Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! This week, we look at Robinhood’s new Gold Card, the challenges in the BaaS space, and how a tiny startup caught Stripe’s eye.
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The big story
Robin Hood completed his new Gold Card last week to much fanfare. It has a long list of impressive features, including 3% cashback and the ability to invest that cash through the company’s brokerage account. A user can also put this cash back into Robinhood Savings Account which offers 5% APY. We are curious to see how this new card will affect the company’s bottom line. But we’re also fascinated by how Robinhood has taken the technology it acquired when it bought startup X1 last summer for $95 million and turned it into a potentially very lucrative new offering.
Analysis of the week
The banking-as-a-service (BaaS) space is facing challenges. BaaS startup Synctera recently carried out a restructuring affecting around 15% of employees. The startup isn’t the only VC-backed BaaS company that has resorted to layoffs to conserve cash over the past year. Treasury Prime, Synapse and Figure also have. Meanwhile, according to American bankerthe FDIC announced consent orders against Sutton Bank and Piermont Bank, telling them to “closer monitor their fintechs’ compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering rules.”
Dollars and cents
PayPal Ventures’ it is the last investment Qoala, an Indonesian startup that provides personal insurance products that cover various risks, including accidents and phone screen damage. MassMutual Ventures also participated in Qoala’s new $47 million funding round.
New pensiona Mill Valley-based company-building software to help people create affordable retirement plans, raised $20 million in a funding round.
We checked in last Zavera Swedish B2C buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider in Europe when it raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now closed a $10 million extension to its Series A funding round, bringing its total Series A to 20 million dollars.
What else are we writing?
Read all about how a tiny four-person startup, Adhesives, caught Stripe’s eye. Supaglue, formerly known as Supergrain, is an open source developer platform for user-facing integrations. The team is set to assist Stripe with real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party applications for its Revenue Automation and Finance suite.
Maju Kuruvilla is no longer the CEO of the one-click checkout company Bolt. He is being replaced by Justin Grooms, Bolt’s global head of sales, who is now interim CEO. Kuruvilla, a former Amazon executive, took over as CEO in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow stepped down. The Information has more on Bolt’s woes here.
High interest titles
Inside Mercury’s stumble from fintech hero to feds target
RealPage and Plaid team up to curb rental fraud
In the HR software battle, Rippling meets Deel — at a cost
Is Chime ready for an IPO? It has more primary customers than Chase
Through the bold claims of a CEO about her hot fintech startupwhich TC previously covered here.
Cloverleaf raises $7.3 million in Series A expansion
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