Daily Fintech Podcast - March 22nd, 2022

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Welcome to another episode of our Daily Fintech Podcast.

This podcast episode is sponsored by Provenir. Provenir does more than help with your current tech challenges. They eliminate them. Designed and built to power agility, their cloud-native technology puts your team in control. Loved by Startups. Trusted by Decacorns.

THE NEWS HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY IS

PayPal is expanding its services to allow its users to send money to Ukrainians

JUST IN:

American Express has filed trademark applications to register its name, logo, and slogans for a range of banking services in the metaverse.

ALSO:

Egypt's three biggest state-owned banks are setting up an $85 million financial technology fund that aims to accelerate innovation in the sector

AS FOR PARTNERSHIPS

eBay and Klarna have joined forces to offer German shoppers more flexible payment options

WHAT ABOUT FUNDING ROUNDS AND INVESTMENTS?

Lucky App, Egypt’s leading app for credit products, offers and cashback rewards, announces its $25 million fund Series A raise.

Shufti Pro raised a €17.6m Series A led by US-based Updata Partners.

Payrails raised a seed round of €5.6m and the French payroll API platform Rollee raised a €4m seed round..

Lune raised $4m, by offering an API and software tools to make it easy for any business to integrate climate impact into their customer experience

Novel Capital has emerged from stealth with $115 million in initial equity and debt funding.

AS FOR OPPORTUNITIES

An Post, the state-owned provider of postal services in Ireland, is looking for a banking platform service provider and has published an e-tender on the Office of Government Procurement website. The response deadline is 22 April 2022, 2pm GMT.

Sequoia Capital is looking for outliers to apply to Arc, a new catalyst for seed-stage companies. The first cohort is in Europe, with a curriculum tailored for the region. Applications for the US will open later this summer.