The Interchange: Venture's mixed signals

It was largely in demand, according to CEO and co-founder Zach Perret, from customers and a desire on its part to “own more of the account funding process.” And it puts Plaid into even more of a competitive position with payments giant Stripe.Meanwhile, Stripe had news of its own, taking the wraps off Data Pipeline, an infrastructure product that will let its users create links between their Stripe transaction data and data stores that they keep in Amazon Redshift or Snowflake’s Data Cloud.As our own Ingrid Lunden puts it, the move underscores how Stripe is positioning itself as more than just a payments provider. Visa denied that assertion, stating that Plaid was not a payments company and, therefore, not a direct competitor.But one of the things that came out at that time was that Visa in fact did view Plaid as a potential competitor, with one executive likening the startup to an island “volcano” whose capabilities at that time were just “the tip showing above the water,” warning that “what lies beneath, though, is a massive opportunity — one that threatens Visa.” And when conducting due diligence in the acquisition process, Visa’s senior executives reportedly grew alarmed by Plaid’s plans to add “a meaningful money movement business by the end of 2021.”When you look back at that history, Plaid’s recent product announcements are hardly a surprise. Launching with over 150,000 pre-registered customers, Zilch says its arrival in the U.S. follows a huge growth period, reaching over 2 million customers in the 18 months since it launched in the U.K.In other (big) BNPL news, the Wall Street Journal reported that Klarna aims to raise up to $1 billion from new and existing backers in a deal that could value the company “at almost a third less than the $45.9 billion valuation it achieved just under a year ago,” or in the value in the low $30-billion-range, post-money. First off, I wrote about Arrived — a proptech that raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Forerunner Ventures to give people the ability to buy shares in single-family rentals with “as little as $100.” Returning backers included Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos; Good Friends, a venture fund run by the CEOs and co-founders of Warby Parker, Harry’s and Allbirds, as well as Spencer Rascoff, co-founder and former CEO of Zillow.The concept of fractional real estate investing is not a new one. Fifth Wall preempted the round, which also included participation from repeat backers Battery Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and GGV Capital.My favorite line in this story was from Belong CEO and co-founder Ale Resnik, who said part of the company’s goal is to make renters not feel like “second-class citizens.” There’s a bigger story here on why startups focused on the rental market seem to be attracting venture dollars. Speaking of infrastructure, payments infra startup Finix announced some new product news last week, including the fact that it is now a registered payment facilitator and has expanded its in-person payments capabilities and added real-time fraud monitoring.In LatAm, UnDosTres, a Mexican fintech company working on airtime top-ups, service payments and entertainment purchases, announced it closed on a $30 million Series B led by IDC Investments.And Nomad, a Brazilian fintech company that allows Brazilians to open a 100% digital banking/investment account in a North American bank, raised $32 million just 9 months after their first round. Speaking of Brazil, check out this feature I did on Neon, a digital bank with 16 million customers in its home country focused on the working class.Trellis, a company that wants to help people pay less money for their car insurance and make it easier to switch with its API, raised $5 million from Amex Ventures.Caribou, a fintech whose mission is to help people take control of their car payments, closed on $115 million in an “oversubscribed” Series C funding round, which valued the company at $1.1 billion.