Embedded finance platform Railsr, formerly known as Railsbank, has closed a £40.4 million Series C round, consisting of £22.8 million in equity and £17.6 million of debt. Nigel Verdon, CEO and co-founder, said, "I'm delighted that less than four months after Railsbank's transformation into Railsr, we've reached another milestone and completed our Series C - an important step on our journey to profitability."
Whistleblowers have made serious allegations against Leonteq. In addition, EY's auditors are said to have preferred not to look too closely at the long-standing client. Whistleblowers say EY has downplayed suspicions of money laundering and tax evasion in an investigation of its long-standing client Leonteq, the Financial Times (FT) reported.
Neutronpay, a startup that enables consumers and businesses to send and receive payments through Bitcoin's Lightning Network, has received $2.25 million in seed funding. The round was led by Hivemind Ventures and saw participation from Republic, Cavalry, Ride Wave, Studio, Fulgur Ventures and Iterative.
Fintech company Geidea has entered into a strategic partnership with U.S. financial services provider Visa to accelerate its digital payment solutions in Egypt. Under the agreement, Visa will invest in launching new payment solutions through Geidea's point-of-sale terminals to provide seamless and secure payment solutions to merchants and small and medium-sized businesses in Egypt.
Investment firm Channel Capital Advisors has launched a $300 million (£270 million) fintech lending strategy to support digital lending platforms. The first tranche of $100 million (£90 million) of the asset manager's strategy will be immediately allocated to fintech lenders seeking additional capital to fund SMEs.
In the third quarter of 2022, European financial startups raised around EUR 3.2 billion. This is far below the same quarter last year but is still significantly more than in previous years. Layoff waves, burst financing rounds, and also several insolvencies - the mood in the fintech sector is particularly gloomy at the moment. Gone are the days when founders only had to include the word "fintech" in their pitch deck to be overrun by backers.
Italian paytech company Satispay has received €320 million in a Series D funding round led by Addition, bringing its valuation to over €1 billion. Existing investors Greyhound Capital, Coatue, Lightrock, Block Inc, Tencent and Mediolanum Gestione Fondi SGR also participated in the round.
The Dutch-South African investment firm Prosus announced the termination of the $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk, which would have been one of the largest in India's financial technology sector, saying conditions of the deal had not been met. The transaction would have given Prosus, which already owns fast-growing PayU, a dominating position in the Indian payment processing market.
Colombian FinTech company Finaktiva has reportedly raised $25 million in a mix of debt and equity, a LatamList report said. The funding round consisted of $20 million in debt from Bancolombia and other local banks. The $5 million in equity was provided by responsABILITY, a Swiss impact investment fund that provides capital to emerging markets.
