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Elliptic banks $23M to shrink crypto risk, eyeing growth in Asia

Crypto means risk. To UK company Elliptic it also means business. The startup has just closed a $23M Series B to step up growth for a crypto risk-management play that involves selling tech and services to help others navigate the choppy darks of cryptocurrencies.

The round was led by financial services and asset management firm SBI Group, a Tokyo-based erstwhile subsidiary of SoftBank . Also joining as a new investor this round is London-based AlbionVC. Existing investors including SignalFire, Octopus Ventures and Santander Innoventures also participated. SBI Group’s Tomoyuki Nii and Ed Lascelles of AlbionVC are also joining Elliptic’s board.

Flush with a sizeable injection of Series B capital, Elliptic is especially targeting business growth at Asia — with a plan to open new offices in Japan and Singapore. It says client revenues in the region have risen 11x over the past two years.

We last spoke to Elliptic back in 2016 when it had just raised a $5M Series A.

The 2013-founded startup began by testing the crypto waters with a storage product before zeroing in on financial compliance as a pain-point worth its time. It went on to develop machine learning tech that screens transactions to identify suspicious patterns and, via them, dubious transactors.

Now it offers an integrated suite of products and services for financial institutions and crypto businesses to screen volumes of crypto-flows that sum to billions of dollars in transactions per day — analyzing them for links to illicit activity such as money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, and other financial crimes.

It’s focused on selling anti-money laundering compliance, crypto forensics and cryptocurrency investigation services to the private sector — though has also sold tools direct to law enforcement agencies in the past.

Billions of dollars in financial services terms is of course just a tiny drop in a massive ocean of money movements. And growth in the crypto risk-management space has clearly required more than a little patience, from a startup perspective.

Three years ago Elliptic’s first blockchain analytics product had 10-20 Bitcoin companies as customers. That’s now up to 100+ crypto businesses and financial institutions using its products to shrink their risk of financial crime when dealing with crypto-assets. But the more three than year gap between Elliptic’s Series A and B is notable.

“To date, we’ve focused on product development and assembling the right team as the market has matured. This new funding will help us expand in the right way, namely by making the push into Asia without diluting our focus on the US and EMEA,” says co-founder and CEO James Smith when asked about the gap between financing rounds.

He declines to comment on how far off Elliptic is from achieving breakeven or profitability yet.

“We provide best-in-class transaction monitoring products for crypto-assets, which are trusted by crypto exchanges and financial institutions worldwide,” he adds of its product suite. “Our products are used as key components of larger compliance processes that are designed to minimise money laundering risks.”

With the addition of SBI Group to its investor roster Elliptic gains a strategic partner in Asia to help push what it dubs “bank-grade risk data” at a new wave of established financial institutions it believes are eyeing crypto with growing appetite for risk as larger players wade in.

Larger players like Facebook . Elliptic’s PR name-drops the likes of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, Line Corporation’s LINK and central bank digital currencies, as markers of a rise in mainstream attention on crypto assets. And it says Series B funds will be used to accelerate product development to support “an emerging class of asset-backed crypto-assets”.

Regulatory attention on crypto — which has been rising globally for years but looks set to zip up several gears now that Facebook has ripped the curtain off of an ambitious global digital currency plan which also has buy-in from a number of other household tech and fintech names — is another claimed feed in for Elliptic’s business. More crypto implies growing risk.

It also points to the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force’s global regulatory framework for crypto-assets as an example of some of the wider risk-based requirements and now wrapped around those dealing in crypto.

The focus on Asia for business expansion is a measure of relative maturity of interest in opportunities around crypto-assets and localized attention to regulation, according to Smith.

“Revenue growth is certainly very strong in this region. We have been working with customers in Asia for a number of years and have seen first-hand how vibrant their crypto-asset ecosystems are. Countries such as Singapore and Japan have developed clear crypto-asset regulatory frameworks, and businesses based in these countries are serious about meeting their compliance obligations,” he says.

“We have also found that traditional financial institutions in Asia are particularly keen to engage with crypto-assets, and we will be working with them as they take their first steps into this new asset class.”

“We believe that crypto-assets will play an increasingly important role in our everyday lives and are shaping the future of banking. Our investment in Elliptic is a further commitment to this belief and to SBI Holding’s appetite to help build the digital asset-related ecosystem,” adds Yoshitaka Kitao, CEO of the SBI Group, in a supporting statement.

“Elliptic’s pioneering approach is enabling the transparency, integrity, and trust necessary for this vision to become reality. We are seeing a growing demand for their services across our portfolio of crypto-assets related companies and view Elliptic as best-placed to meet this considerable opportunity.”

While Elliptic’s business is focused on reducing the risk for other businesses of inadvertently transacting with criminals using crypto to launder money or otherwise shift assets under the legal radar, the proportion of transactions that such illicit activity represents in the Bitcoin space represents a tiny fraction of overall transactions.

“According to our analysis, approximately $1BN in Bitcoin has been spent on the dark web, so far in 2019, on items ranging from narcotics to stolen credit cards. This represents a very small share of all Bitcoin activity — less than 0.5% of Bitcoin payments over this period,” says Smith.

Not that that diminishes the regulatory risk. Nor, therefore, the business opportunity for Elliptic to sell support services to help others avoid touching the hot stuff.

“Crypto money launderers are continually developing new techniques to cover their tracks — from the use of mixers to transacting in privacy coins such as monero,” Smith adds. “We are also constantly innovating to keep pace with this and help our clients to detect money laundering. For example our work with researchers from MIT and IBM demonstrated the application of deep learning techniques to the identification of illicit crypto-asset transactions.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/03/elliptic-banks-23m-to-shrink-crypto-risk-eyeing-growth-in-asia/

Credit Cards

Financial services marketplace CompareAsiaGroup raises $20 million in new funding led by Experian

Experian, one of the largest credit reporting bureaus in the United States, announced today that it has invested in CompareAsiaGroup, the financial services marketplace. Experian led the initial closing of a $20 million B1 round.

In addition to new funding, the investment also gives Hong Kong-based CompareAsiaGroup access to Experian’s technology, including Experian One, a cloud-based credit scoring and risk assessment platform. CompareAsiaGroup recently opened a research and development center in Singapore to develop more tech tools and its partnership with Experian will enable it to launch new open banking services in Hong Kong that can also be adapted for other markets.

The platform currently claims 60 million users in Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, which use it to comparison shop for bank accounts, personal loans, insurance, credit cards and other financial products.

This is the latest investment Experian has made in Asian fintech startups (the others include Jirnexu in Malaysia, C88 Financial Technologies Group and India’s BankBazaar). It is also participated in Grab’s Series H, announced earlier this summer.

Ben Elliot, the CEO of Experian in Asia Pacific, tells TechCrunch that Experian focuses on investments that give more people access to financial services. “Obviously we benefit from that, but I think this really shows our commitment to Southeast Asia in particular, and also in this case Hong Kong and Taiwan,” he said about the new funding in CompareAsiaGroup. “My view is that over time we’ll see our capabilities and CompareAsiaGroup really improving the experience of customers while they are borrowing.”

CompareAsiaGroup has now raised more than $90 million to date since it was founded in 2014. Its other investors include World Bank Group member IFC, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, ACE and Company, Jardines, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, SBI Group and H&Q Utrust.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/05/financial-services-marketplace-compareasiagroup-raises-20-million-in-new-funding-led-by-experian/

Credit Cards

Using Spotify and Netflix payments to build your credit score? Grow Credit has a service for that.

Can subscriptions and everyday payments be used to help build or rebuild a credit score? The Los Angeles-based Grow Credit thinks so.

The service, which launched earlier this month, is one of the slew of new ideas coming from businesses that are angling to help build up credit scores for folks who can’t (or won’t) get a credit card, or who are rebuilding their credit.

The company is the latest evolution of a credit-based approach to financial services from the LA-based serial entrepreneur, Joe Bayen.

Bayen’s last startup was Lenny, a credit monitoring and lending service that was aimed at helping people better manage their payments to avoid damaging their credit scores.

Bayen scrapped the Lenny business model after realizing that he’d have a hard time finding a debt financing partner. So Bayen resolved to be more of a sourcing partner for new customers rather than developing a credit and lending business himself.

Hatch Bank, the new business arm for Firstrust Bank, is acting as the lender of record for Grow Credit’s secured Mastercard credit business.

Bayen has always been focused on helping the under-banked make better decisions, and in-between Grow Credit and Lenny there was still another business model that Bayen wanted to try.

It would have been a platform called LennyBike, which would have been a subscription service for customers to get access to a bicycle for $30 a month, and those payments would then count toward building credit.

However, it’s a much simpler proposition to get people to use their existing subscription services as a credit-building device than trying to get folks to pay for something new… thus, Grow Credit was born. (It also didn’t help that Bird raised $300 million and Lime another $250 million around the time that Lenny Bike was trying to get to market.)

The company uses a virtual Mastercard that allows for consumers to pay for online subscriptions only. “We have been able to transform a healthy, positive habit, which is making subscription payments, and we have turned that into a credit-building opportunity,” says Bayen.

It’s a pretty elegant way to solve a problem that’s a real barrier to entry for a large number of financial services. Credit scores can impact mortgages, the ability to receive small business loans and a host of other services that are ways to boost economic opportunity.

The company has even brought on board experienced executives like Nick Roberts, the former chief marketing officer of Acorns, to help get their messaging out.

There are two main competitors to a service like Grow Credit in the market for providing opportunities to build up a credit score, Roberts says. One is forced savings programs, the other is using fixed-limit credit cards with massive fees. A host of new services that would use reporting utility, rental, mobile phone payments and other monthly expenditures toward credit scoring have yet to gain traction.

Grow Credit offers 0% APR financing for its service, but has two tiers. A free tier for an unlimited $25 revolving credit line and a subscription service that charges $4.99 for a 12-month service offering periodic credit limit increases of up to $300. Both the free and subscription versions offer free FICO scores and automatic subscription detection.

The company makes money by giving subscription services the chance to upsell customers using the credit lines. ClassPass has already signed on as a partner, according to Bayen.

“This is establishing a small dollar loan and a line of credit,” says Roberts. “People on debit cards and stored value cards that are out there… they’re  using debit cards so the money is immediately debited from their account. What we’re doing is paying the bill and establishing the line of credit and getting paid back at the end of the month.”

The idea of using more data sources and alternative data to how credit bureaus determine credit scores is one that’s already resonating with a few Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination.

Senator Kamala Harris has called for amending the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require credit agencies to include rent payments, cellphone bills and things like utility payments in their credit score calculations.

Roughly 26 million people are invisible to credit ratings and another 19 million have files that are unscorable, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . These are people who lack enough bank or credit-union accounts to have a credit score — and they’re a group that’s more likely to include African American and Latinx consumers.

Roughly 15% of African American and Latinx consumers are unable to receive a credit rating, according to data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as cited by MarketWatch.

“Expanding the calculation of credit scores to include payments made on rent, phone bills, and other utilities will increase access to credit for those with a limited or ‘invisible’ credit history or poor credit scores,” according to the Harris website.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/23/using-spotify-and-netflix-payments-to-build-your-credit-score-grow-credit-has-a-service-for-that/

Credit Cards

Fintech in Latin America continues to draw big dollars as Softbank invests $231 million in Creditas

As investors continue to move more aggressively into Latin America’s startup scene, there’s one industry that seems to be drawing more attention than any others — financial services.

As wealth across the region continues to rise, access to adequate financial services — specifically debt — has become a pain-point for an upwardly mobile middle class that wants to be more entrepreneurial and have more financial tools than straight cash at their disposal.

That’s what’s driven companies like Nubank, the Brazilian consumer credit card behemoth, to valuations of roughly $4 billion; and it’s also what contributed to Creditas, a provider of secured loans, raking in $231 million in new financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund and SoftBank Group. Previous investors Vostok Emerging Finance, Santander InnoVentures and Amadeus Capital also participated in the round. 

Nubank is now worth $4 billion after Tencent’s $180 million investment

Founded by Sergio Furio in 2012, the company started as an originator of loans to Brazilian customers who were willing to offer up collateral in exchange for lower interest rates on their debt. Back in 2017, the company became more of a fully integrated lender for the entire process.

Thanks to investments from local and international investment firms including Kaszek Ventures, Quona’s Accion Frontier Fund, Redpoint eVentures, QED Investors, Naspers Fintech, International Finance Corporation and Endeavor’s Catalyst fund, the company became one of Brazil’s largest new financial services startups.

Brazilian startup Creditas is revolutionizing credit in the world’s third largest lending market

Expect the company to use the new cash to expand its product portfolio and try to offer new lines of credit that it would issue itself — perhaps by trying to enter new businesses like unsecured consumer lending and credit cards.

If it does make its way into unsecured side of the lending market, that would put the company squarely in competition with Nubank (which was reportedly in discussions with Creditas’ lead investor, SoftBank, about an investment earlier this year).

“At Creditas we relentlessly focus on creating an amazing experience that provides efficiency and lower prices to democratize the access to low-cost lending in Brazil. With these investments, we plan to accelerate this process and expand our business model in order to improve the lives of the Brazilian population,” said Sergio Furio, Founder and CEO of Creditas, in a statement.

As a result of the investment, representatives from the SoftBank Vision Fund and SoftBank Latin America Fund will join Creditas’ Board of Directors.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/fintech-in-latin-america-continues-to-draw-big-dollars-as-softbank-invests-231-million-in-creditas/

Credit Cards

Step raises $22.5M led by Stripe to build no-fee banking services for teens

The smartphone revolution has well and truly disrupted the world of banking. A wide range of startups have cropped up that have completely removed the need to make visits to physical branches to open accounts, make deposits, pay for things, and ask for loans: you can now do all of these on the go by way of a simple tap on an app.

Now, in the latest development, a new startup is leveraging that progress to create a new service targeting one of the most avid demographics when it comes to smartphone usage. Step, which builds mobile-based banking services for teenagers, is today announcing a round of $22.5 million led by Stripe.

“Schools don’t teach kids about money,” CJ MacDonald, the CEO and co-founder, said in an interview. “We want to be their first bank accounts with spending cards, but we also want to teach financial literacy and responsibility. Banks don’t tailor to this, and we want to be a solution teaching the next generation of adults to be more responsible with money in the cashless era. It was easy with cash to go to the mall but now everyone is using their phone for Uber and more.” (MacDonald has a track record in mobile commerce applications: his previous startup, mobile loyalty card app Gyft, got acquired by First Data.)

Step’s first market will be the US, where it’s estimated that there are just under 50 million teenagers in the population.

MacDonald said the aim with the funding will be to use it to bring Step’s first product — banking accounts with payment cards attached — to market, in partnership with Mastercard and Evolve.

Step actually launched in January this year (when its card partner was actually Visa) but only to unveil a waitlist. Since then, it has amassed 500,000 names of interested would-be users — likely one reason why it attracted this funding, and the attention of a pretty high-profile set of investors, including several who know a thing or two about the youth market.

In addition to Stripe, the round includes Will Smith’s Dreamers fund, Nas, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Wndrco, Ronnie Lott, Matt Rutler, Kevin Gould, and Moat founders Noah and Jonah Goodhart. Previous investors Crosslink Capital, Collaborative Fund and Sesame Ventures also participated. (It’s raised just under $30 million to date. Valuation is not being disclosed.)

Step is not wading into unchartered territory by building a banking service targeting teens. Banks have been offering people the ability to open accounts for their kids under the umbrella of their accounts for many years. And other startups that have built banking services for this age group, who already have products out in the market, include teen debit card and bank app Current, and Greenlight, which makes a debit card for kids. (And that’s before you consider the likes of Chime, which don’t target teens specifically but might be used by them.)

And nor will Step be the last: there have also been rumors that Amazon has been working on its own service offering bank accounts to teens.

MacDonald said there are differences between what Step and these others are offering. First and foremost, its primary point of engagement is the teenager him/herself, with the aim being to give the account holder full autonomy (or at least the feeling of it: parents can still monitor and put controls on an under-18 account, as well as pay funds into it).

To that end, Step has been marketing directly to its future users, doing viral things like incentivizing sign-ups by giving users a dollar towards their bank accounts (when they come online) for each person that gets referred and also signs up using a person’s code. Teenagers under 18 will even be able to sign up for accounts without parental or guardian consent — although these accounts with be very limited in their functionality.

Another key difference will be the business model around which Step is built. As with any company that provides card services, Step gets a cut from card transactions, but unlike others in this space (and unlike most banks), Step is launching with a no-fee model for the basic account. This is because the idea will be to grow with the users, and over time to offer them services that will collect fees, when they are needed.

“As teens grow up we want to grow with them,” MacDonald said. “We will start offering products when they go to college, for example lending money to get books or computers.”

Stripe’s investment for now appears to be mainly a financial one in terms of the services that will be coming in the first wave of Step’s rollout this year. Behind the scenes, it’s actually strategic, too: the company has been quietly building interesting inroads into developing services for card issuers, alongside the services for merchants that you might already know. That’s included the acquisition of Touchtech earlier this year.

Step’s service will be very dependent on building out, and using, robust APIs to let parents and companies pay into their accounts, and for people to be able to use their Step accounts to pay for things, and part of that will involve using and implementing card issuing APIs.

“We are working with Stripe on its issuing API and on developing the issuing side of its business,” MacDonald said. “That is something that we are excited about.” More generally, he said their goals are aligned. “They want to grow the GDP of the internet and grow businesses online. Part of what we are trying to do is to make young people participate responsibly in the online economy, and I think that mission is in line with Stripe’s.” 

Stripe’s head of corporate development, Jordan Angelos, is joining the board of Step with this round.

“Stripe is committed to searching for new ways to remove barriers to commerce and broaden economic access to more people,” Angelos said in a statement. “Step will help teenagers responsibly participate in a financial system that’s moving online, and teach money management skills through direct experience. We’re thrilled to support their efforts.”

The bigger opportunity also seems to be that much larger and more incumbent organizations will tap into what Step is building so that it can make sure to remain relevant and a part of whatever shape financial services take for so-called “generation alpha.”

“Today’s young people are digitally savvy, having grown up with technology as a mainstay in their day-to-day lives. As a result, we also need to ensure that they become familiar with the unique aspects of digital payments including providing education about the various finance and payment products available,” said Sherri Haymond, EVP Digital Partnerships, North America for Mastercard, in a statement. “Step has taken a thoughtful approach to developing an offering for teens and families that provides that first step in educating and acclimating today’s youth to help them gain confidence and awareness around their finances.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/06/step-raises-22-5m-led-by-stripe-to-build-no-fee-banking-services-for-teens/

Credit Cards

Partnering with Visa, emerging market lender Branch International raises $170 million

The San Francisco-based startup Branch International, which makes small personal loans in emerging markets, has raised $170 million and announced a partnership with Visa to offer virtual, pre-paid debit cards to Branch client networks in Africa, South-Asia and Latin America. 

Branch — which has 150 employees in San Francisco, Lagos, Nairobi, Mexico City and Mumbai — makes loans starting at $2 to individuals in emerging and frontier markets. The company also uses an algorithmic model to determine credit worthiness, build credit profiles and offer liquidity via mobile phones.

“We’ll use [the money] to deepen existing business in Africa. Later this year we’ll announce high-yield savings accounts…in Africa,” says Branch co-founder and chief executive Matt Flannery.

The $170 million round from Foundation Capital and its new debit card partner, Visa, will support Branch’s international expansion, which could include Brazil and Indonesia, according to Flannery. Branch launched in Mexico and India within the last year. In Africa, it offers its services in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

A potential Branch customer

The Branch-Visa partnership will allow individuals to obtain virtual Visa accounts with which to create accounts on Branch’s app. This gives Branch larger reach in countries such as Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country with 190 million people — where cards have factored more prominently than mobile money in connecting unbanked and underbanked populations to finance.

Founded in 2015, Branch started operating in Kenya, where mobile money payment products such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa (which does not require a card or bank account to use) have scaled significantly. M-Pesa now has 25 million users, according to sector stats released by the Communications Authority of Kenya. Branch has more than 3 million customers and has processed 13 million loans and disbursed more than $350 million, according to company stats.

Branch has one of the most downloaded fintech apps in Africa, per Google Play app numbers combined for Nigeria and Kenya, according to Flannery.

Already profitable, Branch International expects to reach $100 million in revenues this year, with roughly 70 percent of that generated in Africa, according to Flannery.

In addition to Visa and Foundation Capital, the $170 Series C round included participation from Branch’s existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Ventures, Formation 8, the IFC, CreditEase and Victory Park, while adding new investors Greenspring, Foxhaven and B Capital.

Branch last raised $70 million in 2018. The company’s overall VC haul and $100 million revenue peg register as pretty big numbers for a startup focused primarily on Africa. Pan-African e-commerce startup Jumia, which also announced its NYSE IPO last month, generated $140 million in revenue (without profitability) in 2018.

Startups building financial technologies for Africa’s 1.2 billion population have gained the attention of investors. As a sector, fintech (or financial inclusion) attracted 50 percent of the estimated $1.1 billion funding to African startups in 2018, according to Partech.

Branch’s recent round and plans to add countries internationally also tracks a trend of fintech-related products growing in Africa, then expanding outward. This includes M-Pesa, which generated big numbers in Kenya before operating in 10 countries around the world. Nigerian payments startup Paga announced its pending expansion in Asia and Mexico late last year. And payment services such as Kenya’s SimbaPay have also connected to global networks like China’s WeChat.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/partnering-with-visa-emerging-market-lender-branch-international-raises-170-million/