The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | May 26th

By Puja Sharma

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

QED Investors, a FinTech-focused venture capital firm, will invest a substantial portion of its new $925 million fund in India and Southeast Asia.

The new capital commitments comprise Fund VIII, an oversubscribed $650 million early-stage fund, and Growth II, a $275 million early growth-stage fund. These funds will allow QED to continue investing in disruptive FinTech companies in the US, the UK, Europe, Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

“We are excited, fortunate and privileged to be a steward of our investors’ capital,” said Nigel Morris, Investors Managing Partner and Co-Founder of QED. “We thank our returning LPs and are grateful for the confidence shown in us by our new LPs. We are excited to have the capital to build the next generation of great FinTech companies over the coming cycle.”

QED has exclusively invested in FinTech since its inception and has played a crucial part in the growth of some of today’s FinTech behemoths. QED led the Series A rounds of Credit Karma, Remitly and Nubank, led AvidXchange’s Series B, participated in Klarna’s Series F, and was among the first institutional investors in Greensky.

“QED is an outstanding partner,” said Justin Basini, CEO ClearScore. “They have been intimately involved in every stage of The ClearScore Group, from founding, to start up, through scale up, to now a group of companies serving 20 million users on four continents. Their deep insight, frameworks for thinking, operational experience and emotional support over the years have been invaluable to our success.”

Deals of the week

• Ballerine secures $5m in Seed funding for product expansion
• RupeeRedee disbursed INR 500cr loans in FY23
• Episode Six secures $48m Series C funding
• OpenFin raises $35m in Series D investment
• RupeeRedee disbursed INR 500cr loans in FY23
• Klarna launches BNPL Credit ‘Opt Out’ tool for users in the UK
• Tarabut Gateway announces strategic partnership with Qarar
• Tyme raises $77.8m to boost global expansion
• Kiwi raises $80m to offer credit access to underbanked Latinos in USA
• Deal Source launches to bridge $331b funding gap for African SMEs
• Bolttech raises $196m in Series B to fuel organic growth
• ai raises $3m seed funding

Be on the lookout for

Given the rising competition in the banking industry and Neo-banks winning market share, traditional banks are becoming increasingly concerned about their core systems’ limitations and relatively slow pace of change. Preferences across Cloud-native architecture, SaaS platforms, customer-centricity, and the recurring themes of Hollow-the-Core have significant implications on core banking.

Taking place at Shangri-La The Shard (London) on June 15th, 2023, the 2nd edition of NextGen Core Banking Summit will feature perspectives from global banks and technology companies. During the event, industry leaders will share opinions and discuss emerging technology trends and how these trends will affect their businesses.