The Swedish fintech Klarna was just Europe's most valuable startup, with a valuation of $46 billion. Now CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is hoping for fresh capital for a valuation of just $6.5 billion. Not long ago, the "buy-now-pay-later" pioneer received money at a valuation of $46 billion.
Allianz's fintech prestige project, the finance app Heymoney (website), will be shut down in the coming weeks. Last week, Heymoney informed its approximately 30 employees. The number of users is said to have been just in the five-digit range. Iconicfinance, the company behind Heymoney, has not succeeded over the years in achieving "the targeted user ramp-up," the company confirms.
Just a week ago, the German online trading unicorn Trade Republic raised another €250 million in Series C funding in a depressed market environment. Now, Trade Republic announced layoffs, the German online Business Insider reports. According to the company, more than 700 people were last employed by the Berlin-based startup. According to the spokeswoman, Trade Republic wants to focus more on the tech sector.
Two weeks ago, the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase paused hiring in an effort to slow its headcount growth amid the dawning fintech & crypto crisis. In one of its latest blog posts on 2 June 2022, Coinbase said that it will extend the hiring pause for the foreseeable future and will rescind a number of outstanding offers for people who have not started yet. The move followed a worse-than-expected first-quarter report and is in line with a wider wave of layoffs and hiring freezes in the cryptocurrency space.
According to the #DealMonitor of Deutsche Startups, the German-British FinTech SumUp is about to close a finance round for $400 million at a value of $6.5 billion. The Fintech was founded in 2011 by Daniel Klein, Marc-Alexander Christ, Stefan Jeschonnek, and Jan Deepen. It positions itself as a mobile point-of-sale payment service provider and was most recently valued at between €4 billion and €4.5 billion. However, SumUp is also cutting jobs. Around 100 employees in Brazil have to leave.
Check-out payments startup Bolt Financial is shedding around a third of its workforce, or around 250 employees, as the FinTech sector switches into crisis mode. The layoffs came just months after investors valued the San Francisco–headquartered payment company at $11 billion. Bolt builds software to simplify the check-out process for merchants and shoppers.
After the payment provider Klarna, the Berlin banking and accounting startup Kontist (https://kontist.com) has to lay off a quarter of its team because of financial pressure and the need for strategic changes in its business model. The FinTech segment switches into consolidation mode and will force its startup to restructure or die.
