Stake, Finli, Crescent and OpenFin

Our weekly round-up for you to get the latest fintech funding news from the US.

Stake, a fintech firm that provides cashback and banking services to renters, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round.

Stake bags $12m Series A

The round was led by RET Ventures and included participation from Enterprise Community Partners, Hometeam Ventures, Operator Stack and Second Century Ventures as well as existing investors Shadow Ventures and Olive Tree Ventures.

Stake says the new money will enable it to continue building out its financial infrastructure and solutions that address difficult issues for renters and property owners alike.

“Renters don’t need more debt or loans,” says Rowland Hobbs, co-founder and CEO of Stake. “What renters need is money to help with everyday essentials and to establish long-term savings.

“With Stake, we have reimagined the classic ‘rainy day fund’ for renters to build the sort of wealth traditionally associated with home ownership. Now, their largest expense is also their largest source of savings.”

Headquartered in New York City and Seattle, Stake claims its app is currently used by “thousands” of renters.

Finli, a payment management platform built for service-based small businesses in the US, has closed a $6 million seed funding round led by the Urban Innovation Fund.

Motley Fool Ventures, M13, Alumni Ventures and all existing investors also participated in the round.

The firm says the new injection of funds will be used to expand its team and further develop its business banking capabilities, moving towards becoming a “holistic financial services solution”.

“Our mission is to provide underserved businesses with the financial tools that they need to manage and grow their businesses without taking on hefty fees or complicated workflows. By meeting them where they are, we are giving them back time and money,” says Lori Shao, CEO of Finli.

“We intentionally built Finli to solve cumbersome business challenges so that owners and operators can focus on growing their business and not chasing payments.”

Finli’s platform helps businesses to manage all aspects of invoicing and payments communication, allowing customers to pay outstanding invoices through their mobile devices.

The seed round brings its total funding to $9.5 million.

Fintech start-up Crescent has raised $5 million in a pre-seed round from angels and tech founders to launch a platform to help companies improve cash management.

The platform aggregates top “business-friendly” yields and helps companies deploy idle capital through automation and cash flow insights.

While other spend management and accounting products help companies understand their financial picture, Crescent says it is “determined to help them go further with existing cash, without introducing friction to finance teams”.

Crescent says it is currently onboarding early clients and that this fundraise will help the firm grow its user base, expand its features and build out its automation and integration library “to help finance teams put cash management on autopilot”.

OpenFin, an operating system (OS) and developer platform for financial firms, has secured an undisclosed investment from ING Ventures, the venture capital arm of ING.

OpenFin raises new funding

The fintech says the capital will accelerate the expansion of OpenFin OS throughout the financial industry.

With its HQ in New York, OpenFin claims its web-based software is used at more than 2,400 banks, wealth management firms and asset management firms in 60+ countries.

Built on Google’s Chromium engine, OpenFin OS simplifies app distribution, unifies the digital workspace and enables “seamless” communication and workflow between apps.

ING adopted OpenFin’s technology in 2021 to accelerate its desktop transformation strategy.

Previous investors include the likes of Bain Capital Ventures, Barclays, CME Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, HSBC, JP Morgan, NYCA Partners, Pivot Investment Partners, SC Ventures and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.