Hi all, Julie here. Since it's Friday, I figured we could start with a good shot and chaser, fintech style. Apologies to everyone doing dry January. This drink comes courtesy of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
Shot: Jamie Dimon in 2016. "I’m not nervous about fintech changing the way people are changing their banking habits but I think, in a capitalist world, it’s good that your business model gets attacked. I applaud that. That’s why we’re all here in Silicon Valley. Some of our businesses will be hard to attack, others will be easier to attack."
Chaser: Jamie Dimon on his earnings call this week. "Absolutely, we should be scared shtless [by fintech & Big Tech competitors]."
The News
Affirm's Market Cap
I don't really have much news here. But just wanted to let you know that the stock rose to as much as $137 this week after going public on Wednesday. That takes the valuation to something like $26B. Think about that for a second. American Express has a market cap of $98B and Goldman is $105B.
Funding News
Utah-based MX, a startup poweringthe APIs connecting financial institutions across the country and helping them make their apps for user-friendly, raised $300M at a $1.9B valuation. The round was led by TPG Growth with CapitalG, Greycroft, Canapi Ventures and others also participating. In its press release, MX said that it now powers more than 2,000 banks, credit unions, fintechs, and technology companies, with a combined reach of over 200M consumers.
I'm super familiar with Brex. But I wasn't familiar with the "European Brex" Moss (formerly Vanta and formerly Nufin, for those keeping track). The company said it has raised 21M euros, led by Valar Ventures, with participation from existing investors Cherry Ventures and Global Founders Capital. For those not familiar with Brex, Moss and others in the space, many of these companies are trying to provide better credit card experiences and expense management systems to companies and their employees.
Sticking with the credit card theme, Xi Card, a new credit card that uses your income rather than your credit score to set limits, just raised $12M with Spark Capital, Jared Leto, Aaron Levie, Affirm's Max Levchin and others participating. While I don't think credit scores are going away anytime soon, I do think there will continue to be new up and comers that are looking for other ways to measure risk. They also brought on the former chief risk officer of American Express as an advisor.
Grayscale Get's All the Money
Thanks to its Bitcoin Trust, investment firm Grayscale saw its assets under management go from $2B at the start of 2020, to more than $20.2B at the end. No typos. Just dollar bills on dollar bills. The vast majority of that came from the Bitcoin Trust, which went from $1.8B to $17.5B in assets year-over-year.
Billtrust Does A SPAC
It's official: 19 year old Billtrust, an accounts receivable startup, is making its public debut. The intention to merge with South Mountain Merger Corp. was first announced back in October and was completed this week. We were just all preoccupied with the Affirm IPO to pay attention to when BTRS started trading. Sorry guys! Better late than never though, sort of like how you waited 19 years to go public.
Marcus Partners with Marqeta
We're all pretty familiar with personal loans and savings accounts from Goldman's Marcus. But in the not so distant future, Marcus plans to launch a checking account as well. And this week we found out that Marqeta will be powering it. From the release:
"We’re excited to share our new partnership with Marcus by Goldman Sachs, who will leverage our modern card issuing platform to launch digital checking accounts for Marcus users, set to be available later this year."
Speaking of Marcus, and given our intro today, it's pretty wild how much Goldman has innovated over the past few years while JPMorgan has tried and failed a bunch of things. This doesn't mean JPMorgan is going to fail when it comes to fintech, but it does mean that it has a lot of work to do to even catch up. Though to be fair, why didn't Marcus launch a checking account like 1-2 years ago? And HOW LONG did it take you to launch an app?!
*Editor's note: I currently own around $2,500 worth of shares in Goldman Sachs.
Community Highlights
Fintech Today community member Nik Milanovic sent around this article about seven Indian fintech startups to watch. As someone that wants to continue learning more about what's happening with fintech outside the US, I wanted to share this post too.
You should also follow member Saira Rahman, because she sends out awesome tweets like this.
Career Corner
As always, here are two fintech jobs we're highlighting today!
- Director of Product, Growth, Fundrise: The investment platform that offers direct access to high-quality private market real estate investments is looking for someone to lead in the ideation, shaping, development, launch, analysis, and iterative improvement of new products and services that will accelerate the growth of the Fundrise platform. This is a senior role.
- Product Manager, TrueAccord: This product manager will enable large scale revenue while shepherding TrueAccord's most complex integrations. It's a crash course in working with leading financial institutions as well as the sausage making of tech/finance integrations.
That's all for this week. Hope you guys have a great holiday weekend, and don't forget to check your inbox tomorrow for FTTea with Cokie, and Monday for a special MLK issue of the FTT Update focusing on fintech startups founded by black entrepreneurs.
Julie VerHage-Greenberg is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.
