Hello Fintech Friends,

They say money never sleeps, but it has caffeinated itself to new heights in fintech this week.

As mentioned yesterday, startups announced over $2.7 billion in new fundraising over the last few days. The market in acquisitions and exits also had a particularly busy week. Please find another week of financing events below.

Open Role Spotlight

Earnin is fighting unfairness in the financial system by helping 100 million+ people who live paycheck to paycheck get paid everyday without any fees and save money in a rewarding way. They are growing rapidly and looking for Senior/Group Product Managers. (Happy to put interested candidates in touch with the hiring manager for the role.)

Sponsored Content

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Financings

• UK payments company Checkout, a stealthy Stripe competitor, raised a $450 million Series C at a $15 billion valuation.

• Account aggregation and financial data company MX raised $300 million at a $1.9 billion valuation.

• Grab Financial, the fintech arm of Indonesian superapp Grab, raised a $300 million Series A at a $3 billion valuation.

• Embedded lending and banking services platform Blend raised a $300 million Series G.

• UK payments API provider Rapyd raised a $300 million Series D.

• GCash, a mobile wallet provider in the Philippines, raised $175 million in new capital.

• Investment management tech provider Enfusion secured a $150 million minority investment. 

• Loan origination tool LendingPoint raised $125 million - the company’s ‘first’ fundraise in 7 years.

• Regulatory reporting and compliance software platform Carne Group raised €100 million.

• Momo, Vietnam’s largest digital wallet company, raised $100 million.

• Jedox, a German financial planning and analysis tool maker, raised new funding of over $100 million.

• Curve, an over-the-top UK credit card platform, raised a $95 million Series C.

• Logistics and trucking payment provider Relay raised $43 million in new funding.

• Risk management software Quantile raised £38 million.

• Modern Treasury, which provides new infrastructure for business payments, raised $38 million.

• Ajaib, an Indonesian investment platform, raised a $25 million Series A.

• Neat Capital, a home financing fintech, closed a $22.5 million Series B.

• Moss, a Brex competitor in Germany, raised €21 million.

• Minna, a subscription management service for banking apps, raised $18.8 million.

• CFO software suite Mosaic raised $18.5 million.

• Brace, a digital mortgage platform, raised a $15.7 million Series B.

• Startup business banking platform Rho raised a $15 million Series A.

• HQLAx, a securities lending platform, raised €14.4 million from banks including BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and Citigroup.

• Italy’s Banca Generali joined a $14 million fundraising round for bitcoin wallet provider Conio.

• Mortgage marketplace OwnUp raised $12 million.

• X1 Card raised a $12 million funding round to build a credit card that sets limits based on current and future income.

• Real estate securities marketplace Lex raised $6 million in seed funding.

• Gig Wage, which provides accelerated payment to gig economy workers, added a $2.5 million Series A extension.

• Vesica, a financial data technology startup, raised a $2.1 million seed round.

• b.fine, a platform for managing financial institution regulatory reporting, raised €1 million.

• UBS is in talks to invest $400 million in India’s Paytm.

Exits and M&A

Fintech

• Following a challenge from the Department of Justice, Visa abandoned plans to acquire account aggregation provider Plaid. The move was most likely determined by Plaid, whose enterprise value has grown prodigiously over the last year as the fintech category exploded, and who now faces a hyperactive IPO and SPAC market. 

• Affirm’s share price popped 100% in its market debut, doubling its valuation to $24 billion.

• NCR made a $1.73 billion acquisition offer for ATM operator Cardtronics.

• Equifax acquired e-commerce retailer fraud protection provider Kount for $640 million.

• PayPal has taken 100% ownership of Chinese payments platform GoPay.

• Certent, a SaaS provider focused on financial disclosure management, sold to enterprise software company Global Software.

• Gift card and payments provider National Gift Card was acquired by Blackhawk Network.

• Investment analytics firm Investment Metrics acquired ESG exposure platform Style Analytics.

• LoanDepot, a mortgage lender, filed for IPO.

• Home Point Capital, a mortgage provider, filed a registration statement for an IPO.

Bank

• Aadhar Housing Finance, the Blackstone-backed Indian lender, is planning a $1 billion IPO this year.

• Wells Fargo sold its Canadian equipment finance business to TD Bank and is close to selling its $607 billion asset management business to a group of private equity buyers.

Investment Management

• Investment advisor Mercer Advisors acquired McGee Wealth Management.

• Merit Financial Group received a strategic growth investment from Wealth Partners Capital Group.

• Private equity firms CC Capital and Motive Partners acquired investment advisor Wilshire Associates.

• Ratings agency Fitch will buy debt market research shop CreditSights.

SPACs

• Bakkt, the cryptocurrency venture of Intercontinental Exchange, filed for an IPO through VPC Impact Acquisition. It is expected to fetch a $2.1 billion valuation.

• Accounts receivable automation software Billtrust will go public through a merger with the South Mountain Merger Corp SPAC, at an estimated enterprise value of $1.3 billion.

• Fortress Capital Acquisition, a financial services SPAC, priced a $350 million IPO.

• Thunder Bridge Capital Partners filed for a $300 million fintech SPAC.

• Deep Lake Capital Acquisition, a fintech SPAC founded by former PayPal executives, priced a $180 million IPO.

• Astrea Acquisition filed for a $150 million IPO for its hospitality and financial services-focused SPAC.

• LMF Acquisition Opportunities, a financial services-focused SPAC, filed for a $75 million IPO.

(Source)

Hello Fintech Friends,

At this point, this week feels more like this year in fintech. Private fintechs raised $2.4 billion in venture capital mega-rounds (rounds of over $100 million) this week alone. There were major breaking stories from Ant Group, Walmart and Plaid. Affirm’s share price popped over 100% in its market debut. We may need another newsletter just for headline events.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Quote of the week

“When she heard that the federal government was working on a fresh stimulus package, Ms. Banke called Dupaco to ask whether it would waive the outstanding fees. If it did so, she hoped, she could tap the stimulus funds. Bank officials said no.”

• Emily Flitter, New York Times (source)

Read of the Week

This week in the Financial Times, OCC acting comptroller Brian Brooks opines that decentralized finance (DeFi) is paving the way for self-driving banks. I am a believer in the eventual promise of DeFi: the ability to program contractual terms into financial instruments, without depending on (and paying for) intermediaries, will create a massive paradigm shift that unlocks financial opportunity universally. The technology just needs to suffer its (significant) growing pains first. (In related news, the OCC this week approved Anchorage as the nation’s first federal digital asset bank.

Financial Services & Banking

Product Launches

Standard Chartered bank went live on Cobalt’s foreign exchange market infrastructure platform for its prime brokerage business.

Mastercard and Synchrony will launch a Walgreens credit card. Mastercard also unveiled its first point-of-sale acceptance technology.

The Pakistani government announced its new instant digital payments system.

Other News

Pimco, Man Group, IHS Markit, State Street, Microsoft and McKinsey are joining forces to build a new tech enterprise for the asset management industry. CME Group and IHS Markit combined their post-trade investor services into a new joint venture. Four Irish banks are collaborating to launch a joint multi-bank real-time payments app. Goldman Sachs and Marqeta are partnering to power Marcus’ checking accounts.

Citibank and Grab expanded their in-app consumer lending partnership. The Agricultural Bank of China equipped its ATMs to withdraw the country’s new digital currency.

Santander Bank wound down its SMB invoice and expense management app, Asto Digital. New Zealand’s central bank said its data system was hacked, exposing potentially commercially sensitive information.

Fintech

Product Launches

Green Dot launched its own proprietary neobank, GO2bank, for financially underserved Americans. Updgrade launched a debit card with rewards.

Octobank, a Czech Republic neobank, is launching European banking services for e-commerce merchants.

Spruce launched a new tool for closing home sales.

Other News

In a story that has yet to be confirmed, but could fundamentally alter the landscape for financial technology in China, it is rumored that the Chinese Communist Party is planning to nationalize Ant Financial. This follows months of clampdowns on the operations of the financial super-startup, which was at one point imminently going public. Unlike the prior cull of the massive shadow-lending sector in China, this latest action appears to be more politically motivated, following criticism of China’s regulators by Jack Ma, and top-down rather than bottoms-up.

Walmart is partnering with prolific fintech venture capital firm Ribbit Capital to co-create a fintech joint venture. It is unclear what products or services will be on offer.

Alchemy partnered with Sentilink on fighting synthetic fraud. Banking-as-a-service provider Moven is partnering with digital asset firm Nydig to enable crypto functionality. i2c and TAG are partnering to build Pakistan’s first financial super-app.

Brits using buy-now-pay-later services racked up £2.3 billion in charges over the holiday season, according to Credit Karma. Crypto exchange Gemini is planning a credit card, similar to Blockfi’s, with crypto rewards.

PhonePe, the Indian peer-to-peer payment app that spun off from Flipkart, grew revenues 74% in 2020 and is rumored to be considering an IPO. Apple Pay will likely launch in South Africa this year, with two new banking partners. Samsung Pay will no longer feature its card-present mimicking feature in new phones.

Intuit is planning to add insights, subscription tracking, and motivational features to its Mint iPhone app, after years of neglect.

Neobank N26 secured a banking license to expand its services into Brazil. Meanwhile, competitor Revolut has applied for a UK financial services license. And Starling Bank is in the market to buy a lender. American neobanks Chime, Varo and Current are winning customers over by processing stimulus payments more quickly than legacy banks.

Carta announced that the first private securities offering on its CartaX marketplace will be of its own stock, coming this month.

Latino-focused consumer lender Aura was forced to shut down, following pandemic stress on its loan book. Mexican consumers in the US, meanwhile, have sent record amounts of remittances across borders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fintech salaries. Square in Soho. New financing platform from Hustle Fund.

Policy

Courtesy of Ben White at Plaid.

• The OCC granted a federal banking charter to crypto provider Anchorage, in yet another step by the agency to push banking and crypto closer together.

• Well-known Wall Street regulator current MIT blockchain professor Gary Gensler appears to be the incoming head of SEC.

• Several crypto providers and thousands of commentersspoke outagainst “last minute” FinCEN’s “Know Your Crypto Customer” rules.

• Baby bonds, a proposal to provide all American newborns with investable holdings that research shows could drastically reduce the racial wealth gap, could be back in play under Biden’s stimulus plan.

• The Federal Reserve held an Artificial Intelligence Symposium, highlighted by a speech from Governor Lael Brainard supporting AI’s use to expand access and improve outcomes.

• British MPs are worried that buy-now-pay-later firms could be ‘the next Wonga’.

• The European Central Bank received over 8,000 responses to its consultation on the creation of a digital euro.

(Source)

Deeper Reads

Announcing the Open Employment Data Standards

Why Visa and Plaid called off their $5.3 billion fintech deal

Complex Mainframe Migration: A Premier US Auto Lender’s Journey of Modernization

7 Indian Fintech Startups To Watch Out For In 2021

What does Plaid do?

Simple Bank Alternatives

Reviewing SoFi’s investor deck

How Flutterwave saved 2020 for its community

Why Fintech Innovation will Power Banking’s Next Decade

Drivewealth’s Quarterly Global Trends Report

Octopuses are ocean thugs that punch fish (h/t Matt Levine)

Hello Fintech Friends,

We’re back!

2020 was a wild year across the board and fintech was no exception. I’m curious, what stands out to you as the craziest story in fintech last year?

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Quote of the week

“The shiny new tech in payments tends to be in the retail space, but the opportunities are actually behind the scenes in the B2B space.”

• Ming-Chieh Lee, The Misaligned Opportunity in Payment

Open Role Spotlight

Banking-as-a-service pioneer Unit is hiring a Customer Success Manager for their New York office with remote work available.

Read of the Week

In The Bitter Legacy Of The AT&T Card, Bloomberg tells the entertaining story of the new co-branded credit card that became an overnight sensation before it launched the credit card rewards and price war that we know today.

Sponsored Content

Dwolla’s Drop-in Components are a low-code solution that can be copied and pasted into an application or website to expedite payment functionality. Style these components to match your UX and pass the necessary user information directly to Dwolla. View these components on Dwolla’s GitHub and start testing in the Dwolla Sandbox. 

Financial Services & Banking

BBVA is shutting down Simple, the neobank it acquired in 2014, and Azlo, its business bank.

Silent Eight, an automation platform for fighting financial crime, announced a partnership with HSBC. 

UK banks are pushing the government to increase the contactless payment limit to £100. The Italian Banking Association will explore the creation of a digital euro.

Fintech

Product Launches

Venmo launched a feature to let users cash checks directly to their Venmo balance.

Other News

Neobanks Current and Chime became the first fintechs to both receive and credit funds from the new stimulus. Neobanks across the board are seeing high demand for cryptocurrencies as prices spike. And a coalition of UK neobanks are calling on the FCA to end banks’ hold over consumer financial data this year. And Sadapay is a new neobank rolling out in Pakistan.

Petal launched a two-month promotion to enter cardholders into a $500 sweepstakes for paying down their cards early.

Apple Pay came to 1.2 million stores in Japan through Line Pay.

Chinese regulators ordered Ant Financial to scale back its operations, laid out a ‘rectification plan’ for the company, and are weighing whether or not to force the firm to divest its finance investments.

The New York MTA finished its contactless payment rollout.

Robinhood was served a class action lawsuit for selling stock orders as it approaches its IPO. Elsewhere, Robinhood’s year in review. A DC District Court judge backed PayPal against the CFPB, arguing that new CFPB rules forced it to make confusing and useless disclosures to customers.

Policy

Courtesy of Ben White at Plaid.

• The OCC cleared banks to use stablecoins & blockchain for payments, following September guidance telling banks they can hold stablecoin reserves.

• The CFPB issued an advisory opinion on Earned Wage Access products, sandbox approval for a Synchrony card that graduates from secured to unsecured, and a safe harbor for PayActiv.

• PPP is back for another round in a second stimulus package, this time targeting the smallest firms. Applicants can rely on bank statements for verification.

• The Trump Administration signed an executive order banning transactions on WeChat, AliPay, other China-based platforms.

• The CFPB’s Task Force on Federal Consumer Financial Law issued a 900-page report recommending updates to regulations on credit, payments, and financial inclusion.

Source

Financings

• SMB payroll software platform Paycor raised $270 million in new growth funding.

• Business spend management platform Divvy raised a $165 million Series D at a $1.6 billion valuation.

• German banking-as-a-service platform Mambu raised a new €110 million funding round.

• Online mortgage platform SimpleNexus raised a $108 million Series B.

• Indian credit startup CRED raised an $81 million Series C (maybe again? It’s unclear….)

• Bibit, an Indonesian roboadvisor focused on expanding financial access, raised $30 million in new funding.

• TagPay, a French core banking provider, raised €25 million in new funding.

• Neobank Oxygen raised a $17 million Series A.

• Oxbury, a neobank for farmers to provide seasonal cashflow services, raised a £15 million round. 

• French business accounting automation startup Pennylane raised €15 million.

Exits and M&A

Fintechs

• Affirm restarted its roadshow, planning to raise $935 million at a valuation of up to $9.2 billion. (Roadshow documents here.)

• SoFi will go public through Chamath Palihapitiya’s SPAC at a valuation of $8.65 billion.

• Silicon Valley Bank’s parent will acquire private banking and wealth management firm Boston Private Financial for $900 million.

• Amerihome is looking to revive its $250 million IPO.

• French neobank Anytime was acquired by telco Orange Bank.

• Options Technology will acquire trading software Fixnetix.

• Debt collection platform Simplicity Collection Software was acquired by Katabat.

• AvidXchange acquired accounts payable platform Core Associates.

• Cashplus, banking and credit service provider in the UK, will acquire £2 million in monthly transactions and the current account portfolio of icount.

• The OCC approved Lending Club’s acquisition of Radius Bank.

• Square has allegedly discussed acquiring Tidal, Jay Z’s music streaming service. 

Banks

• JP Morgan will acquire card points and loyalty business cxLoyalty Group.

• Paytrail will acquire e-commerce payments platform Checkout Finland.

• Duo Bank of Canada acquired near-prime credit solutions provider Fairstone Financial.

• Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division will acquire White Ops, a digital fraud prevention platform.

Investment Management

• Brazilian asset manager Vinci Partners Investments filed for a $100 million US IPO.

• Investment manager Constellation Advisers was acquired by IQ-EQ.

• Investment advisor Hightower will acquire Bel Air Investment Advisors.

• Mercer Advisors will acquire Atlanta Financial Associates.

• Mercer Advisors will acquire Kays Financial Advisory Corporation.

• H2O Asset Management’s management team will acquire the firm back from Natixis.

• MNC Kapital Indonesia bought a controlling stake in New York-based brokerage Auerbach Grayson.

SPACs

• Boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg will go public through Bancorp founder Betsy Cohen’s FinTech Acquisition Corp.

Deeper Reads

TransferWise: the UK fintech grows up

Digital Banking is dead.. Long live Digital Banking…!

Green Dot CEO Interview

FT Partners’ January Update

Forbes Favorites 2020: The Year’s Best Fintech Stories

The 2020 Forbes Fintech Awards

2020: The year that shook fintech

2020 Payments Year in Review

2021 Should See Some Big Fintech IPOs

Nine Payment And Fintech Predictions For 2021

Sesame Street announces Noor and Aziz, two new muppets for refugee Rohingya children in Bangladesh. (Read about the Rohingya crisis and donate here.)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Happy holidays! Please enjoy a combined weekend edition of fintech and banking news below.

Quote of the week

“From 2004 to 2020, student-loan debt metastasized from $250 billion to $1.5 trillion, as the costs of higher education increased but wages in many fields didn’t rise to meet them. Also putting young people into arrears during the aughts: carnival barkers in the quad hawking Visa, Mastercard, and the like alongside free T‑shirts and pizza, until the federal government kicked credit-card companies off campus in 2009.”

• Amanda Mull, Why Is There Financing for Everything Now?

Open Role Spotlight

Ziina, which is building the Venmo and Square of the Middle East, is hiring a software engineer.

Read of the week

Amanda Peyton of Braid pointed me to a pair of great reads on the concept of group financial services this week. The first, her piece On Multiplayer Fintech, discusses the need to built financial products that treat groups as the atomic unit (clubs, associations, roommates, etc.) The second, Squad Wealth, begins to explore the possibilities for growing wealth and income collaboratively, rather than individually. It will be interesting to see if this concept of social finance, which has existed for some time in the offline world in the form of lending circles or early insurance schemes, will open the door for new models of fintech.

Financial Services & Banking

Product Launches

Citi signed a deal with eight fintech startups and data aggregators to build a third-party fintech marketplace.

India’s Icici Bank released an online platform, similar to Stripe Atlas, to help companies incorporate in India. The National Payments Corporation of India introduced an offline contactless feature for mobile wallets.

Other News

Goldman Sachs is putting the finishing touches on its wealth management roboadvisor for mainstreet investors. (Their target market, millennials, are still relatively poor.) Safaricom, the Kenyan mobile money pioneer behind M-Pesa, is also evaluating a move into wealth management.

Fifth Third bank partnered with Blend to revamp its home mortgage process.

16,000 ATMs across the UK now facilitate cryptocurrency cash-outs. Visa, meanwhile, is exploring how digital currencies can be used for peer-to-peer offline exchanges, similarly to cash.

The SEC approved a rule change that will allow companies doing direct listings on the NYSE to raise primary capital as well.

Mastercard faces a £14 billion class action lawsuit in the UKS brought against it by 46 million consumers, claiming that it reaped the rewards of interchange fees which were passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Fintech

Product Launches

WhatsApp is quickly iterating on its Indian product, rolling out insurance and pension products.

Payments startup Stax launched in Africa to be a single point of call for money apps and wallets - as migrant remittances to Africa remain steady despite the pandemic.

Parental investing app Earlybird launched on the app store. Object Astra, an equity startup for people laid off during the pandemic, launched in the UK

Expensify launched financial group chat. 

Other News

Covid is accelerating the rate of tech change at banks. There are now 250+ neobanks. Revolut will partner with Belgium’s Qover to offer digital insurance in its banking app.

Homeadvisor is partnering with Affirm to offer installment loans on home improvement projects. Adyen is partnering with Flywire to facilitate vertical payments globally.

Samsung Pay is eliminating its rewards program at the end of the year. The UK banned an Instagram influencer campaign for buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna that encouraged people to use credit to 'boost their mood'.

I will only respond to this title from now on. (Source)

Financings

• Online checkout and payment fraud platform Bolt raised $75 million.

• Liberis, which provides financing to small businesses, raised £70 million in new funding.

• Israeli fintech Trigo raised $60 million to build smart checkout technology.

• Digital payroll platform Skuad raised a $4 million seed round.

• UK trading analytics workflow platform Tradefeedr raised $3 million in early-stage financing.

• Perch, an app for building credit through non-traditional payments, raised a $2.5 million seed.

• Ghanaian electronic money issuer Zeepay raised a $940,000 seed.

• PayJoy, a provider of financial solutions for underbanked consumers in emerging markets, secured $26 million in debt funding from Lendable.

• Banking tech firm 10x Future Technologies hired Lazard to look into a $100 million Series C.

Exits and M&A

• In the massive wave of payment service provider industry consolidation over the past year, news came out that FIS and Global Payments held unsuccessful talks for a merger that would have been worth $70 billion.

• Japan’s NEC Corp will buy Swiss financial software firm Avaloq for $2.2 billion.

• Rent-a-Center acquired lease to own credit issuer Acima for $1.65 billion.

• Chase closed its acquisition of WePay, the fintech that provides payments services for platforms like GoFundMe, for $400 million.

• Japanese roboadvisor Wealthnavi raised $173 million in its IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

• Magazine Luiza, a Brazilian retailer, will buy fintech firm Hub Prepaid Participações for $56 million.

• Gojek bought a 22% stake in Indonesian bank Jago to provide digital banking services on its GoPay mobile platform.

Deeper Reads

The future of fintech is female

Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says 😒

The Amazonization of retail payments

PayPal's Digital Wallet Battle Against Square Is Heating Up

7 FinTechs Fueling Financial Inclusion

Under the hood: The Merchant Payment Process

Three predictions for FinTech Infrastructure in 2021

What are VCs looking for in fintechs?

Nigeria’s best investment apps

'He's the deer of the year': Carrot the deer is back in action after getting arrow removed

Hello Fintech Friends,

As the holidays settle in we finally get a week of respite from no haha just kidding, here are 41 financings and M&A events.

It’s been a pretty wild year (in the world but yes in fintech too). I would be curious to hear people’s most outlandish predictions for where fintech will go in 2021, and with permission, will share the best ones in this newsletter.

Open Role Spotlight

Moov wants to break financial services out of their silo and open-source banking technology for the world. The company is hiring across the board for design, engineering, product, and sales.

Financings

• Creditas, a Brazilian lending startup, raised $255 million in new financing.

• GoCardless, a UK fintech that facilitates direct debit payments, raised $95 million in new capital.

• Real estate lending platform LendingHome raised a $75 million Series E.

• Lydia, a French mobile wallet and peer-to-peer payments app, raised an $86 million Series B extension.

• Social investing app Public raised a $65 million Series C.

• Vise, a company creating investment advisor tools, raised a $45 million Series B.

• Consumer lender Self Financial raised $40 million in new capital.

• Lendeavor, a healthcare lending fintech, rebranded as Provide and raised a $34 million Series A.

• Ramp, a corporate spend management and card startup, raised $30 million.

• Zilch, a UK buy-now-pay-later startup, raised $30 million in new funding.

• Canadian savings startup Neo Financial raised C$25 million in a Series A.

• Employee lender Salary Finance raised £20 million from backers including Experian.

• Arya raised $21 million to build financial services for Indian farmers.

• Wealth management platform Vestrata raised $4 million.

• Umba raised a $2 million seed to build a digital bank for emerging markets across Africa.

• Home loan advice and origination platform Homebuyer raised $1.4 million in seed funding.

• Gr4vy, a cloud orchestration layer for simplifying how businesses add payment systems to checkouts, raised a $1.1 million seed.

• Nigerian lending startup Indicina raised a six-figure funding round.

• American Express announced a strategic investment in institutional cryptocurrency startup FalconX.

• ING invested in UK data security startup eXate.

Exits and M&A

• Affirm will be postponing its upcoming IPO, valued at up to $10 billion, until 2021 for reasons that are still unclear.

• Apollo and Blackstone are both in talks to buy Wells Fargo’s $10 billion student loan book, as the bank continues to pare down assets after years of scandals led to a regulator-imposed freeze on asset growth.

• In a continued wave of regional banking mergers, Huntington Bank agreed to buy TCF for $6 billion.

• Asset management firm Oaktree Capital Group made a $5 billion for bankrupt Indian shadow lender Dewan Housing Finance.

• Private equity firms are also eyeing the purchase of Wells Fargo’s asset management arm for $3 billion.

• Online lender Upstart raised $180 million in its IPO at a market cap of $3.3 billion.

• Cardtronics agreed to sell itself to Apollo and Hudson for $2.3 billion.

• Bain Capital bought UK retirement investing service Liverpool Victoria Financial for £530 million.

• European payments firm Worldline took a controlling interest in Australian bank ANZ’s commercial acquiring business for A$485 million.

• GoDaddy acquired point-of-sale payments provider Poynt for $320 million in cash and $45 million in earnout.

• Private equity firm Inflexion will buy Norwegian financial data provider Infront ASA for $171 million.

• Capita PLC will buy £45 million of ParentPay, an education payments technology, from its parent Montagu.

• Fiserv will acquire online payment experience, rewards, and loyalty platform Ondot.

• AnaCap Financial Partners will acquire UK wealth management platform Novia Financial.

• IBM will acquire Canadian payments-as-a-service fintech Expertus.

• Private equity firm Corsair Capital acquired a majority stake in credit reporting solution provider IDIQ.

• Wahed Invest, an Islamic finance fintech company based in the US, acquired Islamic banking app Niyah in the UK.

• French bank Société Générale acquired online car buying platform Reezocar.

• Australia’s three leading national payment platforms eftpos, BPAY Group and New Payments Platform Australia will merge to fend off competitive threats from foreign payment providers.

• Norwegian browser-maker Opera will buy Estonian banking-as-a-service platform Pocosys.

SPAC

• Katapult, an e-commerce focused fintech that originates point-of-sale purchase options for non-prime consumers, agreed to merge with FinServ Acquisition Corp at an enterprise value of $1 billion.

Source: Fintech Takes