Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at Stripe’s easy-peasy acquisition, the role fintech played in Clio’s latest raise, the latest with digital banking startup Mercury, and more.
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The big story
Payments giant Stripe has made its third acquisition over the past 14 months and at least the 15th total over its lifetime, TechCrunch exclusively reported. Stripe picked up 13-person Lemon Squeezy, a merchant of record that calculates and pays global sales tax for digital products, handling legal processing and fees in every country. The startup primarily served SaaS and software businesses. It’s always interesting when a larger fintech acquires a smaller competitor. In announcing the acquisition on X, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said Stripe was “going to scale merchant of record selling in a big way.”
Analysis of the week
I’ve been covering Canadian legal tech Clio for several years now. So I was particularly interested when the company announced last week that it had raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation (led by new backer New Enterprise Associates, which ponied up more than $500 million alone). I was even more interested when I discovered a large driver of investor interest was embedded fintech. Clio began integrating payments into its offering in 2022 and has since seen its ARR surge to over $200 million, up from $100 million ARR in June of 2022. And it’s profitable! Fintech for the win!
Listen to the Equity crew dissect the deal here:
Dollars and cents
MNT-Halan, a fintech unicorn out of Egypt, is on a consolidation march. The microfinance and payments startup has raised $157.5 million in funding and is using the money in part to fund the acquisition of another fintech, Tam Finans, to expand into Turkey.
TigerBeetle, which has built an open source database engineered for financial online transaction processing, recently closed a $24 million Series A round led by Spark Capital’s Natalie Vais with participation from Amplify Partners and Coil.
What else we’re writing
Digital banking startup Mercury said that it was no longer serving U.S.-domiciled customers with business and residential addresses from certain countries, including Ukraine and Nigeria, in a move that upset founders and investors alike. Mercury has since gone back on the claim, telling TechCrunch that it was “an error” and that the change in policy only applies to founders living in Ukraine, not founders living in the U.S. with a Ukrainian passport. Seeing an opportunity, competitor Brex swooped in to try and help Ukrainian founders.
CRED, an Indian fintech startup, has rolled out a new feature that will help its customers manage and gain deeper insights into their cash flow, as the startup seeks to drive engagement through personal finance tools.
Revolut has been granted a banking license from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the U.K. This is a significant milestone for the London-based fintech company, particularly since it has been trying to secure this license since 2021.
High-interest headlines
Global funding to financial services slowed down in the past 5 quarters
Robinhood expands features with joint investing accounts
Europe’s rival to Visa and Mastercard soon to roll out in Belgium
Nova Credit adds Credit Karma co-founder Nichole Mustard to board (TC covered the startup’s last raise here.)
UniCredit to acquire banking-as-a-service venture Vodeno and Belgian digital bank Aion
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