There’s a real appetite for a fintech alternative to QuickBooks

Comment
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the continued fallout from Synapse’s bankruptcy, how Layer wants to disrupt SMB accounting, and much more!
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. 
The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup Synapse went from bad to worse last week when a U.S. Trustee filed an emergency motion asking to convert the company’s debt reorganization Chapter 11 bankruptcy into a liquidation Chapter 7 due to “gross mismanagement” of its estate. Apparently, up to 20 million fintech depositors are at risk as a result of the bankruptcy. As Fintech Business Weekly’s Jason Mikula reports, “Numerous end users of fintechs that have had their ability to access their funds frozen shared the devastating impact it has had on their lives with the court and the hundreds of attendees dialed in to the hearing [on Friday].” Sadly, the fallout from Synapse’s collapse continues.
There seems to be a real appetite for an alternative to QuickBooks, the legacy accounting alternative for SMBs, judging by the attention this story on Layer’s $2.3 million raise received. Layer is leaning into what it describes as a better user experience through embedded accounting. Its customers are those working with small and medium-sized businesses to offer accounting and bookkeeping features inside their own products. Better Tomorrow Ventures led the pre-seed investment into the startup and was joined by a group of executives at companies such as Square, Plaid, Unit and Check.
PayHOA, a previously bootstrapped Kentucky-based startup that offers software for self-managed homeowner associations (HOAs), is an example of how real-world problems can translate into opportunity. It just raised a $27.5 million Series A round in an environment where nearly $30 million Series A rounds are no longer common.
Buy now, pay later services have become so ubiquitous that BNPL may as well just be another way to say “debt.” But in Mexico, where BNPL platform Aplazo operates, a large underbanked population makes BNPL more like an alternative to cash. A recent $45 million Series B round led by QED Investors should help it further expand its reach, both virtual and physical.
Speaking of QED, it also led a $10 million round into Kudos, which uses artificial intelligence to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice.
Aeropay, a provider of pay-by-bank solutions for businesses that started out helping cannabis retailers and gaming companies with their payments, is now entering into Visa’s and Mastercard’s territory by innovating the payment networks. And it’s just raised $20 million in a Series B round.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing SoLo Funds, a fintech company that enables peer-to-peer lending, alleging that the company used “digital dark patterns” to deceive borrowers and illegally took fees while advertising to consumers that there were no fees.
CFPB takes action against Chime Financial for illegally delaying consumer refunds
Deel partners with Carta to offer equity tax withholding features
Insurtech Cover Genius raises $80M in Series E funding  (TC covered its last raise here)
Yendo raises $165 million for ‘vehicle-secured’ credit card
FinLocker raises $17M in Series B funding round
Bunq enters insurance market via new partnership
Square adds new integrated solutions for restaurants
Embedded accounting startup Teal raises $8M
ICYMI: Baselayer raises $6.5M in seed funding 
Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at maryann@techcrunch.com or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at tips@techcrunch.com. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.
Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.
Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.
The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Sunday.
TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.
India’s Oyo, once valued at $10 billion, has withdrawn its IPO application from the market regulator for the second time.
Where Aytac Yilmaz lives in the Netherlands, the sun might not appear for days on end, which can really crimp the output of the country’s solar panels. Wind turbines might…
Paytm, a leading financial services firm in India, said its net loss widened in the fourth quarter as it grappled with a regulatory clampdown.
Government officials and AI industry executives agreed on Tuesday to apply elementary safety measures in the fast-moving field and establish an international safety research network. Nearly six months after the…
Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.
Some startups choose to bootstrap from the beginning while others find themselves forced into self funding by a lack of investor interest or a business model that doesn’t fit traditional…
Uber and Lyft drivers in Minnesota will see higher pay thanks to a deal between the state and the country’s two largest ride-hailing companies. The upshot: a new law that…
Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund has established a new fellowship program aimed at introducing top engineers and technologists to venture investing, a move that could help the firm identify less…
Another fintech startup, and its customers, has been gravely impacted by the implosion of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse. Copper Banking, a digital banking service aimed at teens, notified its customers on…
Autodesk — the 3D tools behemoth — has acquired Wonder Dynamics, a startup that lets creators quickly and easily make complex characters and visual effects using AI-powered image analysis. The…
Farcaster, a blockchain-based social protocol founded by two Coinbase alumni, announced on Tuesday that it closed a $150 million fundraise. Led by Paradigm, the platform also raised money from a16z…
Microsoft announced on Tuesday during its annual Build conference that it’s bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets. The partnership will allow Microsoft to bring Windows 365 and local…
The spam reached Bluesky by first crossing over two other decentralized networks: Mastodon and Nostr.
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the continued fallout from Synapse’s bankruptcy, how Layer wants to disrupt SMB accounting, and much more! To get a roundup of…
The company is hoping to produce electricity at $13 per megawatt hour, which would be more than 50% cheaper than traditional onshore wind.
Generative AI makes stuff up. It can be biased. Sometimes it spits out toxic text. So can it be “safe”? Rick Caccia, the CEO of WitnessAI, believes it can. “Securing…
It’s not often that you hear about a seed round above $10 million. H, a startup based in Paris and previously known as Holistic AI, has announced a $220 million…
Hey there, Series A to B startups with $35 million or less in funding — we’ve got an exciting opportunity that’s tailor-made for your growth journey! If you’re looking to…
TikTok is pulling out all the stops to prevent its impending ban in the United States. Aside from initiating legal action against the U.S. government, that means shaping up its…
Microsoft wants to put its Copilot everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft renames its annual Build developer conference to Microsoft Copilot. Hopefully, some of those upcoming events…
Build is Microsoft’s largest developer conference and of course, it’s all about AI this year. So it’s no surprise that GitHub’s Copilot, GitHub’s “AI pair programming tool,” is taking center…
Microsoft wants to make its brand of generative AI more useful for teams — specifically teams across corporations and large enterprise organizations. This morning at its annual Build dev conference,…
Microsoft’s big focus at this year’s Build conference is generative AI. And to that end, the tech giant announced a series of updates to its platforms for building generative AI-powered…
The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has closed an almost year-long investigation of Snap’s AI chatbot, My AI — saying it’s satisfied the social media firm has addressed concerns about risks…
U.S. cell carrier Patriot Mobile experienced a data breach that included subscribers’ personal information, including full names, email addresses, home ZIP codes and account PINs, TechCrunch has learned. Patriot Mobile,…
It’s been three years since Spotify acquired live audio startup Betty Labs, and yet the music streaming service isn’t leveraging the technology to its fullest potential — at least not…
Alchemist Accelerator has a new pile of AI-forward companies demoing their wares today, if you care to watch, and the program itself is making some international moves into Tokyo and…
“Late Pledge” allows campaign creators to continue collecting money even after the campaign has closed.
Stack AI’s co-founders, Antoni Rosinol and Bernardo Aceituno, were PhD students at MIT wrapping up their degrees in 2022 just as large language models were becoming more mainstream. ChatGPT would…
Pinecone, the vector database startup founded by Edo Liberty, the former head of Amazon’s AI Labs, has long been at the forefront of helping businesses augment large language models (LLMs)…
Powered by WordPress VIP

source