Fintech’s wild experience in 2023

Welcome again to The Interchange, the place we check out the most well liked fintech information of the earlier week. If you wish to obtain The Interchange immediately in your inbox each Sunday, head right here to enroll! 

What a yr

That is the final version of The Interchange for 2023 — it’s arduous to imagine that the yr is nearly over.

It was an eventful 12 months, even when funding was down. We noticed a bunch of M&A exercise (examine it right here, right here, right here and right here), BNPL made a comeback (form of), new fintech-focused enterprise agency capital raises (Flourish and Vesey), some startup shutdowns (Daylight is one instance) and extra layoffs than we’d have preferred.

And, keep in mind when FedNow went reside within the U.S. in July? On the time there have been 35 monetary establishments on the record, and 5 months later, greater than 330 of them are within the community.

It’s by no means a uninteresting day on the planet of fintech. For a broader look again, keep tuned earlier than yr’s finish for a deeper dive into the highest fintech tales we reported on.

Till then, we wished to take this chance to present heartfelt because of all of you, our readers, for supporting us all year long. We all know you might have a plethora of fintech newsletters to select from, so the truth that you signed up for this one, and maintain coming again, means the world to us.

As we head into 2024, we want you and your households a beautiful vacation season and a New 12 months forward crammed with a lot love, peace and happiness. We’re grateful for you. — Mary Ann and Christine

Weekly information

Christine reported on layoffs at Bolt, an e-commerce and fintech firm, which was at one time the topic of a federal probe. The corporate, through a spokesperson, confirmed the one-click checkout firm laid off 29% of its workers. In an emailed assertion, the Bolt spokesperson mentioned the corporate made the cuts to get Bolt to “an working mannequin optimized for sustainable development and effectivity” and so it might set itself up “with the pace and agility required for the following section of our enterprise.” We’ve been following Bolt for years, and this new spherical of job cuts is the most recent in a handful of different layoffs made since 2022. In Could 2022, Mary Ann reported at the very least 185 staff, or one-third of its workforce, have been let go. Bolt, which gives software program to retailers to hurry up checkout, raised round $1 billion in complete venture-backed funding and at one time was valued at $11 billion.

Mary Ann reported on a few high-profile government departures this week. She broke the information that Credit score Karma co-founder Nichole Mustard could be stepping down after greater than 16 years on the firm. Mustard’s choice to step down marks the third identified high-profile government departure at Credit score Karma in 2023. Then she wrote about how Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu is leaving the actual property fintech firm after 9 years to get again to his startup roots. Notably, Wu has been investing in startups throughout his time at Opendoor. In response to Crunchbase, Wu has backed dozens of corporations, together with Airtable, Scribe, Roofstock and the now-defunct Zeus Dwelling.

Over on TC+, Jacquelyn Melinek wrote about the truth that whereas Robinhood’s foray into crypto isn’t essentially new, the firm continues to be making an attempt to develop its efforts there — even in teams which have usually strayed from the platform. “I feel crypto has all the time been made by very technical individuals and for technical individuals,” Johann Kerbrat, the final supervisor of crypto at Robinhood, mentioned on the Chain Response podcast. “On the finish of the day, I feel prospects, once they use crypto, they don’t actually care what’s the protocol underneath it? What’s the community that you just’re utilizing? They simply need the factor to work.”

Different gadgets we’re studying

Google Pay so as to add BNPL choices early in 2024 (In October, Apple made Apple Pay Later accessible to all customers in the USA, after initially releasing it to a restricted variety of customers again in March.)

Visa acquires Brazilian fintech Pismo in USD$1 billion deal (See TechCrunch protection on how the Pismo/Visa acquisition initially happened.)

Dallas’ Apex Fintech Options recordsdata for IPO in its second go-public bid

Melio rolls out real-time funds

HR tech platform Checkr strikes into funds for gig staff

Deel launches a compliance hub

Repay companions with Inexperienced Dot to allow cash-based invoice cost

Klarna plans to switch staff with AI to drive profitability

Neobank Dave’s new chatbot achieves 89% decision charge, CEO says  (Head right here to learn a Q&A Mary Ann carried out with Dave’s founder in March.)

Funding and M&A

As seen on TechCrunch:

SumUp faucets €285M extra in development funding to climate the fintech storm

Comun channels native banking strategy to serve Latino immigrants

British Worldwide Funding backs India’s Aye Finance in $37M funding

Hyperplane needs to convey AI to banks

Kapital secures $165M in fairness, debt to supply monetary visibility to LatAm SMBs

Prevu’s dwelling sale course of offers credit score to dwelling consumers with cash-back rebates

Seen elsewhere:

Stairs Monetary platform launches to assist first-time homebuyers

Waste administration funds agency CurbWaste raises $10M

Fintech startup Pontera raises $60 mln, plans extra hiring in Israel

January closes $12M Collection B funding

Necto raises $8M in seed funding

HSBC backs Aii’s decarbonization grant fund

E-commerce lender SellersFi secures Citi-led credit score facility

Picture Credit: Bryce Durbin