Yellow Card, QisstPay, Vyne, Tomorrow & more
At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly ‘In Case You Missed It’ (ICYMI) funding round-up for you to get the latest funding news.
Yellow Card aims to be a cryptocurrency exchange for all Africans
Pan-African cryptocurrency exchange, Yellow Card, has announced a $15 million Series A led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime, and Castle Island Ventures.
Yellow Card says the round is the largest of its kind by an African cryptocurrency exchange.
Since launching in Nigeria in 2018, the firm has aimed to make bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets available to African users.
The company claims to have the largest geographical footprint on the continent, with a presence in 12 countries, and 110 employees across 16 countries.
“Africa is poised to benefit tremendously from cryptocurrency’s potential to transform financial services,” says Valar Ventures partner James Fitzgerald.
Pakistan-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm QisstPay has raised $15 million across its pre-Seed and Seed funding rounds.
MSA Capital led the round, with institutional investment participation from Global Founders Capital; Fox Ventures, First Check Ventures; and a series of strategic angel investments.
QisstPay is an installment payment service for emerging markets. The firm says it’s addressing the lack of flexibility, integration, and the hidden fees currently “plaguing” Pakistan’s payments landscape.
Co-Founder and CEO, Jordan Olivas, is a former Klarna employee.
He says: “After moving here to Pakistan, I noticed how badly the people of this country need a financial tool to help them purchase goods and services that they not only want, but actually need.”
Account-to-account (A2A) payments firm Vyne has raised $15.5 million in Seed funding.
The round featured Hearst Ventures, Entrée Capital, Triplepoint, Seedcamp, Venrex, Founder Collective and Partech.
Founded in 2019, Vyne believes it can transform the checkout experience and enable users to complete transactions in three clicks.
“At its heart, Vyne was founded with the simple vision of perfecting payments for businesses and consumers alike,” says CEO Karl MacGregor.
“This seed round will further propel Vyne on its mission to make account-to-account payments the best way to pay and get paid around the world.”
Tomorrow aims to offer ecological banking
German fintech Tomorrow has raised €14 million in a Venture round featuring Abacorn Capital and Signavio founder Torben Schreiter.
Tomorrow offers sustainable banking, and a credit card it says is “ecological, ethical and uses your money to generate a positive environmental impact.”
The firm says it will use its new cash to expand its product range and hire new talent. Tomorrow is also planning to launch a sustainable investment fund.
The fintech says it has seen user growth of more than 100% over the past year, and it plans to be profitable “soon”.
Massachusetts-based blockchain firm Metrika has announced a $14 million Series A funding round led by Neotribe Ventures.
Other institutional investors include Coinbase Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Nyca Partners and SCB 10X.
This latest round brings a total of $17.7 million in funding to Metrika, including its previous $3.7 million Seed round.
Metrika offers blockchain networks (or any company running blockchain applications) monitoring, analytics and “actionable intelligence” tailored to the unique nature of distributed networks.
“Blockchain technology is having a transformational impact on the world as part of the services we rely on daily,” says Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos, CEO at Metrika.
“But the cost of downtime can be catastrophic, and even one failed transaction can erode trust in an entire network.”
Pakistan-based Tag has raised $12 million in a Seed funding round featuring Liberty City Ventures, Canaan Partners, Addition, Mantis and Banana Capital.
According to TechCrunch the new funding took two weeks to close, and the firm is valued at just over $100 million.
Tag aims to become a Revolut or Paytm for Pakistan. It partners with companies to provide their employees banking services, including salary deposits.
It also offers a series of consumer-focused options, including peer-to-peer payments and utility bill top-ups. Tag claims new users can be set up and verified on its platform in three minutes.
The Quant Insight team
Quantitative financial analytics firm Quant Insight has raised $10 million from three investment rounds.
The company, which has offices in London, New York and Limassol, has clients with around $2.5 trillion assets under management.
Quant Insight’s platform scans “millions of data points daily” to provide an overview on how macro forces are impacting all asset classes.
The firm says its system reduces millions of data points into two to five essential daily insights.
“For too long the investment world has relied on a mixture of subjective research,” says co-founder and CEO, Mahmood Noorani.
“To tackle this endemic problem, we have combined advanced mathematics, data science, machine-learning, and decades of financial expertise.”
Busines-to-business payments firm Verto has raised $10 million in Series A fundingled by Quona Capital, alongside Treasury, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), and TMT Investments.
Verto was launched in 2018 by Nigerian co-founders Ola Oyetayo and Anthony Oduwole.
The firm aims to enable businesses to move money across borders seamlessly and instantly, solving “important pain points” in the B2B global payments industry.
The firm says its systems can enable business owners to send cross-border B2B payments at FX rates up to nine times cheaper than through traditional banks.
“We plan to expand our presence in emerging markets with this fund through a suite of top-class tech stacks,” says Oduwole.
“Geographically, this is an essential step towards our mission of making international payments simple, fast and cheap.”
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