Mercury CEO Launches a VC Fund to Invest in Fintech Entrepreneurs with a Chip on Their Shoulder 🇺🇸
We're also covering Klarna's IPO retreat 🇸🇪, Finom's $105M war chest 🇳🇱, ex-Stripe execs "Visa for Identity" play 🇳🇱, Robinhood's tokenized stocks 🇺🇸 & MoneyFellows' Morocco invasion 🇪🇬
If you guys are fascinated by asian fintech super apps like I am, you’ll want to watch my 3 minutes video telling the story of South Korean super app Toss. It explains how a dentist managed to create this fintech powerhouse after failing 8 times before & much more.
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🇺🇸 Mercury CEO Launches a VC Fund to Invest in Fintech Entrepreneurs with a Chip on Their Shoulder
Immad Akhund, CEO of business banking fintech Mercury, just launched IA Fund, a $26 million venture fund focused on early-stage investments. He unveiled the new fund on Harry Stebbings’ podcast on May 12th, 2025. The new fund formalizes Akhund's angel investing activity, which includes backing more than 350 startups since 2016, with notable fintech investments like Rippling (HR/payroll platform), Substack (where this very newsletter is hosted) and TrueBill (a financial management app that sold for $1.28 billion).
Akhund is partnering with Yash Doshi, who previously invested in Mercury at its earliest stage when he was at EQ2 Ventures. "A dedicated fund is a way to go deeper and back founders more meaningfully. It also allows me to operationalize this work," Akhund stated in a LinkedIn post.
The fund will target approximately 60 companies with an average check size of $150,000, though Akhund mentioned he might occasionally write larger "conviction checks" of up to $1 million for entrepreneurs he has known for years. The fundraise was completed in just three weeks, with a significant portion of the capital coming from fund-of-funds (about 60%) and the remainder from entrepreneurs and the general partners.
Akhund told Stebbings he want to back serial entrepreneurs, particularly those with "a chip on their shoulder." He explained this preference, noting that while he strongly favours repeat founders, those who have already achieved massive success might not have the same drive. "I mean, I just prefer serial founders. I have such a bias towards them. A serial founder with a chip on their shoulder... ready to go," Akhund stated. He elaborated that the ideal founder has "something to prove" rather than someone who's had a unicorn exit and could simply retire with "$100 million anyway."
While the fund will invest across sectors, Akhund thinks that AI start-ups are "overhyped and overvalued” and, as a result, sees more opportunities in areas with less competition like fintech and space tech.
Looking to the future, Akhund is bullish on fintech : "We're in like these two huge markets. Banking in the US is a $2 trillion market and financial software tools is like another $500 billion market. To me these two markets should be the same market... The only reason these markets are separate is because banks don't know how to build software."
Source: Global Fintech Insider
🇸🇪 Klarna Pushes IPO to Late 2025 While eToro Forges Ahead
Klarna has pushed back its highly anticipated IPO to late 2025, marking another setback for the Swedish BNPL giant. According to reports from Swedish business outlet Dagens Industry, the company's management wants to see "greater support and momentum" before proceeding with its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange. This further delay follows last month's initial postponement when the buy now, pay later leader halted its planned $15 billion IPO roadshow amid market volatility triggered by President Trump's sweeping global tariff policies. At the time, eToro also announced it had paused it's IPO effort, but unlike Klarna, it seems eToro’s IPO plans are back on track with the Israeli trading platform having filed for an IPO in the US on May 5th.
Sources: Sifted, MarketWatch & Global Fintech Insider
🇳🇱 B2B Neobank Finom Secures a $105M War Chest Earmarked For Customer Acquisition
Amsterdam-based neobank Finom has landed €92.7 million ($105 million) in growth funding from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. The digital bank, serving 100,000+ businesses across Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, will use the capital "exclusively and only for growth," according to Kos Stiskin (right), who co-founded Finom along with Andrey Petrov (left), Yakov Novikov (2nd from the left) and Oleg Laguta (3rd from the left). "Our core operations are generating positive cash flow, and all new investments go directly toward attracting new clients," Stiskin told TechCrunch. Finom's recently launched "autonomous AI accounting agent" could help differentiate it from competing offering like Revolut Business and Qonto in Europe. The company has raised approximately €190 million ($214 million) since its 2020 inception.
Sources: TechCrunch & Global Fintech Insider
🇺🇸 Coinbase Acquires World's Largest Crypto Options Platform Deribit for $2.9B
Coinbase has made a bold move into crypto derivatives by acquiring Dubai-based Deribit for approximately $2.9 billion. The deal, which includes $700 million in cash and 11 million Coinbase shares, gives America's largest cryptocurrency exchange control of the world's biggest trading platform for bitcoin and ether options. "This will make us the most comprehensive player in derivatives," said Greg Tusar, Coinbase's vice president of institutional product. The acquisition comes amid a crypto dealmaking surge following President Trump's pledge to make America a "bitcoin superpower." Deribit, founded in 2016, saw its trading volumes nearly double to $1.2 trillion in 2024, driven by increased institutional investor activity after the presidential election. This represents the largest acquisition yet for Coinbase and the broader crypto industry, dwarfing recent deals like Coinbase rival Kraken's $1.5 billion purchase of crypto derivatives platform NinjaTrader in March.
Source: Wall Street Journal
🇳🇱 Stripe Veterans Secure $12M for Duna, Which Aspires to be the “Visa for Identity”
Amsterdam-based Duna, a business identity platform founded by former Stripe executives, has secured $12.1 million in seed funding. The Dutch startup aims to revolutionize business verification by creating digital "passports" for companies, transforming the traditionally paper-heavy compliance process.
Co-founders David Schreiber (left) and Duco van Lanschot (right) are both Stripe alumni, with Shreiber having worked as product manager and Lanschot as the head of Benelux for the payment behemoth. “When David and I sat at our kitchen tables talking about how to build a "Visa/Mastercard for identity", we could not have imagined to soon be partnering with companies like Plaid, bol, Brand New Day, and Moss”, Lanschot wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the closing of the round.
Duna's platform has already impressed major players like Plaid, whose EMEA VP Zak Lambert noted: "Business onboarding used to be a cost center for Plaid. Now, it's a revenue driver thanks to Duna's intuitive onboarding flows, compliance automation, and high-end UX." Customers report a 38% boost in onboarding conversion within six months of implementation.
Source: PYMNTS & Global Fintech Insider
🇺🇸 Robinhood Plans to Sell Tokenized US Stocks to European Investors
Robinhood is creating a blockchain-based platform that will enable European retail investors to trade US securities, according to Bloomberg. The initiative comes after Robinhood secured a Lithuanian brokerage license last month. Furthermore, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in a podcast, in March, that he thinks “tokenized securities can really push forward US company dominance in the global market. Tokenized securities are gaining traction globally, with a Global Financial Markets Association report suggesting distributed ledger technology could save approximately $20 billion annually in clearing and settlement costs.
Source: Bloomberg
🇪🇬 Egyptian Fintech MoneyFellows Raises $13M to Bring Its Novel Lending Scheme to Morocco
Cairo-based MoneyFellows has secured $13 million in pre-Series C funding to take its profitable digital lending platform to Morocco by year-end. The fintech, which has grown to 8.5 million users in Egypt, digitizes traditional community saving circles, where members contribute regularly to a shared pool that pays out to one person per cycle. Rather than lending its own money, MoneyFellows matches savers (who prefer getting paid later in the cycle) with borrowers (who want money upfront), effectively letting users fund each other. This strategy allows MoneyFellows to avoid the capital requirements of traditional lenders, as the company only provides funds when a savings circle has an unfilled slot, which happens in just 7-8% of cases. "Instead of canceling the group, we finance one slot, which activates and monetizes the remaining nine," explains founder and CEO Ahmed Wadi (pictured above). The funding round was led by Casablanca-based Al Mada Ventures and DPI's Nclude Fund, with participation from Partech Africa and CommerzVentures, bringing its total to over $60 million.
Source: TechCrunch
🇺🇸 Facebook Wants to Pay Content Creators With Stablecoins
Facebook parent company Meta is cautiously returning to cryptocurrency, this time exploring stablecoin integration for cross-border payments on its platforms. According to Fortune, the tech giant is in discussions with crypto infrastructure companies to use stablecoins for handling creator payouts, potentially allowing Instagram to make small $100 payments to creators worldwide with lower fees than traditional methods. To lead this initiative, Meta hired Ginger Baker, a former Plaid executive, as VP of product specializing in fintech and payments in January. This renewed crypto interest comes after Meta abandoned its ambitious Diem (formerly Libra) stablecoin project in early 2022 amid intense regulatory scrutiny.
Source: Fortune
🇨🇦 Kraken VP Mark Greenberg Doubts Canadian Instant Payment Rail Will Ever Launch
Canada's long-delayed Real-Time Rail instant payment system will begin testing this summer, but industry insiders remain skeptical. Mark Greenberg, VP Consumer Product & Business at Kraken, commented on LinkedIn: "If Canadian banks continue to be in charge, I give it another 10 years before we see it in action."
The Real-Time Rail, which would enable nearly instantaneous payment processing, has been in development since 2015. Meanwhile, numerous countries have already implemented successful instant payment systems. The UK launched its Faster Payments Service in 2008 and the US FedNow system went live in 2023.
Payments Canada's chief payments officer Donna Kinoshita stated that the technical infrastructure should be completed by July, followed by a year-long testing phase before public launch. The Real-Time Rail would allow fintechs to process payments directly instead of relying on private services like Interac, potentially increasing competition in the Canadian financial sector.
Source: The Logic & Global Fintech Insider
🇺🇸 Equity Crowdfunding Platform Republic Set to Acquire Kickstarter Archrival Indiegogo
New-York based equity crowdfunding site Republic is in talks to acquire rewards-based crowdfunding platform Indiegogo in an all-stock transaction, according to Axios. Co-founded by Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell in 2008 (both co-founders are no longer involved), San Francisco based Indiegogo is one of the last remaining reward-based crowdfunding platforms and Kickstarter's longtime competitor, having raised over $55 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, though its last institutional funding came more than a decade ago with a $40 million Series B in 2014. Founded by current CEO Kendrick Nguyen in 2016, Republic has raised over $200 million since 2016. It operates a platform where backers receive financial upside from their contributions, unlike Indiegogo's rewards-based model. According to Axios, Republic believes it can leverage the acquisition to grow Indiegogo's reach in the film industry and Middle East markets.
Source: Axios
🇧🇹 Bhutan Creates National Crypto Payment Network to Attract International Tourists
Bhutan has partnered with Binance Pay to implement an integrated national cryptocurrency payment system for tourism. The initiative, developed through collaboration between Binance Pay, DK Bank (Bhutan's first fully digital bank), and Bhutan's Department of Tourism, enables international visitors to use over 100 cryptocurrencies for travel expenses ranging from visa fees and hotel bookings to purchases from roadside vendors. Currently, more than 100 merchants across Bhutan have joined the system, allowing travellers with Binance accounts to complete transactions via QR codes with near-zero fees. The program aims to simplify travel logistics while improving financial access for small vendors in remote areas with limited access to traditional payment infrastructure.
Source: Fintech Singapore
Upcoming Fintech Events
🇦🇪 Dubai FinTech Summit will take place in Dubai on May 12-13, 2025 (899 USD), with speakers such as Arik Shtilman, co-founder and CEO of Rapyd & John Caplan, CEO of Payoneer.
🇺🇸 Stablecon will take place in New York on May 29, 2025 (1,295 USD), with speakers such as Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa and Edward Woodford, CEO & co-founder of Zero Hash.
🇳🇱 Money20/20 Europe will be held in Amsterdam on June 3-5, 2025 (3,395 USD), with speakers such as Steven van Rijswijk, CEO of ING & Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro.
🇬🇧 The Future of FinTech Conference 2025 will be held in London on June 12, 2025 (527 USD), with speakers such as Kirsty Rutter, Strategic Investment Director at Lloyds Banking Group & Chris Waring, Head of Digital Customer Journeys at NatWest.
🇮🇱 Money Tel Aviv will be held in Tel Aviv on June 18-19, 2025 ($83), with speakers such as Ido Shamash, head of payments at Wix & Ran Cohen, CEO at BridgerPay.
🇨🇦 The Customer Experience for Financial Services Summit will be held in Toronto on September 18–19, 2025 ($995), with speakers such as Amit Mondal, VP & Head of Digital Analytics & Experimentation at Amex & Angela Crapsi, AVP of Operations at Flexiti/Questrade.
Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
A Google update ultimately sealed the company’s faith and I started this newsletter to keep myself busy in the aftermath.
Why share this?
Because my goal is to use my experience as an economic journalist, fintech entrepreneur and product manager to present the most essential fintech news from around the world through the eyes of an insider.
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