The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | July 15th

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 Premium subscribers only.

The Big Story

Klarna saw its valuation plummet by 85% after announcing a new financing round on Monday, reflecting grim investor sentiment around high-growth tech stocks and scepticism toward the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) market.

The Swedish fintech announced it raised $800 million in funding from investors at a $6.7 billion valuation, down sharply from the $45.6 billion value hit since the last financing led by SoftBank. The announcement follows weeks of speculations on Klarna’s slashed valuation and after it laid off about 10% of its global staff.

The player remains a big fish, but certainly, the competition in the sector has become more fierce since 2005, when the company was founded, including new entrants like Apple, which announced the launch of its own instalment loans feature in June.

Deals of the week

• wefox announced the closing of a $400 million Series D funding round
• Klarna announced closing a new $800 million financing at a $6.7b post valuation
• WebBank invests $250 million  in Avant to support growth of credit card program
• Pico signs agreement with Golden Gate Capital for $200 million investment
• Asset Class secures $11.6 million in a Series A funding round led by Canapi Ventures
• Apiture announces $29 million funding round
• iraLogix adds $22 million in Series C funding to accelerate FinTech sector growth
• TurnKey Lender raises $10 million in new funding round with OTB Ventures

Be on the lookout for

As it celebrates its seventh anniversary, Revolut has surpassed the 20 million retail customers worldwide benchmark, processing over 250 million transactions a month. In the meantime, the neobank is continuing to expand its global workforce, topping 5,000 employees globally and opening several offices in new locations around the world such as New York, Tokyo, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris etc.