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As 2023 come to a close , we ’re here to look back at the biggest fintech stories of the year . Silicon Valley Bank ’s implosionfelt like a fintech story in that a identification number of inauguration ( Brex , Arc and Mercury , for example ) in the space leapt to make full the golf hole left by its collapse . But it truly was a story that affected all industries — and founders and investor alike . And one that stay to diddle out .
Apple launches savings accounts for Apple Card customers
Ironically , one of 2023 ’s biggest stories involved a technical school giant and not a startup . In April , Appleshared thatApple Card customers in the U.S. couldopen a savings accounting and earn interestthrough an Apple saving account , as report by Romain Dillet . At the prison term , Apple was offering a militant APY of 4.15 % . The company partnered with Goldman Sachs to offer the feature , but by year ’s remainder , that partnership had fallen apart ( an eventwe determine coming ) and it was not yet clear who would be taking Goldman Sachs ’ shoes .
Mastercard CFO says India’s UPI is an ‘incredibly painful experience’ for ecosystem participants
Another one of our most read stories of the year also call for a fiscal services titan rather than a startup . Manish Singh wrote about the fact thatMastercard ’s CFO had declared that India ’s UPI was “ fantastic at many levels”but remained an “ incredibly awful experience ” for ecosystem player who ended up losing money as a result . The commentary underscore tensions around the nomadic payments rail that facilitates over 10 billion transactions monthly in the nation with low card incursion .
Foreign users of WeChat Pay and Alipay can go cashless at Chinese retailers
In July , Rita Liao covered the fact that China ’s two prevalent mobile requital solvent , WeChat PayandAlipay , had announced thatforeign user could now give at Chinese retailersby linking their extraneous quotation cards , including Visa , Mastercard and Discover . This was a big deal , as it was historically difficult for travelers to go cashless like locals . antecedently , using WeChat Pay and Alipay in China required a local bank account , build it challenging for short - term visitors to employ those requital methods .
Visa acquires Brazilian fintech startup Pismo for $1 billion
In later June , I broke the tidings that citation card giantVisawould be acquiring Brazilian payments infrastructure startup Pismofor $ 1 billion in immediate payment in what was expected to be one of the largest fintech M&A deal taking place all year . The deal close down afterwards in the year . Visa was reportedly just one of several companies press for the startup , which was not seeking to be develop , or even fundraising . Pismogetting best up by Visa was a coup of sorts for the integral Latin America region , which saw a surge inglobal investors pour working capital into the regionin 2021 and a bit ofa recede only a year later .
Slope closes on a $30 million venture round with ‘major participation’ from Sam Altman
When Sam Altman is involve in a speculation , masses take posting . Christine Hall report in late September thatSlope , a business - to - business requital political program for enterprise fellowship , hadclosed on a venture round of $ 30 millionto expand its business organization . The round “ include major engagement from OpenAI ’s Sam Altman . ” The core of Slope ’s engineering is order - to - cash workflow mechanization utilizing contrived word - driven tools for checkout , customer and vendor jeopardy assessment , defrayal reconciliation and Johnny Cash direction .
Carta’s CEO reaches out to customers about bad press, alerting them to bad press
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Robinhood acquires credit card startup X1 for $95M
In a bit of a surprise move , Robinhoodannounced in late June that it wasacquiring X1 , a no - fee credit card startup , for $ 95 million in cash . X1 , which volunteer an income - based credit plug-in with reward , had raised a total of $ 62 million in speculation - punt financial backing . Why X1 in special over the many other credit carte startup out there ? We believe it was because of the fact that X1 had plansto establish a new trading platformthat would give its cardholder the ability to buy stock by using earned reward points . Its CEO even single out Robinhood as a company he was hoping to compete with .
Vesey Ventures closes a $78 million debut fund
A new speculation business firm , calledVesey Ventures , that was establish by three female former supervise directors of Amex Ventures , announce it hadclosed a $ 78 million debut fundin early April . During their meter at Amex , the house ’s three founding partners worked on investments in companies such as Plaid , Stripe , Melio and Trulioo . The fact that there was more Washington for other - stage fintech startup receive our reader ’ attention . fillip : We did a snatch of a deeper nose dive into Apple ’s fintech aspiration ( mentioned above ) here as well .
Better.com officially goes public via a long-delayed SPAC
We never thought we ’d see the solar day . In August , digital mortgage lenderBetter.comwent publicvia a long - delay SPAC . No one wait it to execute well in its public debut . And it did n’t . The company ’s executive squad likely know it would n’t perform well but moved ahead anyway , for a diversity of reasons that Alex Wilhelm and I detailedhere . As of December 20 , the stock was trading ata mere 63 centime .
ZestMoney shuts down
In mid - May , Manish reported on the fact that founders ofZestMoneyhad resigned from the inauguration . The Indian fintech , whose ability to underwrite small just the ticket loan to first - fourth dimension internet client , once drew the backing of many high - visibility investors , including Goldman Sachs . By December , Manish had reported that ZestMoney wasshutting downfollowing stillborn efforts to find a buyer . The Bengaluru - headquarter inauguration — which also identify PayU , Quona , Zip , Omidyar web and Ribbit Capital among its backers — engage about 150 people and had raised over $ 130 million in its eight - class journey .
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Got a news tip or privileged information about a topic we cover ? We ’d love to hear from you . you may reach me at maryann@techcrunch.com . Or you may drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com . Happy to respect anonymity requests .
