Robinhood’s new Gold Card, BaaS challenges and the tiny startup that caught Stripe’s eye

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

To receive a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories in your inbox every Sunday at 7:30 a.m. PT, subscribe here.

The big story

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

Analysis of the week

The banking-as-a-service (BaaS) industry is facing challenges. BaaS Startup Syncterus recently carried out a restructuring which affects around 15% of employees. The startup isn’t the only venture-backed BaaS company to have resorted to layoffs to preserve cash over the past year. Treasury Prime, Synapse and Figure have also done so. Meanwhile, according to American Banker, the FDIC announced consent orders against Sutton Bank and Piermont Bank, requiring them to “more closely monitor their fintechs’ compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering rules.” money “.

Dollars and cents

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

New retirementa Mill Valley-based business building software to help people create financial retirement plans, has raised $20 million in a round of funding.

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

What else do we write

Find out how a small startup of four people, Supaglue, caught the attention of Stripe. Supaglue, formerly known as Supergrain, is an open source development platform for user-facing integrations. The team will support Stripe with real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party applications for its Revenue and Finance Automation suite.

Maju Kuruvilla is no longer CEO of one-click payment company Bolt. He is replaced by Justin Grooms, Bolt’s global head of sales, now interim CEO. Kuruvilla, the former Amazon executive, took over as CEO of Amazon in January 2022 after founder Ryan Breslow resigned. The information reveals more about Bolt’s woes here.

Very interesting titles

Behind the scenes of Mercury’s transformation from fintech hero to federal government target

The RealPage and Plaid team to fight rental fraud

In the HR software battle, Rippling catches up with Deel – at a price

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

In a CEO’s bold claims about his hot fintech startup, which TC previously reported on here.

Cloverleaf Raises $7.3 Million in Series A Extension

Abrigo acquires TPG Software

Would you like to give us some advice? Email me at maryann@techcrunch.com or message me on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the entire TechCrunch team at tips@techcrunch.com. For more secure communications, Click here to contact uswhich includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.