The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Jan 14th
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
London-based Checkout.com is now the UK’s most valuable private FinTech after the recent $1 billion funding round sent its value soaring to a sky-high $40 billion (£29.2 billion). The company has also become Europe’s second most valuable private startup (after Sweden’s $46 billion Klarna) and the third most valuable private FinTech in the world.
Investors in the latest Series D funding roundof the company include US investment firms like Tiger Global, Singapore’s GICand the Qatar Investment Authority, the Arab state’s sovereign wealth fund. Checkout.com processes payments for clients including Netflix, cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase and Pizza Hut.
“I didn’t choose payments – payments chose me,” Guillame Pousaz, Founder and CEO of Checkout.com, told the Sunday Times in 2020. “I only took that job so I could go surfing.” Checkout.com, which simplifies payment processes for businesses, launched in 2012 and has grown rapidly to employ 1700 people across 19 countries. The firm supports card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Alipay, bank transfers, SEPA direct debits and even cash payments through various local networks.
Deals of the week
- Arc raises $161 million to launch full-service finance platform for SaaS
- Global Processing Services announces $100 million round
- KoinWorks raises $108 million in Series C Funding
- Qraft Technologies closes $146 million investment from SoftBank Group
- FPL Technologies raises $75 million in Series C funding
- Twig raises $35 million Series A round to fuel Web 3.0 green payment infrastructure
- Quartix raises $20 million funding to democratize supply chain finance
Be on the lookout for
Members of the UK Parliament and members of the House of Lords have launched a Crypto and Digital Assets Group to ensure rules for the crypto industry in the UK. The ross-party group aims to protect investors from financial crimes, including token scams or offerings from regulated companies
“It’s great to see UK MPs push to integrate cryptos into the UK financial system. With the right guidance from government, the crypto industry could really thrive which in turn will help the UK remain a financial hotspot,” Anton Chashchin, Managing Partner of Bitfrost.io, commented. “By introducing crypto regulation, people will have a framework to guide them in their adoption. It will help those interested to more clearly know what they should and shouldn’t do. At the moment, it’s not clear. A framework will both encourage adoption from institutions and safeguard investors from some of the unsavoury activities that have drawn negative media attention to the industry.
The advocacy group will also be supported by the country’s self-regulating trade group for the crypto industry CryptoUK, that, reportedly, plans to spend more than $67,000 in 2022 to support the Crypto and Digital Assets Group, with a focus on “education, education, education” around crypto assets.
Events & Appointments
- When normal life was put on hold, retail never stopped. But kept moving, striving. For this reason, this edition of NRF 2022, the biggest retail show, will be more relevant than ever. In New York City, Jan 16th – 18th, retailers, merchants, FinTechs and financial services companies will meet again for the great comeback of the conference.
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