Archive for 2021
The Mayor of Miami is Hosting a Crypto Conference
June 1, 2021Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has embraced crypto so completely that he’s hosting his own crypto conference on Wednesday, June 2.
Tomorrow I’m hosting my very own Crypto Conference with some of the top players in the DeFi space.
Use the link below or tune into Channel 77 to get in on the action🚀 https://t.co/QnmNa0WxKl pic.twitter.com/N8GSR2UPSa
— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) June 1, 2021
The mayor regularly shares photos with crypto executives on social media and his own city government website biography includes a section dedicated to the Bitcoin White paper. The Miami Heat’s home stadium is even being rebraned to the FTX Arena, named after a cryptocurrency exchange (which oddly cannot be accessed by US residents).
Suarez’s June 2nd conference will be 100% virtual and FREE.
In the three days that follow, the largest ever in-person Bitcoin conference will take place at the Mana Convention Center in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood.
It’s not just crypto. Suarez has been heavily accommodating to the tech and finance industries with the hope that they might relocate their businesses to Miami.
In that vein, deBanked sat down with the mayor in person back in March.
Kabbage Spotted in American Express Cardholder Dashboard
May 27, 2021
American Express business cardholders may be seeing a notification from Kabbage in their online dashboards. This writer did today.
“Introducing Kabbage®, now an American Express company. Streamline your business banking with Kabbage Checking™ and earn 1.10% APY on balances of up to $100,000, with no monthly maintenance fees. It’s digital checking for the way you work today. Terms apply. Learn More.”
The Learn More link goes to the Kabbage website where users can apply. The product itself may not be ready yet however, as clicking the application link tells users that they can join the waitlist because they’re “not currently accepting new customers.”
The rollout is consistent with statements that American Express has made about Kabbage’s role in the company.
Irish E-commerce Revenue-Based Funder Raises $76 Million Series A After First Year
May 27, 2021
An Irish revenue-based e-commerce financing platform called Wayflyer raised $76 million in a funding Series A round this past week. It has been a roaring first year for the small fintech, so far funding $150 million to online merchants. The firm just launched its cash advance product 14 months ago and raised $10.2M in a seed round only six months ago.
Wayflyer offers e-commerce sales-based funding, without the need for collateral, from $10k up to $20M. They partner with firms across the UK, including a recent deal with the international athleisure brand Gym+Coffee.
Left Lane Capital led the round with investments from DST Global, QED Investors, Speedinvest, and Zinal Growth. The successful funding comes after the firm widened its credit facility by $100M to keep up with the demand for capital and a partnership announcement with Adobe Commerce.
The cofounders, Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse came together in 2019. Back then, Corbett led an online marketing analytics firm called Conjura when Pierse, a former venture capitalist, proposed using analytic tech to underwrite what amounts to digital MCAs.
“Jack came to me and said, ‘You should stop using our marketing analytics engine to do these big enterprise SaaS solutions, and instead use them to underwrite e-commerce businesses for short-term finance,'” Corbett told Tech Crunch. “We just had our heads down and started repurposing the platform for it to be an underwriting platform.”
Launching in April 2020, Wayflyer funded $600,000 in the first month. In March of 2021 alone, the firm did about $36 million in advances.
“So, it’s been a pretty aggressive kind of growth,” Corbett said.
International Payments Firm Lands $125M Series B
May 26, 2021
Paysend, a UK-based international payments processor, landed a $125 million Series B investment round led by London-based One Peak Partners. Paysend said it would use the funds to invest in its infrastructure, cutting the costs of sending funds toward a goal of $5.4 billion in savings towards customers by 2025.
Founded in 2017, The firm focuses on helping consumers and merchants send payments worldwide in any currency. To date, the firm said it had reached more than 3.7 million consumers and firms, connecting 110 countries.
“Paysend’s vision is to develop the next generation integrated global payment ecosystem for consumers and SMEs,” Paysend CEO Ronnie Millar said. “Our innovative technology is connecting 12bn cards worldwide to pay and send instantly anywhere, anyhow. Any currency – we call this Money for the Future.”
Paysend supports connections between 12 billion cards globally across Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay, and local card schemes and provides over 40 payment methods for online SMEs. McKinsey’s 2019 Global Payments Report valued the untapped card to card international payments market at an estimated $133tn.
“We are excited by Paysend’s enormous growth potential,” Humbert de Liedekerke, a managing Partner at One Peak, said. “Paysend has built an exceptional payments platform by maintaining an unwavering focus on its customers and constantly innovating.”
After Funding Millions, Alt Financier Hosts Funding CEO Challenge
May 25, 2021
Leo Kanell, a funder from Utah, runs the 7 Day Funding CEO Challenge, a seven-day marathon video livestream of inspirational and educational funding content.
“So how [the challenge works] is basically, we’re looking for communities, and we’re building a community,” Kanell said. “Our focus is how can we help existing loan brokers, and then how can we help people who are looking for an additional stream of income that they can do from home obviously with the pandemic.”
All the action happens in a livestream on Facebook.
“Everybody kept asking ‘we need some training,’ so we built out a custom website for them so that they can build their funding empire from home,” Kanell said.
Many of the brand new market entrants are sales-minded individuals that are interested in working from home. Kanell has a sales mind and a small business funding background. He grew up in a family of nine from a small town in Utah with a population of only 3,000. He knew he would be a salesman when he turned a summer painting business internship into a $60,000 operation. After college, he tried his hand at real estate, but after 2008 he started looking for another industry.
“I started and went ‘Well, I’m gonna need money for that business,'” Kanell said. “I started looking at the different options to get financing for that next business venture, and it was very difficult, especially for a new business, especially if you’re a pre-revenue business or you don’t have a lot of sales and or collateral.”
He realized SMB funding was the business he should be getting into so he jumped in with both feet. From there he veered into a business education program alongside products like business credit cards.
He soon said that he was doing well, but he heard the funding industry calling his name. “Everything pulled me back into funding,” Kanell said and he decided to combine his education system toward loan broker training programs. He said many brokers don’t realize startups and pre-revenue bushiness can qualify for 0% for up to 15 months.
Now, Kanell hosts an industry podcast that features financial industry guests, and alongside funding, he looks forward to building a community of broker and funder education services.
“We’re going to not only get you the best funding guaranteed, but we’re going to educate you and empower you along the way,” Kanell said. “They can work as direct funders and keep 100% of the commission, and that if they want us to do the work you know, we can do splits.”
SEAA Kicks Off in Florida
May 25, 2021More than a thousand people are attending the 20th annual SEAA conference in Bonita Springs, FL that started on Monday. The show is a staple of the payments industry.
“It’s a changing game every minute,” said SEAA board member Derek Vowels about what’s going on in payments .
The packed event has more than 90 companies exhibiting. The “Flamingo” level sponsors include American Express, IRIS CRM, Worldpay, Cardconnect, and Electronic Merchant Systems.
deBanked has been streaming live at debanked.com/tv/. Attendees are saying that it’s great to be back in person.
The May 25th Live Stream schedule is as follows:
9:00 – 10:45am,
3:00 – 4:00pm
5:00 – 6:30pm
Opening 9 minutes from May 24th:
One on One With Joe Camberato at National Business Capital
May 23, 2021I sat down with Joe Camberato (@GrowByJoe), CEO of National Business Capital in Bohemia, NY. He shared tips about how to run a successful business and gave me a personal tour of his company’s office.
deBanked to Livestream from the SEAA Show in Bonita Springs
May 21, 2021May 24th LIVE schedule: 4:45pm – 6:30pm
May 25th LIVE schedule: 9:00 – 10:45am, 3:00 – 4:00pm, 5:00 – 6:30pm
deBanked will be streaming live from the Southeast Acquirers Association conference on May 24th and 25th in Bonita Springs, FL. The payments show celebrating its 20th anniversary is expected to have nearly 800 people IN PERSON.
The livestream will be available at scheduled times at deBanked.com/tv/. We will be speaking with executives across the payments and small business finance industries.
