📰 ARTICLE
Serial fintech entrepreneur Walter Cruttenden founded Acorns with his son, Jeff, in 2012 with the goal of helping low- and middle-income households invest and save responsibly.
Now as 2021 comes to a close, Cruttenden’s latest fintech, Ant Money, is announcing it has raised $20 million in funding (a mix of previously unannounced seed and Series A capital) and acquired Blast via a stock-for-stock merger.
Cruttenden founded Ant Money, a micro-income startup, with Mike Gleason in March of 2020.
“What we are doing is we’re basically creating a way for investors to participate in rewards programs. So instead of opening an investment account and saying, ‘Hey, here’s some rewards,’ we’re actually going out and saying here’s income from rewards or advertising and then go ahead and invest that,” Gleason said.
👉 Read the full TechCrunch article written by Mary Ann Azevedo here.
💡INSIGHTS
Credit Sesame’s new Credit Builder lets users build a credit score through purchases on a Credit Sesame prepaid debit card by pairing it with a virtual credit card. Users can set the amount they want to allocate toward building credit and Credit Sesame’s computers calculate the debit expenditures to match that amount and reports it to the credit bureaus through the virtual credit card.
The results have been impressive. “Ninety percent of consumers that didn’t have a credit profile in their first month went from 0 to a 600 credit score. Nobody in the industry is doing this right now. We see a massive opportunity to get the unbanked and underbanked into the ecosystem.”
👉 Read the full Forbes article here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🇺🇸 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ iCapital Network, a global financial technology platform driving access and efficiency in alternative investments for the asset and wealth management industries, closed on a $50m funding round. Link here.
⭐️ Bottomline Technologies is set to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in an all-cash deal worth $2.6 billion. Link here.
⭐️ Oportun, an A.I.-driven FinTech company, announced it closed a $150 million credit facility secured by credit card receivables arising under its Oportun Visa Credit Card issued by WebBank. Link here.
CRYPTO
Cryptocurrency and stock trading app Robinhood plans to roll out the beta version of its digital wallet feature starting in January 2022. Robinhood said tens of thousands of users currently on the waitlist for the trading app’s crypto wallet would have access to the beta version starting in mid-January. Link here.
Personal-finance startup Dave Inc. plans to use the roughly $450 million from its coming public listing for acquisitions, new products and possible investments in cryptocurrency. The Los Angeles-based company offers an app for people who frequently run short of cash or overdraw their bank accounts, and is in the process of merging with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings III Inc., a special-purpose acquisition company. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.