​

​

Hi all, Julie here.

Happy Friday! I was all thrown off this week with Momma VerHage staying until Tuesday so I was half working half hanging with her. Side note: the conversations you start having with your mom when you start thinking about having kids of your own are 10/10. I recently did Modern Fertility (click here for $20 off) so we were going over the results, talking about her pregnancy symptoms etc. All over wine tasting which made it even better of course.

Back to fintech. We’ve released two amazing podcast episodes in the last three days. The first was with FDIC Chairwoman Jelena McWilliams and Plaid’s John Pitts. The second was with Coinbase’s VP of Product Sanchan Saxena to talk about the new NFT offering the team is launching in the coming weeks. Add them to your weekend listening, they’re only 20 mins each.

Today's Partner, ComplyAdvantage

2021 has been a year of significant change in the world of financial crime – and it’s not over yet! From the disruption of criminal supply chains to geopolitical tensions over Iran, China, and Afghanistan and the growing debate about the regulation of crypto-based assets, there is a lot for compliance teams to keep track of.

On November 11th join global compliance leaders from Stripe, Railsbank and the Royal United Services Institute to discuss all the latest fintech and regtech trends. Sign up today!​

Company News

NerdWallet IPO

Congrats to community member Jake on his company’s IPO! The personal finance site soared as much as 91% in its trading debut on Thursday after pricing at $18/share. I’m still bummed the ticker is NRDS and not NERD though….

Opendoor Is Not Zillow

And Keith Rabois wants to make sure you know this…But it’s true (hopefully). Zillow’s abrupt exit from the home-buying market has many thinking that Opendoor is being handed a new opportunity. Shares in the company, which went pubic via a SPAC, surged nearly 20% the day after Zillow’s announcement. It’s since given back some of those gains, perhaps with some investors trying to wait and see until the company reports earnings on Wednesday of next week. Guess we’ll find out just how much better Opendoor’s algorithms actually are.

Square Falls Slightly After Earnings

Robinhood isn’t the only company that didn’t make as much money on crypto last quarter.

​Square reported lower-than-expected revenue for the third quarter as less volatile pricing for Bitcoin impacted demand. The company posted a break-even third quarter, after earning $37M in the year-earlier quarter. On an adjusted basis, Square earned 37 cents a share, up from 34 cents a share a year earlier, while analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting 38 cents a share. Some other numbers:

• Revenue grew to $3.84 billion from $3.03B (analysts had been modeling $4.39B)
• Cash App generated gross profit of $512M (analysts were looking for $536M)
• GPV was $45.43B, up from $31.73B a year earlier
• Square expects seller GPV to be up 42% on a year-over-year basis during October

Funding and Deals

Ualá Makes An Acquisition

Argentine fintech Ualá is buying Mexican bank ABC Capital as part of its bid to keep growing abroad. Backed by SoftBank, Tencent and billionaire George Soros, Ualá was valued at $2.5B in its latest financing round. The company provides a slew of financial services through a mobile app and will be able to offer more services through ABC’s bank license.

HoneyBook Round

HoneyBook, whose software helps business owners manage cash flow, announced $250M in funding, just six months after securing $155M. The company’s round was led by Tiger Global at a valuation of $2.4B. With the creator economy booming and many people opting to be more entrepreneurial, HoneyBook is hoping they can help fill a gap. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, nearly 20M people quit their jobs between April and August 2021, while the Census also reported that over 4M applications for new businesses were filed between January and September of this year.

Nigeria Funding Boom

Lending startup Payhippo announced $3M in a seed round as it hopes to extend credit quickly to more SMEs in the West African country. The round was led by an array of angels including the co-founders of Chipper Cash. Payhippo says it disburses short-term loans in less than three hours, whereas traditional banking institutions in the country often require borrowers to meet stringent conditions like regular account activity and the maintenance of minimum operating balances. The company says it has so far disbursed about 5,000 loans since inception, valued at $1M and with a repayment rate of 97%. There are a number of startups trying to do similar things in the region, such as Carbon and FairMoney. Last year, FairMoney disbursed a total loan volume of $93M and Carbon disclosed that it had hit 659,000 customers last year and had disbursed $63M in loans.

Crypto WatchNYC Wants to be More Like Miami

It would be nice if this came with palm trees and better beaches, but I guess the newly elected Mayor trying to be more crypto friendly is cool too. Eric Adams said this week that he would take his first three paychecks in Bitcoin and that he wants to make the city the "center of the cryptocurrency industry" after he takes office in January. Will be interesting to see what else he has in mind to make the city more crypto friendly.

Bitcoin Isn’t Cool Anymore

Some interesting stats from Genesis’ latest report:

• BTC accounted for 32.4% of outstanding loans at the end of Q3, down from 42.3% in Q2 and 53.9% at the end of 2020.
• ETH loans accounted for 32% of the loan book at the end of Q3, up from 27.9% in Q2 and 15.5% at the end of 2020.

Bakkt Adds Ether

Speaking of ETH, Digital asset platform Bakkt announced it’s going to start allowing customers to trade Ether. The company added that institutional clients can opt to use the Bakkt Warehouse for custody of Ether as well. With all the interest in ETH, can we please get gas fees down soon? IYKYK

Together With Fintech Meetup

Get your Fintech Meetup ticket before prices go up tonight! It’s the industry’s next can’t-miss event--the easiest and most efficient way to find new solutions, partners and customers. No speakers. No content. Just 30,000+ online speed date meetings, so you can meet the people and organizations you need to meet to drive your business forward.

Join hundreds of organizations already signed up, including:

• Fintechs including Akoya, Alliance Data, Alloy, Alviere, Argyle, Autobooks, Azimuth, Botdoc, Certa, Checkout.com, Dave, FISPAN, MANTL, Nuance, Nymbus, PPRO, Revolut, Ripple, Signal Intent, Sila, Socure, Synctera, Urban FT (to name just a few!)
• Banks including Bank of America, Citi, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Santander, Wells Fargo & more
• Networks including American Express, Discover, Mastercard & Visa
• Investors including Bain Capital, General Atlantic, Mosaik Partners, Next Level, Point 72, Vestigo & more
• Plus Credit Unions, CUSOs, Community Banks, Tech Cos and more!

Online, March 22-24. Qualifying Startups get special startup rate tickets, qualifying Banks & Credit Unions eligible for FREE tickets. Get your ticket now before prices go up tonight! Get Your Ticket!​

Plaid believes that the way consumers and businesses interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. Now, it is looking for an experienced customer-facing professional to manage and grow its relationships with some of the most strategic, fast-paced, innovative, and high-growth companies. In this role, you will focus on our Scaled, High Potential, or Named accounts, depending on experience.

The right candidate has the ability to build strong partnerships with their customers, be able to develop a deep understanding of their priorities, motives and key drivers, is solutions oriented, and has demonstrated success owning and growing strong, long-lasting customer relationships. If this sounds like you, apply via the link below!

​Strategic Account Manager at Plaid

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.

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