Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! I’ll be filling in for Marianne, who is enjoying a well-earned break. This week, we’re looking at Griffin Bank getting a license ahead of some heavy hitters, and we’ll take a deep dive into Stripe’s annual letter, some funding rounds, and more!
big story
The headline news this week is UK-based Griffin Bank, a banking-as-a-service company that managed to do what even the region’s most valuable fintech, Revolut, failed to do – obtain a banking licence. Granted, as Mike Butcher writes, a banking license is difficult to obtain (it took Griffin a year), but Revolut has been talking about getting one for the past three years.
Now that it has a banking license, Griffin provides fintech companies with an end-to-end platform that delivers banking, payments and wealth solutions through automated compliance and integrated ledgers. More likely, the company will offer bank accounts to businesses rather than consumers.
Analysis of the week
Alex Wilhelm and I read through Stripe’s annual letter. Here are some things we think are worth discussing:
- The company’s growth has been impressive. In 2023, total payments will reach the $1 trillion mark, with payment volumes increasing by 25%. That is, if the company did process $1 trillion last year, that would mean $800 billion in volume in 2022 and $200 billion in TPV revenue within a year. For Stripe’s scale, that’s a pretty good result.
- Although venture capital activity has declined over the past year, Stripe’s number of new startups hit an all-time high in 2023. Not only that, the payments infrastructure company also reports that compared to companies launched in 2019, these companies are 60% more likely to start collecting revenue within the first year and process $1 million in the first year. 57% more likely.
dollars and cents
We have a new unicorn. Perfios, an India-based company that provides financial institutions with instant data aggregation and analytics tools to help them streamline customer journeys and make smarter decisions, has raised $80 million in funding, taking its valuation to over $1 billion Dollar. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan led the investment. The company said it plans to go public next year.
Manish Singh also writes about Indian digital payments app Paytm, which received an important license needed to survive and maintain continuity of multiple core app features. The company’s banking unit was scheduled to cease operations on March 15 due to regulatory restrictions.
OpenMeter, a startup developing an open source platform to help companies more easily track usage-based billing, has raised $3 million in funding from Y Combinator, Haystack and Sunflower Capital.
What else should we write?
Judging by how the company chooses to set up, Reddit’s IPO could turn out to be a potential meme stock. In a new SEC filing, Reddit’s IPO involves about 22 million shares priced between $31 and $34. However, this could get very interesting soon, considering that Reddit will allow members of its community to sell their shares immediately, rather than being subject to a lock-up agreement that typically prohibits investors from selling shares within six months of an IPO.
According to RevenueCat’s analysis, most subscription mobile apps don’t make money. Of the 29,000 apps surveyed, the company found that only 17.2% even made $1,000 in monthly revenue, but after reaching that point, their likelihood of further growth increases.
TikTok is expanding its Effect Creator Rewards monetization program to more regions and lowering payment thresholds. The company currently operates in 33 locations across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The program rewards creators for effects created through Effect House, TikTok’s AR development platform. TikTok has also updated the program’s payment model, as creators will now only be rewarded for effects used in public videos.
High-profile headlines
HSBC to hire nearly 50 bankers to serve startups and venture loans in the U.S.
Green Dot will provide cash transactions to 3 more fintech companies
Fintech financing fell by 70%. Here’s how much the fintech giants are now worth
Maxwell launches POS capabilities to provide lenders with tailored workflows
JPMorgan sees mixed results from Silicon Valley push
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