Fintech in 5 - Temenos Lost $2.4B

Hey 👋,

Happy leap day. It’s week 9 of the year, which means the year is already 17% complete. I hope you’ve been getting after it.

Temenos lost $2.4B in market value after a 30%+ stock drop prompted by Hindenburg Research, Webull is going public via a SPAC, Google will kill Google Pay in the US, instant payments are to become the norm in the EU and Bitcoin crossed $60K+.

Let’s dive in 👇

💰 Fundraising

Just 4 deals in European Fintech last week, representing a cumulative 30M €. One BNPL app, one payments company and two crypto companies from Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and the UK, respectively.

• 🏆🇨🇭 Zood raised $20M to boost digital lending in Uzbekistan, aiming to raise $30 Million more in debt

• 🥈🇩🇪 Monite raised $6M in seed funding top-up to expand in US and strengthen European presence

• 🥉🇩🇰 Januar secured historic $6.51M (€6 Million) seed funding, becoming Denmark's largest seed round

• 🇬🇧 Superfluid raised $5.1M in strategic funding to advance ethereum-based streaming protocol, following $9M seed round

📰 Top Stories

🇨🇭 What the hell is happening at Temenos ?

Temenos is under scrutiny due to allegations from Hindenburg Research (activist short-selling investment research firm) claiming accounting irregularities and product failures, causing Temenos’ stock to lose 30% and $2.4B in market value 📉.

The company is actively defending its position, refuting the allegations with detailed evidence of financial health, successful product implementations, and strategic business practices, including a focus on a subscription-based revenue model.

Temenos has launched an independent investigation to address the allegations, forming a special committee led by non-executive Chairman Thibault de Tersant and engaging reputable law firms to ensure thorough examination and transparency.

→ FinExtra

🇺🇸 Trading platform Webull to list on Nasdaq via $7.3B SPAC deal

Webull will list on the Nasdaq through a merger with the blank-cherck firm SK Growth Opportunities, in the second half of the year, pending regulatory and shareholder approval. The combined company will list at a valuation of $7.3 billion.

💡Interesting to see a multi-billion dollar listing being done with a SPAC. Over the last couple years it seems that everyone and their mother was launching a SPAC. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the data, most post-merger SPACs have performed poorly. Will Webull be the expection ?

→ Reuters

🇺🇸 Google to kill Google Pay app in favor of Google Wallet in the US later this year

Another one bites the dust. Google Pay will cease operations in the US in June, transitioning its services to Google Wallet. As of today, Google Wallet is already used five times more than Google Pay.

After the 4th of June, the functionality to send, request, or receive money through Google Pay will be discontinued. For those with money in Google Pay, Google is advising to transfer balances to other bank accounts before this date, although the Google Pay website will remain available for fund transfers post-shutdown.

According to Killed by Google, 4 Google services (not including Google Pay) will be killed off in 2024 — and it’s only been 2 months. Place your bets on the next service to get killed folks ☠️.

→ TechCrunch

🇪🇺 EU Makes Instant Payments the Law of the Land

The regulation enables money transfers within 10 seconds to occur at any time, for both domestic and cross-EU state transactions. The regulation mandates that the service charges must not exceed those of standard credit transfers.

Previously, only 11% of eurozone transactions were executed instantly. This move will align the EU with global standards, responding to consumer demands for faster payment solutions.

Takeaway ? Now I can spend my salary even faster ⚡💸.

→ Pyments

📈 Bitcoin crosses $60K+

Buy high, sell low — is that not what they say ? Oh wait no, that’s just me. Of course, after selling my bitcoin in 2022, bitcoin is back .

Led by Blackrock and Fidelity, the finance industry rolled out 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs. Just 6 weeks since SEC approval, the ETFs have seen an aggregate $5.5B in net inflows and $50B+ in cumulative trading volume.

This week, nine of the newly created approved ETFs broke their all-time daily volume record, likely suggesting that new investors are coming into the market.

→ Danny Marques

🖼️ The Meme Market