Deal flow was back at it this week, but with lots of chop, in smaller deals, and nothing coming close to $700M USD Reef Technology deal from last week, but there is still interesting news to report
Proptech – regtech – payments – banking. Those were this week’s top cash winners in this week’s VC game. Gosh, sounds kinda like a game show (or lottery for that matter), and some weeks when I watch the cash being doled out in the VC sector, to some fairly questionable deals, I might add, I’m fairly convinced that’s exactly what it is.
The challenger banks are back. This week, Italian bank Aidexa snagged £45 million in seed money. You may remember that last week, two challenger banks – one Berlin-based and the other British, were on the roster, and the latter raised £263 million. This is a trend you will continue to see internationally. The challenger banks are COMING and that has a lot to do with how the technology works on the back end of the larger legacy banks. Basically, it doesn’t and the overhead is also massively larger, so the smaller startups can walk in – scoop up VC – spend marketing dollars and pick off millennial customers, often with gamification on investing and banking apps. It’s gonna keep continuing, bank on it (pardon the pun).
Two deals in proptech to report this week – proptech being short for “property tech” which covers monetization in the real estate sector. Check out the Envoy Technologies deal. “Mobility as an amenity” is their trademarked tagline (yup you saw that right). They provide electric car sharing and charging stations for the commercial real estate community. There’s also a second proptech out of California providing a title and escrow platform, a regtech out of Kentucky providing risk management solutions and an Indonesian payments deal for LinkAja, which was our largest VC deal this week at $100M USD.
Anyway, following are the latest top five fintech VC deals of the week according to the Digital Wealth News research team:
- LinkAja (Payments) | $100 million, Series B | Indonesian-based merchant services & e-wallet | Grab, Telkomsel, BRI Ventura Investama, Mandiri Capital Indonesia
- Envoy Technologies (Proptech) | $70 million, Debt; $11 million, Series A | CA-based electric car-sharing in commercial RE communities | Shell Ventures, Building Ventures, DENSO, Goodyear Ventures, GroundBreak Ventures, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator Impact Fund, Macquarie Specialized, Asset Finance
- Aidexa (Banking) | £45 million, Seed | Italian-based challenger bank for SMEs | Generali Group, Banca Sella, IFIS, VCs, Family offices, Trade associations, Angel investors
- Endpoint (Proptech) | $40 million raise | CA-based title & escrow platform for sellers/buyers/agents | First American Financial Corporation (parent company of Endpoint)
- Venminder (Regtech) | $33 million, Series C | KY-based, 3rd party risk mgt solutions provider | Silversmith Capital Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, MissionOG
