News Letter for 01/23/21
Below are news related to fintech industry this week.
New US nominations
- Janet Yellen, Professor Emeritus of U.C Berkeley, becomes the first woman to serve as the Treasury Secretary in the new Biden Administration. She will also be the first person to have worked in the three critical federal economic policy making roles, Chief White House economist, Chair of the Federal Reserve, and now Treasury Secretary.
- Also, the Biden administration nominated MIT Sloan professor Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC)
Fin Tech Venture Capital
- Brigit, a startup that helps end-users build a brighter financial future, raises $35M in Series A funding. The company uses an algorithm to protect consumers from overdraft fees, and they also provide cash advance services without interest rates.
- Rapyd, a global payment services company, raised $300M in Series D funding.
- Plaid launches Finraise incubator program targeting entrepreneurs from under represented communities.
- PPRO, a global provider of local payments infrastructure, raise $180M
- MotoRefi, an auto refinancing startup, announced a $10 million Series A
- Blend, a digital lending solution vendor, raised $300M in series G funding.
New blog post this week.
China 2020-Stagflation to Growth
Last year, just before the onset of the global pandemic, I wrote an articleabout stagflation [/stagflation/] (a good read on GDP). There was widespreadspeculation back then on whether china was heading into stagflation. China recently announced its 2020 Q4 GDP results, which was up by 6.5%Yea…