Robinhood’s new Gold Card, BaaS challenges, and the small startup that caught Stripe’s attention

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly Interchange)! This week, we’re taking a look at Robinhood’s new Gold Card, challenges in the BaaS space, and how a small startup caught Stripe’s attention.

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big story

Robin Hood launched its new Gold Card with much fanfare last week. It has a long list of impressive features, including 3% cashback and the ability to invest that cashback through the company’s brokerage account. Users can also put that cash into a savings account at Robinhood, which offers 5% APY. We’re curious to see what impact this new card will have on the company’s bottom line. But at the same time, we’re also thrilled by how Robinhood has incorporated the technology it acquired when it bought startup X1 for $95 million last summer and turned it into a potentially very attractive new offering.

analysis of the week

The Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) sector is facing challenges. BaaS Startup synctera Recently a restructuring took place which affects approximately 15% of the employees. The startup isn’t the only VC-backed BaaS company that has resorted to layoffs to preserve cash in the past year. Treasury is also in Prime, Synapse and Figma. Meanwhile, according to American Banker, the FDIC announced consent orders against Sutton Bank and Piermont Bank, asking them to “keep a close eye on their fintechs’ compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering regulations.”

dollars and cents

PayPal Ventures’ The latest investment is in koala, an Indonesian startup that offers personal insurance products covering various risks including accidents and phone screen damage. MassMutual Ventures also participated in Koala’s new $47 million funding round.

new retirementThe Mill Valley-based company that makes software to help people create financial retirement plans has raised $20 million in a tranche of funding.

we last checked in conclusionA Swedish B2C buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider in Europe when it raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now closed a $10 million extension in its Series A funding round, bringing its total Series A total. Up to $20 million.

What else are we writing about

Read all about how a small startup of four people started Supaglu, Stripe caught sight of. SupaGlu, formerly known as SuperGlu, is an open source developer platform for user-facing integrations. The team is going to help Stripe deliver real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party apps for its revenue and finance automation suite.

Maju Kuruvilla no longer CEO of one-click checkout company screw, He has been replaced by Justin Grooms, Bolt’s global sales chief, who is now interim CEO. Kuruvilla, a former Amazon executive, takes over as CEO in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow stepped down. The information provided here has more information about Bolt problems.

high interest headlines

Inside Mercury’s stumble from fintech hero to Fed target

RealPage and plaid team up to curb rental fraud

In HR software battle, Rippling makes ground against deal – it costs money

Is Chime ready for IPO? It has more primary customers than Chase

Inside one CEO’s bold claims about his hot fintech startup, which TC previously covered here.

Cloverleaf raises $7.3 million in Series A extension

Coats acquires TPG Software

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