​

Hi all, Julie here.

Yesterday started out by grabbing coffee with Adina Fischer from NYC Fintech Women and ended with Fintech Bae taking me out for pizza. I love this community <3

Today's Partner, Secureframe

Secureframe makes it quick and easy to achieve SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance.

With its guided workflows and one-click integrations, Secureframe automates the entire compliance process, from readiness to report. With Secureframe, companies can easily:

• Connect with 100+ cloud services and vendors including AWS, GCP, and Azure
• Automate the evidence collection process through our 1-click integrations
• Customize auditor-approved compliance policies from a library of 40+ templates
• Get step-by-step guidance from in-house experts

They know that navigating the world of security and compliance can be confusing. But it doesn’t have to be! Secureframe offers user-friendly solutions geared for fast-growing businesses.

If you’d like to learn more, schedule a personalized demo today at Secureframe.com!

Company News

AmEx Checking

AmEx is the latest to get into the checking account game. It turns out that checking accounts are still en vogue? Amex should have been reading my stories at Bloomberg back in 2018….

The checking account won’t come with admission to special airport lounges but it will have an APY of 0.5% and a debit card that offers rewards tied to spending. The company said that this move was geared towards its younger customers (millennials and Generation Z), of which about 60% of new accounts added came from last year.

Adyen Earnings Beat

Heyyyyy, finally a fintech/tech stock that surges after reporting earnings! I’d forgotten that this was possible. Congrats to our friends at Adyen for sending shares higher by more than 10% ​​after reporting a 51% jump in core earnings in the first half of 2021. The company said that net revenue in the period came in at 556.5M euros, up 47% year-on-year. That was higher than the 552M euros of net revenue expected by analysts, according to Reuters. Adyen’s profit margin climbed to 64% in the second half, up from 61% in the first half. Its total processed transaction volume climbed 72% to 300B euros.

Funding and Deals

Charitable Funding Funding

Adam Nash’s new startup, Daffy Charitable, announced a $17.1M funding for Aside, the company building the technology behind Daffy. The round was led by Ribbit Capital and will go towards helping the company scale and drive product innovations to help people be more generous, more often. It believes it can do this by asking people up front to set a goal for how much they want to give to charity for the year and then asks members if they want to automate those contributions. The money is then invested in one of nine modern portfolios to maximize their potential impact, and then members can donate to any of over 1.5M charities across the U.S.

Happy Funding

Unsecured lending fintech Happy Money announced it has closed a $50M round. The company has created financial tools that members can use to consolidate and pay off credit, such as the Payoff Loan, which helps members consolidate and pay off credit card debt and experience less financial stress. The company also recently appointed Jeff Winner (former Stripe and Marcus) as permanent CEO and Board member.

Web3 Funding

Blockchain infrastructure startup Alchemy has closed on a $200M round that values the company at $10.2B. This comes just months after it raised at a $3.5B valuation and less than a year after it was valued at $505M. The company’s mission is to make it easier to build on Web3. Techcrunch put that into a crazy perspective: that’s a valuation increase of $1B per month. Anyways, Lightspeed and Silver Lake co-led this new investment. The company has powered $105B worth of annualized on-chain transactions and in the last 12 months, NFT marketplaces built on Alchemy have delivered more than $1.5B in royalties to artists, with almost $1B of that coming in just the last three months.

Crypto Watch

Another Sotheby’s Auction

Just be sure you don’t tell Ken Griffen how much you plan to bid on something. Sotheby’s announced it will auction off 104 CryptoPunks, one of the oldest and most popular NFT collections to date, in New York on Feb 23 at 7pm EST. This will be its first dedicated live evening auction for NFTs. It has held other NFT auctions, but they weren’t live like this.

A Bitcoin Hack 5 Years Later

It might have been half a decade ago, but the US DoJ has seized $3.6B worth of Bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of Bitfinex. Two individuals/rappers?/TikTokers?, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, were arrested in New York and are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the US. They face as many as 25 years in prison if convicted. I don’t think TikTok is allowed in jail but honestly I’m not sure. I do know that you should read what Matt Levine wrote about it all though.

Together With Fintech Meetup

​Fintech Meetup ticket prices go up on Friday – Get your ticket now! It’s the easiest way to meet new partners, fill pipelines and get business done!

Join thousands of fintech and banking industry professionals from 1,000+ companies including:

• Fintechs, including Alloy, Argyle, Array, Boomtown, Bread Finance, Cash App (Square), Checkout.com, Dave, Dwolla, Equifax, Emburse, NIUM, Pipe, Revolut, Ripple, Sila, Socure & Upstart (and many more!)
• VCs, including Bain Capital Ventures, Commerce Ventures, General Atlantic, Mosaik Partners, Next Level Ventures, Oak HC/FT, Point 72 Ventures & Tribeca Venture Partners
• Payments, Networks and Tech Cos, including American Express, Discover, Finastra, FIS, Fiserv, Mastercard, SWIFT, The Clearing House, Visa & Western Union
• Major banks, including Bank of America, Citi, CIT Bank, Cross River, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Santander & Wells Fargo
• 100+ Regional & Community Banks
• 150+ Credit Unions
• Plus Retailers & Merchants, Media and many others

Virtual, March 22-24. Don’t miss out–there’s less than 30 days left to get your ticket. Get Your Ticket Now!

​Head of Sales at Lithic​

As a remote-first company with an office in New York, Lithic has raised $100M+ from top-tier investors including Index, Bessemer, Stripes and Tusk Venture Partners. As Head of Sales, you will drive the rapid acceleration of product adoption and growth, build and develop a world-class sales team, meet customer acquisition and revenue targets, and continue to build on the Lithic brand. The team is looking for a leader who can help build an industry-changing company with passion, humility, drive, maturity, and impeccable business acumen. If you have a proven ability to scale an organization and rapidly ramp sales, are an empathetic leader who is passionate about career development, and have a passion and fervor for industry-leading next-generation technology, apply at the link above!

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