Confluent co-founder Neha Narkhede today announced a new fintech company, Oscilar, that’s developing an “AI-driven” platform to help financial institutions protect online transactions from fraud and theft. Oscilar is entirely self-funded, backed by $20 million that Narkhede and the company’s other co-founder, Sachin Kulkami, themselves contributed. Narkhede says that they opted not to take outside […]
The rising prices for gas continue to be a headache and stress for a lot of people around the world, but it underscores something more besides the cost of living becoming increasingly untenable: Cars are a central part of modern life. So for the entrepreneurially minded, gas stations thus represent a huge opportunity: the engagement […]
Salt Labs, a rewards platform for hourly workers, today emerged from stealth with $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Fin Capital with participation from Anthem Venture Partners and others. Co-founder and CEO Jason Lee tells TechCrunch that the money is being used to build out Salt Labs’ initial team, product development and go-to-market strategy […]
Alvaro Morales and Kshitij Grover were working together as engineering leaders at Asana for five years, during a time when the company underwent major changes to pricing and packaging. The initiatives were painful for both the engineering and finance departments, they say — which is when the pair realized that they wanted more flexibility over […]
Payday, a neobank issuing global (USD, EUR and GBP) accounts to Africans, has raised $3 million to fuel its “future of work” initiative through borderless payment alternatives in major currencies. The seed round was led by Moniepoint Inc (formerly TeamApt Inc), the U.S. entity that houses Moniepoint Microfinance Bank and TeamApt Nigeria. Techstars, Angels Touch, […]
Payments remains one of the most fragmented of online services, a situation that is only compounded when your business trades internationally. A UK startup called Paytrix says it has raised $18.3 million to build a solution to fix this: a single platform — and single contract — that lets its customers manage all of the […]
Last July, TechCrunch reported that customers of several fintech apps couldn’t access the virtual dollar card services that these platforms provided. In addition, customers couldn’t create new cards, fund existing ones, or make online and in-store payments and purchases with them. At the heart of this issue was chargeback fraud that Zambian startup Union54 was […]
The pandemic brought with it a spike in work-from-home and hybrid work, which increased peoples’ dependence on personal devices — driving businesses to try and rein in their use. It’s been a particular challenge for the financial services industry, which has comparatively strict governance and compliance requirements. In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission […]
Building credit is hard when it’s difficult to even get credit. And while it’s not impossible to get loans or credit cards, they are usually offered at high interest rates to the people who can least afford to pay them. One Austin-based startup is out to help people build — or get — credit without […]
Nimbbl, an Indian startup that offers a one-click payment checkout solution for merchants, has raised $3.5 million in seed and pre-Series A funding from Sequoia Capital India, Global Founders Capital (GFC), financial services platform Groww and a list of angel investors. The Mumbai-based startup’s solution works with a list of payment methods, including various Buy […]