Fintech funding round-up: 28 March 2018
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s (27 March) fintech funding round-up, say hello to more bite-sized bustle. This round-up stars Canopy, Spring Labs, Equitise and Xinja.
Utah-based Canopy, a cloud-based practice management platform for tax professionals, has closed a $30 million in new financing and totaling $60 million secured to date. Led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Pelion Ventures, University Growth Fund, and EPIC Ventures.
Kurt Avarell, Canopy founder and CEO, says its connected suite of products “improves organisation, transparency, and collaboration for tax practices”. The US firm should not be confused with Singapore-based Canopy. The latter offers a wealthtech service through Credit Suisse Private Banking’s Asia Pacific app.
Still in the US, Spring Labs, the company behind the Spring Network – a blockchain-based network for lenders, banks, and data providers to exchange data – has raised $14.75 million in seed funding. The round is led by August Capital with participation from fintech and enterprise software-focused funds like Victory Park Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital, as well as Multicoin Capital, Wavemaker Genesis (part of the Draper Venture Network), and Jump Capital. The money will be used to build the company’s platform in the coming months and to expand its engineering team.
Spring Labs was set up by members of the founding team and board of Avant, a lending platform and technology firm. Adam Jiwan, CEO of Spring Labs, keen to make money from misfortune, says: “The 2017 Equifax hack that affected 140 million Americans is a public representation of underlying issues with how data is exchanged and secured among parties in the ecosystem.”
Over in Australia, Equitise is finalising the nation’s first equity crowdfunding offer, with neobank Xinja raising more than $2 million as it prepares to launch products. The average investment in the Xinja round, at $1,858.57, “was higher than anticipated”, given the entry point of $250.
As we reported a few days ago, Xinja unveiled its prepaid travel and spending card and app. The card is tap-and-go with no ATM fees in the country or overseas. The app allows users to lock the card if it is lost, and is being designed to let users track their spending. The card is being sent out to Xinja’s waitlist.
