Fintechs worldwide saw sizeable funding rounds this week, with investment fintech Qraft closing a $146 million series C round and crypto exchange Rain nabbing $110 million in a series B round.

Qraft hauls in $146 million

Investment management fintech Qraft has closed a $146 million series C funding round led by $402 billion Japanese financial conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. The funding will be used to bolster expansion into the American and Chinese markets, while also providing the opportunity to create an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled portfolio management system for SoftBank.

“Qraft can revolutionize the way financial institutions manage public equity assets, by providing their own AI technologies that have been tested and proven in the US equity market,” Kentaro Matsui, managing director at SB Investment Advisors, said in a release.

Qraft creates and manages proprietary portfolio weight signals and has a range of NYSE-listed ETFs, according to the release. The company also offers data processing solutions and investment analysis for global asset managers.

Crypto management platform Rain gets $110 million

Bahrain-based crypto management and exchange platform Rain Financial completed a $110 million series B round, led by investment groups Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins and joined by Coinbase Ventures, Global Founders Capital and other groups.

The funding will go toward expansion in Middle Eastern and North African markets, along with developing an improved digital trading platform and expanding its 400-person global team.

Operating with an official license from the Central Bank of Bahrain, the firm is also a crypto asset broker. Its flagship Rain platform has hosted nearly $2 billion in transactions worldwide and is used by a network of more than 185,000 users.

Personetics closes $85 million for personalized digital banking

Israeli fintech Personetics has grabbed $85 million in a private equity round to use to improve its customizable digital banking services.

Personetics uses AI-driven technology to provide customers of client banks with specialized financial insights, including spending advice reflective of account activity and money management tips. The company will look to enhance existing financial tools and innovate new products for its banking clients, which include Bank of Montreal (BMO), U.S. Bank, Mero Bank and MUFG.

The company has raised $160 million since the start of 2021, with its latest funding coming in a private equity round in February 2021. This round was led by Thoma Bravo, with Lightspeed Ventures, Nyca Partners, Warburg Pincus and Sequoia Capital, among investing partners.

FV Bank makes strategic investment in DIRO technology

Puerto Rican digital bank FV Bank has announced its investment in DIRO, a platform that verifies identity and documents for banks and financial service providers. The bank will use DIRO for international onboarding and account opening processes.

“We’re delighted to invest in DIRO — a technology company at the forefront of the identity verification sector,” Miles Paschini, co-founder and chief executive at FV Bank, said in a statement. “DIRO’s instant bank account verification services will help us to further improve our clients’ user experience while also strengthening our KYC and AML processes.”

DIRO reduces document and identity fraud for customers by providing blockchain-based solutions that are not based on third-party application programming interface (API) integration. DIRO’s technology is data privacy law compliant and does not use screen scraping or document downloads for its solutions.

FV Bank is currently valued at $48.9 million, according to a release.

Deals and Dollars is a weekly Bank Automation News column that features fintech funding rounds and the technology dealings of financial institutions. Submissions may be sent for consideration to editorial@royalmedia.com.

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