Canadian Fintech: E-com lending is cool again 🛍️
RBCx buys Zillow for Canada. Lender tries radical honesty. Bitcoin mining merger.
Morning!
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💰 Funding
Paperstack raised $9m in debt & equity for e-com lending. This comes as category leader Clearco, recently laid off 65% off staff and struggled to raise more capital.
Levr a platform for small businesses to prepare loan applications and get matched with lenders, raised $1m. Cubeler and Swoop operate similar marketplaces.
Edmonton based Jobber, a backoffice platform for contractors to do bookkeeping, quoting and payments raised $130m. Roofr, a similar (but more niche) platform, raised $12m last year.
Financial planning software Conquest Planning raised $24m, with strategic investment from Fidelity, who has licence to distribute their product and brought them into the UK last year.
🤝 M&A
RBCx, the VC / venture building arm of RBC acquired OJO, a platform for homebuyers to discover real estate listings - think Zillow for Canada.
Canadian bitcoin miner Hut8 is merging with competitor US Bitcoin. Blockstream, another Canadian miner pulled in $125m earlier this year.
Subprime auto lender Axis acquired an undisclosed $17m portfolio. Axis’ subsidiary, Pivot Capital raised a $55m facility last year.
🚀 Product
Ownr, a business registration platform owned by RBCx, will now let newly minted businesses apply for business credit cards, after they open up an RBC business bank account.
Souqh, a marketplace for finding homebuyer service providers like brokers, lawyers & movers launched.
RBC has joined CIBC, TD, & Scotia in charging commercial clients a fee to pay their taxes. The bank has decommissioned its use of Interac in favour of a third party service provider, managed by Dye & Durham.
Parachute, a consumer lender will start showing borrowers’ FICO scores directly to them. Typically borrowers only receive approval / decline status, without any explanation.
Outlit, a financial literacy tutorial app launched.
Canada’s biggest bank tech conference is coming to Toronto
The Bankers Summit brings together over 500 banks & fintechs. Come learn how technology startups are partnering and competing with banks across payments, lending, treasury and more.
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⚖️ Policy
Regulations under the Retail Payment Activities Act were published this weekend and stakeholders will now have a 45-day consultation period to respond. The act covers what’s needed for PSPs to register with the Bank of Canada and how to comply with the Act.
In Friday’s jobs report, the Canadian employment rate rose to 62.5%, the highest level since May 2019. The stronger jobs are, the more likely we’ll see another rate hike, despite signalling from the BoC last month that hikes were being paused.
🎂 Number time!
$500,000 - the amount that UofT is paying back to FTX. The money was originally granted to the university to study “predictions in the social sciences”.
$1.7m - the amount Canadians “think” they need to save in order to retire, according to a BMO survey.
25% - venture debt as a percentage of venture capital in Q3 22 according to the CVCA. As VC has dried up in Canada, mid-market lending has picked up (see graph).
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