affirm.

Funding and Deals

JPM Buys The Infatuation

Much like Amex buying Resy a few years back, it looks like JPM wants to build even more benefits for certain card holders with its acquisition of The Infatuation. Of course, this site doesn’t offer reservations at this point, but the press release said that JPM plans to offer up the website’s reviews and possibly special access to its annual food festival to its customers and credit card holders. Someone in our Slack pointed out that in the worst case scenario, JPM still gets some free ad space.

Varo’s Big (And Very Diluted?) Round

Varo Bank, aka first U.S. neobank to get a national bank charter, announced a $510M funding round at a $2.5B valuation. Several people in the Fintech Today Slack were wondering just how diluted this is given those numbers. Any insights? This financing brings its total raised to $992.4M. In February, Varo touted 3M opened accounts. The company’s CEO said it isn’t yet profitable, but predicts that it will be in about two years.

Big BNPL Rounds

Speaking of Affirm, the private markets are still attracting a ton of attention for BNPL as well. Scalapay and Wisestack both announced big rounds of $155M and $45M respectively. Tiger is leading Europe-based Scalapay’s round, while Insight Partners is leading Wisestack’s. While Scalapay is focused on e-commerce, Wisestack is trying to make it easier for retailers to bring financing options to the POS. Right now it is focusing on some expensive items like air conditioning units and other things provided by contractors. I’ll just say that when something big eventually breaks in our new house, I will be praying that they offer installment options. Soooo much less stressful.

Canada’s Nuula Raises For Super App Ambitions

Canadian startup Nuula is hoping to be a super app for SMBs, raising $20M in equity and $100M in debt to get the ball rolling out of beta. Current products include cash flow forecasting, personal and business credit score monitoring, and customer sentiment tracking. Of course, there are a number of other companies in this space as well (Stripe and Square being two huge ones). But hey, it’s a huge market so plenty of room for winners.

Crypto Watch

Mastercard Makes A Crypto Acquisition

The payments company is moving deeper into crypto, announcing it’s acquiring CipherTrace, a leading cryptocurrency intelligence company with insight into more than 900 cryptocurrencies. CipherTrace currently offers a suite of digital assets and helps customers improve security and fraud monitoring around crypto, working with some of the largest banks and exchanges. Mastercard’s cyber security solutions will be integrated here to provide businesses with greater transparency to help identify and understand their risks and to help manage their digital asset regulatory and compliance obligations. Mastercard is hoping the deal can help it differentiate its card and real-time payments infrastructure.

Together With Fintech Meetup

Ticket prices go up at Midnight tonight! Fintech Meetup (Online, March 8-10) is the quickest way to fill up your pipeline--it’s lead gen on steroids! We’re facilitating 30,000+ 15-minute meetings for 4,000 participants from 2,000 organizations--you’ll get 3 months worth of meetings in just 3 half days.

All meetings are double opt-in (you both swiped right!) and 33% of 2021 participants were C-level (63% VP & above)--so you know you’ll be meeting the right people to help you grow your business. That’s why the meeting satisfaction rate was over 94% in 2021!

If you need to meet Fintechs, Processors, Networks, Large Banks, Community Banks & Credit Unions, Investors, Media and more, Fintech Meetup is the event for you.

Get your ticket now before prices go up tonight at midnight! Qualifying Startups are eligible for a special startup rate. GET THE YOUR TICKET!

​Senior Software Engineer for Crypto at Square:​

The Crypto team at Cash App is responsible for building, maintaining, and growing the company's blockchain-based financial services. It's now looking for senior level engineers with a history of successfully building high-impact products to join it in redefining the world’s relationship with money. In the role you will architect, build, and deliver user-facing features that provide value to millions of people around the world. You'll be involved in all stages of developement, working with non-Engineering related disciplines (Product and Design) and adjacent Engineering teams (Mobile, Platform, Machine Learning, and Data Science). Apply for this role or others on our job board!

Congrats to Fintech Today community member Jesse Podell’s wife on her new children’s book!

Share Fintech Today, get exclusive rewards! Have friends who'd love our newsletter too? Give them your unique referral link (below) and the first 5 people to refer 5 new subscribers will win a FTT hat this week! https://sparklp.co/d848d352 PS: You have referred 0 people so far ⚡️ Powered by SparkLoop

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.

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, tell your friends to subscribe ;)

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205