– Neo Financial (Neo), a financial technology company created by two of the co-founders of SkipTheDishes, announced their $64 million Series B fundraising round.
– This brings Neo’s total funding to $114 million CAD, with Valar Ventures leading both Series A and B rounds.
– With this latest capital raise, Neo will continue to grow its team from both Calgary and Winnipeg, and focus on launching new integrated fintech partnerships with retailers – a significant gap that’s underserved by incumbent banks. They will also be going beyond just ‘spending and saving’ to innovate and launch new products and features across the entire journey of Canadians’ financial lives.

– Challenger bank Point raised $46.5m Series B funding.
– The round was led by Valar Ventures and joined by Breyer Capital, YC Continuity and Human Capital.
– The company raised a $10.5m Series A round 18 months ago and a seed round before that, which means that Point has raised $60m in total.

– Point Card, a mobile payments app that offers unlimited cash back and personalized offers, has raised $46.5m in Series B funding.
– Existing investor Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures led the Series B round.
– Other investors include Breyer Capital, YC Continuity and Human Capital.

– Seek, a NYC-based new influencer-centric consumer leisure recommendation platform, raised $4m in seed funding.
– Backers included Valar Ventures, QED Investors, WTI, Breyer Capital, Entrée Capital and Goodwater Capital.
– The company intends to use the funds for product development to bring features and functionality for the platform’s tastemakers as well as expand and scale its consumer experience.

– Octane lending has raised $52 million in Series D funding.
– Progressive Investment Company, Inc., a member of the Progressive Insurance ® group, led the round, with participation from existing investors Valar Ventures, Upper90, Contour Venture Partners, Citi Ventures, Third Prime and Parkwood as well as new investors Gaingels and ALIVE.
– The new round of financing will further Octane’s mission to connect people with their passion.

– Vauld is a global platform for building wealth with crypto based in Bangalore, India.
– Series A funding of $25m was led by Valar Ventures and attracted Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, CMT Digital, Gumi Cryptos, Robert Leshner, Cadenza Capital and others.
– The new investment will be used to build out its team and further its global expansion.

– Singapore-based Syfe, a robo-advisor app, raised $30m in Series B funding.
– The round was led by Valar Ventures and joined by Presight Capital and Unbound.
– It brings Syfe’s total raised so far to $52.4m since it was founded in 2017.
– The startup did not disclose its Series B post-money valuation.

– MAJORITY, a mobile banking service, raised $19m in its seed funding.
– The round was led by Valar Ventures while Avid Ventures, Heartcore Capital and several prominent Nordic fintech unicorn founders participated in it.
– The two-year-old startup operates an eponymous mobile banking service.
– MAJORITY, whose name is a play on bringing financial inclusion to more people, runs a subscription service where it charges $5 a month to individuals and provides them with a range of financial services, including an FDIC-insured bank account with early direct deposit at no overdraft fee, a debit card, mobile credit and at-cost international phone calls.

– Novo announced that it has raised $40.7M in Series A funding.
– Valar Ventures led the round, with participation from Crosslink Capital, Rainfall Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, and BoxGroup.
– Since launching in 2018, more than 100,000 small businesses have opened a Novo account. In 2021, Novo surpassed $1 billion in lifetime transactions, announced a number of new features, opened a new office in Miami, and grew its leadership team. The company was also named both CNBC’s Best Business Checking Accounts of March 2021 and Money Magazine’s Best Business Checking Accounts of 2021.
– Novo will use its Series A funding to continue building out a best-in-class platform for small business banking, with a focus on helping business owners simplify their finances and optimize their cash flow.

– BukuWarung, a fintech focused on Indonesia’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), announced it has raised a $60 million Series A.
– The oversubscribed round was led by Valar Ventures, marking the firm’s first investment in Indonesia, and Goodwater Capital.
– The Jakarta-based startup claims this is the largest Series A round ever raised by a startup focused on services for MSMEs.
– BukuWarung did not disclose its valuation.
– Other participants included returning backers and angel investors like Aldi Haryopratomo, former chief executive officer of payment gateway GoPay, Klarna co-founder Victor Jacobsson and partners from SoftBank and Trihill Capital.

– Kafene, a buy now, pay later company, raised $14m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Global Founders Capital and Third Prime Ventures and also included participation from Valar, Company.co, Hermann Capital, Gaingels, Republic Labs, Uncorrelated Ventures and FJ labs.
– Kafene’s “flexible ownership” model is designed to not let that happen to a consumer. If for some reason, someone has to forfeit on a payment, Kafene comes to pick up the item and the customer is no longer under obligation to pay for it moving forward.

– Fortú is building modern banking products with a Latino cultural context.
– The fortú account is bringing the first holistic approach to better banking for Latinos.
– Traditional banking products are not designed to meet these unique, culturally contextual, household needs.
– In 2020, the company raised a $5m seed round led by Valar Ventures with participation from prominent fintech executives like Jake Gibson; co-founder of Nerdwallet; Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer; Joyce Kim, Executive Director and founder of the Stellar Foundation; and Andrew Endicott, COO and co-founder of Petal.

– Bitpanda, a “neobroker” that wants to make it easier for ordinary people to invest not just in bitcoin and other digital assets, but also gold, and any established stock that takes their interest, has picked up $170m funding.
– Bitpanda is based in Vienna, Austria and says that this equity round makes it the country’s first “unicorn” — the first startup to pass the $1 billion valuation mark.
– The round is being led by Valar Ventures — the fund backed by Peter Thiel — with participation also from DST Global (Yuri Milner’s fund).
– Bitpanda says that this equity round makes it the country’s first “unicorn” — the first startup to pass the $1 billion valuation mark.

– TaxBit is a Salt Lake City, UT-based provider of cryptocurrency tax and accounting automation software.
– The company raised $100M in Series A funding led by Paradigm and Tiger Global with participation from PayPal Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Bill Ackman, Qualtrics co-founder and chairman Ryan Smith, Anthony Pompliano, former Venmo COO Michael Vaughan, Galaxy Digital, Valar Ventures, Collaborative, Global Founders Capital, Album Ventures, TTV Capital, Original Capital, and more.
– The company’s platform helps automate all aspects of cryptocurrency tax compliance for enterprises, consumers, and governments.