The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | Jan 31st

By Gaia Lamperti

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Big acquisitions

Hazel, the FinTech arm of US retail giant Walmart, announced it will acquire FinTech platforms Even and One to bring further its financial services ‘super app’ strategy already underway. The FinTech will operate under the One brand, Walmart said, and users will be able to manage their finances all in one place, allowing them to get paid, spend, save, borrow and invest their money.

Swiss bank UBS has signed a deal to buy USW-focused automated wealth management provider Wealthfront, which has more than $27 billion in assets under management, in an all-cash deal worth $1.4 billion. Wealthfront has more than 470,000 clients in the US and specifically caters to Millennial and Gen Z investors. The acquisition is set to close in the second half of 2022.

African FinTechs rocking Series A

Nigerian startup Bamboo, a brokerage app to buy and trade US stocks in real-time, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Greycroft and Tiger Global with participation from Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, and Chrysalis Capital, amongst others. The money injection will accelerate its growth, helping the company to move into new markets and launch more products. So far, Bamboo has gained over 300,000 accounts in Nigeria. Meanwhile, an API solution allows asset managers, fintech companies and other consumer-facing platforms and financial institutions to integrate Bamboo’s API and to offer their users global access.

Tanzanian cross-border payments company NALA, which recently pivoted from local to international money transfers, has raised $10 million in a new Seed fundraising round. The company helps its users to move money from the UK to East African countries (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), thus ushering the Tanzanian FinTech into the remittance business.

Where’s the buzz

Trading app Robinhood’s share prices fell by 16% in pre-market trading on Friday, after the app’s Q4 results missed analysts’ estimates. The company reported a net loss of $423 million, and its monthly active users were down 8%. Robinhoodwent public last July at $38 per share, but after hitting last week’s low, Bloomberg marked it as the worst “high-profile” global stock market debut since the beginning of the pandemic.