FinTech Weekly - Fintech News Issue #354

Benjamin Ensor and Sim Rai are joined by Yann Ranchere (Anthemis), Clare Gambardella (Zopa) and Ali Niknam (Bunq) to discuss how the fintech community is responding to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Virginia is one of the most crypto-friendly states in the US, and the last move of the government in this sense is to allow banks to provide crypto custody services to crypto users. But there is one point that may prevent crypto traders and investors from using these services: the bank needs your private keys.

Shamyl Malik, co-founder and CEO of Haruko, says that he wants his company to become the “one-stop-shop for crypto” – especially for institutions. The start-up has just announced a $10 million funding round, after investors showed interest in this initiative.

As also FinTech Weekly reported, Ukraine managed to collect over $60 million in crypto donations. The funds were spent not only in food and fuel, but also in military supplies: suppliers have crypto accounts and accept crypto payments, and the whole operation is facilitated by Kuna, the Ukrainian crypto exchange.

Climate fintech companies are raising billions both in the US and Europe: CommerzVentures shared 2022 data, analyzing almost 300 fintech start-ups. In Europe, the country that collected more funds is the UK.

Even if the financial technology industry is still one of the hottest markets, it is undoubtedly affected by geopolitical tensions in Europe: data provided by Crunchbase shows that in the last two weeks funds collected decreased by over 60% compared to previous weeks.

The fintech company BankiFi is partnering with Visa to provide a wider range of banking services to SMEs: BankiFi’s goal is to increase the amount of tasks of digital banks to free SME owners from daily and time-consuming administration.

Zeta, the fintech company specialized in banking and credit card services, is considered a unicorn in the fintech space. The last funding round raised $30 million and one of the investors is Mastercard, which announced a five-year partnership with the fintech company.

FinTech Sandbox announced its Demo Day 8.0, which is back as a virtual event. As a part of the New York Fintech Week, the fintech event will host founders and live product demos that will show new fintech solutions realized by fintech entrepreneurs and companies.