Colombia-based Fintech Minka Raises $24 Million

Colombia-based Fintech company Minka announced that it has secured $24 million in capital through a funding round led by Tiger Global and Kaszek. With the new funding, Minka plans to continue modernising the clearinghouses and central banks' infrastructure, but also to grow the network by enabling a full self-service platform for publishing and moving money to organisations. Minka is a seamless payment network built from the ground up. It enables the last-mile infrastructure, including banks, clearinghouses, and organisations, to publish and exchange balances.

Volume Raises $2.4m to Drive Online Payment Fees to Zero

Volume, the transparent checkout startup, has closed a pre-seed round of $2.4 million, in an oversubscribed deal led by firstminute Capital and joined by SeedX and Haatch Ventures. Other participants include angels Christian Faes (LendInvest), Russ Carroll (ex-Klarna), as well as angels from MADE.COM, Mastercard, Visa and American Express. Volume improves on current open banking capabilities to reduce the long checkout process, while simultaneously killing hidden fees charged by payment intermediaries.

London Fintech Monspire Raises £600,000

Monspire, the London fintech helping small businesses predict cashflow needs in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, has raised a £600,000 funding round led by Fuel Ventures. The cash boost will enable Monspire, founded by serial tech entrepreneurs Simon Draper and Ben Gillen, launch to market and rapidly onboard new businesses. The entrepreneurs are aiming to make Monspire the global cashflow management platform for small businesses, empowering small business owners to grow their businesses with confidence. A Censuswide study of 500 small business owners commissioned by Monspire found that 67% of entrepreneurs believe running day-to-day finances ‘actively distracts’ them from running their business.

Hashed leads 10M Seed Round for NFT God Game Apeiron

South korean blockchain investment firm Hashed, a core backer in the web3 space who have raised over $320M in the past 12 months, have led the way in investing in Apeiron, the hottest new blockchain game on the market. Developed by Foonie Magus, the game has now raised over 17M USD at the close of their seed round for the new play-and-earn NFT god game Apeiron. The company received 3M from preseed investment, 10M from seed investment, and 4.5M from NFT sales, putting them over 17.5M in total. Hashed is a team of blockchain experts based in Seoul and the Silicon Valley. The firm has swiftly risen to become one of the biggest blockchain investment firms in Asia, and currently operates a $200M fund that backs projects with high potential.

Zenda Raises $9.4m Seed Round for Pay-now, Pay-later Proposition and Accelerates India Expansion

Zenda, MENA’s first fintech app for families announced it secured a $9.4m oversubscribed seed round. zenda currently addresses pain points around the payment of school fees - in particular, the lack of convenience and flexibility in payment options for parents and the poor collection of payments for schools. Zenda was founded in June 2021 by Raman Thiagarajan and Haseeb Ahmed, alumni of McKinsey & Company, where Raman led the Firm’s Financial Services Practice in the MENA region. zenda is the founders’ second start-up, and leverages deep insights and knowledge from their successful previous ed-tech venture.