- Fintech Friday
- Posts
- Meet the 27 Fintech Startups in YC's Winter 2023 Cohort
Meet the 27 Fintech Startups in YC's Winter 2023 Cohort
Plus: My Top 3 Picks
Alejandro Vivanco
April 08, 2023
The YC Winter 2023 Batch was announced this week, and there's 27 fintech companies in the cohort. Here’s the full list 👇
Note: I excluded crypto companies from this list, I will cover those on the next issue of Web3 Wednesday.
Curious about my top 3 picks? Go here.
1/ Wallbit Pay: Neobank for global remote workers
Wallbit is a neobank that gives global remote workers a US bank account where they can receive their income, withdraw in local currencies, and earn yield from U.S. treasury bills.
Wallbit offers features such as receiving ACH/Wire and Swift bank transfers, receiving payments from payroll platforms like Deel and OnTop, converting and withdrawing in crypto or local currencies, getting access to a virtual US debit card, and investing in the stock market and US treasuries
The team behind Wallbit are software engineers from Argentina who have faced the problem of banking gap between the US and the rest of the world while working remotely for US companies
2/ Interlock: Digital-first mortgage servicer
Interlock is the best way for lenders to service their mortgages. They're a new digital-first mortgage servicer that lets lenders engage with borrowers post-close and gives consumers a 10x better user experience.
3/ Constant: Private credit investment platform
Constant lets financial advisors and high-worth individuals invest in top private credit funds.
Private credit is a $1.4 trillion asset class that offers high yields, limited risk, and strong diversification from other assets
Constant provides a curated set of high-quality private credit funds and guides users through the complexities of funds
By pooling investors, Constant lets smaller investors meet the minimum investments of funds
4/ Littio: Dollar banking for people in Latin America
Littio is a neobank focused on solving the currency devaluation problem for Latin Americans.
300 million people in Latin America have no way of accessing basic financial services in U.S. dollars
With Littio, people can open a free dollar bank account in less than 3 minutes, get a Mastercard debit card, and send and receive dollar payments
Littio uses USDC and traditional payment railways to power up this solution in a simple and easy experience for users
Littio is a solution to the problem of limited access to dollar financial products, which is limited to the richest 1% in Latin America
5/ Waza: B2B payments platform for emerging markets
Waza is the B2B platform for global payments and emerging market trade.
They make it easy and affordable for businesses with no access to USD to fulfil their global payment obligations, treasury and liquidity needs.
6/ Milio: B2B payments infrastructure for emerging markets
Milio is building B2B payments infrastructure for emerging markets, both domestic and cross-border, with an embedded B2B-commerce checkout.
Legacy B2B payments infrastructure in Latin America doesn't allow automated transaction initiation and costs up to 3% through local ACH networks and credit card processing fees.
Milio enables real-time B2B account-to-account payments, both domestic and cross-border, that are real-time and save up to 80% of transactions cost and FX rates.
Milio's platform allows faster money movements, real-time access to data, and treasury automations through efficient workflows and seamless account-to-account domestic and cross-border payments.
Milio connects the payments infrastructure to legacy ERPs through one single API, enabling automated treasury workflows that save customers over 10h per week in manual work.
7/ Shekel Mobility: B2B marketplace for Auto Dealers in Africa
Shekel Mobility is a neobank and trading platform for car dealers in Africa.
The platform offers a simpler, smarter, and faster way to launch and grow car dealerships locally or virtually.
Shekel Mobility dealers have been able to triple their sales by growing their inventory through access to affordable finance.
8/ Inri: Wealthfront for India’s 32M expats living abroad
Inri is an investment platform for Indian expats to invest in Indian index and debt funds with hassle-free repatriation and tax compliance.
The platform provides personalized wealth advisory and compliance services to solve challenges for Indian expats investing in India, such as lack of awareness, high complexity, physical paperwork, and inefficiency.
Inri's vision is to become a one-stop platform for the Indian expat community of all things money in India.
9/ Alaan: Corporate cards & spend management for businesses in the Middle East
Alaan is a corporate cards and spend management platform for businesses in the Middle East.
They help businesses instantly issue corporate cards for employees, control their spending, and automate receipts.
10/ Infinia: Helping merchants accept bank payments in LATAM
Infinia is an account to account payment solution in Latin America that helps merchants/apps save up to 80% on credit card fees.
Infinia enables Pay By Bank across Latin America, making it easy for consumers to pay by bank and for merchants to accept this payment method.
Unlike in Europe where there is an open banking standard and regulation, in LATAM each country operates independently, with different regulation and payment rail.
Cards decline rate roughly 35% in LATAM, and Infinia is the first solution to put together those payment rails and create an easy way for merchants to accept frictionless Pay By Bank across the continent.
Infinia's all-in-one Pay By Bank API solution includes payment initiation services, funds confirmation, and a rewards program.
11/ Fluid Markets: Exchange to Invest in Company Earnings
Fluid is a futures exchange that enables direct investments in components that influence stock prices, without taking any market risk.
Investors can invest in earnings of a public company, but not the equity itself.
The exchange offers futures on fundamentals of public companies, such as revenue, earnings, and segments, among other fundamentals.
The exchange plans to solve the problem of investors losing money on trades despite being correct in their predictions about a component.
The founders of Fluid are experienced entrepreneurs who have worked in derivatives and securitization investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Barclays.
12/ Hadrius: The SEC Compliance Autopilot
Hadrius is an SEC compliance copilot that automates the ongoing compliance process for investment managers, saving compliance teams hours daily on manual reviews, filings, and audit prep while giving full control over tasks and flagged items from an intuitive dashboard.
The existing solutions for SEC compliance are inadequate, with most firms paying for third-party consultants, law firms, and outdated software, while still relying on endless manual work.
Hadrius uses GPT3 to scan emails, slack, and SMS, flagging non-compliant language to speed up correspondence review, and automates billing reviews, allocation reviews, and rollovers by integrating into investment managers' existing compliance stack.
13/ DailyPe: Marketplace for business loans that are repaid daily.
DailyPe is a marketplace for business loans that are repaid in smaller, daily instalments.
Small shop owners who earn daily find it difficult to calculate how much to save each day so that they will have the required instalment amount at the end of the month. DailyPe reduces the risk and allows them to pay small amounts daily.
With DailyPe, lending decisions are much more informed leading to higher collection rates and lower NPAs.
The founders saw this problem firsthand when their fathers, who ran their own businesses, would stress out days before instalment day.
The loan products DailyPe offers are called "khandi Udhar" and have existed for a long time in the unorganized markets in India.
14/ Berilium: Wealthfront for Private Equity & Private Credit
Berilium allows access to top private market strategies from firms such as Blackstone and KKR with minimum investments as low as $10k.
Private assets have historically outperformed public markets over the long term.
The S&P500 is dominated by a handful of large technology companies, while there are 10 times more private companies than public.
Berilium is for long-term investors who care about compounding their wealth and do not have $5 million+ to invest.
Berilium offers low minimum investments, no capital calls, and no lengthy lock-ups.
15/ Finex: Single platform for all e-commerce finances.
Finex is a new all-in-one financial platform for e-commerce
The platform offers a FDIC-insured bank account with up to 4% APY, domestic and international payments, and unlimited virtual credit cards
Finex is designed to be a single platform for all e-commerce finances, eliminating the need for multiple platforms
Traditional banks and general-purpose neo-banks often use a "one-size-fits-all" approach, whereas Finex caters to the specific needs of individual customers
16/ Bluedot: Single payment platform for EV drivers and fleets.
Bluedot is a payment platform for electric vehicle drivers and fleets to charge their cars and manage expenses.
Bluedot aims to address challenges around EV charging and payments, such as accessibility, trackability, and reimbursement.
Bluedot has a driver app and a dashboard for fleet managers to monitor and authenticate driver permissions and gain better visibility into charging and driving behavior.
Bluedot is expanding its offering through auto dealers, auto financing companies, fleet management, and delivery companies.
17/ coil: Pay-by-bank for subscriptions
Coil is a solution to the problem of high credit card processing fees and churn from credit card declines in subscription businesses.
Credit card charges are declined 15% of the time and account for 48% of churn in most subscription businesses.
American businesses spent over $138B on credit card processing fees last year, and with Visa and Mastercard controlling over 70% of the market, they have no incentive to reduce these fees themselves.
Coil allows businesses to accept bank payments from customers with a simple experience they'll actually use with no account, routing, or microdeposits needed.
Coil aims to become the default payment method for a post-credit card world, improving the scenarios and integrations necessary to achieve this goal.
18/ Trigo: Rent data API for landlords and lenders
Trigo aggregates consumer rent history to help landlords approve better tenants and lenders write more loans.
The company has 25x more coverage than the credit bureaus and has already consolidated tens of thousands of rental units to provide data instantly.
Landlords need more data to protect themselves from bad debt and evictions, and tenants with positive rent history are 4x more likely to pay their rent on time and in full.
Financial institutions, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have added rent payment data to their underwriting models to expand access to credit, but lenders are writing 17% fewer loans than they could because of the lack of rent data. (The largest database has only 3% coverage of rent data.)
Trigo is a federally regulated Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) that provides this missing rent data set through a real-time API and web application.
19/ JustPaid.io: AI-powered financial controller automating bill pay and invoicing
JustPaid.io is an AI-powered controller that checks bills and bank charges against contractual pricing from vendors to ensure there are no billing errors.
The current financial processes of companies are disconnected from what was agreed to pay vs. what was actually charged, leading to invoice fraud and financial loss.
JustPaid.io provides a centralized experience to automate and manage vendor relationships, overspending, and more to ensure organizations are always in control of their spending.
20/ Feather: The Bloomberg Terminal for retail traders
Feather is a one-stop solution for retail traders to analyze any investment, anywhere in the world.
The platform provides real-time financial data on every major tradable asset class.
Feather's pricing starts at just $39 per month, making it affordable for everyday investors to access data previously only available to Wall Street.
Investors can discover insider trades, check analysts' growth and earnings expectations, and compare companies' valuation multiples - all in one place, within seconds.
21/ Ruby Card: Neobank for e-commerce businesses
Ruby is a neobank designed for e-commerce businesses
They offer a flexible expense management solution that can accommodate each business's unique expense patterns
Ruby integrates into commerce platforms like Shopify, Stripe, and Amazon to provide a comprehensive view of financial health and empower smarter decisions
The traditional banking services often fail e-commerce businesses because of inflexibility, slow money movement, scattered cash positions, and tons of manual work
Ruby's solution includes a flexible spend management system, instant deposits, integrations into commerce platforms, and real-time analytics
22/ Mercoa: Accounts Payable API for B2B Fintechs
Mercoa is a new B2B fintech platform that allows other fintechs to offer bill pay and accounts payable services to their customers
Most fintechs struggle to monetize payments out, but Mercoa offers premium payment options that help customers maintain their cash flow while ensuring their vendors are paid on time
Mercoa offers a white-labeled, embedded BillPay experience with pre-built payment monetization
Mercoa's payments-focused BillPay experience allows payers to pay how they want and lets vendors choose how they want to receive their payment
Mercoa aims to digitize the $25 trillion in annual business payments in the US and eventually globally
23/ Palomma: Frictionless Account to Account (A2A) Payments for LatAm
Palomma helps online merchants in Latin America save on card processing fees and increase conversions by enabling frictionless Pay by Bank for their customers.
Existing Pay by Bank alternatives are difficult and pose several frictions, including low conversion, non-recurrent payments, and difficult reconciliation.
Palomma's solution is a single API and platform that allows for frictionless Pay by Bank payments.
The benefits of Palomma's solution include higher conversion rates, easily enabled recurrent payments, easy confirmation, and easy reconciliation.
24/ Concourse: Treasury management for global companies
Move money cross-border, automate workflows, and gain visibility & control all in one place.
Lowest FX rates and no transfer fees guaranteed.
25/ OneText: Frictionless payments via SMS
OneText is a startup disrupting SMS marketing and payments.
They aim to make every purchase as effortless as paying with your hotel room number.
In their first year, they have onboarded 50 fast-growing e-commerce brands and added as much as 14% in incremental revenue to their bottom lines.
The founders are Jonathan Fudem/CEO and Daniel Brain/CTO who met at PayPal Checkout where they designed and launched some of the world’s best checkout experiences.
The CMO of their largest customer, a $90M clothing brand, says they have revolutionized marketing for his company and are the best thing that’s happened to SMS marketing in forever.
OneText generated $597,000 dollars in payments in March and will book $50,000 dollars in revenue for April 2023.
26/ Laminate: Physical cards made easy for issuers
Design, manufacture, and fulfill physical debit/credit cards.
27/ AlphaWatch AI: AI copilot for hedge funds with trusted data
AlphaWatch AI is a research and analysis platform designed for hedge funds and private equity firms.
The platform uses custom LLMs, specialized embedding models, and integrates with trusted external data sources and secure private data.
AlphaWatch AI offers a reliable chat interface that cites its sources, saving financial professionals time on research.
The platform aims to solve a real pain point in disjointed data and high data costs for hedge funds.
While LLMs currently have limitations, AlphaWatch AI's efficient data integration and valuable insights enhance the way financial institutions access essential information and make informed decisions while maintaining data privacy.
Looking to start your own newsletter? Beehiiv is the Stripe of creator platforms.
Have feedback? Let me know at [email protected]
First time reading? Sign up here.