Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! This week we take a take a look at Robinhood’s recent Gold Card, challenges within the BaaS space, and the way a small startup got here to the eye of Stripe.
Subscribe here
The big story
Robin Hood unveiled its recent Gold Card to much fanfare last week. It has a protracted list of impressive features, including 3% cashback and the power to speculate that cashback through the corporate’s brokerage account. A user may withdraw this money to Robinhood’s savings account, which offers 5% APR. We’re excited to see how this recent card will impact the corporate’s bottom line. But we’re also intrigued by how Robinhood turned the technology it acquired when it bought startup X1 for $95 million last summer right into a potentially very lucrative recent offering.
Analysis of the week
The banking-as-a-service (BaaS) sector is facing challenges. BaaS startup Synctera has recently undertaken a restructuring affecting roughly 15% of employees. The startup is not the only VC-backed BaaS company to resort to layoffs to lower your expenses last 12 months. Treasury Prime, Synapse and Figure too. Meanwhile, loudly American bankerThe FDIC announced consent orders against Sutton Bank and Piermont Bank, requiring them to “pay closer attention to their fintechs’ compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering regulations.”
Dollars and cents
PayPal Ventures’ The latest investment is in Qoala, an Indonesian startup that gives personal insurance products that cover quite a lot of risks, including accidents and phone screen damage. MassMutual Ventures also participated in Qoala’s recent $47 million funding round.
New retirementA Mill Valley-based company that builds software to assist people create financial retirement plans has raised a $20 million tranche of funding.
We last checked in on Diplomaa Swedish B2C buy now pay later (BNPL) provider in Europe when it raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now accomplished a $10 million extension of its Series A funding round, bringing its total Series A funding round to $20 million.
What else we write
Read all about how a small four-person startup Supaglue, caught Stripe’s gaze. Supaglue, formerly often called Supergrain, is an open source developer platform for user-facing integrations. The team will support Stripe with real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party apps for its Revenue and Finance Automation suite.
Maju Kuruvilla is not any longer CEO of the one-click checkout company bolt. He will likely be replaced by Justin Grooms, Bolt’s global sales director, who’s now interim CEO. Kuruvilla, the previous Amazon executive, took over as CEO in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow resigned. The information accommodates more about Bolt’s suffering Here.
Very interesting headlines
In it, Mercury stumbles from fintech hero to government goal
RealPage and Plaid work together to curb rental fraud
In the battle for HR software, Rippling is gaining ground on Deel – but at a value
Is Chime ready for an IPO? It has more core customers than Chase
Inside a CEO’s daring claims about her hot fintech startupwhich TC previously covered here.
