The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Feb 4th
By Gaia Lamperti
The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.
The Big Story
Visa users made $2.5 billion in payments with crypto-connected cards during the company’s fiscal quarter ending Dec 31. That timeframe only saw 70% of Visa’s crypto volume for all of fiscal 2021, the company said. The payments giant continues to lean in the crypto space aiming to improve areas such as connectivity, scale, consumer value propositions, reliability and security for crypto offerings to continue growing.
“To us, this signals that consumers see utility in having a Visa card linked to an account at a crypto platform. There’s value in being able to access that liquidity, to fund purchases and manage expenses, and to do so instantly and seamlessly,” Visa’s CFO Vasant Prabhu said in a CNBC interview.
Up to date, more than 65 crypto platforms and exchanges, including Coinbase and BlockFi, have partnered to issue Visa credentials, and more than 100 million vendors in the Visa network are also now accepting Visa crypto payments, the company added.
Deals of the week
- Chargebee raises $250 million to meet demand from subscription and SaaS businesses
- Wayflyer hits unicorn status after raising $150 million
- Bold announces $55 million Series B investment to drive transformation
- Interchecks announces $16 million Series B financing
- Tiger Global invests $15 million in Indonesian FinTech Ayoconnect
- LemonEdge announces a $4 million funding round led by Blackstone
- Wise Platform enters 2022 with seven new partnerships
Be on the lookout for
HSBC‘s funding in green tech. The group will allocate $100 million to power green technology projects as part of the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst network, an initiative founded by Bill Gates, which supports the decarbonisation of high-carbon sectors. The project will focus on four critical climate technologies: direct air capture, clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage, and sustainable aviation fuel.
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