FinTech Weekly - Fintech News Issue #329

Investments in Israeli fintech (financial tech) firms soared to a record $2.3 billion in the first half of 2021, representing a record-breaking 260 percent increase over funding in the first half of 2020. It also surpassed 2020’s full-year total of $1.8 billion by 28 percent. These fintech investments made up 19 percent of the $12.2 billion invested in Israeli tech companies in the first half of 2021, according to a newly published report by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC.)

Have we truly fulfilled the promise of fintech? How do you look beyond what is easy and serve communities who have long been ignored by traditional financial services, such as migrants? What is best for the greater good? How do we create change at scale? Perhaps the only way to unbake systemic racism within financial services is to change the ingredients and those that are preparing the meal, as well as for whom we are preparing the meal. Everyone deserves a seat at the table. In this week’s One Vision, Theo and Bradley welcome Nina Mohanty back on the show to talk about her new brainchild, Bloom Money, an app that is “built by migrants, for migrants”.

According to a Monday announcement, EY’s flagship blockchain services (e.g. EY OpsChain and EY Blockchain Analyzer) will be integrated with Polygon. This will allow transactions to be committed to Etherum (on the mainnet), via the sidechain.

oday, SpotOn said it has closed on $300 million in Series E financing that values the company at $3.15 billion — more than 5x of its valuation at the time of its Series C round, and significantly higher than its $1.875 billion valuation in May (yes, just three and a half months ago) when it raised $125 million in a Series D funding event. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led both the Series D and E rounds for the company, which says it has seen 100% growth year over year and a tripling in revenue over the past 18 months.

It's called Project Santos and it's Amazon's play to take on Shopify, PayPal and other point-of-sale systems. According to a report that examined internal documents from the online giant the system will handle both online and in-store transactions, provide enhanced analytics and (of course) integrate with Prime and other Amazon technologies for check out, security and delivery.

Intuit confirmed persistent rumors that it was in the process of buying Mailchimp, detailing a $12 billion transaction that will bring the well-known email infra company to its corporate remit. Intuit is not a well-known player in the email marketing space. The company is instead best known for its TurboTax software (and associated lobbying of the U.S. government to ensure its rent-seeking can continue), its recent purchase of Credit Karma and its more dated acquisition of Mint.

ETFs have inhaled more than $600 billion of assets this year, well in excess of the record $494 billion that accumulated in 2020, according Bloomberg data. The funds have also set global records, raking in $834 billion in 2021, bringing their total worldwide holdings to $9.7 trillion, according to ETFGI, a research and consulting firm.

More than three quarters of cashless transactions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are now contactless, a remarkable turnaround from pre-pandemic figures of just 40%.