After accounting startup Bench abruptly shut down on December 27 and was bought in a fire-sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning they can’t easily just take their financial data and leave. And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch. To recap: When Bench, a startup based in Canada that raised […]
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Philippine fintech startup GCash is gearing up for what could become the country’s largest stock offering, with plans to raise up to $1.5 billion through a domestic IPO. The company has enlisted major financial players, including Citi, Jefferies, and UBS, […]
The post Philippine fintech startup GCash eyes $1.5 billion IPO, hires banks first appeared on Tech Startups.
As digital payments morph into strategic assets, India is offering a template for other nations seeking to reduce dependence on Western payment networks. Regulators around the world are notching up scrutiny on Visa and Mastercard over the fees they charge merchants, but India has chosen a different path: creating rival payment networks that are increasingly […]
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Retraction Notice (Added on January 10, 2025): On January 9, 2025, we published this article titled “Payroll startup Deel accused of money laundering, sanctions failures in Ponzi scheme lawsuit.” The article referenced reporting by The Information, which Deel, Inc. has […]
The post Payroll startup Deel accused of money laundering, sanctions failures in Ponzi scheme lawsuit first appeared on Tech Startups.
Wirecard, a German fintech that raised hundreds of millions of dollars only to collapse in 2020 in a sea of scandal and insolvency, still makes headlines today as lawsuits continue against different entities and people once connected to the business. But not all that came out of it was rotten. A Dublin-based startup called Nomupay […]
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Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! It’s good to be back. This week, we’re looking at the wild ride that was Bench’s shutdown and acquisition; dozens of companies that are hiring in the fintech space; lawsuits against PayPal; an IPO update; and more! This edition is a bit longer than normal since we were on a hiatus […]
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Employer.com has offered to acquire Level, a fintech startup that just last week abruptly shut down after failing to find a buyer, according to The Information. But Level is still mulling over the offer, its Employer.com CMO Matt Charney told TechCrunch. “It’s with legal,” he said. Update: There are other details, beyond legal, that are […]
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Employer.com, a San Francisco-based company focused on acquiring human resources businesses, has made a $30 million cash-and-stock offer to buy Level, a benefits startup that recently announced its closure. The Information broke the news, citing a source with direct knowledge […]
The post Employer.com offers $30 million to acquire troubled benefits startup Level just 5 days after abrupt shutdown first appeared on Tech Startups.
Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the start of a relaxing holiday weekend. But it was chaos for thousands of small business owners who use Bench, an accounting and tax startup based in Canada that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify. That morning, they found themselves unable to log […]
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While the rapid pace of funding has slowed, many fintechs are continuing to see growth and expand their teams.
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Businesses today face a stark choice: adapt with precision or risk being left behind in the relentless march of innovation. This is especially true in the realm of digital finance, where organizations find themselves at varying stages of their transformation […]
The post Business Startup Financial Management: SAP Software for Planning first appeared on Tech Startups.
Thomson Reuters has acquired tax automation company SafeSend in an all-cash transaction valued at $600 million. Founded in 2008, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based SafeSend serves a cloud-based platform designed to streamline the processing and sharing of sensitive financial documents. This includes tools for delivering tax returns, gathering e-signatures, collecting payments, automating workflows, meeting compliance obligations, and […]
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It’s been some time since we last featured KuCoin, one of the best cryptocurrency exchanges known for enabling trades in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and over 700 altcoins. In recent months, the KuCoin team has been quietly working on its new offerings, […]
The post KuCoin launches KuCoin Pay, enabling QR-code crypto point-of-sale payments and revolutionizing retail first appeared on Tech Startups.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has a lot to celebrate this holiday season. After a bumpy few years following Robinhood’s 2021 IPO — a period during which shares of the commission-free trading app plummeted by more than 90% after it abruptly restricted trading in some meme stocks — the 12-year-old company was just declared Yahoo Finance’s […]
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Check out these pitch decks to see how fintech founders are selling their vision and nabbing big bucks in the process. You'll see new startups using generative AI to ease up grunt work at investment banks and private equity firms, fresh twists on digital banking, and innovation aimed at making it easier for consumers to gain access to financial services and investments.
SecureSave
SecureSave works with employers to offer their workers an emergency savings account. An emergency savings account operates much like a health savings account, in that it sets aside a portion of an employee's wages to pay for emergency expenses.
Albert
Founded in 2015, Albert offers automated budgeting and savings tools alongside guided investment portfolios. It's looked to differentiate itself through personalized features, like the ability for customers to text human financial experts.
Kristelle Boulos Photography
Novo is a digital banking fintech for small businesses that offers a checking account, debit card, access to financing, and invoicing services.
Rocket Dollar
Fintech startup Rocket Dollar helps users invest their individual retirement account (IRA) dollars into alternative assets. Cofounder and CEO Henry Yoshida sold his first startup, a roboadvisor called Honest Dollar, to Goldman Sachs for an estimated $20 million in 2016.
NDVR
NDVR is a portfolio management app that customizes portfolios and investment strategies to the needs of wealthy investors. The Boston-based startup — pronounced "endeavor"— applies to portfolios holding between $1 million and $100 million, and leverages quantitative investing strategies, which use computers and algorithmic trading to decide what stocks and other assets to buy, a method typically available to only the largest institutional investors.
Percent
Percent is a three-sided private-credit marketplace that connects borrowers, investors, and underwriters. The marketplace is geared towards accredited retail investors but plans to support more institutional investors in the future.
Vint cofounders Nick King and Patrick Sanders.
Vint wants to make investing in wines and spirits accessible to everyone. In June 2019, it launched as a marketplace to enable both accredited and non-accredited investors to buy shares in collections of fine wines and spirits.
Tulipshare
London-based Tulipshare lets individuals in the UK invest in publicly-traded company stocks, and then pools individuals' shareholder rights with other like-minded investors to advocate for environmental, social, and corporate governance change at firms like JPMorgan, Apple, and Amazon.
Altruist
Los Angeles-based Altruist is a digital brokerage built for independent financial advisors, intended to be an "all-in-one" platform that unites custodial functions, portfolio accounting, and a client-facing portal. It allows advisors to open accounts, invest, build models, report, trade, and bill clients through an interface that can save advisors time by eliminating mundane operational tasks.
Hum Capital cofounder and CEO Blair Silverberg
Hum Capital uses artificial intelligence to match investors with startups looking to fundraise.
Hum Capital's 11-slide pitch deck for its $9 million Series A
Doorvest
Doorvest helps everyday investors buy single-family homes to rent out for passive income. Through its online platform, users can purchase and manage their rental properties.
IMMO
Immo is a real-estate investing startup that buys properties on behalf of institutional investors, renovates them, and rents out the upgraded home.
Relief
Relief offers an app that automates the credit-card debt collection process for users. It negotiates with lenders and collectors to settle outstanding balances on their behalf.
Stilt
Stilt offers loans and credit cards to immigrants coming to the US. The startup uses data, such as education and employment details, to predict an individual's future income stability and cash flow before issuing a loan, rather than rely on traditional metrics like a credit score. It also sells its loan software to other companies looking to offer a credit product.
Laura Kornhauser, cofounder and CEO, and Dmitry Lesnik, cofounder and chief data scientist, of Stratyfy
Stratyfy is a startup that uses AI to help lenders underwrite consumers without long US credit histories or gig economy workers who don't get a traditional W-2 from their employers.
Janick Gilpin
Miren works with federally-certified lenders that focus on reaching underserved customers in low-to-moderate income areas to underwrite credit-thin small-business owners.
CollateralEdge
Dallas-based fintech CollateralEdge works with regional and community banks — typically those with between $1 billion and $50 billion in assets — to help analyze and price slices of commercial and industrial loans that previously might have gone unserved by smaller lenders.
Pinwheel
Pinwheel shares payroll data to help fintechs and traditional lenders serve consumers with limited or poor credit who have historically struggled to access financial products.
Tricolor
Tricolor is an alternative auto lender that caters to thin- and no-credit Hispanic borrowers. The Dallas-based auto lender is a community development financial institution that uses a proprietary artificial-intelligence engine that makes decisions for each customer based on more than 100 data points, such as proof of income.
TomoCredit
TomoCredit lends to thin- and no-credit borrowers using an internal algorithm to underwrite customers based on cash flow, rather than a credit score.
LoanWell
LoanWell works with community-focused lenders to fill a gap in the SMB financing world by boosting access to loans under $100,000. It automates the financing process — from underwriting and origination to money movement and servicing — which can shave down an up-to-90-day process to 30 days or even same-day with some LoanWell lenders.
Uplinq
Uplinq is trying to bring alternative data to small-business lending beyond a traditional credit score.
Parafin
Parafin works with companies that other small businesses sell their products through (like DoorDash and Mindbody), to offer capital to these small businesses. Parafin's tech offering spans product, marketing, compliance, and IT support. It also provides the capital, sourced via debt capital providers, and manages underwriting and risk.
Boom
Boom helps people build credit by reporting rent payments to credit bureaus.
Morty
Morty is an online mortgage marketplace that connects borrowers with different loan options, while also automating the loan-closing process.
Mako
Mako AI is building a generative AI associate for the private-equity industry. Its seed round was led by Khosla Ventures, an early backer of OpenAI.
Reflexivity
Reflexivity, formerly Toggle AI, builds data-analysis tools for traders and investors. Its investors include Wall Street investors Izzy Englander, Stanley Druckenmiller, Greg Coffey. Reflexivity's tech is used by ExodusPoint, Soros Fund, and Millennium Management.
Louisa AI
Louisa AI wants to help bankers and investors make network connections for deals. It was founded within Goldman Sachs by a managing director.
Rogo
Rogo is building a generative AI chatbot for bankers and analysts that can automate tasks like creating PowerPoint decks. It was cofounded by former investment bankers.
QC Ware
QC Ware is a startup looking to cut the time and resources it takes to use quantum computing. The technology has potential to enable companies to do complex calculations faster than traditional computers and is especially helpful in risk analytics or algorithmic trading. The fintech is backed by Wall Street giants, including D.E. Shaw, Citi, and Goldman Sachs.
Claira
Claira is a startup that uses artificial intelligence to analyze financial contracts and documents. Its founding team brings experience from Citadel, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock.
Beacon
Beacon is a fintech that provides a shortcut for banks, asset managers, and trading firms looking to use quantitative modelling and data science to help with analyzing risk, ensuring compliance, and improving operational efficiency. The company has been backed by Warburg Pincus, Blackstone, PIMCO, and Global Atlantic.
Mark Lennihan/AP
For years, the only way investors could figure out the going price of a corporate bond was by calling up a dealer on the phone. The rise of electronic trading has streamlined that process, but data can still be hard to come by sometimes. BondCliQ is a fintech that provides a data feed of pre-trade pricing quotes for the corporate bond market. It was founded by Chris White, a former Goldman Sachs exec.
Proper Finance
Proper Finance helps other businesses keep track of transaction data moved between third-party and in-house systems. In 2024, Proper Finance's tech and team were acquired by Intuit to help small businesses.
Uprise
Uprise is an app that offers small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers financial advice and tax-planning services. The San Francisco-based startup partners with financial institutions and other fintechs for them to offer Uprise's tech.
Productfy
Productfy aims to help non-finance companies offer their own banking products without additional engineering resources or background knowledge of banking compliance or legal requirements.
Highnote
Highnote is a startup that helps small to mid-sized merchants roll out their own debit and pre-paid digital cards.
OppZo
OppZo is a fintech that is figuring out how to speed up loans to small government contractors. It works with financing partners to extend working capital loans to firms that have won contracts, and who need cash to quickly ramp up their businesses, but might not see that first contract payment for as long as 120 days.
Decimal
Decimal provides a back-end tech layer that small- and medium-sized businesses can use to integrate their accounting and business-management software tools in one place, and automate some accounting operations.
Now
Now is a startup, cofounded by politician Stacey Abrams, that aims to solve the capital supply chain woes that plague bootstrapped businesses that have to choose between paying invoices and keeping the lights on. Now uses its own line of credit to purchase invoices from customers, paying Now's business customers immediately. When the invoice payment is eventually made by the end-customer, that money goes to Now.
FlyFin
FlyFin is an artificial-intelligence tax preparation program that helps freelancers, who don't get traditional W-2 forms, with their taxes. It connects to a person's bank accounts, allowing the AI program to help users monitor for certain expenses that can be claimed on their taxes like business expenditures, the interest on mortgages, property taxes, or whatever else that might apply.
Worksome
Worksome is a startup that wants to eliminate the extra work required to manage contractors and freelancers by automating the administrative burdens of hiring, paying, and accounting for contract workers.
HoneyBook
HoneyBook provides payment and operations support for freelancers. Its $155 million Series D was led by Durable Capital Partners and included Tiger Global and Citi Ventures.
Jason Lee, founder and CEO of Salt Labs.
Salt Labs is a loyalty and payments fintech that is helping hourly-wage workers build wealth through a rewards points system. In June 2024, it was acquired by neobank Chime Financial for as much as $173 million, according to a Fortune report.
Hive
Hive pools unused cloud capacity on people's phones and computers and resells it to businesses. It was founded by the former CEO of Symphony, an instant messaging service widely used by Wall Street firms.
40Seas
40Seas provides software and financing to bridge the gap between global importers and exporters.
Bolt
Ryan Breslow
Bolt gives merchants the tools to offer a one-click checkout experience. The e-commerce startup made headlines in August 2024 for its pitch to raise a $450 million Series F that would see once-ousted founder Ryan Breslow back as CEO and value the company at $14 billion.
Method
Y Cominator-backed Method Financial aims to help consumers pay off their debt by providing an application programming interface to move money more easily.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Kasheesh allows users to split online payments across several debit and credit cards. The financial-technology company positions itself as a "responsible" alternative to buy now, pay later services.
Qolo
Qolo is a business-to-business fintech that bundles back-end payment rails for other fintechs.
Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
Atomic simplifies payroll integrations with its API, which can help financial institutions access financial data for verification of income and employment, offer consumers automated set-up or updating of direct deposits, collect financial obligations straight from consumers' paychecks, and more.
Glean
Glean offers both automated payment services and tailored line-item accounts-payable insights driven by machine-learning models.
Kamino
Sao Paulo-based Kamino helps businesses automate their payments processes, such as invoice processing and cashflow management. Investors include Inspired Capital, Flourish Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, and QED Investors.
GlossGenius
GlossGenius provides payments and accounting software built for the wellness and beauty industry.
Finix
Finix works with businesses so they can accept, disburse, and manage payments without needing software-developer resources or experience.
Slope
Slope wants to digitize the largely manual, $125 trillion industry of business-to-business payments to help companies process customer orders, collect payments, and manage cash flow. It also uses AI to underwrite buyers and extend short-term financing. Investors include OpenAI's Sam Altman, Y Combinator, and Union Square Ventures.
Ladder
Founded in 2017, Ladder uses a tech-driven approach to offer life insurance with a digital, end-to-end service that it says is more flexible, faster, and cost-effective than incumbent players.
Counterpart
Counterpart is a fintech that applies data science to the commercial insurance industry to more accurately measure risk and find coverage that best fits the customers' needs.
Honeycomb
Honeycomb is using AI to streamline the often time-consuming and expensive process of sending an inspector to identify potential risks of a commercial property. It analyzes a combination of third-party data and photos submitted by customers through the startup's app to quickly identify any potential risks at a property and more accurately price policies.
Footprint
Footprint helps financial firms onboard customers and verify their identities. Investors include QED Investors and Index Ventures.
ValidMind
ValidMind automates risk-manages processes for AI models on Wall Street, specifically testing, verifying, validating, documenting and monitoring models. Its $8.1 million seed round was led by Point72 Ventures.
Spade cofounders (left to right) Cooper Hart, CTO, Tess Bloch, head of operations, and Oban MacTavish, CEO
Spade sells its software to banks and fintechs so they have more granular payments data about merchants to mitigate fraud. Its Series A was led by Flourish Ventures and included Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and Everywhere Ventures (The Fund).
Neepa Patel, Themis' founder and CEO
Themis develops compliance software for banks, fintechs, and the companies they work. Founder and CEO Neepa Patel worked as a bank regulator at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and in compliance at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.
Zamp's Clete Werts, Edward Lando, and Rohit Bhadange.
Most people think of sales tax as a couple of dollars tacked onto their grocery receipt, but for the seller, managing those dollars on every single product is more complex. Zamp aims to help online sellers of all sizes manage their sales tax compliance.
LeapXpert is helping companies ensure the messaging channels employees use to communicate professionally are safe and compliant. Monitoring business discussions outside traditional channels has been a sore spot for Wall Street firms, and a regulatory crackdown in recent years has meant firms have gotten more aggressive in their monitoring efforts.
India has once again pushed back a contentious plan to limit major technology companies’ control of the nation’s digital payments system, extending a regulatory uncertainty that has weighed on the sector for years. The National Payments Corporation of India said on Tuesday it would extend the deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any individual […]
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India has removed restrictions on WhatsApp’s payments service in a significant victory for Meta in its largest market by users as the social media giant seeks to compete with entrenched fintech rivals. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the payments body overseeing the popular instant payments rail called UPI, said Tuesday that WhatsApp can […]
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India’s payments regulator is set to decide as early as Monday whether to curb the dominance of Walmart’s PhonePe and Google in the nation’s fast-growing mobile payments market, a move that could reshape how its billion-plus population moves money. The decision centers on UPI, or Unified Payments Interface, a network backed by more than 50 […]
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Africa’s tech ecosystem just got a boost of attention, with South Africa’s TymeBank and Nigeria’s Moniepoint both raising funds in recent weeks at valuations of over $1 billion and joining the coveted unicorn pantheon. But those valuations don’t just reflect investor confidence. They signal the success they’ve had in taking disruptive fintech models originally developed […]
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