• LendInvest received increased funding from Lloyds Bank this week, bringing its total warehouse investment to $367 million (£300 million).
• The boost in investment will help LendInvest enter the homeowner mortgage market, a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity.
• LendInvest now has more than $4.4 billion (£3.6 billion) in funds under management.

U.K.-based property finance asset manager LendInvest scored an increase in warehouse funding from Lloyds Bank totaling $367 million (£300 million) this week. The purpose of the investment is to facilitate LendInvest’s entry into the mortgage market, which the company estimates to be a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity.

LendInvest was founded in 2008 to serve as an online marketplace for property lending and investing, enabling everyday investors to access a wider variety of asset classes, including opportunities to gain exposure to the U.K. property market. The company launched its homeowner mortgage product in beta last month and plans to launch the product to a wider audience this year.

“There are a significant number of people in the U.K. with complex income streams – from barristers to actors to NHS contract workers – who find it harder to get a mortgage because of multiple income sources or less regular pay cheques,” explained LendInvest CEO Rod Lockhart. “Our offering is tailored to their needs, providing access to the finance they require to buy the home of their dreams, and without all the stress and hassle.”

The new homeowner mortgage product targets borrowers with multiple sources of income, those who are self-employed, and those who are small-business owners. The company’s technology simplifies complex mortgage cases to improve and streamline the process of closing on a home loan.

“The complexity of this part of the U.K. mortgage market makes it ripe for disruption by our purpose-built technology and is a natural evolution for us following our launch into buy-to-let mortgages in 2017,” added Lockhart.

With more than $4.4 billion (£3.6 billion) in funds under management, LendInvest is headquartered in London. The company’s funders and investors include pension funds, insurers, and global institutions including HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, and National Australia Bank. LendInvest went public in 2021 and is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker LSE. The company has a market capitalization of $141 million (£115 million).

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• Uplinq, a company that offers advanced bookkeeping solutions to SMEs, has raised $5.6 million in funding.
• Headquartered in Arizona, Uplinq will use the capital to scale its marketing efforts to better serve fintech’s “underserved bookkeeping” market.
• The funding was led by Arizona-based AZ-VC, and included a strategic investment from Live Oak Ventures.

Uplinq, a technology company that leverages automation and machine learning to provide businesses with advanced bookkeeping solutions, has secured an investment of $5.6 million. The funding, announced in early December, was led by Arizona venture capital fund AZ-VC and included a strategic investment from Live Oak Ventures. Live Oak Ventures is the fintech-oriented venture capital arm of Live Oak Bank. Also participating in the funding were Merus Capital and members of the Kuwaiti Royal Family.

“With continued economic uncertainty, new automated fintech like Uplinq helps businesses take advantage by keeping track of changing costs and financials more efficiently than ever before to make smart business decisions fast,” Uplinq CEO Alex Glenn said. “This funding round will accelerate the next phase of Uplinq’s growth plans and expand our reach across this lucrative $15 billion industry.”

The capital will be used to help scale Uplinq’s marketing efforts, sales power, engineering capabilities, and customer delivery departments in order to better serve what the company calls fintech’s “underserved bookkeeping” market.

Uplinq leverages its proprietary technology to gather, organize, and categorize business transactions to provide small businesses with review-ready, real-time analysis “at the touch of a button.” With seamless integrations with more than 10,000 financial institutions, Uplinq provides its customers with weekly updated financial data – instead of monthly or quarterly – and said that more solutions for SMEs are planned to go live in 2023.

“We offer businesses a better way to get professional help through our proprietary technology, that not only makes bookkeeping worry-free for the business owner, but also provides them with powerful data automation and machine learning to better understand their finances and how their business can improve,” Glenn said.

Founded in 2020, Uplinq is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona.

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• Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to more than $60 million.
• Along with today’s announcement, X1 is also unveiling a new in-app stock investing tool that will enable cardholders to purchase stocks using points.
• X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members.

Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million this week. The funds bring the company’s Series B round to $40 million and elevate its total funds to more than $60 million. The investment was led by Soma Capital and included contributions from Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) and Kyle Vogt.

While the self-described smart credit card did not provide an exact valuation, the company said that today’s round increases X1’s total valuation by more than 50% over where it stood four months ago, when the company raised $25 million in Series B funding.

X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members. One such new feature is X1’s new investing platform that enables cardholders to buy stocks in the X1 app using their rewards points. X1 will guide investors by recommending stocks based on the cardholder’s spending habits, risk preferences, investment goals, income, and time horizon. The new capability will begin rolling out to select cardholders in the coming weeks.

The company said in the press release that it has future plans to expand the stock purchasing features “to compete with more traditional investment options.” Based on this, we can expect features common to Acorns and Robinhood such as spare change investing and automatic investment deposits.

For a card with no annual fee, X1’s rewards are hard to beat. The company offers cardholders 2x points on every dollar spent, 3x points on every dollar spent for the year if transactions exceed $15,000, and 4x points on each dollar for one month of purchases for each referral. X1 has paid out more than $10 million in rewards points since exiting its beta last October.

“With X1, we want to build an iconic and enduring consumer finance brand in an industry that’s long overdue for disruption,” said X1 CEO and Co-founder Deepak Rao. “We’re honored by the reception our card has continued to receive and to have raised this funding from Soma Capital, an early investor in more than 20 unicorns. With our innovative new investing platform, we’re excited to reimagine yet another sector in the consumer financial market.”

Outside of its rewards structure, X1 has other unique features that help differentiate itself in the crowded credit card market. The company has a stainless steel card and offers users virtual card numbers that they can set to expire on a specified date in order to avoid forgetting a subscription or a free trial period. The former automatically expires after one use, while the latter automatically expires 24 hours after it is activated.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

• Miami, Florida-based neobank Novo raised $35 million in funding, taking its Series B funding round to $125 million.
• The Series B raises Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.
• The latest capital infusion comes from GGV Capital, which manages more than $9 billion in investments across North America, China, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Israel.

An additional $35 million investment brings the total raised by Miami, Florida-based fintech Novo to $125 million. The latest infusion comes courtesy of strategic investor GGV Capital, and brings Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.

In a statement, Novo CEO and co-founder Michael Rangel highlighted the new functionality of the Novo Platform and the “tens of thousand” of small business customers the company has onboarded. Rangel also praised GGV as “instrumental” in helping other technology companies (“from Airbnb to Square”) scale their businesses, and said he believed the support of the firm would help Novo reach “millions more small businesses in the coming years.” Note that GGV Capital Principal Robin Li will join Novo’s board of directors as an observer.

With more than 175,000 small business customers, Novo offers a free business checking account with free ACHs and incoming wires; a Novo Virtual card; no hidden fees; and an application process that can be completed in less than 10 minutes. Novo also provides online small business banking services including the ability to send and track invoices; as set aside funds for taxes, payroll, and more via its Novo Reserves feature. Novo is partnered with Middlesex Federal Savings, which provides FDIC coverage of Novo deposits up to $250,000.

Additionally, as of 2021, the company has offered Novo Apps, a comprehensive apps marketplace to enable SMEs to customize their banking experience; Novo Boost, which gives small businesses same day access to payments received through Stripe; as well as Express ACH that enables same day processing of ACH payments.

GGV Capital Managing Partner Hans Tung underscored Novo’s “ecosystem approach” to providing banking services to small businesses, freelancers, and gig economy workers. “They’ve built a robust, intuitive platform that allows SMBs to connect all of their business and financial applications to their Novo account,” Tung said.

Novo’s latest investment comes as the company announces surpassing $12 billion in lifetime small business transactions. Founded in 2016, Novo was named one of the “Next Billion-Dollar Startups” of 2022 by Forbes earlier this year.

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