A look back at the fintech world in 2022

These are the stories that have aroused the most interest among readers.

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Welcome to Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and for your trust. If you read this as a post on our website, please sign up here to receive it immediately in the future. Every week I check out the latest fintech news from the past week. This includes everything from funding rounds to trends, analysis of a specific space and opinions on a specific company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it and understand it so you stay up to date. 🇧🇷 maria ann

Of course, as this year comes to a close, it’s a good time to take a look at some of the highs (and most of the negatives) in the world of fintech news.

We started 2022 with a relatively high figure. Still had mega rounds! Decacorns were born. Venture capital was still available. That changed sometime in the second quarter. And they’ve been touring ever since.

When deciding how to approach the final issue of this year’s newsletter, I was curious to see which of my stories performed best. So I asked our amazing Audience Development Manager Alyssa Stringerto get my top 15 stories by page views. All in all, dear readers, it seems that you were all more interested in coverage of companies at their peak and coverage of companies at their lowest point. It was the best time. And then it seemed like the worst time. And oh, many of you were curious about the concept of fractional real estate investing.

These were my 15 most read stories on the TechCrunch website in 2022:

“We probably wasted $200 million,” the CEO of Better.com told employees at a layoff meeting — a partnership with the brilliant Zack Whittaker, where we could hear Vishal Garg speaking to the team . 🇧🇷 🇧🇷 and it wasn’t pretty. Doors closing fast on sluggish growth, fundraising opportunities blocked by high spending: a partnership with My Dear Friend, editor of TC+ and co-host of the Equity Podcast Alex William🇧🇷 The vision of the launch of Fast Crash and Burn one-click payment was undoubtedly one of the biggest fintech stories of this year. Disaster confirms a new valuation of $8.1 billion after an “almost 10x” year-over-year revenue increase: The business-spending startup doubled its valuation from August 2021 to March 2022. The space it operates in has just been filled. Meanwhile, the company has expanded into new industries. Fintech Roundup: Better.com Employees Leaving After CEO Vishal Garg Returns on Herd: This is especially meaningful to me because it was the smooth start of what would eventually become The Interchange. Also one of many Better.com-related news items. PayPal is closing its San Francisco office: This surprised me a bit as it didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but maybe it was a sign of things to come later in 2022. – This is pretty much the same as the PayPal piece above. There was a lot of interest, maybe it’s a combination of the very attractive business model and the fact that Jeff Bezos is a sponsor. Better.com employees found out about the layoffs when the severance paychecks showed up in the payroll app — another piece of information that left many of us puzzled (and not in a good way). Fintech Klarna reportedly rose to a valuation of $6.5 billion, giving new meaning to the term “round down”: it could mark a turning point in 2022. In a company worth $45 billion last year, valued in dollars, it goes up about 1/7 that people pay attention. The tide was turning in the fintech space and this news made many people very nervous as it seemed like proof that the 2021 party is over. Better.com is losing more executives as employees prepare for another mass layoff — another piece of news that left many of us puzzled (and not in a good way). Fintech layoffs continue: As of early 2022, the only layoffs covered were at Better.com. But by early November, it had become very clear that layoffs were rampant in the fintech industry. Alchemy, which aims to be the “de facto platform” for developers building on the web3, is now worth $10.2 billion: I wrote this when I was still doing cryptography reporting. Alchemy grew very, very quickly. It might be a good time to review them given what’s happened in the crypto space since that surge. Fintech Brex confirms $12.3 billion valuation, hires metamanager as product lead: This was published in January. In October I wrote about corporate layoffs. A lot has happened in the meantime, including the company’s controversial decision to stop serving SMEs. Better.com plans to lay off about 4,000 employees this week, sources say: you guessed it, another change. Fintech startup Jeeves raises USD 180 million and quadruples in half a year to USD 2.1 billion: the growth rate and valuation of Jeeves is impressive. A BaaS company in the field of corporate cards and expense management. But in March, the startup’s CEO said of the fundraising process, “The market looked very different in January and February than it did in December.” you really like investing in fractional real estate, or maybe a lot of people just secretly want to own it.

It was an eventful and at times harrowing year that was so much more than before. Risk dollars pouring into fintech have fallen, just like every other sector. The characters were interrogated. But I still hope. The companies that made a difference in 2021 and 2022 will continue to do so. They may spend more consciously and work a bit more quietly, but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. Fintech innovation remains more important than ever, especially when it comes to inclusiveness and access. There are so many startups doing great work. We must not allow the few bad apples to contaminate everything. I know it’s a long road. We are not done correcting the excesses of 2021. But as for me, I am curious to see what Fintech 2023 will bring. (By the way, check out the Equity team’s predictions for the year ahead here.)

weekly news

Copper banking app launches investment product for teens

Visa will invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years

Why Checkout.com lowered its internal rating

Chime made two offers to buy DailyPay, worth more than $2 billion, but it was turned down

Robinhood raised interest rates for Gold members to 4% APY

Insurtech Vouch launches Web3 protection policy touted as the first insurance policy designed specifically for Web3 businesses

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

Self Financial adds rent and utility reporting to its line of credit building products

Capchase, which offers “non-dilutive” financing to SaaS companies, says revenue will grow 250% by 2022

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

Highnote expands platform capabilities by becoming certified for Visa payment solutions

India’s Paytm plans to spend up to $103 million on share buybacks

Financing and M&A

Poolit raises millions to convert accredited LP investors into VC private equity funds

Nilus raises $8.5 million led by Bessemer to automate its financial operations

Vic.ai raises $52 million, demonstrating that automating accounting processes can be profitable

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

DataVisor raises $40 million in strategic growth funding

Plooto Completes $20 Million Series B to Help SMBs Manage Cash Flow

Oyster raises $3.6 million in seed funding to launch its personal insurance POS platform

Barcelona fintech Novicap raises €200 million line of credit to boost growth for companies and organizations

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And with that I say goodbye. This is the last newsletter I will publish in 2022. I don’t know where this year went, and to be honest it was very, very tough in many ways. But there were also many positives, including the increase in the audience of this newsletter and the honor of sharing this content with all of you. Thanks again. Happy holidays everyone and a happy and healthy new year! May it be a better, brighter and more beautiful year. Kisses, MaryAnn