Brex lands Coinbase as new software customer • TechCrunch
Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your declaration of confidence. If you are reading this as a post on our site, please register here so that you can receive it directly in the future. Each week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there, and it’s my job to stay on top of it—and make sense of it—so you can stay up to date. — Mary Ann
Hellooo! I’m writing this newsletter on the plane back to my home in Austin after attending Disrupt in San Francisco this week. It was my first IRL Disrupt, and even though I’m on the team and aware of all the behind-the-scenes planning and preparation, I was still blown away by how incredibly professional and well-executed it was. We had around 10,000 attendees, tons of great panels and speakers, engaged audiences, and the super exciting Battlefield competition, among other things.
But I’m tired, so be warned that this newsletter might be a little abbreviated. 🙂
I had the honor of kicking off the whole show with the recording of the Equity podcast LIVE with Alex Wilhelm and Natasha Mascarenhas, where we shared some interesting new news about Domm Holland, co-founder of the now-defunct one-click checkout startup Fast. We had an absolutely amazing shoot in person instead of looking at each other on Zoom. Thanks to everyone who attended so early that morning!
So on Wednesday I moderated a panel titled “How to Compete Without Losing Your Mind and Your Runway.” Ramp CEO Eric Glyman and Airbase founder Thejo Kote were good sports and joined the amazing Ruth Foxe Blader of Anthemis to talk about what it’s like to compete in this current environment. Despite being competitors in the consumer management space, Eric and Thejo kept it cool and no fights broke out on stage. Meanwhile, Ruth shared some insight from the investor side. I will have a story with more details about what they discussed that will be published sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Also on Wednesday, I moderated a fireside chat with Brex co-CEO and co-founder Henrique Dubugras and YC continuity manager (and early Brex investor) Anu Hariharan. Standing room only, Dubugras spoke candidly about a variety of topics, such as how much the company spent on the billboard campaign, what actually led to the decision to stop working with SMBs and the lessons learned after that decision caused quite a stir in the startup environment. He also revealed some new customers for the company’s Empower software product: Coinbase, SeatGeek, SuperHuman, ScaleAi and Medical Genomics. Again, I will write up a story with more details about what we discussed that will be published sometime in the next couple of weeks.
And finally, on Thursday, I interviewed Rippling CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad. He discussed what he describes as “the biggest launch” of his career – the company’s new global payroll product, which he’s not shy about saying will directly compete with the likes of Deel. You can read more about that here. He also discussed some takeaways from his experience at Zenefits, saying he took compliance “very seriously” at his new company. Rippling’s move into the payroll space comes about a month after it announced an expansion into spend management, putting it in direct competition with the likes of Brex, Ramp, Airbase, TripActions and many others in the space.
Image credit: TechCrunch
Weekly news
As Fintech Fund’s Nik Milanović (who also spoke at Disrupt about community) noted in this tweet“@plaid The team has been busy this past week:
- Faster digital onboarding
- More fraud checks
- Suite for privacy controls
- Crypto wallet on board
Meanwhile, payment infrastructure provider Phoenix revealed another way it goes head-to-head with Stripe. In a blog post, the startup said: “Finix is expanding further its personal payment offerings, rolling out more software development kits and APIs to pair with a suite of multi-vendor payment terminals. The best part? Only a single integration is required.”
As reported by TC’s Catherine Shu: The start of cross-border payments Thunes working together with Visa in a move that will add more than 1.5 billion new endpoints to Visa Direct’s digital payments network. This enables many more consumers and small businesses to send funds to markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where digital wallets are often the default payment method.
With fintech enthusiast and newsletter writer Marcel van Oost launching a new fintech community. You can learn more here.
Finally, Cardless and Simon® are launching Premium Retail Credit Cards on the American Express Network.
Financing and M&A
Landis raises $40 million to turn renters into homeowners
Enable Land $94M to help B2B companies manage their discount programs
Achieve aims to drive digital personal finance transformation with a new $225 million in fully committed debt capital
Bookkeep raises $6.6 million in seed funding
Mexican buy-now-pay-later app Nelo gets a $100 million credit limit
Capital on Tap receives a $110 million credit facility to build a central financial hub
Well, I had an amazing time at Disrupt and met my amazing colleagues (we genuinely respect and like each other!) and so many of you. I’m already looking forward to next year. Oh, and a heads up that I’ll be out all of next week, taking a much needed break so you don’t get Interchange in your inbox on October 30th. But I’ll be back the following week! That’s it for this week. See you again in two weeks! Until then, take good care. – xoxoxo, Mary Ann
