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Why SoftBank made a big bet on an Indian bank-tech startup

Hello and welcome to Protocol | Fintech! This Tuesday: An Indian startup looking to disrupt banking technology, Maxine Waters' worries about SPACs, and the key to stopping money launderers.
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Indian startup Zeta just raised a stunning $250 million in a series C round led by SoftBank. It highlights a key trend in financial services: Banks are tired of their aging tech and want newer, faster, better software.
Zeta, which provides infrastructure technology for a host of banking services, including credit-card processing and mobile banking, is now valued at $1.45 billion. That's a fourfold increase from two years ago, which underlines heightened investor interest in this space.
As consumers go mobile, banks want to move away from antiquated systems. Founded just six years ago, Zeta says it now serves 10 banks and 25 fintechs in eight countries.
Why the big valuation bump for Zeta? It's not really surprising given so much pressure to "upgrade their antiquated systems," to get rid of "massive inefficiencies," Moya said.
"This unicorn has got everyone's attention." The monster funding round naturally means a more intense spotlight on the Indian startup, Moya said. That's also partly because of Turakhia, Zeta's 41-year-old CEO, a legendary serial entrepreneur who started his first company at 18. Zeta's game plan is simple, he said: to "disrupt the stagnant landscape of banking tech."
— Ben Pimentel
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Coinbase's big lobbying hire: The crypto marketplace named a Goldman exec as its chief policy officer.
What fintech trend are you most excited about?
What's happening with the rapid increase in crypto and related digital currency services. In the last year or so, we have seen digital currencies go from relative obscurity to a mass market consumer phenomenon. Let's take non-fungible tokens. Three months ago, most consumers had never heard of NFTs. Now you have everyone from the American rapper Ja Rule to the Christie's auction house all participating in the NFT economy.
What trend are you most worried about?
Financial crime is the biggest trend that I worry about the most for obvious reasons. While fintech innovation is amazing and the benefits are many, the new services that are being launched are unfortunately ripe for criminal intrusion and potential manipulation. Many new services are often rolled out with anti-money laundering (AML) and risk detection as an afterthought. There is usually a decision to bring on a compliance team or team member when the service has reached enough scale. Unfortunately, without early AML and risk detection, there's always the possibility of onboarding a person or business entity with criminal intent.
What was your biggest professional blunder, and what did you learn from it?
My biggest professional blunders have always been hiring-related. As much as you can always try and hire the right people, do background checks; in the end people will always surprise you and it will be impossible to get the right candidate for the role every time.
That was the April volume on Uniswap, a decentralized crypto exchange, compared with $110 billion on Coinbase.
Trusted since 2011, there are over 73M Blockchain.com Wallets that have transacted nearly $1T in crypto.
Whether you want to trade, earn, custody, or access full-stack institutional solutions, Blockchain.com is a market leader in retail and institutional crypto products.
Thanks for reading — see you Friday.
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