Point raises $46.5 million for its premium debit card
Challenger bank Point has raised a $46.5 million Series B funding round. The company offers an account associated with a debit card. And the startup positions itself as a premium debit card company and tries to offer credit card rewards with debit cards.
Existing investor Peter Thiel’s Valar
All the reasons why you should launch a credit or debit card
Over the previous two or three years we've seen an explosion of new debit and credit card products come to market from consumer and B2B fintech startups, as well as companies that we might not traditionally think of as players in the financial services industry.
On the consumer side, that means
India launches Account Aggregator to extend financial services to millions
India's top banks five years ago built the interoperable UPI rails and enabled over 150 million people in the South Asian market to pay digitally. Scores of firms — including local firms Paytm, PhonePe, CRED and international giants Google and Facebook — in India today support the U
Top Indian payments app PhonePe opens its data firehose to everyone
PhonePe, one of the largest digital payments services in India, on Thursday launched Pulse, a free product to offer insights into how people in the world's second-largest internet market are paying digitally.
And PhonePe would know: the Flipkart-backed five-year-old startup said its insights ar
Challenger bank Bunq rolls out Spanish IBANs
Amsterdam-based challenger bank Bunq is updating its service with a handful of new features. In addition to Dutch, German and French bank account numbers, existing and new users in Spain can now get a Spanish IBAN.
European IBANs are supposed to work across Europe. Your employer or internet provide
Square to launch a new paid subscription, Invoices Plus
Square’s popular free invoicing software is becoming the company’s next big subscription service. The company is poised to announce a paid subscription offering called Invoices Plus, which will offer sellers a set of advanced features, including some that had previously been available w
Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. It's also killing the 21st
When did indoor air become cold and clean?
Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous that many in the developed world don't even realize that less than a century ago, it didn't exist. Indeed, it wasn't so long ago that the air inside our buildings and th
Indiagold raises $12 million for its gold-focused digital alternative credit platform
India has a unique fascination for gold. The households in the South Asian market are estimated to have a stash of over 25,000 tons of the precious metal whose value today is about half of the country's nominal GDP. But much of this gold has been sitting idly in lockers in big metal wardrobes f
Israel's maturing fintech ecosystem may soon create global disruptors
“Even with its vast local talent, it seems Israel still has many hurdles to overcome in order to become a global fintech hub. [ … ] Having that said, I don't believe any of these obstacles will prevent Israel from generating disruptive global fintech startups that will become game-changing
With investors like Lightspeed and The Chainsmokers, Mexican neobroker Flink raises $57M to boost financial inclusion in LatAm
Flink, a Mexico City-based neobroker, has raised $57 million in a Series B round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
The financing comes just over six months after Flink raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Accel. Existing backers Accel, ALLVP, Clocktower and new investor Manti
Final vote delayed for Korea's plan to ban Google and Apple in-app payment rules
As Apple and Google continue to face increasing scrutiny over the rules they set for how third-party apps in their app stores charge for services, a significant development in that story is going down in South Korea.
South Korea's parliamentary committee passed on Wednesday (25 August) a landma
Linktree partners with PayPal to allow users globally to accept direct payments
Linktree, the popular “link in bio” service with more than 16 million users, is partnering with PayPal to expand its recently launched “Commerce Links” tools for direct payment on Linktree globally. The Melbourne-based startup says creators in over 200 countries where PayPal operates can no
Plentific cements $100M to expand its property management SaaS
London based Plentific, which operates a marketplace SaaS platform targeting the property management space, has closed a $100 mlion Series C. The funding round is led by new investors Highland Europe and Brookfield Technology Partners — the VC arm of the eponymous real estate giant — al
South Korean online secondhand marketplace Danggeun Market raises $162M at a $2.7B valuation
Danggeun Market, the publisher of South Korea's hyperlocal community app Karrot, announced it has raised $162 million in a Series D round of funding with a valuation of $2.7 billion. (By the way, Danggeun means carrot in Korean.)
This round of funding was led by DST Global, with additional part