
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (previously The Interchange)! This week, we’re taking a look at Robinhood’s new Gold Card, challenges within the BaaS area and the way a tiny startup caught Stripe’s eye.
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The large story
Robinhood took the wraps off its new Gold Card final week to a lot fanfare. It has an extended checklist of spectacular options, together with 3% money again and the power to speculate that money again by way of the corporate’s brokerage account. A consumer may put that money again into Robinhood’s financial savings account, which presents 5% APY. We’re curious to see how this new card will affect the corporate’s backside line. But additionally, we’re fascinated by how Robinhood included the know-how it acquired when buying startup X1 last summer for $95 million and turned it right into a probably very profitable new providing.
Evaluation of the week
The banking-as-a-service (BaaS) area is going through challenges. BaaS startup Synctera just lately conducted a restructuring that impacts about 15% of workers. The startup is just not the one VC-backed BaaS firm to have resorted to layoffs to protect money over the previous yr. Treasury Prime, Synapse and Determine have as nicely. In the meantime, in keeping with American Banker, the FDIC introduced consent orders towards Sutton Financial institution and Piermont Financial institution, telling them “to maintain a more in-depth eye on their fintechs’ compliance with the Financial institution Secrecy Act and cash laundering guidelines.”
{Dollars} and cents
PayPal Ventures’ newest funding is in Qoala, an Indonesian startup that provides personal insurance products covering a variety of risks, together with accidents and telephone display screen harm. MassMutual Ventures additionally participated in Qoala’s new $47 million round of funding.
New Retirement, a Mill Valley–based mostly firm constructing software program to assist folks create monetary retirement plans, has raised $20 million in a tranche of funding.
We final checked in on Zaver, a Swedish B2C buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) supplier in Europe, when it raised a $5 million funding spherical in 2021. The corporate has now closed a $10 million extension to its Sequence A funding spherical, bringing its whole Sequence A to $20 million.
What else we’re writing
Learn all about how a tiny four-person startup, Supaglue, caught Stripe’s eye. Supaglue, previously often known as Supergrain, is an open supply developer platform for user-facing integrations. The staff goes to assist Stripe on real-time analytics and reporting throughout its platform and third-party apps for its Income and Finance Automation suite.
Maju Kuruvilla is no longer CEO of one-click checkout firm Bolt. He’s changed by Justin Grooms, Bolt’s world head of gross sales, who’s now interim CEO. Kuruvilla, the previous Amazon government, took over as CEO in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow stepped down. The Data has extra about Bolt’s woes here.
Excessive-interest headlines
Inside Mercury’s stumble from fintech hero to target of the feds
RealPage and Plaid team to curb rental fraud
In HR software battle, Rippling makes up ground against Deel — at a cost
Is Chime ready for an IPO? It has more primary customers than Chase
Inside a CEO’s bold claims about her hot fintech startup, which TC beforehand coated here.
Cloverleaf raises $7.3M in Series A extension
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