Carta’s missteps and actual property fintech’s up-and-down week

14 January 2024

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Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (previously The Interchange)! On this version, I’m going to take a look at some hits and misses in the actual property fintech area, Carta’s missteps (once more), and extra!

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The large story

Fairness administration platform Carta was within the information . . . once more. And never for good causes. Once more. A outstanding buyer accused Carta of misusing delicate info that startups entrust to the corporate in pursuit of its personal targets. The declare raised wider questions on how Carta operates, at the same time as Carta argued the incident was remoted, and led to the corporate shutting down its secondary buying and selling operations. So what occurs to Carta now? Rebecca Szkutak does a deep dive. In the meantime, Alex and Anna argued that Carta’s progress story is being overshadowed by its inventory buying and selling snafu.

Evaluation of the week

The true property fintech area continues to have its ups and downs. We began the week by reporting on the information that Right here, a fractional short-term trip rental market we first reported on in 2022, had shut down its funding platform after simply over two years of operation. The corporate claimed that it’s nonetheless alive, however we’re undecided precisely what’s left. Although so many firms within the business have struggled or shut down, traders aren’t giving up on it.

I additionally reported this week on Downpayments’ mission to assist traders buy new properties with interest-free down funds.

Lastly, we checked out Overmoon, which additionally has a singular mannequin that may be a hybrid of Airbnb and accommodations — however with one of the best of each worlds. Take heed to the Fairness crew focus on Overmoon extra right here:

{Dollars} and cents

Latin American startups proceed to draw enterprise {dollars}. We reported on two raises out of the area:

Conta Simples grabs one other $41.5M for its expense administration method in Brazil

Prometeo raises $13M from PayPal, Samsung and extra to carry open banking to Latin America

In the meantime, in Africa, YC-backed African fintech Cleva, based by Stripe and AWS alums, raises $1.5M pre-seed

And, right here within the U.S., Pier banks $2.4M to launch ‘Stripe for credit score’

What else we’re writing

Deal Dive: A Stripe secondary deal value listening to: There apparently has been a flurry of patrons trying to get shares within the firm in latest months.

Arc desires to make enterprise debt common once more: Arc is taking up the $30 billion enterprise debt business with a brand new market for startups.

GenAI may make KYC successfully ineffective: There’s no proof that GenAI instruments have been used to idiot an actual “know your buyer” system — but. However some comparatively convincing deepfaked ID pictures are trigger for alarm.

Scoop: Treasure Monetary lays off employees simply months after reporting ‘explosive progress’: The layoffs affected some 60% to 70% of the corporate.