Ladder raises $100M on a $900M valuation for a platform selling flexible term life insurance

Life insurance has had a new lease on life in the era of insuretech, and today one of the companies building a business out of rethinking everything — from target customers through to how to provision and pay for insurance, and how much coverage to give — is announcing some funding on t

B Capital in talks to back Indian neobank Fi

B Capital Group, which last week co-led Indian social commerce Meesho’s $570 million funding, is in advanced stages of talks to back Bangalore-based neobank Fi (formerly known as epiFi), many aware of the talks told me. Fi offers a neobanking service for millennials in India. The startup, whi

Who needs a BaaS partner, anyway?

Over the last several years, a series of startups have emerged to cut through the complexity of launching financial services by offering technology that sits on top of partner banks' infrastructure and enables developers to spin up bank accounts, payments and card capabilities through APIs. The

Verto picks up $10M for cross-border payments play in emerging markets

Verto, a global B2B payments platform that allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make payments to their suppliers, today announced that it has closed $10 million in Series A funding. Quona Capital, an emerging fintech-focused venture capital firm, led the round. Other firms also parti

Hedvig banks $45M to expand its millennial-focused insurance service in Europe

Mlennial consumers are emerging as a key demographic in the insurance market, and today a Swedish startup that’s buding a business catering specifically to their needs and priorities is announcing a round of funding to fuel its growth. Hedvig, a neo-insurer that provides property, travel, con

NBA Top Shot creator on the NFT craze and why Ethereum still isn’t consumer friendly

Roham Gharegozlou has been betting on the potential success of NFTs for years. This year, it happened. Gharegozlou and the team at his startup, Dapper Labs, shipped the blockchain world’s first popular game, CryptoKitties, back in 2017. The startup then launched NBA Top Shot late last year, a

Swan raises $18.7 million to provide embedded banking services

French startup Swan has raised an $18.7 million Series A funding round (€16 million) led by Accel. The company provides a banking-as-a-service platform for other products and services. Embedded finance has been an important trend for the past few years in fintech. Companies that operate in this s

Nigerian businesses can now accept Apple Pay on Paystack

Paystack, the African fintech company that powers and processes payments for businesses, today announced that it is launching Pay with Apple Pay on its platform. The company, in a statement, called the integration “the fastest, secure way for Nigerian businesses to accept international paymen

Insight Partners leads $34M round in Singapore-based fintech Spenmo

Spenmo originated as an expense management platform before realizing that expenses “are just a tiny sliver” of a company's payables, founder and CEO Mohandass Kalaichelvan told technewss. Financial teams also need to manage vendor payments, supplier payments, payroll and reconcile bank acc

PayPal launches its ‘super app’ combining payments, savings, bill pay, crypto, shopping and more

PayPal has been talking about its “super app” plans for some time, having recently told investors its upcoming digital wallet and payments app had been given a go for launch. Today, the first version of that app is officially being introduced, offering a combination of financial tools i

TrueLayer nabs $130M at a $1B+ valuation as open banking rises as a viable option to card networks

Open banking — a disruptive technology that seeks to bypass the dominance of card networks and other traditional financial rails by letting banks open their systems directly to developers (and new services) by way of APIs — continues to gain ground in the world of financial services. As

Airwallex raises $200M at a $4B valuation to double down on business banking

Business, now more than ever before, is going digital, and today a startup that’s building a vertically integrated solution to meet business banking needs is announcing a big round of funding to tap into the opportunity. Airwallex — which provides business banking services directly to b

FloBiz raises $31 million to scale its neobank for small businesses in India

FloBiz, an Indian startup that is building a neobank for small- and medium-sized businesses in the South Asian market, said on Monday it has raised $31 million in a new financing round as it works to broaden its product offerings. Sequoia Capital India and Think Investments co-led the 18-month-old

Asian merchant commerce platform Pine Labs raises $100 million

Pine Labs said on Thursday it has raised an additional $100 million, just weeks after securing $600 million in a financing round, as the Asian merchant commerce platform begins to explore the public markets. The U.S.-based investment management company Invesco Developing Markets Fund made the $100