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Hi all, Julie here.

I know a number of you took part in NFT NYC recently. If that was you, or you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should check out Parker's recap of it for us on Crypto Tonight :) **and you should subscribe if you haven't yet.

Speaking of events, don’t miss our's with Zeit TONIGHT! Get tips from Charley, Colleen and Trevor on breaking into fintech or changing roles within. Sign up here!​

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Company News

Robinhood Hack

So, a lot of us are very happy that Robinhood has added loads of customer service reps. A hacker is pretty happy about this right now too. Unfortunately, a customer service mishap allowed a hacker to steal the personal information of about 7M users. A company statement said that on November 3, a breach occurred via a phone call where a hacker duped a customer support staffer. The hacker then accessed the email addresses of about 5M Robinhood users, as well as full names for a separate group of about 2M. Just under 500 people had even more data exposed.

Amazon and….Venmo?

This is wild to me. Have you ever noticed that one of the only places that PayPal isn’t available is on Amazon? Well, that part is going to stay the same, but Amazon is caving and adding Venmo to its platform. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this move. Tom Noyes has one of the best pieces I’ve read on it so far. TLDR: Amazon is trying to lower its cost of payments. Venmo is trying to encourage shopping behavior with its digital wallet.

Funding and Deals

Making Lemonade out of Auto Insurance

This news broke shortly after the newsletter went out on Monday. Two insurtechs are teaming up, with Lemonade announcing its acquisition of Metromile (for quite a bit lower than where it SPAC-ed last year). Guess the pair are hoping that together, they can justify valuations and help loss ratios. It’s also an easy way for Lemonade to suddenly expand into auto, where it’s never been before.

Socure’s New Round

Socure, which helps with identity verification, announced a $450M round led by Accel and T. Rowe Price. The funding brings the company’s valuation to $4.5B, up from $1.3B this March when it last raised. Bain and Tiger joined the round as new investors. The company’s identity resolution engine helps provide a multi-dimensional picture of a consumer’s identity for fraud detection purposes, even for hard-to-identify populations, including those who are Gen Z, credit-invisible or new to the country. Its customer base includes 12 of the top 15 banks and a roster of fintech companies, online gaming providers and crypto exchanges. Socure is also looking at more partnerships with state and federal governments to help them invest in digital identity technology. Socure grew from approximately 350 customers served in March to nearly 1,000 today.

Lightspeed Backs Payitoff

Big seed round news from Payitoff and CEO Bobby Matson, a friend and FTT community member, who hope to help consumers navigate student debt. Lightspeed is leading an $8M seed round to help Payitoff build intelligent repayment pipes to make it easier for all the financial counterparties to integrate with each other. With Payitoff’s infrastructure, partners using the API and low code tools can save their borrowers $240 per month on average. Lightspeed and others argue that this is superior to helping consumers get better at saving when they’re only making a small amount of money each year and an extra $20-30 a month isn’t going to make much of a difference. Fair, but I’m glad we have both options now :)

Atomic’s Next Round

Atomic announced a $22M round led by Core Innovation Capital. The payroll API company helps consumers to connect their income to different services, such as helping them set up direct deposits at a neobank or verifying income and employment. Atomic charges corporate customers for income and employment verification services on a usage basis, and for its direct deposit product in a more SaaS-like manner.

Crypto Watch

Coinbase Earnings

No one here will be surprised that trading slowed down on Coinbase this past quarter. However, the outlook stayed strong, which has helped the stock recover from an initial slump of more than 10%. The crypto exchange posted revenue of $1.24B, compared with the $1.57B forecast by analysts. However, Coinbase added that “market conditions improved meaningfully later in the quarter which we have continued to see into early” into the current/4Q. Other notable figures:

• Monthly transacting users on its platform was 7.4M, down from 8.8M in the second quarter
• It updated its full-year average monthly transacting user guidance and now expects between 8M and 8.5M such users, up from 5.5M to 8M projected in August
• EPS $1.62 vs. $6.42 q/q
• Trading volume $327B, -29% q/q, estimate $308.88B
• Retail trading volume $93B, -36% q/q, estimate $99.42B
• Institutional trading volume $234B, -26% q/q, estimate $210.91B

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​Venture Senior Manager, Fiserv​

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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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