Welcome to this week’s edition, where we navigate the fine line between legacy and the next frontier. Today, the fintech ecosystem is being reshaped by those who refuse to accept friction as a permanent state of affairs.
In our featured Q&A, we sit down with Cale Johnston of Onsetto to explore the “moment of the switch”—the critical juncture where business banking primacy is either won or lost. Complementing this vision, our expert analysts dive deep into the mechanics of change: Samarth Shekhar spotlights the high-impact players currently redefining investment and identity, while Frank Schwab delivers a sobering yet vital reality check on the “death zone” facing traditional banking. To tie it all together, we showcase a fresh wave of Funding Rounds—a testament to the resilience and inspiration of founders who have successfully secured the capital needed to turn bold ideas into institutional reality.
Join us as we bridge the gap between today’s challenges and tomorrow’s standards.
A Q&A with Onsetto’s Cale Johnston on Owning Core Operating Accounts in Business Banking
In the dynamic landscape of fintech, where the battle for primary banking relationships hinges on seamless transitions, few innovators have mastered the art of frictionless change like Cale Johnston. As the Founder and CEO of Onsetto—a Minneapolis-based startup founded in 2025 and already backed by a $2.2 million seed round led by EJF Ventures—Cale brings a wealth of experience from his previous venture, ClickSWITCH, which revolutionized consumer account switching before its acquisition by Q2 Holdings and adoption by hundreds of institutions.
Joined by a powerhouse team including CTO Rob Zwink, COO Jason Johnston, and Chief Product Officer Jordan Lemanski, Onsetto is tackling the untapped complexities of business banking with precision and depth. Dive into this exclusive Q&A as Cale shares how they’re empowering banks to capture the core operating account, accelerate funding, and redefine growth—insights that could reshape how financial institutions build lasting primacy.
1- Tell us about yourself / your co-founder(s).
I’ve spent my career as an entrepreneur building technology companies for banks, with a particular focus on removing friction from how people and businesses move their money.
One of my first roles in fintech was selling mobile check deposit into banks, back when many institutions were still uncomfortable with the idea. Those early conversations were incredibly formative. While banks were evaluating new technology, they consistently shared the same frustration. Winning a new account was one thing. Getting that customer to actually move their direct deposit was another.
Through those conversations, a clear theme emerged. Switching banks was difficult and manual, that friction often prevented banks from ever realizing the full value of the relationship. From that point on, I became deeply committed to solving the switching problem in a meaningful way.
I later founded ClickSWITCH, which modernized consumer account switching and now powers hundreds of financial institutions following its acquisition by Q2.
But while consumer switching evolved, business account switching did not. Moving a core operating account is exponentially more complex involving payroll, accounts receivable and payable, cards, wires, and treasury services, and no one had solved it end to end.
That is why we founded my most recent venture Onsetto. Financial institutions do not win business banking relationships at account opening. They win when a business fully switches its core operating account. That moment defines primacy, lifetime value, and long term growth, and it is where Onsetto focuses.
Read more from the interview: Turning the Core Operating Account into a Growth Engine
Deal Highlights
I am all for Sidekick and other players offering “private banking-lite” serving the mass affluent / digitally savvy HNW / emerging HNW / HENRY segments with roughly €100 – 1M in investable assets. Think of them as sitting between retail robo-investing (e.g., Nutmeg, Trading 212, Vanguard Personal Investor) and traditional private banks (Julius Bär, UBS, Coutts, Barclays Private, etc.) Will be one to watch.
Sidekick secures £7.8M Series A to broaden access to private-banking style investing. Founded in 2022, Sidekick targets professionals whose finances have outgrown entry-level investing apps but who find private banks costly, complex, or inaccessible… Unlike many digital wealth platforms focused on basic portfolios and automation, Sidekick combines public market investing with tailored portfolio strategies and, for eligible clients, access to private market opportunities. It also offers Lombard lending, enabling users to borrow against their investment portfolios without selling assets, a feature typically reserved for private banking clients in the UK.
Amazing founder-startup fit, thinking of ex-Stripe team “building the trust rail of B2B internet” with the complications of shell companies, complex ownership trees and cross-jurisdiction structures and outdated corporate databases on the other. To be sure- this is a crowded space with both newer (Trulioo, Alloy, AiPrise…) and established players (LexisNexis, Refinitiv).
Duna, Built by Stripe Veterans, Raises €30 Million CapitalG-led Series A to Solve Business Identity For The Internet…“Duna is addressing one of the internet’s biggest unsolved problems: identity,” says Duna founder Duco van Lanschot. “Compliance and identity now consume up to 10-20 percent of a bank’s total costs. The expensive and manual legacy systems lead to billions lost in fraud, friction, and fines, as well as lost income from refusals of legitimate customers. This makes it an ideal use case for AI automation.”
Circit is going after a very specific but mission-critical choke point in audits: getting independent, third-party evidence (cash, debt, investments, held-at-custodian assets, transactions, etc.) without relying on client-provided PDFs/spreadsheets/email chains—which are slow, inconsistent, and a fraud vector. Confirmation, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2019, mentions ~1.5M users in 170 countries and >$1T of financial data confirmed annually.
Circit Secures $22 Million Growth Equity Funding to Build the Independent Verification Layer Powering the Future of Audit … “Audit confirmations are fundamental to trust in financial reporting, yet the process has remained manual, costly, and fraught with fraud risk for both auditors and corporates. Circit was built to change that, by giving auditors direct, independent access to confirm all asset and liability types on corporate balance sheets. As financial infrastructure evolves through open banking, API access, and digital asset frameworks such as the GENIUS Act, Circit is building the verified data infrastructure to power AI-driven audit testing and workflows.”
Read on for more on the founders and investors in the news last week. If you are building or backing “what’s next in finance” and want to spread the word with our network of 20K+, reach out to Samarth Shekhar or Frank Schwab.
The Middle is a Death Zone
by Frank Schwab
Most banks are currently “zombie institutions”—they just haven’t checked their pulse yet.
We are witnessing the brutal hollowing out of the financial sector. The era where a banking license was a business model is over.
Today, you face a binary choice.
Read the full post here: Why Banks Must Innovate or Liquidate
Funding Rounds
Levl Raises $7 Million Seed Round to Bridge Traditional Banking and Stablecoin Payments
Company reached $1 billion in annualized global transaction volume within the platform’s first four months and is trusted by institutional leaders including TerraPay, TapTap Send, and Nala
LONDON & NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Levl, a unified platform powering fiat and stablecoin global payments, announced today it has closed $7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Galaxy Ventures with participation from Protagonist, Deus X, Blockchain Builders Fund, OpenFX, FalconX, CMCC, Variant Fund, and a strategic angel network including leaders from Revolut, Brex, Comun and others.
The global cross-border payments market is demonstrating explosive growth: transaction volumes are projected to reach $320 trillion by 2032. But, global payments remain constrained by legacy financial infrastructure, resulting in slow settlement, fragmented money movement, excessive intermediaries and inflated FX costs.
Apexx Global raises $10m for payments orchestration platform
Payments orchestration platform Apexx Global has received a strategic investment of up to $10 million led by Finch Capital.
Founded in 2016, Apexx has built a platform that enables enterprise merchants to optimise payment performance at scale through a single API.
By intelligently routing transactions across the global payments ecosystem, Apexx says it materially increases acceptance rates, reduces processing costs, and improves unit economics.
The investment comes s Apexx nears break-even and will support product innovation and international expansion.
As part of the investment, Radboud Vlaar, managing partner at Finch Capital, will join the Apexx Global board and assume the role of chairman.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/47255/apexx-global-raises-10m-for-payments-orchestration-platform
Sidekick secures £7.8M Series A to broaden access to private-banking style investing
London-based wealth management platform Sidekick has raised £7.8M in a Series A round to expand its product suite and bring sophisticated investment tools to professionals priced out of traditional private banking.
The round was led by Eos Ventures and the Development Bank of Wales, with participation from Koro Capital and returning investors including Seedcamp, MS&AD Ventures, TheVentureCity, PactVC, Blackwood, 1818 Venture Capital, and Semantic Ventures.
Bridging the gap between retail investing and private banking
Founded in 2022, Sidekick targets professionals whose finances have outgrown entry-level investing apps but who find private banks costly, complex, or inaccessible. The platform is designed for individuals managing higher balances, rising incomes, and more intricate financial needs, offering a streamlined alternative to traditional wealth management.
https://www.founderstoday.news/sidekick-secures-over-7m-series-a/
Bits secures €12m Series A to simplify AML for European FinTechs
Bits, a compliance infrastructure platform, has raised €12m in Series A funding to speed up product development and support European expansion.
The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Unusual Ventures and Alliance Ventures. Haval van Drumpt, chief executive of Tre Sweden, also invested.
Bits said the funding will be used to deepen automation across financial crime workflows, expand coverage of additional regulatory and data sources, and scale commercial operations across key markets.
Bits is positioning its platform as a response to fragmented compliance across Europe, where banks and FinTechs face rising fraud and money laundering risk alongside tighter regulatory scrutiny, while also needing fast, digital onboarding.
https://fintech.global/2026/02/03/bits-secures-e12m-series-a-to-simplify-aml-for-european-fintechs
Waffo raises over $15m in Series A funding to expand global payments platform
Announcing the raise on LinkedIn, Waffo says it plans to use the funds to fuel “key developments” across its offering.
Hong Kong-based paytech Waffo has raised over $15 million in Series A funding to expand its payments infrastructure platform.
The round was co-led by Illuminate Financial and Gaorong Capital with support from HSBC and BAI Capital, and brings the start-up’s total funding to $30 million.
The company’s list of existing backers also includes the likes of banking heavyweights BNY, JP Morgan, Citi, and Barclays.
The Waffo platform enables businesses to accept payments worldwide using over 430 local payment methods, with additional tools for managing collections, subscriptions, compliance, risk management, and settlement.
https://www.fintechfutures.com/venture-capital-funding/waffo-raises-over-15m-in-series-a-funding
YC alum Pasito raises $21M to transform messy benefits data into a smart AI workspace
The insurance and employee benefits industry still uses many outdated, manual processes. Tasks such as quoting, plan creation, enrollment, and claims processing are often done in spreadsheets or through slow, error-prone data entry. This leads to higher costs for companies and a poor experience for employees who rely on these benefits.
Pasito wants to solve these problems. The company builds digital tools for group health, life, and retirement benefits, and just raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Insight Partners, with support from Y Combinator and MTech Capital. Its software automates the aggregation of scattered benefits data into a single smart workspace.
The company claims its AI builds benefit plans with 98% accuracy (compared to the industry’s 74%), and slashes repetitive back-office work along the way.
https://techfundingnews.com/pasito-raises-21m-series-a-ai-benefits-workspace
Circit Secures $22 Million Growth Equity Funding to Build the Independent Verification Layer Powering the Future of Audit
On 10 February 2026, Circit announced a $22 million growth equity financing to scale our global verification network and embed trusted data at the core of every audit.
The round was led by Ten Coves Capital, a New York–based growth equity firm specializing in financial software, with strong participation from existing investors Aquiline and MiddleGame Ventures. Together, the investor group brings deep experience supporting enterprise technology companies that transform mission-critical infrastructure across audit, tax, and regulated financial services industries.
The funding follows a breakout year for Circit, with adoption across more than 400 auditfirms – including all of the Top 20 global audit networks – and a verification network spanning over 30,000 banks, funds service providers, and other evidence providers. Over the past year, the Circit platform facilitated the confirmation of assets and liabilities for 150,000 corporate entities and, on average, independently verified over 100 million transactions.
InsurTech platform Equal Parts bags $23m Series A funding
Equal Parts, an InsurTech platform focused on transforming independent insurance agencies through acquisition and technology, has raised $23m in fresh funding as it looks to scale rapidly across the US market.
The Series A round was led by Inspired Capital, with participation from Equal Ventures, Max Ventures, Genius Ventures and a group of lending partners.
The funding will support the company’s efforts to expand its footprint among independent agencies and strengthen its technology-driven operating model.
Founded in March 2025, Equal Parts acquires independent insurance agencies and integrates them into a shared operating platform designed to support growth while preserving agency culture and client relationships. The company positions itself as both an acquisition partner and an operational backbone for agency owners navigating succession and scale.
https://fintech.global/2026/02/11/insurtech-platform-equal-parts-bags-23m-series-a-funding
Alinea Invest scores $22.5m in user acquisition financing
The financing follows Alinea’s $10.4 million Series A raise in 2025 and its $3.4 million seed round in early 2024.
US wealth management start-up Alinea Invest has secured $22.5 million in user acquisition financing from PvX Partners, a Singapore-based financing firm.
The start-up says it will use the new credit facility “to scale its marketing spends in an effort to deliver its personalised wealth management platform to more investors”.
Established in 2021 by co-CEO’s Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhani, Alinea’s platform has been built to democratise access to investment services for first-time investors. The company provides users with personalised investment portfolios and financial education services through its AI-powered “personal investing companion” dubbed AI Allie.
https://www.fintechfutures.com/wealthtech/alinea-invest-scores-22-5m-in-user-acquisition-financing
Duna, Built by Stripe Veterans, Raises €30 Million CapitalG-led Series A to Solve Business Identity For The Internet
AMSTERDAM & BERLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Duna, the identity fintech founded by two Stripe alumni, today announced a €30 million Series A funding round led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund. Existing investors Index Ventures, Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake Chairman Frank Slootman also participated in the round.
The company, based in Germany and the Netherlands, was launched in 2023 by Duco van Lanschot, who was head of Benelux and DACH at Stripe for three years, and David Schreiber, who spent six years at Stripe where he ran the company’s largest global business unit, including the core card payment platform. In May 2025, the company announced a €10.7 million seed round led by Index Ventures. The latest fundraise brings Duna’s total funding to more than €40 million.
UK proptech OneDome lands £25m pre-Series C
Bringing OneDome’s total capital raised to £40 million, the funding includes a media-for-equity deal with Channel 4 Ventures, valued at up to £7.5 million.
London-based proptech OneDome has raised £25 million in a pre-Series C funding round to support its goal of creating the UK’s first housing and fintech superapp.
The investment, which brings OneDome’s total capital raised to £40 million, includes a media-for-equity agreement with UK broadcaster Channel 4 valued at up to £7.5 million. This deal will fund a national TV advertising campaign in 2026 to promote OneDome’s HomeBuyer Service, which integrates mortgage advice, insurance, conveyancing, and transaction management.
https://www.fintechfutures.com/venture-capital-funding/uk-proptech-onedome-lands-25m-pre-series-c
Artificial Labs secures $45m in Series B round
Artificial Labs, a provider of digital broking and underwriting technology, has completed a Series B round, securing $45m (£32.79m) in financing.
The investment round was led by CommerzVentures, with participation from Move Capital Fund I, a European B2B technology investor.
Existing investors including Augmentum Fintech, 6 Degrees Capital, FOM and TrueSight Ventures also contributed to the funding round.
CommerzVentures managing partner Heiko Schwender said: “We have been backing next-generation technology businesses for more than a decade. Artificial’s platform addresses a real, structural problem that has constrained efficiency in commercial and specialty insurance for decades.
“The team’s combination of deep insurance domain expertise and world-class engineering is rare, and it uniquely positions them to redefine this market.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/artificial-labs-secures-45m-series-101051894.html
Indigo Raises $50 Million to Modernize Medical Malpractice Insurance Nationwide
Funding will accelerate automated underwriting, expand distribution, and scale operations across Indigo’s medical professional liability platform
MIAMI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Indigo, a vertically integrated, AI-driven medical professional liability platform, today announced the closing of a $50 million oversubscribed Series B financing, led by existing investor Rubicon Founders, with significant participation from new investor Town Hall Ventures, and other existing strategic investors including Optum Ventures.
The new capital will support continued expansion of Indigo’s AI-powered underwriting and distribution platform, enabling faster, more precise coverage decisions for physicians and brokers nationwide.
Founded in 2023, Indigo provides medical professional liability insurance to physicians across a broad range of specialties. The company has rapidly grown to insure nearly 1,000 providers nationwide and has surpassed $10 million in premium. Indigo’s proprietary AI platform, Lux, applies advanced machine learning and purpose-built risk models to automate underwriting workflows traditionally handled through manual, labor-intensive processes.
Anchorage Digital lands $100m Tether investment at $4.2bn valuation
The company has also launched its first employee tender offer, aiming to “reward the builders who believed early and stayed the course”, according to co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley.
Anchorage Digital has secured a $100 million equity investment from stablecoin heavyweight Tether and has launched its first employee tender offer.
The investment values the company at $4.2 billion, a significant increase from its $3 billion valuation in 2021, which it achieved following a $350 million Series D funding round led by global investment firm KKR.
Founded in 2017, Anchorage Digital is the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the US. With offices in Singapore, Portugal, and the US, the company provides institutional clients with crypto services such as trading, staking, custody, settlement, governance, and stablecoin issuance.
VENTURE FUNDS
Blue Dot Investors Emerges as a Fintech-Focused Secondaries Investment Firm
Growth investor brings strategic capital and liquidity to late-stage companies to support early investors, founders and employees
New York, NY – February 11, 2026 – Today, Blue Dot Investors, announced its launch, emerging from stealth to provide secondaries and strategic capital solutions for late-stage companies across major fintech verticals and their early investors, founders and employees.
During the 2021 ZIRP era, fintech companies accounted for nearly 20% of venture dollars, reflecting strong investor interest in the sector. Since then, private funding has cooled within the space, yet hundreds of mature, profitable fintech companies are now approaching IPOs, strategic exits or extended private lifespans. Founders, employees and early investors, many constrained by fund-life timelines or other structural limits, are driving demand for liquidity in fintech companies that require deep investor sector expertise.
https://bluedotinvestors.com/press
As we close this week’s briefing, one theme remains clear: the future of finance belongs to those who prioritize clarity over complexity and action over inertia. Whether it is a Stripe veteran solving global identity or an AI-driven platform modernizing medical insurance, the companies featured today remind us that every industry bottleneck is simply an opportunity in disguise.
We hope these insights spark new ideas for your own projects and provide the momentum needed for the week ahead. Stay curious, stay bold, and as always, thank you for being a vital part of our community. We look forward to seeing you in our next edition.