At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up for you to get the latest funding news.
Left to right: Michael Do, Anfin co-founder; Louis Nguyen, chairman and CEO, SAM; Phuoc Tran, Anfin co-founder; Hiep Nguyen, Anfin tech lead
Vietnam-based Anfin Company has onboarded Saigon Asset Management (SAM) as an equity investor and a strategic partner.
As part of the deal, SAM’s portfolio of investment funds will be offered on Anfin’s stock trading app. SAM will also work with other institutional investors on future investment rounds.
Anfin claims to be the first fully digital broker in Vietnam and “a disruptor in the brokerage industry”, offering tradable securities and wealth management products to retail investors via its app.
Anfin was founded in mid-2021 by Phuoc Tran (CEO) and Michael Do (chief product officer, CPO).
It previously raised $510,000 from Global Founders Capital, First Check Ventures, and R2 Venture Partners, and $125,000 from Y-Combinator.
Anfin employs 30 people in Vietnam.
Hubuc, an embedded finance platform that calls itself “AWS for financial services”, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round, co-led by WndrCo and Runa Capital.
Y Combinator and Village Global, backed by Jeff Bezos, Kenneth I. Chenault, Abigail Johnson, and Bill Gates, also participated alongside a cohort of angel investors. These angels include John Lilly (ex CEO Mozilla), Immad Akhund (CEO Mercury), Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen (ex-VP Uber), Bo Jiang (CEO Lithic), John Bautista (partner Orrick), and Anthony Saleh (angel investor in Coinbase and Robinhood).
Hubuc was founded in 2021 by Hasan Nawaz (CEO) and Ignacio Javierre (COO), with teams in Europe and North America. It is a trading name for B2B Fintech Solutions, registered in Barcelona, Spain.
“Embedded finance is no longer the exclusive privilege of large technology firms,” observes Nawaz.
The start-up says it has secured long-term customer contracts worth over $4 million with clients including Wagestream, PayFlow, OkTicket, and Declarando.
It has also partnered with Mastercard.
“Through a single API, any business in any industry can add managed financial services, from bank accounts to payments, virtual and physical cards as well as real-time FX rates and digital wallets, to their product offering,” the company says.
“Instead of lengthy onboarding processes, which can take anywhere up to a year, Hubuc’s managed service cuts this time to just weeks thanks to its in-house compliance, ledger and processing platform. This compliance platform sits as a layer between the financial partners Hubuc works with, and the company’s product.
“In this way, the contracts, knowledge, regulatory requirements, integrations and risk are all managed by Hubuc, allowing its customers immediate access to a full-suite of money-laundering, payment processing, card manufacturing, exchange rates and digital wallet services at the touch of a button.
“Just as with AWS, where customers don’t need to worry about buying computing infrastructure like servers, data centres, maintenance, security, and so on, Hubuc removes the need to worry about finding banking partners, compliance, regulatory license, card manufacturers, and identity verification.
“Hubuc also allows for the same scalability as AWS, and it does away with the high set-up costs in the same way.”
The raised funds will be invested into product development, expanding its compliance team, and boosting its European presence.
Summa Equity Fund III has acquired a majority stake in Intix, a Belgium-based firm that offers a transaction and compliance insight platform engine for the financial sector.
Founded in 2011, Intix counts Nordea, Société Générale, Standard Bank, and KBC Bank among its customers.
The vendor says its “off-the-shelf” solutions replace manual work that costs financial institutions billions of euros each year and can radically speed up time to insight and action by tracking transactions, identifying irregularities, and issuing real-time alerts.
“In Summa Equity, we found the ideal partner to support our exponential growth ambitions,” comments Marc Braet, CEO of Intix. “From the very first contact, we felt that Summa Equity shares the cultural and social values of the Intix family.”
Pluto, a corporate spend management start-up in Dubai, UAE, has raised $6 million in its seed round.
The round was led by GFC, with participation from Adapt VC, Soma Capital, Graph Ventures, and OldSlip Group. Several angel investors also contributed to the round.
Pluto was founded by Mohammed Ridwan (ex-Shopify and Square Cash App), Nayeem Zen (ex-Shopify, Square CashApp, and Uber), and Mo Aziz (Y Combinator graduate).
The start-up has a waitlist on its website and plans to launch in the UAE later this year, followed by Saudi Arabia.
The money will also be used to grow the teams in the UAE and North America.
Upswing Financial Technologies, an open finance B2B ecosystem enabler, has raised $4 million from QED Investors and a group of fintech founders. These are Kunal Shah of Cred; Jiten Gupta of Jupiter; Rajan Bajaj of Slice; Lalit Keshre of Groww; Anurag Sinha of One Card; Shivashish Chatterjee of DMI Finance; Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal; and Sumit Gwalani and Sujith Narayanan of Epifi.
The round also saw participation from funds like Better Capital, Amara VC, Multiply Ventures, Capier Investments, and Utsav Somani from AngelList.
Upswing was founded in 2021 by ex-bankers Anupam Bagchi and Nihar Gupta, and is based in Mumbai, India.
The funding will be used to build plug-and-play platforms for open finance, helping fintechs and consumer tech players launch financial services seamlessly and in a matter of weeks, the start-up says.
It is currently working with a number of banks on its stack, it adds, and will go live in a phased manner later this year.
Banking app for kids WALO raises $1.1m
Montreal-based WALO, a start-up that focuses on banking services and financial literacy for kids, has raised $1.1 million from the government of Quebec, Desjardins, Granicus Group, and WatchMojo, plus several angel investors.
WALO says it will use the money to get its bank account and prepaid Mastercard card offering to the market, “helping parents teach their kids about managing their first bank account”. The launch is expected later this year and the waitlist is currently open.
The project was conceived during the Cooperathon, Desjardins’ innovation competition, in late 2018. WALO then moved into the bank’s accelerator for young businesses, Start-up in Residence.
Desjardins is the largest cooperative financial group in North America and the fifth largest in the world, with assets of $397 billion.
“We’ve worked together right from the beginning because the missions and the values of our organisations match up well,” comments Martin Brunelle, VP, growth, acquisitions and development office, Desjardins.
“Managing personal finances is a real source of stress in our society. We need to give parents and families the tools they need to improve their financial literacy. We definitely see WALO as part of that solution.”
