The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | July 18th

By Gaia Lamperti

July 18, 2022

Banking
Cryptocurrencies
EU

Monday

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

Big money injections

Pico, a provider of technology services, software, data and analytics for financial markets based in New York, secured a $200 million investment from Golden Gate Capital to pursue M&A opportunities, improve the company’s infrastructure and data offerings, as well as expand its market coverage. Amohg, the existing Pico investors and clients, are Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, JP Morgan, UBS, etc. The firm, founded in 2009, offers a portfolio of financial markets services spanning 55 data centres in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

FinTech Stori, which provides credit to Mexicans without bank accounts, just hit a valuation of $1.2 billion after completing a $150m series C funding round. The funding was led by venture capital firms, including BAI Capital, Singapore’s GIC and GGV Capital. The money injection turned Stori into the ninth Mexican unicorn and the second Mexican FinTech to attain unicorn status this year, following Newport in May.

New crypto businesses

Crypto firm Coinbase can now operate as a crypto assets service provider in Italy after getting approval by the country’s financial regulator, in light of the rapid growth of the market. The regulatory approval will enable Coinbase to continue offering crypto services in Italy and to bring new products to market in the country alongside the 40 countries in Europe where the firm currently operates. Coinbase is planning to obtain licences in more jurisdictions.

Plaid has now made available on its platform the major crypto exchanges, including Binance, Gemini, Robinhood, and SoFi, to enable its customers to securely share account information, including asset types, balances and transactions with the apps they use, facilitating operations like tax advisory services, net worth calculations, and others. Plaid claims that it is already supporting 12,000 financial institutions, and more integrations are planned for the next year with the aim to simplify customer onboarding experience, identity verification, compliance, and bank-linked account funding.

Where is the buzz

Another slashed valuation. This time happened to payments company Stripe, which saw its market value decrease by 28% as the result of the continuous sell-off of tech shares. Stripe was last valued at $95 billion after a $600 million funding round sealed in March 2021. However, its current share price is at $29, versus the previous calculation of $40. The decision wipes $21 billion off the company’s valuation, cutting the headline figure to $74 billion.

July 18, 2022