Fintech Update, 11/8 - 11/14
Hi! It’s Monday, November 15, 2021.
The Rundown
Insurtech platform Lemonade announced that it will acquire auto insurer Metromile for $500 million, only a week after announcing that it was expanding into the auto insurance market with its newest product, Lemonade Car. The $500 million price tag for Metromile is a significant discount on its $1.3 billion valuation from February, when it went public via SPAC. The twin announcements signal Lemonade’s aggressive push into auto insurance, helping the firm broaden itself into a “one-stop shop” for consumer insurance by rapidly building a new vertical in its product mix. By launching and quickly supplementing Lemonade Car with Metromile (particularly Metromile’s data and machine learning capabilities), Lemonade now boasts competitive products for renters insurance, pet insurance, auto insurance, and even life insurance (via partnership). We believe this is a great move at a seemingly great price and we’re excited to see Lemonade moving into new services, which we expect they will simplify and improve as it has in other areas. More practically, we expect this additional diversification will help Lemonade pick up new sources of customers and lower its customer acquisition costs by leveraging its existing relationships to sell new types of coverage via cross selling and bundling. We’ll make a note to check back on this one to see if we were right :)
Robinhood experienced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 7 million customers. The majority of affected customers (~5 million) saw their email addresses exposed, ~2 million had their full names revealed, and roughly 300 had more sensitive details exposed, such as dates of birth and ZIP codes. According to Robinhood, hackers accessed their systems by socially engineering a customer service representative to provide system details over the phone.
PayPal announced that Amazon will add Venmo as a checkout option for users in the U.S. starting next year. As part of the partnership, “Amazon shoppers will be able to link their accounts to popular mobile payment services for purchases made through both Amazon.com and the company’s mobile shopping app.” The partnership is geared towards giving Amazon customers more payment flexibility, an effort they’ve also made with their recent (and newly exclusive) BNPL partnership with Affirm.
Building on a previously reported story, Twitter formally launched a new team focused on crypto. According to the company, the team’s remit is to be “a center of excellence for all things blockchain and web3” (a mission exactly as broad and hazy as blockchain and web3 themselves, so... so far so good!). Team leader Tess Rinearson said she expects Twitter Crypto to “help push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more.”
Mastercard announced the expansion of its recently launched BNPL program to include new US partners such as American Airlines, CSI, Fiserv and TSYS.
Klarna launched in Ireland, offering consumers a “Pay in 3” option that can be used in any online store, regardless of whether it is a Klarna retailer or not. This appears to be Klarna’s 11th core country (defined as a country where they offer Klarna Credit, local non-risk payment methods and card options), bolstering their seemingly BNPL-leading international presence.
Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit predicted that within “one to three years, every large bank . . . is going to actively think about . . . trading and selling cryptocurrency assets[.]’” Vik, really going out on a limb on that one. Powerful stuff.
Not to be outdone, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that crypto is “something that we’re looking at.” Hold on. Too much insight. Need to catch our breath. Yep, let’s wrap it up here.
Selected fundings:
Identity verification company Socure raised $450 million in a Series E funding round led by Accel at a $4.5 billion valuation.
South African banking as a service provider JUMO raised $120 million in a new funding round led by Fidelity at a $400 million valuation.
Atomic, an embedded investing provider, raised $25 million in a Series A funding round co-led by QED.
African digital payments network MFS Africa raised $100 million in Series C funding —$70 million equity and $30 million debt.
Financial services platform for the entertainment industry Wrapbook raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Tiger.
Stori, the Mexican credit card-led fintech focused on expanding access to credit cards for mass-middle and emerging-middle income populations, raised $125 million in Series C funding and $75 million in debt financing.
New York-based SaaS firm Notabene, which helps crypto firms comply with FATF regulations, raised $10.2 million at a $45 million valuation.