Fintech

After calling off its plans to go public via a SPAC at a $10.4 billion valuation in 2022, trading platform eToro has secured $250 million in funding at a $3.5 billion valuation. The money is not a typical equity round: It comes by way of an Advanced Investment Agreement (AIA), eToro founder and CEO

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you're reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Mary Ann is on a much deserved break this week, so I am filling in for h

Founders are still shaking off the dust a week after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse. Rumors are swirling about who might be looking to buy the beleaguered bank's assets. Some of the top firms urged their portfolio managers to diversify their assets as the bank was collapsing, and are contin

An agreement among a group of the nation's largest banks to deposit some $30 billion with First Republic Bank could be coming this week, according to a Bloomberg report. Bloomberg reports that banks said to be involved in this deal include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of Ameri

Digital payments company Stripe announced Wednesday that it raised over $6.5 billion in Series I funding to value the company at $50 billion. As we reported earlier this month, the payments giant was expected to raise a lower amount of funding, around $2 billion, though at $60 billion valuation. Mo

The Justice Department and SEC are investigating the stock sales that officers of Silicon Valley Bank made days before the bank failed, according to both the WSJ and the NYTimes. The probes are reportedly in their preliminary phase. Both outlets note that it’s common to investigate prearrange

Nigerian credit-led digital banking platform FairMoney has acquired PayForce (sub-brand of YC-backed CrowdForce), a merchant payment services that serves small businesses, as the digital lender looks to broaden its financial services proposition to merchants. Both startups declined to disclose the

The fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is impacting a range of startups and larger firms including, as we know now from SEC filings, publicly traded companies like Roku, Roblox, Quotient, and others. Roku said in a filing that it had around $487 million held at SVB, representing aroun

Startups are facing a moment of reckoning in the current economic climate, and today one of the more promising in the world of fintech has cracked under the pressure. Railsr, the London, U.K. embedded finance startup formerly known as Railsbank and once worth nearly $1 billion, announced today that

Synctera, a banking-as-a-service startup, has raised an additional $15 million as it expands into Canada. NAventures, the corporate venture arm of National Bank of Canada, led the financing, which brings Synctera's total raised to $60 million since its June 2020 inception. Private equity firm T

Digital mortgage lender Better.com's SPAC deal with Aurora Acquisition Corp. recently got a new lease on life, extending its timeframe to close the transaction through the end of Q3 2023. Without the extension the transaction would have had to close by today. Further investigation has turned up

When people think of the funding crisis in further education, thoughts normally turn to the rising price of a typical four-year college degree. But that’s not the only financial gap that exists: Those who want to pursue hands-on careers in trades like medical technicians, automotive mechanics

Student debt relief has been a hot topic for years now, with some big things happening — policy-wise — in the past year: Last summer, the Biden administration announced a plan to cancel up to $20,000 for people holding federal student loans. Then in December, Congress passed the SECURE ACT 2.0,

After a slow start in the U.K. and Europe, open banking is catching on with fintechs, which are using APIs to access banking data and rails and using them as an alternative to traditional credit networks to build products. Now, a U.K.-based consumer lending service called Abound is doubling down on