Square
Square buys majority of Tidal, adds Jay-Z to its board in bid to shake up the artist economy
This morning Square, a fintech company that serves both individuals and companies, announced that it has purchased a majority stake in Tidal, a music streaming service. The deal, worth some…
Square’s bank arm launches as fintech aims ‘to operate more nimbly’
Known for its innovations in the payments sector, Square officially now has a bank. Nearly one year after receiving conditional approval, Square said Monday afternoon that its industrial bank, Square…
Jack Dorsey and Jay Z invest 500 BTC to make Bitcoin ‘internet’s currency’
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z have created an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey said on Friday. The duo is…
This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here. Welcome to a special…
Square and PayPal earnings bring good (and bad) news for fintech startups
Earnings season is racing past us, with the big ride-hailing companies’ numbers in, all of the Big Five having wrapped their reporting and lots of SaaS numbers in the market. But…
PayPal’s earnings don’t excite Wall Street, but bring good news for consumer fintech
PayPal’s stock is down in after-hours trading after reporting third-quarter earnings that beat expectations. It’s not immediately clear why PayPal is losing ground, although it could stem from retail investor…
Payments services company Finix adds $30 million to its Series B
Finix, a startup that provides payments-related services to other companies, announced it has extended its Series B financing with a $30 million investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and American…
Featured Article
Robinhood raises $200M more at $11.2B valuation as its revenue scales
Robinhood announced this morning that it has raised $200 million more at a new, higher $11.2 billion valuation. The new capital came as a surprise. Astute observers of all things fintech will recall that Robinhood, a popular stock trading service, has raised capital multiple times this year, including an initial $280 million round at an…
Square’s Cash App tests new feature allowing users to borrow up to $200
Cash App, the peer-to-peer payments service from Square, is giving select users a way to get short-term loans. The company said it’s only testing the feature with around 1,000 users…
Former COO sues Pinterest, accusing it of gender discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination
Pinterest’s former chief operating officer has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of gender discrimination. Françoise Brougher, who says she was abruptly fired from the company in April, is suing…
Featured Article
As e-commerce accelerates, fintech startups raised record $100M rounds in Q2
Reading headlines here and there, one might assume that venture capital interest in fintech startups is setting records every quarter. After all: Didn’t Robinhood raise $280 million and $320 million more this year? Stripe raised $600 million just a few minutes ago, and wasn’t it Monzo that raised £60 million a few weeks back? Oh,…
PayPal and Venmo QR Code checkout is coming to 8,200 CVS stores in Q4
PayPal has struck a deal with CVS Pharmacy to offer the ability to check out using PayPal’s payment services, including both PayPal and Venmo, at the register. The company announced…
Revolut partners with Paxos to bring cryptocurrency trading to the US
Neobank Revolut launched in the U.S. a couple of months ago. The startup is slowly catching up with features that are available in the U.K. and Europe. This time, Revolut…
Square acquired Verse, a Spanish peer-to-peer payment app that works across Europe. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. According to Crunchbase, Verse had raised $37.6 million from Spark Capital, eVentures,…
Snap is unveiling some important changes for Snapchat at its Snap Partner Summit. The navigation has been rethought with a new action bar at the bottom that lets you access…
Extra Crunch Live: Join Roelof Botha for a live Q&A on May 6 at 2pm ET/11am PT
23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square. Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much…
8 top fintech VCs discuss COVID-19 trends, signals and opportunities
In recent years, fintech’s revolution has felt like a rising tide. Behemoths like Stripe and Square edged out banks while newbies like Brex nonchalantly raised nine-figure rounds. Today, however, the…
PayPal, Intuit & Square approved to offer loans to small businesses through coronavirus relief program
Fintech companies have been lobbying for weeks to be able to participate in the U.S. government’s emergency lending program for small businesses. Now those efforts have paid off, as PayPal,…
Let’s give tech philanthropists the benefit of the doubt on COVID-19
We’ve spent so long asking tech to turn its attention to real-world problems. Let’s not complain when they do so now.
Jack Dorsey creates $1B COVID-19 relief fund using Square equity
Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets today that he is shifting $1 billion in his Square equity to create a fund dedicated to COVID-19 relief. The Twitter and…
Oura raises $28 million for its health and sleep tracking ring
Smart rings are still a relatively young category in the wearable hardware world, but the Oura Ring seems to be a standout in terms of early success. The Oura Ring…
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might not spend six months a year in Africa, claims the real product development is under the hood and gives an excuse for deleting Vine before…
Featured Article
6 strategic stages of seed fundraising in 2020
Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would write the terms of the deal in a term sheet and then pass that document to their…
Payments infra startup Finix closes $35M Series B led by Sequoia
This morning Finix, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup selling payments tech to other businesses, announced that it has raised a $35 million Series B. Sequoia led the round, which also saw…
Africa Roundup: Nigerian fintech gets $360M, mints unicorn, draws Chinese VC
November 2019 could mark when Nigeria (arguably) became Africa’s unofficial capital for fintech investment and digital finance startups. The month saw $360 million invested in Nigerian-focused payment ventures. That is…
Fundbox raises $176 million Series C to build ‘Visa’ for B2B payments
Credit cards have become all but ubiquitous for consumer transactions, and it isn’t hard to see why. By intermediating payments, networks like Visa allow buyers and sellers to exchange money…
DoorDash is buying Caviar from Square in a deal worth $410 million
DoorDash has reached an agreement with Square to purchase on-demand food delivery and catering business Caviar. DoorDash has agreed to pay Square $410 million in cash and preferred DoorDash stock.…
Square’s The Avengers stars vaguely familiar versions of Marvel’s iconic heroes
This evening’s Square E3 press was…something. After more than an hour of Final Fantasy remasters, the publisher closed things out with far and away its most eagerly awaited game. Licensing…
Square has acquired conversational artificial intelligence startup Eloquent Labs to help its merchants improve customer service. Eloquent Labs, which raised a $1.5 million seed round back in early 2017, offers…
Square reports Q1 sales of $489M, up 59%, but net loss widens to $38M
After Square issued weak guidance in Q4, all eyes were on the payments company to see what kind of growth it really had in Q1. Results reported today underscored some of the challenges…
