PYMNTS FinTech IPO Index Surges 4.4% as Worldpay Expands Partnership With Affirm

Earnings season has yet to be a prime mover of the FinTech space. Partnerships announced through the past week helped drive most names higher as the overall index surged 4.4%. And one key theme was embedding: of workflows and automation, and payments.

To be sure, the relatively strong showing by traditional finance players — namely the banks, which kicked off earnings season last week — helped underpin the FinTech rally. PYMNTS reported that firms such as JPMorgan and Bank of America have reported resilient spending by consumers on credit and debit cards, and strong credit metrics. 

The read across for the FinTechs, is that loan demand is similarly healthy, as is their own credit performance. In one recent example, LendingClub reported that loan originations were up 37% year over year.

In company by company news, as reported by PYMNTS, U.S. Acumatica customers can now manage and pay bills within their enterprise resource planning system. They can do this with the help of BILL’s accounts payable automation. This capability comes from a new strategic partnership. Acumatica now embeds BILL’s AP automation into its Cloud ERP, the companies said. With the embedded solution, businesses can manage bills, streamline payments and optimize cash flow by choosing how and when to pay.

Shares of BILL were up 2.2%. 

Also this week, PYMNTS reported that Affirm expanded its partnership with payment services provider Worldpay. The new arrangement will integrate Affirm into Worldpay’s embedded payments offering for software platforms. Worldpay for Platforms provides embedded payments for more than 1,000 software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and has processed more than $400 billion in payment volume and 4.6 billion transactions in the last year. The expanded efforts and integration mean that  platforms gain the ability to offer merchants Affirm as a payment method to their merchants, giving eligible customers more ways to pay.   

“The expanded partnership is the latest in a series of efforts by Affirm to widen its reach,” we noted. The company also announced this week that it is extending its relationship with Wayfair, integrating its buy now, pay later offering directly into the home goods retailer’s checkout system. Affirm shares were among the most notable gainers through the week, jumping 9.4%.

Blend unveiled “Intelligent Origination,” a new operating model for lending in which artificial intelligence is embedded into the core execution layer of the platform (rather than being a bolt-on tool), designed to orchestrate data, documents and product rules across the lending lifecycle and move from manual/exception-based steps to continuous, autonomous workflow execution.

Blend shares jumped 6.1%

FinWise Bancorp announced a strategic program agreement with DreamFi to deliver financial products including a DreamFi debit card, checking account, access to over 40,000 surcharge-free U.S. ATMs, prescription savings, and built-in protections such as life insurance and phone protection; future expansions may include lending, bill-pay and savings products. FinWise shares tacked on 3.2%.

dLocal said this week that it had formed a partnership with Alchemy Pay, a payment gateway that connects crypto with traditional fiat currencies. The collaboration leverages dLocal’s local payment infrastructure to support Alchemy Pay’s expansion in Latin America, starting with instant bank transfers in Argentina. dLocal’s stock gave up 1.3% through the past five trading sessions.

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