Category: financial services
Aspiration, the LA-based fintech focused on conscious consumerism, raises $135 million
When former Bill Clinton speechwriter and political wunderkind Andrei Cherny launched Aspiration four years ago, the upstart fintech startup was one of Los Angeles’ early entrants into a financial services market dominated by players from Europe and the financial capital of the U.S. in New York City. Fast forward four…
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This UX specialist opened 12 UK bank accounts and ‘logged everything’
“I’ve got a really high attention to detail, which might sound great, but it’s possibly a curse because I can’t help but spot problems with everything around me,” says Peter Ramsey. He’s the founder of Built for Mars, a U.K.-based UX advisory, and he has spent the last three months…
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TikTok parent ByteDance leads $6M round in financial AI startup Lingxi
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has added Lingxi, a Beijing-based startup that applies machine intelligence to financial services such as debt collection and insurance sales, to its ever-expanding portfolio of investments. The AI startup has raised a $6.2 million Series A round co-led by ByteDance and Rocket Internet, the German accelerator…
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Stilt, which provides financial services for immigrants, raises $7.5 million seed round
Stilt, a Y Combinator alum that provides financial services for immigrants without Social Security numbers or credit reports, announced today that it has closed a $7.5 million seed round. It also launched FDIC-insured pre-approved global bank accounts today. The startup has raised equity from investors including Liron Petrushka; Hillsven Capital;…
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Visa and Kenya’s Safaricom partner on M-Pesa, payments and tech
Visa just connected to Africa’s most powerful mobile payments network. The global financial services company and Kenyan telecom Safaricom — operator of the M-Pesa mobile money product — announced a partnership today on payments and tech. The arrangement opens up Visa’s global merchant and card network across 200 countries to…
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B2B challenger bank Finom raises $7M Seed from Target Global and General Catalyst
Just as challenger banks have appeared in the B2C space, so to have B2B startup banks aimed small businesses, among them startups like Qonto (Fr), Tide (UK), Penta (GER) and CountingUp (UK). Today another such firm, Finom, has closed a €6.5m ($7M) seed funding round led by Target Global, with…
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