#430
Getting Back Off The Bench?

Simetrik raises $20m to develop their payment infrastructure solutions for Latin America - The Bogota based company, which provides payment infrastructure in Latin America, has raised $20m in a Series A funding round led by FinTech Collective. Other investors include Tiger Global, Cometa, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Monashees. The latest financing brings Simetrik's total raised since its 2019 inception to $29m. Read more

Women Who Roar podcast series episode 2: From VCs to founders: a journalist’s perspective - Episode 2 produced in collaboration with FinTech Collective and MoneyLion is live! From topics like female founders, the world of fintech journalism, and how to get ahead in your career, join in the conversation with Mary Ann Azevedo, Senior Reporter for TechCrunch. Click the link to listen to or watch the full episode now! Read more

Apple buys UK fintech start-up Credit Kudos - It’s not yet clear what Apple has planned for Credit Kudos. The company has made significant inroads into financial services over the years through its Apple Pay mobile wallet and the Apple Card, a credit card the firm launched in partnership with Goldman Sachs in the U.S. Read more

Bored Ape Yacht Club has big plans to enter the metaverse - Yuga Labs’ Otherwise metaverse project will join an increasingly crowded group of metaverse platforms, some of which also incorporate NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Read more

Crypto firms face being booted from the UK as a key deadline approaches - A slew of cryptocurrency companies could be forced to wind down their business in the U.K. if they fail to register with the finance watchdog ahead of a key deadline next week. From Mar. 31, firms operating crypto services in Britain must be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, which is tasked with overseeing how digital asset firms combat money laundering. Read more

Equiano, Google’s subsea internet cable in Africa, will make its first landing in Togo this month - Equiano is Google’s 14th investment in internet subsea cables, but the first dedicated to internet access in Africa. It is expected to travel from Portugal to South Africa and is part of the company’s $1b Africa investment that includes a $50m venture capital startup fund. Read more

Mercy Corps Ventures launches their Crypto For Good Fund - The objective of the Fund is to drive global financial inclusion through a series of pilots, building an evidence base to prove the scalability of blockchain-enabled solutions in making a positive impact on the 1.7 billion people in the world who are currently unbanked. Read more

Money washing - A long form read on money washing and "Londongrad" from Scott Galloway. In short, the AML, KYC business is going to boom! Read more

OECD opens proposal on tax transparency framework for crypto to public comment - According to the OECD, the crypto market posed a “significant risk” around tax transparency, claiming that any gains will eventually be lost without additional safeguards. Read more

Request to Pay: a new European payment method in development - By enabling a secure messaging channel between biller and payer, Request to Pay (RtP) allows the biller to initiate a transaction and the payer to choose when – and how much – they pay. This is unlocking new flexible ways for money to move between people, organizations and businesses. Read more

The IPO market has frozen over. When it thaws, it could look much different - So far this year, just 22 companies have gone public in traditional IPO's, raising a combined $2.3 billion. That is a huge downshift from last year, when 79 companies had raised nearly $36 billion by this point. Consensus on the best candidates to reopen the IPO market are profitable, fairly large, raising around $500 million, and be “must-own” names in their industries. Read more

United Bank for Africa extends payments reach across 19 African countries with Cellulant - Africa’s global bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, and leading Pan-African Payments Company Cellulant have announced a partnership that will extend payment services for merchants and consumers across 19 key African countries in which UBA operates. Read more

Will banks or neo-banks win as zero-rate era ends? - Disrupting banks when interest rates are near zero is in some ways playing on easy mode writes the WSJ. As rates rise, the game will get harder—but certainly not impossible for the challenger brands. Read more