​

​

Hi all, Julie here.

I had so much fun tracking friends running the NY Marathon yesterday. I think it was the first time since I’ve left that I’ve had major FOMO about not being in the city. What a beautiful and moving day. Congrats to all the runners, including Charles Birnbaum of Bessemer who got a new PR and broke 3 hours! Wild. Props to several Alloy employees and Nicole Pinto who also ran!

Today's Partner, ComplyAdvantage

Are today's crypto assets the future of money? Or do blockchain-based financial technologies hold more as yet untapped potential? What does it take to be successful in the compliance world in today's dynamic, ever-changing financial services environment?

Crypto and fintech firms know answering these questions correctly is key to securing their reputations - the most valuable asset of all. Join Ed Luo, Head of Compliance Systems at NEST Financial Group for an in-depth discussion on the big questions facing the crypto industry on the Illicit Activity podcast, brought to you by ComplyAdvantage. Listen here!​

Company News

Lots of Earnings This Week

AMC, PayPal, Lemonade, Opendoor, Coinbase, Affirm, Remitly, and more. I’m especially interested in PayPal, Affirm and Opendoor following recent news and earnings from Square, Peloton and Zillow (respectively).

Funding and Deals

Fidelity’s First African Investment

Big round for JUMO, the Baas fintech based in South Africa and London. Led by Fidelity Management, the company raised $120M and is valued at 400M. JUMO uses AI to power financial services, particularly lending in emerging markets where over 1.7B people do not have basic access to financial services. Some reports show 42% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are unbanked, and only 11% of adults are under credit bureau coverage in Africa. JUMO says it has now served loans worth over $3.5B to more than 18M customers across these markets, granting up to 120M individual loans. Aside from geographical expansion into Nigeria and Cameroon, JUMO says it will use the investment to improve and increase the number of financial products it offers to SMBs.

Crypto Watch

More NYC Crypto

Last week we told you that the newly elected mayor of NYC was going to take his first paychecks in Bitcoin. Shortly after, he said he also wants to start adding crypto to curriculum in schools. From the piece:

Bitcoin means a “new way of paying for goods and services throughout the entire globe,” he said. “And that’s what we must do - open our schools to teach the technology and teach this new way of thinking.”

Adams also said that he’s going to look at perhaps encouraging businesses to accept Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies.

Stripe’s New Board Member

Matt Huang, co-founder of crypto-centric investment firm Paradigm, is joining Stripe’s board. While Stripe was one of the first companies to look at Bitcoin and crypto more broadly, it has yet to do much in the space. The company said it plans to leverage Huang’s expertise to guide its crypto strategy. Reminder, there are still a few crypto engineering roles at Stripe up on our job board...

Nigeria Crypto

The Central Bank of Nigeria has told commercial banks in the country to close accounts connected to two entities accused of trading crypto. The memo also instructed that the funds held by the entities should be placed in “suspense accounts.” Back in February, Nigeria’s central bank banned financial institutions from providing services to crypto trading platforms. Following the ban, peer-to-peer transactions reportedly account for the bulk of the country’s virtual currency trading activity, with lower remittance costs and currency devaluation driving demand.

Matter Labs Is Complicated

Thanks to Ian and Parker for explaining this story to me. A crypto company called Matter Labs raised funding from a16z (that much I understood). As Ian tells it, Matter Labs basically moves the proof of work aspect of Ethereum (which verifies transactions and leads to gas fees), off of the Ethereum chain. Parker adds that “there are 2 layers of Ethereum: layer 1 and layer 2. You can think of layer 1 as the original Ethereum blockchain, and layer 2 as it's carbon copy chain with the same amount of security. Processing transactions and scaling decentralized apps on L1 is slow and costly. By handling transactions on L2, transaction speed and throughput is increased, and cost is reduced. The way this works is L2 can use rollups. What ‘rollups’ are are functions that ‘roll up’ batches of transactions into one ‘block’ - which is why they can be processed faster...a16z just invested in a zK rollup startup, which is a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum.”

Together With Fintech Meetup

​Fintech Meetup is the industry’s next can’t-miss event! It’s the easiest and most efficient way to find new solutions, partners and customers. No speakers. No content. Just 30,000+ online speed date meetings with 3,000+ participants, so you can meet the people and organizations who will help 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​

​Risk Analyst , Simpl​

Simpl is focused on transforming how the people of India deal with money. Its first product is a payment mode that lets users skip traditional forms of payments entirely. Instead, all the transactions get added into a single bill, payable on the 1st and 16th of every month. This way, the checkout process takes less than a few seconds - making it a win-win for merchants and users alike.

In place of traditional forms of identification and authentication, Simpl integrates deeply into merchant apps via SDKs and APIs. This allows for more sophisticated forms of authentication that take full advantage of smartphone data and processing power. As a Risk Analyst, you will be joining a small, and nimble team which reports directly into the executive team. You will be empowered to own and build hypotheses around complex problem statements as it relates to product, user onboarding and full customer life cycle utilizing large amounts of structured and unstructured data. If this sounds like you, apply today!

Don’t miss our event with Zeit on Wednesday! Get tips from Charley, Colleen and Trevor on breaking into fintech or changing roles within. Sign up here!​

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