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Top Fintech Stories of 2022 • TechCrunch

Here are the stories that attract the most readers’ attention

Welcome to The Exchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and voting of confidence. If you are reading it as a post on our website, please subscribe this so that you can get it directly in the future. Every week, I will watch the hottest fintech news of the past week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to analysis of a particular space to attractions for a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there, and it’s my job to stay on top of that news — and make sense of it — so you can stay informed. — Mary Ann

As the year draws to a close, it’s clearly the right time to look back at some of the highlights (and weaknesses) in the world of fintech news.

We have started 2022 with a relatively high record. The big rounds are still going on! Decacorns are born. Venture capital is still available. Then, sometime in the second quarter, everything changed. And they’ve turned around ever since.

In deciding how to approach the final edition of this newsletter for the year, I was curious as to which of my stories performed best. So I asked our incredible audience development manager, Alyssa Stringer, to get my top 15 stories based on pageviews. In short, dear readers, it seems that you are all most concerned with the coverage of the companies at the top and the coverage of the companies at the bottom. That is the best time. And then it felt like the worst time. And oh, many of you are really curious about the concept of fractional real estate investing.

Here are my 15 most read stories on TechCrunch in 2022:

  1. Better.com CEO tells staff during layoff meeting: ‘We probably gave away $200 million’: A collaboration with brilliant Zack Whittaker, where we heard staff Vishal Garg talking to himself . . . and it’s not pretty.
  2. Quickly closes after slow growth, high burn prevents fundraising options: Collaborating with my close friend, TC+ editor and Equity podcast podcast co-host Alex Wilhelm. Witnessing the one-click payment launch Fast crash and fire is definitely one of the biggest stories in fintech this year.
  3. Ramp confirms new $8.1 billion valuation after revenue up ‘almost 10 times’ year-over-year: The corporate spending startup doubled its valuation from August 2021 to March 2022. The space it operates in is only getting more crowded. Meanwhile, the company has expanded into new lines of business.
  4. Fintech Roundup: Better.com workers leaving ‘rushed’ after return of CEO Vishal Garg: This was especially meaningful to me, as it was the gentle beginning of what would eventually become The Interchange. Also, one of the many scoops regarding Better.com.
  5. PayPal closes its San Francisco office: This surprised me a bit, as it didn’t impress me as much as that Important news, but perhaps it’s a sign of what’s to come after 2022.
  6. Predecessor, Bezos Returns Has Arrived, a Startup That Lets You Buy Single Family Rentals For ‘Just $100’: This is roughly tied to the PayPal section above. It gets a lot of attention – perhaps it’s a combination of a very attractive business model and Jeff Bezos’s backer.
  7. Better.com employees learned about layoffs when severance checks appeared in the payroll app: Another scoop that leaves many of us shaking our heads in disgust (and not in a good way).
  8. Fintech Klarna is reportedly on the rise with a $6.5 billion valuation, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘down round’: This probably marks a turning point in 2022. When a company valued at $45 billion last year is raising about one-seventh of that, people take notice. The tide is changing in the fintech space and this news makes many people very nervous, as it feels like proof that the 2021 party is over.
  9. Better.com loses more senior executives as employees prepare for another round of mass layoffs: Another scoop that leaves many of us shaking our heads in disgust (and not in a good way).
  10. Fintech layoffs keep coming: As 2022 kicks in, the only layoffs I’m referring to are those conducted by Better.com. But by early November, sadly, layoffs were rampant in the fintech industry.
  11. Alchemy, which aims to be a ‘de facto platform’ for developers to build on top of web3, is now valued at $10.2 billion: I rewrote this when I was still doing some crypto reporting. Alchemy grows very, very quickly. This might be a good time to check them out considering all that has happened in the crypto space since that rally.
  12. Fintech Brex confirms $12.3 billion valuation, appoints Meta exec as head of product: This was published in January. In October, I wrote about the company’s layoffs. A lot happened in between, including the company’s controversial decision to stop serving SMBs.
  13. Better.com plans to lay off about 4,000 people this week, sources say: You guessed it, another scoop.
  14. Fintech startup Jeeves raises $180 million, quadruples valuation to $2.1 billion in half a year: Jeeves’ growth rate and increase in value is impressive. A BaaS company in the corporate tag and expense management space. But as early as March, the startup’s CEO noted about the fundraising process: “The market in January and February looks very different than in December.”
  15. Landa can turn you into a homeowner for as little as $5: Like I said, it sounds like you’re all really interested in retail real estate investing, or maybe just a lot of people secretly wanting to be homeowners.

It’s been an eventful, and at times stressful, year that goes beyond the above. Venture dollars flowing into fintech slow down, as with any other field. Character has been called into question. But I still hope. Companies that did meaningful things in 2021 and 2022 will continue to do so. They could spend more carefully and work a little more quietly – but IMHO, that’s not a bad thing. Fintech innovation is more important than ever, especially when it comes to inclusion and accessibility. There are a lot of startups that are doing great work. We can’t let a few bad apples ruin them all. I know there is still a long road ahead. We’re still not done fixing 2021’s redundancies. But first, I’m excited for what fintech will bring in 2023. (By the way, check out the Equity team’s predictions for next year. this.)

Vishal Garg Better.com fires employee, admits he 'failed' on multiple fronts in leaked audio recording addressing significant staff cuts.  Screenshot of the meeting.

Leaked meeting recordings/Better.com Image credits: TechCrunch

Weekly News

Copper banking app launches youth investment product

Visa to invest 1 billion USD in Africa in the next 5 years

Why Checkout.com lowers its internal value

Chime made two offers to buy DailyPay, for $2 billion, but were rejected

Robinhood raises interest rates for Gold members — to 4% APY

Insurtech Vouch launches web3 protection policy, advertising is the first insurance designed specifically for web3 companies

London-based Wise says it is profitable and plans to hire more than 250 new employees in three US offices

Self Financial adds rent and utility reports to its credit building product suite

Capchase, which provides ‘undiluted’ financing to SaaS companies, says revenue to grow 250% by 2022

Microsoft buys 4% stake in London Stock Exchange Group as part of 10-year cloud partnership

Highnote expands the platform’s capabilities by certifying with Visa’s group payment solutions

India’s Paytm spends up to 103 million USD to buy back shares

Financing and M&A

Poolit raises millions of dollars to turn accredited investors into LPs in VCs, private equity funds

Nilus achieves $8.5 million led by Bessemer to automate your financial operations

Vic.ai raises $52 million, shows how accounting automation can be profitable

London-based fintech Bondaval B2B raises $15 million Series A

DataVisor raises $40 million in strategic growth funding

Plooto closes $20M Series B to help SMBs manage cash flow

Oyster raises $3.6 million seed fund to launch point-of-sale platform for personal insurance

Barcelona-based fintech company Novicap raises 200 million euros in debt to drive growth for businesses and institutions

Friendly PSA: We want you to join us in Boston on April 20 at Early stage TechCrunch 2023And we’ve got a great end of 2022 sale to help you shop for the rest of your holiday. Sign up with this link by 11:59 p.m. PT on December 31 and sign up for a Founder Pass for just $75 — normally $149! The first phase is TechCrunch’s one-day founders summit where you’ll get helpful advice and lessons learned from top experts, meet other entrepreneurs doing similar journey, share your own experiences and build confidence to take the next steps towards growing your business. Don’t wait — book your Founder Pass today for just $75 with this link!

And with that, I’ll sign off. This is the last newsletter that I will publish in 2022. I don’t know where this year is going, and to be honest, in many ways, it’s been really tough. But there were also a lot of bright spots, including increasing the viewership of this newsletter and the honor of sharing this content with all of you. Thank you again. Wishing you all a happy holiday, and a happy and healthy new year! May it be a better, brighter and wonderful year. xoxo, Mary Ann




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