Fintech Focus Roundup For August 22, 2020

Robinhood Valued At $11.2B After Series G
What Happened: Robinhood, a retail trading platform that offers investors commission-free stock, ETF and options trading and high-yield savings accounts, announced a $200-million Series G funding round Monday at an $11.2-billion valuation that was led by D1 Capital Partners.

Why Does It Matter: “We believe investing at its core is a democratic concept — it allows people to take part in the success of a company or sector they believe in. With our latest round of funding, we’ll continue empowering people in their financial lives and enabling a more democratic financial system,” Robinhood representatives said in a statement.

DailyPay Helps Digitize Payroll
What's The Problem: Payroll is a massive industry with American’s receiving $13 trillion across 3.9 billion paydays. The problem with traditional payroll: it hasn't changed for 30 centuries.

What's The Solution: Founded in 2015, DailyPay is a mid-to-late stage fintech specializing in the employer-employee relationship. The company is a pioneer in the on-demand pay industry and has helped bring the payment experience at organizations like Kroger, McDonald's, Six Flags, Berkshire Hathaway, among others, into the 21st century.

BlockFi Raises $50M Series C
What Happened: On the heels of two other funding rounds in the past 12 months, BlockFi, as part of a vision to expand its ecosystem of customer-centric digital asset solutions, secured funds from Morgan Creek Digital, Winklevoss Capital and Matthew Dellavedova, among others.

What Does It Mean: “With the support from our investors, we’re creating a platform for investors where they aren’t investing in just digital assets anymore—they’re investing in the future, greater financial empowerment and accessibility," said Zac Prince, CEO and Co-Founder, BlockFi.

bitFlyer Launches Exchange Services In Hawaii
What Happened: In partnership with the Hawaii Department of Financial Institutions and Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, Japanese-based bitFlyer launched its services in Hawaii.

What Does It Mean: The launch is one of the first to be approved under the Digital Currency Innovation Lab, a regulatory sandbox that allows digital asset service providers the ability to do business in Hawaii without obtaining state licenses for money transmission.

'A Robinhood For The World': Meet Passfolio
What Happened: Passfolio, an app for commission-free trading of stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrency in over 170 countries, recently expanded the depth and breadth of its product portfolio.

Why Does It Matter: “A lot of people just want access to U.S. dollars or the U.S. stock market, which, you know, in the U.S., we take for granted,” said Passfolio CEO David Gobaud. “So we enable equal and fair access to all investments.”

JPMorgan, Commonwealth Democratize Finance
The Problem: COVID-19 disrupted finance and accelerated an ongoing shift to fintech solutions. The increased efficiency and reduced costs offered by fintech, however, increased fractures in the financial system, exacerbating economic inequality.

The Solution: JPMorgan Chase and Commonwealth, a financial security nonprofit, formally announced a two-year initiative to address the challenges and opportunities emerging technologies present to people of lower- and moderate-income.

Bitfinex Intros Secondary Sales Solution
What Happened: As part of a vision to spearhead innovation in the digital asset ecosystem, Bitfinex introduced Catalyst Sales, a token sale platform.

Why Does It Matter: “Bitfinex Token Sales envisions another industry innovation, the technology that powers the first formal secondary sales in the ecosystem. Catalyst Token Sales will aid in expanding user access to tokens while simultaneously helping the ecosystem flourish,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex Token Sales.

StockHoot Adds Data And AI Insights App
What Happened: As part of a vision to make investors more aware of the opportunity, StockHoot introduced an intelligent companion tool that guides decision making in a personalized way.

What Does It Mean: “We created the AI structure within our app so any of our investors can go and check which stocks crossed their 200-day moving average, which hit their 52- week high and low, as well as what are the best investments based on analyst ratings,” said Mitesh Bilimoria, CEO and CTO at StockHoot.