Technology

Unsexy industries can also appeal to investors

Published

8 months ago

March 25, 2024

IAM

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! This week, we’ll take a take a look at some popular fintech startups in Africa, how the shutdown of Mint helped Copilot, and why VCs doubled down on a specific spend management startup.

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Big story

While enterprise funding in Africa (as elsewhere on the planet) has declined recently, the past week has been a superb one for the regional fintech ecosystem. TC reporter Tage Kene-Okafor shared how Uber invested $100 million in African mobility fintech Move up when the startup’s valuation reached $750 million. He also wrote about how Zone raised $8.5 million to scale its decentralized payments infrastructure. And Annie Njanja reported on how the Tanzanian payments company NalaThe company’s successful transition to a money transfer service in 2021 also led to the constructing of a B2B payments platform.

Weekly evaluation

Intuit’s decision to shut down its budgeting app Mint created opportunities for startups within the space. Christine Hall wrote about how to do that Co-pilot has grown more within the last 4 months than within the previous 4 years, and the startup was able to translate that growth right into a $6 million Series A funding round led by Nico Wittenborn’s Adjacent. TC previously reported on Copilot when it first launched the service with $250,000 in angel funding, and nevertheless when it added Apple Card support. Monarch Money co-founder Ozzie Osman also told TechCrunch that Mint’s loss was their gain.

Dollars and cents

Unsexy industries can also appeal to investors. Launching expense management Coast preys on firms with so-called real field staff and fleets to manage. It claims to have grown revenue 550% within the last 12 months and has just raised one other $25 million in equity financing.

Digital bank Private onyx switches to B2B. The YC-backed startup raised $4.1 million last 12 months to serve top-earning millennials and Gen Z. But last week it told customers it was ending its banking operations and shutting their accounts.

Swiss fintech Sorrywhich makes banking in Switzerland available to residents of nations with an unstable banking sector or in countries fighting high inflation, has raised $4 million in seed capital.

What else will we write?

Despite all of the recent growth within the fintech industry, Eric Glyman, co-founder and CEO Ramp, believes the industry and firms like his are only scratching the surface. Glyman recently told the TechCrunch Found podcast that despite how much his unicorn card and spending startup has grown to date, it has only captured 1% of its potential market share. Fun Fact: Both Ramp and Deel turned five years old this week – just at some point apart.

In its wide-ranging antitrust criticism against Apple and its iPhone business, the US Department of Justice has taken specific aim against Apple’s massive financial activities.