Monarch Raises $75M at $850M Valuation
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
When Intuit shut down Mint earlier in 2024, millions of users were left without a personal finance anchor… but in the space that opened, one startup quickly stepped forward. Monarch, a subscription-based personal finance app, has now raised $75 million at an $850 million valuation, marking one of the largest consumer FinTech deals in the U.S. so far this year.
The round, led by Forerunner Ventures and FPV Ventures, reflects a broader shift in how consumers engage with their financial lives. Monarch’s promise is a unified platform that includes budgeting, investment tracking, and financial goal-setting in one single mobile experience. It’s a vision co-founder Val Agostino has been working toward since the company’s launch in 2018.
“Managing your money is one of the big unsolved problems in consumer technology,” Agostino told CNBC. Since the wake of Mint’s closure, Monarch’s user base grew 20-fold, fueled by demand for a reliable alternative that doesn’t depend on ad revenue or data sales.
Agostino, who helped build Mint in its early days, brings that legacy into Monarch, but with a new model. This time, the focus is on paying subscribers. That decision shapes not only the product’s design but its priorities: ease of onboarding, clarity in expense tracking, and alignment with user needs rather than advertiser demands.
Read more global FinTech industry updates below 👇 and I'll be back with more tomorrow!
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INSIGHTS
🇧🇷 Warren Buffett walks away from Nubank with a $250 million gain. His departure comes despite Nu's strong financial performance, which posted record profits in 2024 and Q1 2025. The digital lender reported a Q1 net income of $557.2 million, up 47% YoY, with annual earnings for 2024 reaching $1.97 billion, a 91% increase from 2023.
FINTECH NEWS
🇦🇺 Go FinTech eyes Australian expansion as global push for inclusive AI-driven finance accelerates. The company aims to collaborate with financial institutions and regulatory bodies to implement AI-driven systems, enhancing financial inclusion for underserved communities.
🇺🇸 JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo explore a joint stablecoin project to challenge digital asset platforms. Discussions within the bank consortium are in early, conceptual stages and remain subject to change. Any final decision would depend on the fate of legislative actions around stablecoins and other factors.
🇦🇪 Bybit enables direct global stock trading with USDT. This innovation unlocks direct trading of 78 of the most sought-after global equities, all powered by USDT. Users can now tap into traditional markets like stocks, gold, oil, indices, and forex, without fiat onboarding or leaving the crypto ecosystem.
🇪🇺 Visa and Mastercard fees hit by new round of EU antitrust scrutiny. The fresh scrutiny comes on the heels of comments from European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde that the 27-member bloc needs to reduce its dependence on foreign payment providers.
🇬🇧 Revolut joins new European payment wallet “Wero”. The British FinTech is not yet joining the "European Payments Initiative" (EPI), which is behind Wero, as a shareholder, but will very much become a "scheme member," meaning it plans to offer Wero as a payment solution to its customers soon.
🇸🇬 Tiger-backed Robinhood rival, Public, explores direct indexing for DIY investors. Called Generated Assets, it lets users create and backtest custom indexes based on a slew of themes. Soon, they’ll be able to invest in those portfolios directly and publish the results to see how the strategies stack up against other offerings from the crowd.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇨🇴 Worldpay continues expansion into Latin America with domestic acquiring in Colombia. The company gives key solutions, including its advanced e-commerce payments technology, multi-layered fraud protection, 3D secure, and secure customer authentication, authorization, clearing and settlement, dispute management, and data insights.
REGTECH NEWS
🇮🇳 Getepay receives RBI approval to operate as an online payment aggregator. The digital payment platform has secured final authorisation from the RBI to operate. Aiming to empower SMEs, particularly in Tier 2, Tier 3, and rural areas, it plans to scale its operations and broaden its merchant offerings across India.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇦🇪 Emirates Development Bank launches Fee-Free Digital Banking Platform to support UAE entrepreneurs. From a single app, entrepreneurs will be able to manage payroll, invoicing, and payments, monitor cash flow, and access a growing suite of value-added services.
🌍 Quant makes money smarter with the rollout of industry-wide programmable money. Quant Flow, an industry programmable money and banking infrastructure now available via a white-label solution to banks, institutions, and corporates across Europe, the Middle East, and APAC.
🇮🇹 UniCredit escalates Banco BPM fight by taking Italy to court. The claim aims to address the legitimacy of the "golden power" under Italian and EU law, and UniCredit will support the EU's review of the situation. Read more
🇨🇭 Revolut Business Chief James Gibson: We want to double our Swiss client base. Gibson outlined the neobank’s growth strategy, which includes new investments, enhanced foreign exchange tools, seamless onboarding processes, and the upcoming introduction of payment terminals for merchants, directly challenging the market dominance of Worldline.
🇬🇧 FinTech Fiinu massively narrows annual losses and monthly burn rate. The company completed a £1.25 million equity raise in February and secured a £511,000 R&D tax credit in May 2025, extending its financial runway through at least mid-2026.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 Michigan lawmakers file 4 crypto bills on retiree funds, CBDCs, mining. House Bill 4510 would amend Michigan’s Public Employee Retirement System Investment Act to allow the state treasurer to invest in cryptocurrencies that have averaged a market cap above $250 million over the last calendar year.
🇬🇧 R3 and Solana partner to enable tokenized real-world assets. The combination of their capabilities will help regulated financial institutions meet the demand for tokenized real-world assets. Continue reading
🌍 XRP Ledger Community gets its first MiCA-regulated euro stablecoin, issued by Schuman Financial. This milestone positions EURØP as a pioneer among euro-denominated digital assets operating on a widely adopted blockchain infrastructure. The introduction of EURØP is expected to expand the utility of blockchain technology across euro-denominated markets.
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan National Bank to regulate the crypto sector. The initiative falls in line with the President’s directive, with the financial institution and government agencies jointly developing a suite of legislative amendments specifically for creating a legal framework for digital asset turnover.
🇺🇸 Fireblocks rolls out security upgrades for digital assets. The new capabilities focus on eliminating operational friction whilst strengthening security protocols across payment systems, retail applications, and institutional trading workflows.
🌍 Binance Wallet breaks records with 5 billion dollars in daily volume. With its Token Generation Events (TGEs), traders can buy tokens at bargain prices. In 2025, fifteen TGEs allowed acquiring tokens up to eight times cheaper than their market launch value on the first day.
PARTNERSHIPS
🌏 areeba and Foo to deliver digital payment services in the Middle East. This offering enables banks and FinTechs to build their own secure and scalable card programs and wallets without the need for complex infrastructure. The partnership removes traditional barriers and accelerates go-to-market timelines.
🇨🇳 Ant International launches tokenised deposit solutions for real-time treasury management with HSBC. The service will support treasury management with real-time, always-on HKD and USD payments between corporate wallets held by a corporate client at HSBC Hong Kong.
🌍Onramper partners with Opera's MiniPay to expand global access to stablecoins. The partnership allows Onramper to onboard more customers in SEA into the stablecoin ecosystem, utilising a gateway that is simple and secure to leverage through the use of a phone number.
🇬🇧 UK FinTech MuchBetter partners with NatWest to launch business accounts through its new business banking offering, MuchBetter Business (MBB). NatWest will provide essential fund safeguarding, access to payment schemes, foreign exchange capabilities, and comprehensive banking support for its new B2B solution.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 OpenFX raises $23 million led by Accel to build near-instant cross-border transactions. OpenFX can bring FX spreads down from around 69 basis points to sub-10, with 90% of its transactions settling in 60 minutes. If successful at scale, it could be enough of a technological leap for stablecoins to take off beyond pilots and experimentation.
🇺🇸 Announcing Monarch’s $75M Series B financing. This capital will accelerate its mission of bringing financial wellness to the masses and expanding the breadth of the Monarch platform. Continue reading
M&A
🌍 Orange is winding down its European retail banking operations and is in exclusive talks with Crédit Coopératif to sell its FinTech subsidiary, Anytime, which supports associations. This move aligns with Orange’s strategic exit and Crédit Coopératif’s 2030 growth plan.
🇺🇸 Alchemy acquires no-code NFT launchpad HeyMint for an undisclosed amount. The undisclosed funding deal will see HeyMint’s infrastructure embedded within Alchemy as it seeks to simplify user onboarding for Web3 applications.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🌍 EBANX appoints Marie-Elise Droga as CRO. Droga steps into her new role with the mission to further expand EBANX’s client portfolio, currently comprising over 500 enterprise merchants from North America, Europe, and APAC, and grow the FinTech’s footprint beyond the 29 countries it operates in across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
🇺🇸 Goldman Sachs hires Tommaso Ponselé for the new capital solutions team. He is joining the company as a managing director within its capital solutions unit. Goldman launched the unit in January as part of a new push to do more work with financial sponsors and do more work in the private credit space.
🌎 Revolut’s CFD Trading launch led to Sergei Riabov's departure as head of Wealth & Trading after 3 years. His role included setting product strategy and overseeing operations across the UK, EU, and other international markets such as Singapore, Australia, and the US.
🇺🇸 JPMorgan expands tech team with four veteran bankers from BofA, Goldman, Lazard. Mark Garcia, Eric Quanbeck, Brett Miller, and Peter Duda join as senior leaders in tech banking. They will be part of JPMorgan’s expanding technology investment banking division.
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