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Startups Weekly: Understanding Uber’s latest fintech play

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about how SoftBank is screwing up. Before that, I noted All Raise’s expansion, Uber the TV show and the unicorn from down under.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.


Uber Head of Payments Peter Hazlehurst addresses the audience during an Uber products launch event in San Francisco, California, on September 26, 2019. (Photo by Philip Pacheco / AFP) (Photo credit should read PHILIP PACHECO/AFP/Getty Images)

The sheer number of startup players moving into banking services is staggering,” writes my Crunchbase News friends in a piece titled “Why Is Every Startup A Bank These Days.”

I’ve been asking myself the same question this year, as financial services business like Brex, Chime, Robinhood, Wealthfront, Betterment and more raise big rounds to build upstart digital banks. North of $13 billion venture capital dollars have been invested in U.S. fintech companies so far in 2019, up from $12 billion invested in 2018.

This week, one of the largest companies to ever emerge from the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, Uber, introduced its team focused on developing new financial products and technologies. In a vacuum, a multibillion-dollar public company with more than 22,000 employees launching one new team is not big news. Considering investment and innovation in fintech this year, Uber’s now well-documented struggles to reach profitability and the company’s hiring efforts in New York, a hotbed for financial aficionados, the “Uber Money” team could indicate much larger fintech ambitions for the ride-hailing giant.

As it stands, the Uber Money team will be focused on developing real-time earnings for drivers accessed through the Uber debit account and debit card, which will itself see new features, like 3% or more cash back on gas. Uber Wallet, a digital wallet where drivers can more easily track their earnings, will launch in the coming weeks too, writes Peter Hazlehurst, the head of Uber Money.

This is hardly Uber’s first major foray into financial services. The company’s greatest feature has always been its frictionless payments capabilities that encourage riders and eaters to make purchases without thinking. Uber’s even launched its own consumer credit card to get riders cash back on rides. It’s no secret the company has larger goals in the fintech sphere, and with 100 million “monthly active platform consumers” via Uber, Uber Eats and more, a dedicated path toward new and better financial products may not only lead to happier, more loyal drivers but a company that’s actually, one day, able to post a profit.


VC deals


Meet me in Berlin

The TechCrunch team is heading to Berlin again this year for our annual event, TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, which brings together entrepreneurs and investors from across the globe. We announced the agenda this week, with leading founders including Away’s Jen Rubio and UiPath’s Daniel Dines. Take a look at the full agenda.

I will be there to interview a bunch of venture capitalists, who will give tips on how to raise your first euros. Buy tickets to the event here.


Listen to Equity

This week on Equity, I was in studio while Alex was remote. We talked about a number of companies and deals, including a new startup taking on Slack, Wag’s woes and a small upstart disrupting the $8 billion nail services industry. Listen to the episode here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunesOvercast and all the casts.

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Learn how to change banking one dollar at a time at Disrupt SF

Fintech startups are the hot new thing. Everybody wants to reinvent the way you manage money, invest and pay for things. That’s why we’re inviting three fintech experts to TechCrunch Disrupt SF to help you learn everything about the space.

They know that the bank of the future is not necessarily a bank and that the payment method of the future is not necessarily a card. And they’re going to tell you all about it.

First up is Chris Britt, the founder and CEO of Chime. While there are plenty of challenger banks in Europe, Chime is a rare success in the U.S. market.

The company has managed to attract over 3 million customers and $300 million in funding with a simple value proposition — a better user experience, an automatic way to save money and no fees for basic features. But Chime isn’t an overnight success. Britt has amassed a ton of experience in retail banking as chief product officer at Green Dot and as a senior product leader at Visa.

We also invited Angela Strange, a general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz . As a founder of a fintech startup, you might want to know what investors are looking for. And Strange is an expert on this front.

She focuses on financial services of all sorts, including insurance, real estate and increasing inclusivity. She’s a board observer at Branch, Earnin, HealthIQ, Mayvenn, PeerStreet and Point. As you can see, it’s an impressive portfolio, and she has encountered a ton of different situations in the fintech industry.

And finally, Omer Ismail from Goldman Sachs has seen both sides of the banking coin. After many years working in private equity investing and investment banking, he was asked to lead an unusual team — the consumer business of Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs hasn’t been a powerful brand when it comes to consumer products — until very recently. The company successfully launched Marcus, a banking product focused on personal loans and online savings with high interest rates, and Clarity Money, a mobile app that acts as a financial dashboard.

More recently, Ismail was in charge of the surprising partnership with Apple for the Apple Card. It’s clear that he knows where the industry is heading, so you’ll want to learn a few tips from Ismail.

Buy your ticket to Disrupt SF to listen to this discussion — and many others. The conference will take place on October 2-4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

In addition to fireside chats and panels, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.

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US mobile bank Chime raises $200 million, valuing its business at $1.5 billion

San Francisco-based mobile banking startup Chime announced this morning it has raised an additional $200 million in Series D financing led by DST Global, valuing its business at $1.5 billion. The oversubscribed round also included participation from new investors Coatue, General Atlantic, ICONIQ Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group, along with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Cathay Innovation and others.

To date, Chime has raised approximately $300 million, including last year’s $70 million Series C, which then saw the company valued at $500 million.

With the new funding, Chime has now raised the most funding and has the highest valuation among other U.S. challenger banks.

The company is now one of several going after a younger, millennial audience who no longer sees the need for banks with physical branches, and who are sick of being nickel-and-dimed by bigger banks’ numerous fees. Like others in this space, Chime offers a “no fees” bank account, which won’t penalize users for things like dropping below a minimum balance or even overdrafts.

On top of this is a modern-day banking app with features that make it look like it was actually built by a technology company — not a traditional bank. That’s because its team’s background is a mix of both tech and finance. Chime’s co-founder and CEO Chris Britt previously worked at Flycast, was an early comScore employee and worked at Visa and Green Dot; co-founder and CTO Ryan King spent time at Plaxo and Comcast before Chime.

Chime also includes a couple of innovative features that help differentiate it from the other mobile banking apps on the market. This includes an automatic savings feature that rounds up purchases to pocket the change; another feature that automatically saves 10 percent of your paycheck into Chime’s savings account; and one that offers a no-fee paycheck advance that makes your money available sooner.

To date, customers have opened more than 3 million FDIC-insured bank accounts on Chime, which makes it the largest brand in its category, the company claims. (This appears to be true. SoFi had 500,000 members as of last year. Simple doesn’t disclose its account base beyond “hundreds of thousands.” Moven and Varo Money are smaller, according to American Banker’s round-up.)

Its size, scale and growth trajectory, perhaps, have aided Chime in poaching a few execs from its other fintech businesses — including rivals. For example, the company recently added Chime VP, Risk Brian Mullins, who was the former head of Risk Ops at Square; and Chime GM, Lending Aaron Plante, who was the former Business Unit leader for Student Loans at SoFi.

The company says it plans to use the new investment to continue to accelerate growth and launch new products, including those in lending and credit. It also plans to double its San Francisco-based team to more than 200 employees and expand its leadership.

“We’re excited to welcome some of the world’s leading growth investors to Chime,” said Britt in a statement about the funding. “Banking should be free, helpful and easy to use but traditional banks are reluctant to embrace this reality. We aim to set a new standard in the industry by using technology to create services that are truly aligned with the best interests of consumers.”

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Amazon launches Chime, a video conferencing and communications service for business

Amazon corporate office building in Sunnyvale, California (Photo: Lisa Werner/Moment Mobile/Getty Images) Amazon has taken the wraps off of its own Skype competitor. Chime is a new video conferencing and communications from AWS that’s focused on business users. Beyond VoIP calling and video messaging, Chime includes virtual meetings, allowing users to host or join a remote meeting through the service. Pricing starts at $2.50 per user per month on the lowest end, with a higher tier plan… Read More

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Camellia Labs debuts single-cup chai brewer, Chime

Camellia Labs' Chime, a single-cup brewer for traditional, Indian chai. In the world of kitchen appliances, everyone wants to be the next Keurig, it seems. First, there were single-cup coffee brewers that followed and claimed to be better than Keurig, from Nespresso, Mr. Coffee and Lavazza to name a few. Later came cold drink machines like the Bartesian for cocktails, or PicoBrew for craft beer. And most recently, the Juicero cold press juice machine promised to… Read More

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“Chime” In On Video Chat Threads With This Intimate App

Chime Featured Image Texting is the quickest way to be misunderstood. With no facial cues or vocal tones, enthusiasm becomes sarcasm, jokes are read as cruelty. But while audio and video chat are vivid, its inconvenient to get both people on a call at the same time.
Yet, a new iOS app called Chime combines the best parts of these media, plus sprinkles on some mustaches and top hats to keep it fun. Read More

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